Wicked After Midnight(111)

“What the hell?”

Madame Sylvie appeared in the door to look me up and down as if I was a show dog, as if she was hunting for faults or bared teeth. “Hush. Tonight is the night.”

Charline stepped to Sylvie’s side. Their avid eyes made my blud run cold, their horizontal pupils unblinking and their arms crossed. Sylvie’s flesh-colored powder completely creeped me out; surely that didn’t fool the men? Or perhaps that was why she mostly stayed hidden in her room—who knew what her skin truly showed?

“Tonight’s what night?” I asked.

Charline smiled too brightly. “The night.”

Blue darted in with her brush, painting my lips with a blood-red Cupid’s bow. Her own mouth was drawn down in a frown, darker blue in the wrinkles.

Madame Sylvie’s eyebrows shot up in drawn-on arches. “You know what to do, n’est-ce pas? Where everything goes? In theory if not in practice?”

I went stock-still, frozen. They still thought I was a virgin. And they still thought I was for sale. And apparently, they had finally earned a price high enough to ensure that they got a receipt, elephant or no.

“I’m not a whore.” My voice was tiny, needle-thin. But as strong as a needle, too.

“Of course not.” Charline patted me as if I was a fractious lapdog. “You’re a courtesan. And the highest-paid one in all of Paris. Possibly all the world one day, if you’re any good at it. Impress him, and you might find yourself on the Maybuck.”

Bile rose in my throat. When had I eaten last? Ah, yes. A vampire poodle. No wonder it tasted gamey. I swallowed it back down. “I don’t want to go on an airship brothel. And I’m not sleeping with whatever rich asshole you sold me to. Period.”

“That’s no way—” Charline began.

“How dare you—” Madame Sylvie barked at the same time.

But Blue held up a hand. I was utterly surprised when both Sylvie’s and Charline’s mouths snapped shut, and Blue gave them both a benevolent and forgiving nod. “You’re a girl. A beautiful, talented girl with a unique flair that draws men to you like bludbunnies to a baby carriage. What are your choices?” She counted the options off on her stubby blue fingers. “Marry well. Unlikely, as you’re not landed or human. Make enough money in the cabarets to set up your life. Probable, if you don’t make enemies, but they’ll always want more. Stand your man up tonight, and you might wind up dead, for he’s not the forgiving type.” She pinned me with a gimlet eye. “You could be someone’s mistress. Possible, but you’ll need to be damn fine in bed and willing to put up with a nagging wife in the background. Become the greatest and most well-paid courtesan in Paris, with just an hour’s worth of work.” Her last finger was a thumb, scarred with years of sewing and needle pricks. She pointed it at my chest. “Or get kicked out of here and fall into the gutter as so many girls do. Take less and less money for doing more and more against the filthy bricks of back alleys. Waste away on drops of absinthe. Fade into nothing.”

The thumb disappeared.

“You’ve got five other fingers,” I hissed.

Blue held up a fist. “Only if you’re a man.”

“He’s waiting, darling. We know you’ll choose wisely,” Charline said.

“Or else,” Madame Sylvie added.

Charline’s hands curled around my shoulders and squeezed, ushering me toward the door. My feet were leaden in gold sandals so thin I could feel the nails in the floorboards through their soles.

“If all else fails, just moan and think of the Tower,” Blue called.

That struck me as odd. In my world, they told people to think about England.

“Why the Tower?”

The old blue daimon snorted. “Because if you want to die, you need only touch it.”

* * *

Nothing but twisted moorings and broken concrete remained of the copper pachyderm where I’d once met my suitors. Instead, Charline pulled me down the hall and up the stairs, and a cold foreboding descended on me. So the deed was to happen in my own room? The only privacy I had in all of Paris? The place I had stolen and claimed for my own?

But when she opened the door . . . it wasn’t my room anymore.

It was a bower. A beautiful, otherworldly bower. They’d brought in potted trees, draped flowering vines across the walls, and hung warmly glowing lights between them. My bed had been replaced by a monstrous boat of a four-poster thing, draped with fluttering white gauze. The windows were thrown wide open to let in the breeze, and a tiny sliver of moonlight shone upon the thick rugs and furs they’d draped everywhere, as if the magic depended on one’s feet never touching the ground.