“It’s late,” Mel said, worried eyes darting from me to Vale. “And we’re not allowed to talk to her.”
“We must speak with Bea,” Vale said. “It is imperative.”
She chewed her green lip, still streaked with red paint. “Oh, la. I think that’s a bad idea.”
“Is Blaise with you?”
“No. He’s with Blue tonight.”
Vale nodded to himself and pulled the canvas tube from his collar and unrolled it. I held out the gold pin.
“I know it is bad, Mel, and I hate to ask. But Lenoir tried to kill Demi tonight, and we killed him instead. We have only a few hours to find the Malediction Club and shut it down. Permanently.”
Mel’s skin shivered over to a pale and sickly light green, her eyes going wide and scared as she stared at Lenoir’s painting of Bea. Finally, she took a shuddering breath and stood back to let us in. Bea was a blue smudge by a bedside lamp turned low, her arms spotted under a colorful afghan. Before she could sit up enough to withdraw her hands and sign anything, Vale held up the painting. She slumped to the side, pale blue against her white pillow, her shoulders heaving as she shook her head back and forth in useless negation.
Mel crossed the room on bare feet and curled around Bea, stroking her gently and murmuring to her in Franchian.
Vale’s voice was gentler than I’d ever heard it, as if he stood over a newborn foal, something spindly and easily snapped. “Bea, we’re so sorry, chère. We need to know about Lenoir and the Malediction Club.”
She shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut. No no no no no.
Mel caught her hands and held them up. “Yes, love. Yes. You have to. Did they do this to you?” One green finger gestured to Bea’s throat.
Bea’s hands went up and clenched, and her face screwed up as if she were were caught between trying to throw up and trying to hold something in. Her teeth chattered and clacked, her eyes starting to bulge as some secret, silent battle raged in her chest.
Vale exhaled hard beside me, his pale eyes filled with grief and worry. His hands went to fists at his sides, as if he could feel Bea’s pain. And then his fingers snapped open. “Wait. Let me try something.”
He looked from Bea’s painting to her tortured face, then thrust the canvas into the banked fire in their grate, where it caught with the same blue sparks as mine had. Bea’s eyes flew open, her hands to her heart, and Mel wrapped her arms firmly around Bea’s shoulders, their skin merging into teal.
The room was silent but for the painting’s crackling, all of us transfixed as the dancing figure dissolved into ash. When it collapsed into the grate, Bea let out a silent but massive sigh, shook Mel off, and sat up against the headboard with a determined set to her chin and a spark to her eyes I’d never seen before. They exchanged a glance, and then Bea’s hands began to fly, fast and furious, Mel’s voice soft and halting at first, then hurrying to keep up and shaking with rage.
“She could not say it before now, could not communicate anything about Lenoir and the Malediction Club. There was magic in the painting to stop her, imperfect but clever. She is sorry that she was unable to tell you.” Mel stroked Bea’s arm fondly, tears in her eyes. “Oh, la. Mon amour, of course.”
Bea flapped her hand at Mel, who said, “I’m sorry. I know it’s important. But you’re important, too, love.” Mel chuckled and dashed away tears. “Bea says it happened eight years ago. She had just come to Paris, still had her voice. She had no plans to join the cabaret, was talented enough to perform on the true stage. Lenoir heard her practicing in the Tuileries one day and came back another time to sketch her and listen to her sing.” Her hand landed on Bea’s knee, soft as a dove. “She had a beautiful voice, then, and was going to be a star in the opera. Lenoir sent a card, invited her to sit for a painting. He wasn’t famous yet, just rich and mysterious. She went, and he gave her daimon drinks and told her she was beautiful. She felt homesick and alone and enjoyed the peace she found in his atelier.”
Something twisted in my gut. I knew exactly how she felt.
Bea stopped a moment, her hands fallen in her lap. As she gazed into the pitch-black night, beyond the window Mel’s fingers traced her shoulders and neck and back, one going lower to rub what I suspected was the large, painful scar that had once carried a tail.
“Then, one night, he put something strange in her drink. She fell asleep. When she woke up, she was in a . . . a dungeon. Somewhere deep underground, cold, all stone. Looked as old as the catacombs, maybe older. There were skulls everywhere, and it was very dark, and she was so scared. She could hear bludrats eating something and the sounds of women crying and screaming. Soon men in strange, pointed masks and long black cloaks came. They took her down, they . . .”