Wicked After Midnight(2)

“Cherie and I have been talking.” I paused, chewing my lip carefully with too-sharp teeth. “We’d like to try London.”

“Over my dead body!”

I’d heard Criminy could be terrifying, but I’d never believed it, not until that moment. He seemed to rise over me and spread out a vulture’s dark wings, his sharp features going sharper and his hair crackling with lightning that wasn’t there. I shrank down, all my bravado fled.

Almost.

“You don’t want to go to London,” Tish started, and Criminy hissed, cutting her off.

“She’s not going to London. I’ll never allow it.”

Before he was done talking, I rose from the chair, feeling the sparks in my own dark hair. “You can’t stop me! You don’t own me. I’m not just another freak in your sideshow.”

He chuckled darkly and leaned back, crossing his arms and going cold. “I can stop you, actually. I made your papers, and I hold them. Without papers, you don’t exist. You can’t get into any cities.”

“I can forge new papers.”

“With what money?”

“I’ll . . . I’ll . . .” I swallowed hard, the anger draining out through my toes and leaving me cold and empty inside.

He was right, the smug asshat. Without those papers and the years of back pay stored in the safe hidden in his wagon, I wasn’t going anywhere. And Cherie was no better off. For all the freedom he claimed we had, we were trapped in his caravan like canaries with clipped wings—albeit fanged canaries in a very pretty cage.

I caught the sob, sniffling it back down. “I don’t want to grow old here, Crim. Nothing ever changes. I never change. Let me fly free.”

“Demi, love . . .”

I looked up at him, straight into those cloudy gray eyes. When I first saw a mirror after he bludded me, I had been horrified at the dancing shadows in my own sky-blue eyes. They snapped like the fire of a Bunsen burner. But when I cried, the tears were tinged with red. And I didn’t want to cry right now. I’d been good for so long, but the rebellion had been simmering underneath. I hated, just hated, being told what to do, what to be. Maybe I couldn’t get what I wanted by shouting, but I would get it. Or else.

“You have to kick the baby bird out of the nest sometime,” Tish said, and I smiled my thanks.

“Around here, baby birds that fall without flying get eaten in seconds. The bludbunnies wait underneath the nests all spring, drooling.” Crim waved a hand at me when I tried to interject. “You’re no baby bird, Demi. But Letitia is right. A lone female in the city will generally become a victim. London is out of the question. But I do have contacts in other cities. What about Ruin?”

I plundered my memory, trying to match the one-off names of Sang to my own world. “Is that in Franchia?”

“Not too far from Paris but safe enough. There’s a university there. They allow women, although you might be the only Bludman. The daimons aren’t so picky, if you aren’t.”

I didn’t breathe for a moment. Not too far from Paris. Images from the capital of France in my former life crashed with what I knew of the Paris of Sang like badly shuffled cards. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre Dame were the same in existence, if not in name, and much of the history I’d studied in high school and the art I’d studied in college were mirrored in Franchia. I was especially intrigued at the thought of finally seeing the famous paintings that straddled both of our worlds, live and without pesky guards and cameras. Paris called to me in both universes. But the colorful daimons who peopled the closest country across the sea changed the flavor entirely, and I had heard that there, the Green Fairy was more than just a potent drink. London felt safe and exciting, a short jaunt from which Criminy could easily rescue me. Franchia, however, was a different story.

And I liked that even better.

“Why Ruin?” I asked.

“Not too far from Sangland. Civilized, mostly safe. The university has everything a young lass could want—literature, languages, painting. Handsome young scholars. Baggy, unflattering robes.”

“I thought Bludmen weren’t allowed to go to university.”

His smile quirked up. “Only in Sangland, ma petite. Can’t have you getting any ideas in that pretty head of yours and trying to eat the Magistrate.” His gaze traveled up and down me, sharp eyebrows cutting down. “I’ll cover matriculation and a stipend. For you and Cherie. I know it’s not the glamorous escape you’ve been hoping for, but will it suffice?”

“I—”

I didn’t want to go back to college. Even though I’d been stuck in Sang for years, some small part of me kept expecting that one day, I would collapse, as Tish sometimes did, and wake up in my own world and go back to school as if nothing had ever happened. If I committed to college here, it was not only giving up that pleasant dream but also dooming myself to the same reality that had once brought me nothing but misery and a fatal drinking problem. Even in Franchia, college would be an acquiescence to doom, not a bright future. But if Ruin was near Paris, that meant it was near the famous cabarets. And I could always find a place in the cabarets. I gave a small smile, knowing Criminy would be watching closely.