Wicked After Midnight(9)
“That sounds wretched.” Cherie crossed her arms and shivered. “At least Criminy keeps us safe.”
“Ah, yes. Monsieur Stain is a truly unique creature. You would not find such care in Mortmartre, no matter how delightful the show looks from the outside.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
Her skin had always appeared red, but now it shivered over briefly into an angrier, glowing burgundy shot through with stripes like a tiger’s. Luc had explained to me once that every daimon was born a certain color and wore it when resting or not concentrating, but they could change colors and patterns like chameleons to varying degrees, both on purpose and when particularly affected by emotions. Luc himself had changed to a bizarre fuchsia every time he’d kissed me, which startled the crap out of me the first time.
Caprice closed her eyes, concentrating until the furious stripes melted back into velvety red. “I know because my father sold me to a cabaret when I was only sixteen to pay for his gambling debts. It happens often, when a daimon hungers for anticipation and chance but isn’t rewarded with luck. Let us say only that I was fed well but heartsick, and I will stay with Monsieur Stain as long as he will have me.” Her face was pointed toward the airships, but her mind was clearly in the past and troubled. She lay back on the trunk and closed her eyes, trusting the conveyance to carry her down the straight lines toward the port.
“See, Demi? I told you Paris was horrid.”
I flapped a hand at Cherie, just as Caprice had. “You forget: we’re not daimons. It would be different for a Bludman.”
“Everything is,” Cherie grumbled.
I slung an arm around her waist and walked in step with her. Speeding up the pace, we hurried ahead of Caprice, who was emitting soft snores. “You’re looking at it the wrong way, honey. We’re out of the caravan. We have a little money. We can do anything we want to. The world is our oyster.”
Her gray eyes went wide and shocked as she stopped and pulled away from me.
“Demi, no. No! I don’t know what an oyster is, and I don’t want to. You’re the one who’s looking at it the wrong way. We’re being given the chance of a lifetime. Do you have any idea how rare it is for girls like us to go to university? I didn’t want to be part of this plan, but now I’ve never felt so grateful. Don’t botch it up just because you always want more.”
“Of course I always want more. A hungry animal lives longer.”
Her gloved hands went reflexively to her stomach. “I almost starved to death as a child in Freesia. I don’t want to be hungry ever again.”
Just ahead, at Dover, all the possibilities in the world waited, tethered to the docks by long ropes. Mademoiselle Caprice would soon haggle our passage to Callais, probably on one of the large, fast passenger airships, where we’d huddle on the open deck and try to keep hold of our hats. Then we would spend our first night in Franchia at an inn before taking a carriage to Ruin. I dreaded spending more than six hours trapped in a tiny, airless, jouncing box with humans, even if Criminy had given us a vial of salve to rub on our collars to lessen the smell of their blood. The bottled goo stank of Vicks VapoRub mixed with perfume, and for me, at least, hunger would be less painful. I was better at controlling the blood hunger than Cherie, who’d been raised far away from humans and, unlike me, had never been one of them.
The trunk’s clockwork key had worn down, and it slowly rolled to a halt behind us. Caprice sat up like a zombie coming awake, rubbing her eyes with red fingers. She hopped down from the trunk with a dancer’s flair and stretched, cracking her back and settling her voluminous skirts.
“We will all walk from here, my dears. Demi, pull the trunk along manually. We cannot have the people of Callais eyeing our goods until they’ve paid, non?”
I was glad to pull the handle and lag behind Caprice and Cherie. As I watched their skirts sway and listened to the sort of polite conversation that bored me to blud tears, the airships played peekaboo with my hopes. We were so close to freedom. And I didn’t want to go to Ruin. No matter what Caprice said, my heart hungered for the cabarets of Paris.
Cherie never liked my ideas at first. But eventually, she always admitted that I was right.
She’d thank me later.
* * *
The airship ride was exhilarating, even if we weren’t allowed to stand up for fear that our skirts would fill with air and carry us over the railing and into the fatally salty sea below. Cherie buried her face in my shoulder, and I wrapped my arm around her and inhaled the brisk, briny air. I’d loved the ocean before becoming a Bludman. Now it could kill me. Half my senses wanted to suck in the sea spray, and the other half wanted to hold my breath until we were safely on the other side of the Channel.