Light Fantastique Page 8

He chuckled and shook his head. “Lucille will proceed with her plans no matter what silly army dares to disrupt her.”

  Marie wanted to ask why he was always so concerned with her mother, and she’d formed a theory through the years, but he always evaded her questions. Now she had more pressing things on her mind, but she had to tread carefully. Zokar and Saphira didn’t ever admit to being able to work magic, and they became offended if anyone asked.

  “I’m the female lead of the play,” she said.

  Zokar drew his brows together but didn’t say anything, just waited for her to continue.

  “And I’m worried that I’m not going to be able to keep myself from slipping too deeply into the role.” She looked into his coal black eyes for some sympathy, some sign of understanding.

  “Did Lucille not train you how to manage your talent on the stage?”

  Marie relaxed slightly and handed her now-empty bowl to Saphira. Previously, if she had brought up her troubles, he would only offer her empty assurances.

  “I am afraid if I tell her what I can do, she will draw me further into it and make me keep going with it. All I want is to escape, but I tried that and it didn’t work.”

  “No, you came back.” He shook his head again. “Silly girl. Your good heart will be your downfall.”

  “But I don’t even know if I have a good heart. I don’t know what kind of heart I have, what kind of person I am, and I won’t know until I can live my own life.”

  “And what of a young man? A family? Children?” Zokar gestured to the camp.

  Marie knew that half the people there were related to him by blood or marriage. Somehow he knew her better than most, so she could be honest with him. “I think that’s something I want someday. A normal life. But I don’t seem to attract or be attracted to normal men.” She rubbed the back of the hand Maestro Bledsoe had kissed, and the memory and resulting sensation made her shift on her hard seat.

  “That’s another problem.”

  “Yes, but I need help with the stage thing first. Do you have any…advice?”

  Zokar and Saphira exchanged looks, and Saphira shook her head.

  “You are not ready for some truths yet, cherie, and I need you to help me first.”

  Marie squashed her disappointment, but she nodded. “I owe you much, not least for saving my life when I got lost down here all those years ago. What do you need?”

  “Only for you to keep an ear out. I know your mother has her spies. Perhaps you can help find something that has been lost. Or has wandered off.”

  A goat bleated, and Marie asked, “An animal?”

  “Not quite. I’ve been working on an automaton that can think and act like a man.”

  Marie shuddered. “Why?” Real men are trouble enough. Why do we need fake ones?

  “Because we have jobs that need to be done, and our numbers are getting less and less with our inability to live openly. Young people are leaving the camps, some in disgrace, and some with their own reasons.”

  “Can I see it? The automaton?”

  “That’s the problem. It’s either wandered off or gone missing. Since its trail went cold, I cannot find it, but something as wondrous as that will not stay hidden for long. I need to find it before the gadze government does and tries to turn it to non-peaceful purposes.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Marie stood. “Thank you.” She thought about what she had seen in the hall and in her dressing room, but she wanted something solid before she told Zokar anything or at least to be able to tell him where to look. The theatre and its myriad hidden passages was a big place.

  Zokar hugged her again. “Any time, little one. I will walk you back to the stairs.”

  * * * * *

  Johann left the theatre. The strange notes left in his violin case unnerved him more than he wanted to admit. Did they have anything to do with Frederic the jealous violin player? If so, why didn’t the man want to confront him openly? That was how Johann preferred to do things—air grievances and sort them out, either with words or with fists. He’d gotten good at fighting without damaging his hands.

  These French are crazy.

  With his thoughts as tightly wrapped around him as his cloak, he didn’t see the dark figure that approached him until he ran into it.

  “Oh, Maestro, I didn’t see you. This snow is falling hard.”

  “Doctor Radcliffe, I apologize.” Johann stepped back a pace. “I hope I didn’t injure you.”

  “Not at all. I was just seeing if there was anything on the sidewalk I might have missed after the earlier tragedy, but I think Inspector Davidson and his men picked up what little there was to find.”

  They walked back toward the townhouse, but Radcliffe hesitated before they turned on to the walk leading up to the front steps. “May we speak privately elsewhere?” he asked.

  “Of course. Where did you have in mind?”

  “Follow me.” Radcliffe led him to a clinic a few blocks away and unlocked the door. “Several of the city’s doctors fled before the Prussians boxed us in,” he explained. “One of them left this space, so I moved in.”

  Johann stripped his gloves and cloak and hung the latter on a hook by a stove in the main room, which Radcliffe added coal to and stirred back to life. Thankfully the office was still warm from the morning. “I knew you were doing something to occupy yourself, but I didn’t pay much attention to what.”

  “Yes, you’ve been busy with keeping out of sight and making sure Professor Bailey stays stable.”

  There was no judgment in his tone, only observation, and Johann wondered how much the doctor had noticed. Like had he seen how Johann looked at Marie, or how she looked back at him? He thought he could still taste her skin on his lips, especially the salty dew that came to it when he made her blush all the way down to her—

  “Would you like some tea?” Radcliffe asked. “I have the good English stuff.”

  Johann blinked to clear the memory of the desire in her hazel eyes from his brain. “Tea would be perfect. How did you get it, and what are you using for water? I thought it was regulated at this point.”

  “Some of my patients can’t pay in money because they’re using it for the goods smuggled in on the airships, so we barter.” Radcliffe filled a kettle from a bucket in the corner. “I get water from the pump down the road once a day. Boiling it seems the best way to approach it at this point. At least the Prussians haven’t figured out how to block it at its source yet. Paris is a canny old city.”

  “Right.” Johann stood by the stove and warmed his hands. The temperature seemed to have dropped several degrees while he was in the theatre, and the chill stayed with him.

  Or maybe Mademoiselle St. Jean had warmed his blood.

  Radcliffe’s next words cooled him.

  “I saw you speaking with the inspector. Do you know him?”

  “Not very well,” Johann said. “We encountered each other last summer after the incident at the Louvre.”

  “Right, the belladonna poisoning.” Radcliffe had figured out the means, but the culprit was still at large as far as anyone knew. They all had determined it had something to do with the neo-Pythagoreans, a slippery cult. “He recognized you?”

  Johann allowed his frustration to tighten his lips into a frown. “Apparently my new coiffure and beard are not enough to deter the observant.”

  “You’re good at deluding yourself.” Again, that neutral tone, but Radcliffe’s words stung.

  “Yes, I know you pride yourself on your expertise on all things mind-related. You could have said something before. I could have gone to a barber and had my hair dyed.”

  Radcliffe rubbed his own beard. “Short of surgery to change your facial features, I don’t know that any disguise would have worked for you. You have a certain way of carrying yourself that makes you easy to pick out.”

 
“You’re not helping.”

  “What do you know of the victim of today’s stabbing?” Radcliffe asked.

  “That’s a random change of subject. Nothing, other than it was a man.”

  “It was a man of about your height with your coloring and light-colored hair and beard. He also had a certain swagger to him according to the witnesses who had walked behind him for a few blocks. They said he managed to block the sidewalk with his lady friend no matter how hard they tried to get around him, but it wasn’t intentional.”

  “You’re saying that I block sidewalks and am an inconsiderate ass?” But he knew it was partially true—he tended to walk as though he was the only one on the path, and he expected others to get out of the way.

  Radcliffe spoke slowly as if laying out the pieces of a puzzle on a table between them. “I’m saying that the murder victim resembled you in some uncanny ways, and your disguise isn’t terribly effective, not for those who know you. We also know the Clockwork Guild and the neo-Pythagoreans are not above violence in their means.”

  Now the stove couldn’t dispel the chill that slithered between Johann’s shoulder blades. “So you’re thinking the target was me.”

  Radcliffe nodded. “And I wonder how comfortable you’d be with bringing this knowledge to the inspector.”

  “Not terribly. Madame St. Jean seems to feel he’ll cause trouble for her because of her Romany background even though she’s a law-abiding citizen.” He shook his head. “Why would she be afraid if she’s done nothing wrong?”

  “Those who are different become scapegoats in troubling times such as these. So far the city is limping along with what the airships can bring in, but resources will run out eventually, and the people will turn on each other starting with those who they perceive as other. She probably doesn’t want to draw attention to herself beyond what she already does.”

  Radcliffe stared into space as he talked, and Johann wondered if he spoke from experience.

  “Then we should look into things on our own and see if there is another explanation, bring that to the inspector and deter him from looking into those of us at the theatre.”

  The doctor produced a piece of paper from his pocket. “I recorded all the witness names I overheard once the gendarmes left as well as what I could remember of their addresses.”

  Johann raised his eyebrows and scanned the list. “You have a good memory. There’s a lot of detail here.”

  Radcliffe shrugged. “It’s helpful, but sometimes it’s good to forget.”

  The water in the kettle boiled, and Radcliffe made the tea. “I’m aware that you have had some liaisons since coming to Paris. Did Madame Cinsault happen to be one of them?”

  Johann sighed. “Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t know because there have been so many?”

  The look Radcliffe gave him said he did believe him although he didn’t want to. “Perhaps you should make a list of the ones you can remember dallying with, and we can see if there are any areas of intersection.”

  Johann opened his mouth, but he didn’t expect the words that came out on a tide of an unfamiliar emotion—regret? “Just please don’t tell Mademoiselle St. Jean.”

  “For your safety, you probably should, but I will leave that up to your discretion. Now, where do you want to start?”

  Johann gazed into his tea. “Do I truly have to reveal all this to you?”

  “Do you want to endanger Madame after all she’s done for us? And Mademoiselle? There are consequences for not being careful, you know.”

  It’s because of Mademoiselle that I don’t want others to know how wanton I’ve been. It was a new experience for him, considering the potential results of his actions. But as reluctant as he was, he knew it was necessary. “Madame LeFleur first caught my eye when she walked by the theatre one rainy Sunday afternoon…”

  He thought he heard Radcliffe mumble something like, “And here we go.”

  “But it was her daughter, Mademoiselle Elise, who truly caught my eye.”

  Chapter Ten

  Théâtre Bohème, 2 December 1870

  Once back in the theatre, Marie shut the door of the dressing room behind her and lit one of the lamps. Someone had cleaned Corinne’s things out of there, and so the furniture and dressing table stood bare except for a few lamps and pillows, similar to how it had looked when Marie was the primary occupant of the star’s dressing room.

  That was long ago, and I have more pressing things to think about.

  She lit the other two lamps so that the small room blazed with light. After placing her cloak on a hook by the door, she rolled up her sleeves and walked to the wall of the room that was a mirror.

  From where she stood, it looked like an ordinary mirror, somewhat tarnished in places because of its age. She held one of the lamps up close to it, but she didn’t see any evidence that it could be a one-way window. Cobb had had one on his airship between his office and the dining room, from where he could watch and listen to his guests after they thought he had retired to his suite, which was directly below his office and accessible via a secret passage behind the closet. He never trusted the Clockwork Guild’s listening devices and preferred what he heard with his own ears over inscribed information.

  Marie shook her head to dislodge the memory, which highlighted to her that she knew many of Cobb’s secrets. It was strange that he’d left her alone, even stranger he’d let her go from his employ, but the oddness of the circumstances hadn’t occurred to her before now. She’d been too focused on evading her mother’s attempts to force her back on the stage.

  “And now I am back on the stage in more ways than one,” she murmured. She examined the edges of the mirror and the wall around it for wood dust, scratches, gaps or any other sign it could be moved and had been recently. There was nothing.

  “Bien. I was dreaming, then. Zokar’s automaton must have wandered off on its own.”

  Perturbed at the idea that an automaton could come to life and move on its own but comforted that the mirror couldn’t possibly be a door to a secret passage, Marie reached into the pocket of her cloak and extracted the paper that had fallen from the balcony earlier. She saw it was a newspaper clipping with the headline, “Scientist, Musician Disappear on Continent Under Mysterious Circumstances.”

  It was dated two months earlier in October and detailed how brilliant scientist Professor Edward Bailey and talented musician Johann Bledsoe had gone on an expedition funded by an American but hadn’t returned. The only connection to their whereabouts, a Miss Iris McTavish, had reappeared briefly for her father’s funeral but had remained close-lipped regarding where the young men were, only meeting privately with their families to assure the concerned parents of their sons’ safety. Still, the reporter said, some sort of foul play was suspected, and if Miss McTavish were to return without the young men, she would face questioning from the authorities about them and the mysterious death of Lord Jeremy Scott, who had met a tragic end in Italy that summer.

  Hiding from Cobb means hiding from everyone. It hardly seems fair.

  The sense of entrapment Marie felt when she really considered her circumstances cinched further and made for a too-tight belt around her spirit. Suddenly weak, she sank to the chaise lounge and clutched her stomach, where the invisible belt felt real. She blinked to clear her vision, which had gone foggy, but it only continued to cloud, and the mirror shimmered to her left. She twisted sideways to look at it, but her head lolled back, the muscles in her neck collapsing as the familiar smell filled the room again.

  Cobb’s tobacco.

  She struggled to move, to escape.

  “Come now, darlin’ don’t hurt yourself.” Gentle hands repositioned Marie’s head and smoothed her hair back.

  “You’re no ghost,” she whispered. All she could see was a shadowy form above her. Light gleamed off his face, a metal mask. “Who are y
ou? Zokar’s automaton?”

  “I’m whoever you need me to be. You were telling me an interesting story earlier today. What happened the next night when you went to meet Cobb for dinner at his hotel?”

  Marie’s tongue tripped out the story as if it moved on its own accord.

  * * * * *

  17 May 1868

  Marie put her heart into the performance that night because in spite of the complication of having lost her traveling papers—and she suspected she had help in losing them because she knew she’d kept them hidden in a safe place—she intended it to be her last.

  It was the closing night of the play as well, which leant a certain energy to the performance. At the end of the play, the audience rose to its feet, stamping and applauding, and she bowed and snatched a rose out of the air on the way up. She held hands with her costar, an older actor named Maurice, who had played the man Marie’s character had fallen in love with and become obsessed with, and bowed again. After five curtain calls, she said goodbye to the rest of the cast and made her way to her dressing room, where her mother waited for her.

  Instead of looking pleased at the record receipts from the performance, Lucille glowered at the large bouquet of flowers on Marie’s dressing table. Mostly hothouse flowers, the bouquet was obviously expensive but still tasteful. Her heart fluttered as her eyes analyzed the contained extravagance of the flowers and design of the vase. Even after only a brief encounter, she recognized Parnaby Cobb’s style.

  “Who is this from?” Lucille demanded.

  “I don’t know, Maman. They must have arrived during the final act after my last costume change.” Marie hated to disturb the bouquet, but she dug through it until she found a small envelope that contained a card. “It must have slipped down when it was delivered.”

  “Or someone didn’t want it to be found by anyone but you.”

  Marie tried to buy some time by reassembling the bouquet so it looked mostly like it had before. The fragrance of the flowers filled the room with sweetness and a sharp green odor from the crushed leaves. Not able to put it off anymore, Marie opened the card and found only a number—the room where she was to meet Cobb?