Absinthe had never been Céleste’s preferred drink. It wasn’t that she disliked the flavor—the sharp sweet tang of anise that caused the tongue to feel slightly numb after a few sips—or the ritual of slotted silver spoons and sugar cubes. It wasn’t the stories of a fairy as green as the alcohol itself or even the darker tales of insanity that the drink’s opponents liked to tout. Her avoidance had always been personal, a grudge against the smoky salons where emerald fountains flowed. Places where all she’d heard was no, no, no. Where her sketches weren’t afforded a second glance. Good, but not good enough, one particularly drunk artist had said. Let me show you how it’s done.
He’d pulled out a pencil and tried to sketch her.
Then he tried to kiss her.
It had put a terrible taste in Céleste’s mouth, but it had also given her a fresh conviction. If she couldn’t be good enough, she would be awful. If no patron was willing to pay the tuition she needed to attend Académie de La Palette, she’d draw the damn banknotes herself.
Rafe’s history with absinthe had clearly been different. “I’ll have une correspondance.”
The bartender understood—Parisians had been ordering absinthe this way for decades, by asking for “a ticket” to the Charenton asylum. It was tongue-in-cheek, obviously, but when the man asked for Céleste’s order, she wanted to laugh. Hysterically. She already felt she was losing her mind, so why not go ahead and summon a fairy or two?
“I’ll take one as well,” she told him.
The bartender appeared unbothered by the state of Céleste’s torn dress and the bruises on Rafe’s face. This could have been because they’d wandered out of the eighth arrondissement, across the river, and down the Left Bank, in search of a café more affordable for penniless pockets. They’d ended up in the Latin Quarter, where university students drank cheap wine and The Rite of Spring was far enough away to feel like a fever dream.
Céleste shivered, despite the fact their table was by a set of doors open to the warm night air. The lamps were hot too. She tried not to focus on how their flames cast her profile against the wall, where a poster advertised Eau de Récollets mineral water. A winged woman bottled water from a geyser, and the yellow words above her claimed this was a cure for arthritis. Céleste felt herself sneering as she read them. Miracles! Magic! Snake oil. She used to wonder at the sort of people who fell for such ruses. How could you be so gullible, to believe that a few extra francs spent would take away pain?
She knew now it had nothing to do with gullibility. It was a distinct choice to fool yourself. To celebrate birthdays you’d never see. To go to a ballet and leave with a stranger. To toss your bloody opera gloves in the Seine and watch them drift downriver. To lift your goblet of absinthe before the sugar cube dissolved. To swallow it all down before you could cough it back up—sludge and sweet rot.
Rafe raised his eyebrows as she set her empty glass on the table. “I was going to propose a toast to my second ballet brawl. Tant pis!”
Céleste ordered another drink. “I’m more curious about the first fight,” she told him.
“It wasn’t nearly as dramatic as tonight’s.” His burnt-sugar eyes caught the candlelight. “There was no Veuve Clicquot artillery involved. Théâtre de Belleville has always been more of a working-class establishment, cheap enough for the masses to enjoy. I tried to be even cheaper and snuck into a show without paying. When the ticket holder found me in his seat, he raised a ruckus. Anne—sorry, I mean, Honoré—kicked him in the crotch.”
“That sounds like Honoré.” The crotch kicking, Céleste meant. Not the other name; her friend had never uttered it before. She’d never said anything about Belleville either, which was strange, considering the neighborhood was only a few blocks from their cemetery camp.
The watchword system made more sense now.
As did the pits of broken glass.
“I take it she hasn’t changed much?” Rafe said.
“Well, she has grown a moustache,” Céleste replied slyly.
“That was unexpected,” the other artist admitted. “She pulls it off well. A little too well. I hope I didn’t upset her by commenting on the family resemblance.”
Honoré is always upset, Céleste wanted to say, but the bartender had come back with a second glass of green liquor, another sugar cube. He seemed determined to prepare it properly, pouring the water through the spoon himself. It was a slow process. Drip, drip. Long enough for her to think about what Rafe had said.
“Who is Gabriel?” she asked, once the bartender left them alone again.
Rafe pinched his lips. “You and Honoré… you’re close, yes?”
“Like sisters.”
The other artist stayed silent for a moment.
Somewhere up the cobblestone lane, a violin started playing. When Rafe spoke, it was clear he’d chosen his words with care. “If she hasn’t told you about Gabriel, there’s a reason. She was always trying to protect him too. But I shouldn’t say anything more. It’s not my story to tell.”
Céleste considered this. She considered the man sitting across from her as well. Tangled black hair, scars, and such an easy smile—too easy, perhaps. “She never told me about you either.”
The tattoo below Rafe’s left eye flinched as his smile disappeared. “Yes, well, there’s not much to tell. We were kids together. Kids who ran around with knives and tried not to fall on them.”
This made Céleste think of Sylvie rushing from their tomb, so eager to cut her birthday dessert. It had been hard to imagine Honoré as a young girl then. Just as hard as it was to imagine why the other Enchantress was so unsettled by this man, yet not threatening to stab him.
“There’s got to be more to your story than that,” Céleste said delicately.
Perhaps she hadn’t been delicate enough. Rafe’s tattoo wrinkled again. He glanced at his drink with a look that suggested he wanted to quaff it. “Honestly, I’m surprised Honoré remembers me. I—I was—” He cleared his throat. “Well, I was the black sheep of Belleville. Never quite fit in there, no matter how many red scarves or shiny boots I wore. My parents were from Spain, but they moved to the neighborhood shortly after I was born, so I don’t think that’s the reason it never felt like home.”
“Could it have been all the stabbings?” Céleste reasoned. Belleville was one of the more dangerous parts of Paris, thanks to a gang known as the Apaches.
His scarred eyebrow twitched. “Did my fair share of that,” he said. “Stealing too. Mamá always hated that I was getting into trouble. My father was different. As long as I brought home money to help with the rent, he didn’t care where it came from.”
Céleste arched a brow. “But now you’re penniless.”
“Practically.” The artist’s hand went once more to his watch, covering the chains protectively. “I needed to get the hell out of Belleville. I needed more.”
“More than money?”
“So much more.” Rafe leaned forward in his chair, his eyes catching the glimmer of the lantern, his voice going as deep as the shadows. “I needed magic.”
The fiddle song up the lane went sharp. It was Céleste’s turn to stare down at her absinthe. Perhaps she shouldn’t have guzzled that first round so fast. She’d hoped the hallucinations would stop once she’d started drinking or that she might at least be able to blame the alcohol, but Rafe kept on speaking in his low, smoky way, sending sparks from Céleste’s neck down to the base of her spine.
“Magic exists. You might not believe it yet, but you see it, don’t you? You saw the feathers at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, and I’m guessing you glimpsed the shadows too.” His hands gave a small flourish in front of the lantern, casting the shape of a fox on the wall beside them. The creature pulled away from Rafe’s silhouette—trotting several steps before disappearing into Céleste’s shadow.
She could feel it.
An unspoken whisper against her skin. A breeze on a windless night. “That…” Her throat was dry. She swallowed. “That was you?”
“The fox? Yes. The shadows during The Rite of Spring?” He shook his head. “I was merely a spectator.”
Céleste waved her own hand in front of the lantern. Her shadow stayed hand shaped. “How?”
“Magic is a law of the universe,” Rafe said, “the same way water is wet or the sky is blue.”
“Yes, but I can see the sky.” She nodded at the night just past his shoulder, where the moon would soon unpeel over zinc rooftops. “I’ve been able to see the sky since I was born.”
“You probably saw magic then too,” Rafe said. “Most children do, as I understand it. But we grow up and grow blind. If you’re lucky enough to find yourself Enlightened again, you have to make the most of it.” He looked back at Céleste’s profile cast over the mineral water poster. “You strike me as an opportunist. Can I see your hand?”
Her shadow reached out to his. “Are you going to predict my future?”
“That’s beyond me,” Rafe said. “If you want your fate spelled out, you should go to the Seine. There’s a woman there who reads palms like novels. But she takes a piece of every fortune she tells. You leave every reading with one less crease.”
“I take it you’ve never been?” His own hand was warm, calloused in the exact same places as hers.
“It’s easy to lose yourself in magic, if you aren’t careful.” Rafe ran his fingers over her own, drawing new lines over Céleste’s palm. It was just a whisper of a touch, but a whisper was enough. Her shadow shivered. The sparks at the base of her spine flared enough to make her lean forward in her chair.
The lantern flickered on the table between them.
Heat prickled Céleste’s cheeks. It flushed down her chest when she swallowed, but she didn’t pull back.
Rafe didn’t either. Instead, he looked more closely at her palm, where crimson paint from her Delacroix forgery was starting to peel. “I see you’re an artist after all,” he said warmly.
“I dabble.”
“I’d say it’s more than that.”
There was something hypnotizing about the way his gaze reflected the lamp’s flame. Magnetic, even.
“It could have been.” Céleste forced herself to glance back at her absinthe glass. Its contents matched the green of her dress, the green of the lily pads she’d planned to paint around her next version of Ophelia. A project that would never be finished. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life drawing drowning women. “Once. I had big dreams when I first came to Paris, but Paris had no dreams for me. I gave up painting for myself, and I’m good at pretending I don’t regret it.”
At least, she had been.
It took a concentrated effort not to meet Rafe’s eyes. Not to think about the tones she’d mix onto a palette to bring out their brown—fox fur and amber and fire. Even then, it would probably be impossible to capture the way they glimmered. Did it have something to do with magic?
“I understand,” he said. “I used to play fiddle games with Honoré too. We were trying to save money for train tickets, but—well, it was never enough. Even when it was.” He fell quiet for a moment. “You’re wrong about the dreams though. Paris has more to offer than you’d think… if you know exactly where to look.”
“I’m guessing you do.”
His smile curled the edges of his lips. Easy again. “I’ve never met another Enlightened forger before. I may have an… opportunity for you, if you’re interested.”
Normally, her answer would be no. Céleste only ever worked with the other Enchantresses, and she already felt bad enough for abandoning them—Honoré would be waiting up for her. Sylvie too was probably awake, counting cats as they padded over the mausoleum dome, smudging stars with their paws.
She should return to them.
She should say no.
The fox leapt back to Rafe’s shadow when he released her hand, streaking over the Eau de Récollets poster in a way that made its yellow letters stand out even more… If this man was bullshitting her, she couldn’t see how, and if he was telling the truth…
It meant Céleste wasn’t going mad. It meant miracles did, in fact, exist.
“What does the job pay?” she asked.
“More than money,” he said.
“Shadow puppets?” She tried to keep her voice light, dancing on strings, lest it betray the hope she tasted.
Rafe’s shadow nodded, while his gaze stayed still. “Or wings. Or paintings hung on the walls of the Louvre. Or rubies that make your lips just as bright when you wear them. You can ask my employer for anything in his power if you bring him enough dreams.”
“You steal… dreams…?” Her thoughts spun, trying to wrap around what he was saying. “From sleeping people?”
“The dreamers aren’t asleep. They’ve been awoken to magic—‘Enlightened’ is the technical term. They spend their evenings imagining all sorts of things in La Fée Verte’s salon.”
La Fée Verte. Immediately Céleste thought of absinthe advertisements, each featuring a beautiful, eerie woman dressed in green. “The green fairy?”
“It’s what the imaginers call her. Very few magicians have real names,” Rafe told her. “La Fée Verte is the hostess of an enchanted establishment on the Left Bank. It’s an incredible place! Ideas have power there. Real power. They can be converted into spells that bring statues to life or change the river’s currents or shift the very stars themselves… It’s why La Fée Verte invites the city’s most creative minds to her salon every night. It’s why she collects their thoughts.”
“And why do you take them?” she wondered.
“For the same reason you will, I expect.”
“What’s that?”
“A future.”
Céleste looked back at her hands, at their shadows cast over the promise of the winged woman’s poster. She turned them into fists. “Why come to me with this?” she asked.
“I need help,” Rafe told her. “The job is big, and my employer is getting impatient. A second forger would take some of the pressure off.”
“You haven’t even seen my work,” Céleste pointed out.
“There’s no need. If Honoré vouches for you, that’s enough for me.”
“Honoré would call you mad.”
“She’s called me worse.” Rafe laughed. “But magic is madness to those who can’t see it, so act with care. Don’t go telling police officers you see feathers everywhere when they don’t… That’s a surefire way to get yourself an actual ticket to Charenton.” He drained his goblet’s absinthe down to its sugary dregs and stood. “There are far better destinations. Cursed pyramids, mystical monasteries, mountain caves inhabited by hermits who live forever, bazaars where starlight is bottled and sold… The horizons are endless! Even in La Fée Verte’s salon, there’s a room where you can paint landscapes and walk through them.”
“Really?” Céleste stood too, breathless, trying to ignore the iron taste on her tongue as she placed some francs on the table.
“I painted a city underneath an ocean once and almost drowned trying to explore it, before I thought to give myself gills—”
“There are men who live forever?”
“Ah.” Rafe hesitated, then shook his head. “Not men.”
“Hermits.”
“Myths, more like. Even if there were truth to them, it’s not the kind of magic you or I could steal. We are but mere mortals.”
As if Céleste needed reminding.
She stuffed a cloth napkin into her purse, just in case.
Rafe ducked out of the café and began walking. His shadow rippled—and not just because of the lane’s cobblestones or the gas lamps that lit their way. He was beckoning her. “Follow my lead. From here on out, we’re proper painters, with heads full of stardust. I trust you can act the part?”
“That depends on whether the stardust is a metaphor,” Céleste said, still breathless. It was hard to keep up, especially now that magic was in the mix.
“The stardust can be poetry,” he said, as he stepped out onto Boulevard Saint-Michel. “Or songs. Or sketches. La Fée Verte is able to pull such things from people’s minds. You’ll see when we reach the salon, but first you have to think lots of whimsical thoughts: glass snowflakes, swords in lakes—those sorts of things. It will make her more likely to invite you inside.”
Céleste had walked this street many times, following its tram tracks to the river, but Rafe didn’t venture that far. They stopped short of the bridge, by the Fontaine Saint-Michel. She was familiar with this landmark too—how could she not be? The fountain was striking. A heavenly battle played out in its bronze: the archangel’s sword always pointed down, the devil forever crouched under his heels, and a pair of dragons spouted water for generations of pigeons. There was no winner, no loser, no change.
Tonight, however, one of the sculptures started moving.
The dragon on the left-most pedestal winged down to the plaza, where Rafe and Céleste stood.
“Holy hell!” She gasped.
Rafe laughed. He didn’t seem to mind that the statue had fangs the size of steak knives or that these were looming just over the couple’s heads. “It’s all right!” he promised.
“It’s a goddamn dragon!” she hissed.
“Not damned by God at all.” Rafe placed a hand between the beast’s curled horns. “And I believe it’s technically a chimera, from ancient Greek mythology, but that’s neither here nor there.”
The statue itself was most definitely here. And alive. It seemed to be nudging against Rafe’s fingers, the way a cat might demand to be scratched. “How is it doing that?”
“Magic,” her companion replied, his tone teasing.
“No shit.”
“That’s right! No shit! It’s stardust, like I said.” Rafe started rubbing the statue behind its lionlike ears. At this point, Céleste wouldn’t have been surprised if the bronze beast started purring. “This magnificent creature was sculpted in 1860 by A. Jacquemart, who left small sparks of himself in his statues. All the best artists do that, you know… lose slivers of their soul to whatever they’re working on. La Fée Verte figured out a way to harness that energy. This statue is her gatekeeper now. He weighs your thoughts to see if they’re worth entertaining. Why don’t you go ahead and give him a show?”
Céleste studied the statue more closely. In Greek mythology, chimeras were cobbled together using random animal parts, but the way A. Jacquemart had sculpted this piece felt far more flowing: lion jaw into ram’s horns into bat wings into a scaled tail. Dragon was a better-fitting term.
And more whimsical, to boot.
She thought of the stack of fairy books by Sylvie’s bed, flipping through their illustrations of buried treasure and looming kings. These had to be fanciful enough. Right? Or could the statue sense that she was using someone else’s story? A. Jacquemart hadn’t given the dragon pupils, but she knew, somehow, that it was staring, searching her mind for bright thoughts.
After a long moment, the statue turned and stepped into the street.
A dragon, Céleste thought faintly. A dragon is walking across Boulevard Saint-Michel.
The sculpture gleamed against the headlamps of passing automobiles; slashes of light brought out the bronze scales of its tail. This was an astonishing sight, but none of the drivers braked for it. Someone did honk at Céleste and Rafe when they followed the beast.
On the opposite sidewalk sat an alley she didn’t recognize. This street wasn’t rue de la Huchette or rue Saint-Séverin. It shouldn’t have been there at all—the cast-iron flower lights of the nearby MÉTROPOLITAIN sign usually bloomed over storefronts, but tonight their orange rays illuminated a gap in the buildings.
The dragon’s scales gleamed as it slipped through.
A few of Rafe’s hairs were glowing too—impossibly silver—as if they’d just walked for years instead of minutes. He did not look old. More like a knife’s edge under a midnight moon or a wish waiting at the bottom of a fountain.
Céleste wasn’t sure which metaphor suited him more.
“Are you ready?” Silver hairs glinted as Rafe tilted his head after the dragon.
She followed the artist’s gaze through the alleyway’s shadows. A few steps in, and the buildings took on a grown quality, as if their architects had simply planted drawings in the earth, then let water and sunlight do the rest. Columns climbed like vines. The balconies’ wrought iron wrapped around itself, blooming at the ends. Lamps with iridescent flames lined the lane, lighting doors with jeweled knobs. Things kept sprouting in the corner of her vision. A turret. A staircase. More doors.
The dragon of the Fontaine Saint-Michel trundled past these, its tail slithering down the leaf-covered lane, then curling around taloned paws as the statue halted by a green door. It had no emerald knob. The only decor was golden script written over the mantel: IN SOMNIS VERITAS.
The statue crouched beneath these words, waiting for Céleste and Rafe.
Was she ready?
She wanted to say yes, but how could anyone be ready for this?
“I—I have no idea.”
“Well, the statue didn’t eat you, so clearly that’s not true.” Rafe leaned in then. There was no lantern between them, but Céleste’s cheeks still warmed. She felt him pick a bobby pin from her hair so that a long ribbon of it fell to her shoulder. “There! You see? Stardust.”
She blinked, breathless again. A few of the strands tickling her collarbone were no longer white but opal, shining in the same way as Rafe’s. The artist hadn’t moved. The heat of his closeness had become glittering.
“What—what is happening?” Céleste reached up to grab a shining hair. Her heart trembled like an overstrung fiddle, and a rosy flush bloomed across her décolletage. “Don’t you dare just say ‘magic.’”
Rafe laughed and took a step backward into the alley. “Words cannot compare to what awaits us behind that door, mademoiselle. I’d much rather show you.”
Céleste let him go a few steps farther before she decided to follow. She didn’t want to appear too eager. She also wanted to make sure Rafe approached the dragon first. She was fairly certain he’d been joking about the statue eating people. Then again, she’d thought he’d been bullshitting about magic too. But the truth of it changed everything. How could you read someone else if you couldn’t even predict the shape of their shadow? When their very edges kept shifting?
Currently, Rafe’s silhouette seemed to be on its best behavior. There was no sign of a fox when he approached the dragon by the green door, and when he bowed, his shadow followed suit. The sculpture nodded back. The entrance to the salon swung open.
Laughter poured out onto the cobblestones, along with light, so much light. Most of this emanated from the salon’s ceiling. Céleste’s breath caught—again—when she saw its stained glass pattern. It was nothing like the dome in the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Instead of storm clouds, there were leafy patterns that kept on growing: green, green, gold, matching the feathers of the songbirds that soared just beneath the glass. There were dozens of these creatures, perched on candelabra that looked like twigs and hopping between plates of cakes covered in crystallized violets and flutes of purple, blue, pink drinks.
This was the sort of magic Sylvie wove through her stories, the kind you always hoped to spy in the corner of your eye or under the folded shadows of circus tents. To see it in the heart of Paris was… overwhelming.
Céleste paused on the threshold, trying to swallow her shock, but it was impossible. It was all impossible! The chandelier of butterflies fluttering over revelers’ heads. The way the wallpaper’s flowers grew and unfurled. How smokers puffed out rings shaped like Spanish galleons or Pegasus. How these floated past bubbles filled with swimming goldfish. Or the fact that a woman by the bar was wearing a gown of petals that bloomed and shed and bloomed again. There were more decadent dresses on the dancers who pushed through the velvet drapes in the far corner, exiting a room filled with a song Céleste had never heard before, yet had always known.
Everything here had the dizzying flavor of déjà vu.
Even the colors Céleste had no name for, those hues no paint knife could mix. The drink Rafe placed into her hand was one such shade.
“Here,” he offered. “This helps make everything a little easier to swallow. My first night here, I was practically petrified on that settee over there until I had my first sip of sunset.”
She studied the slender glass. The fizzing liquid began to settle into a nominal lavender, then a violent violet, then a purple so rich, it could pass as black. “Sunset?”
“That’s what mine tastes like.” There was a glass in Rafe’s hand too. Its contents glowed orange, much like the fur of the luminescent tiger that was prowling around the room. “Everyone’s welcome aperitif is different. Your flavor might be sugared plums or a sonata or a horseback ride through a frosty field. There’s no telling until you try.”
“Sylvie tells me you should never accept food or drink in the other world, lest it trap you. She’s an expert on fairies.”
“Still young enough to see them, I’d wager.” Rafe tapped his flute against hers, then tipped his glass to his lips. “This drink won’t trap you though. It’s meant to do the opposite.”
“Rafe García! There you are! All dressed in bruises!” A line of winged horses, composed of cinnamon smoke, blew over Céleste’s head and trotted in a circle. The man who’d made them was walking toward the couple, his silk robes swishing. The way he sashayed made Céleste think of Honoré—because it was so different and yet so similar to the way her friend moved through the world. Defying its every expectation. “And who is this magnificent creature at your side? Are you sure she isn’t a figment of someone’s imagination?”
He would have kept on speaking forever, perhaps, if Rafe hadn’t interrupted. “Good evening to you too, Jean.”
“Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau.” The bracelets on the new man’s wrists and ankles matched his singsong voice. His lips—which looked to have some rouge on them—pursed as he took another drag of his cigarette. Soon a second herd of pegasi circled the trio’s heads like a merry-go-round. “But what in heaven’s name happened to your dress, ma chère? Did you stumble across a herd of ravenous goats?”
“Worse,” Rafe interjected. “We went to a ballet.”
“Ah—The Rite of Spring! I was commissioned to draw the poster for that show, you know. What a riot! Have you caught wind of the rumors, dear Rafe? They’re saying there was a duel between Sancts backstage!”
The back of Céleste’s neck prickled—with shadows and feathers and whispers of magic. “Sancts?”
“He means the magicians,” Rafe clarified.
“What a dull term! You make it sound as if they simply pull rabbits from hats!” Jean scoffed, then turned to Céleste. “Magicians are mere men. Sancts are so much more than that, ma chère. They are wings on holy buildings and black-cat fears. Hieroglyphs and wives’ tales! They are… transcendent. At least, La Fée Verte is. Behold! Our muse!”
He gestured toward the bar, where flutes had been stacked in a pyramid, overflowing with the color-changing drink. Just behind that, Céleste saw a figure wrapped in a dress of emerald feathers. Woman was the wrong word for her. Angel would have been a slur too, even though her face seemed to be filigreed with gold. She was a very bright thing indeed. The skin around her eyes was shining, and her arms were sheathed in bracelets, and her laughter belonged in a champagne glass. Everyone around the Sanct seemed inebriated. Even Rafe was staring wistfully. Céleste herself felt a strange twist in her chest when she saw the green gown wasn’t a gown at all but a pair of massive wings. When La Fée Verte unfolded these, songbirds came to roost, slipping into the Sanct’s larger feathers, becoming them.
“Ah!” Rafe jumped, and Céleste did too, when she saw the fiery tiger had joined their group. Its tail twitched over the rug, spilling harmless sparks as it watched the trotting pegasi. “I see someone has been quoting Blake again!”
“Is… that the tiger’s name?” she asked, uncertain.
More flying horses spilled from Jean’s lips when he laughed. “Oh, ma chère! He’s referring to William Blake. The English poet. You know the line, ‘tyger, tyger burning bright’?” One of his hairs began to sear. Stunningly gold. All the nearby songbirds turned their heads toward it. “Here, if you say something with enough conviction, you can bring it to life.” Jean plucked the shining strand with practiced fingers, then threw it to the floor. Quick as a FLASH! A real blinding light.
When Céleste managed to blink away her tears, she saw a second jungle cat with flaming white fur.
More than just a metaphor.
“Voilà!” Jean bowed, and the green birds that had gathered around them flew off. “A tyger!”
“I wouldn’t recommend plagiarism though,” Rafe added in a low voice. “La Fée Verte has little patience for the practice. There’s no power in it.”
Bracelets chimed as Jean waved his hand. “She’ll forgive me! I’m one of her most prodigious imaginers! But back to the real problem—you cannot wear such a drab gown, ma chère! We must dress you in something divine! What do you say? Silk? Glitter? Embroidery that twists into a tattoo? Don’t be shy! We’re all Cinderellas here!”
“My name is Céleste,” she finally managed.
“Celestial! It suits you! Should we conjure you a gown of stars, perhaps?” Another one of Jean’s brown hairs began to glimmer. “The fabric would be dark taffeta, and opals would form the constellations—and—and every few minutes, they’d ignite!”
A songbird swooped down from the chandelier, snatching the bright hair in its beak and tugging, out, out, so Céleste could see glimpses of Jean’s dream dress burning through the gold. She could only imagine what Honoré would say if the other Enchantress saw her wearing it. “I’m not sure fire and taffeta are the best combination, Monsieur Cocteau…”
“Fire?” Jean shook his head, and the bird flew off—gold streaming from its beak. “What fire? Forgive me, I lost my train of thought. Well, really, I lost the thought.” His sharp chin turned back toward the bar, where La Fée Verte’s wings were fanned out wide. She had her hand out too, welcoming the songbird as it dropped Jean’s dream into her palm. “It must have been beautiful…”
The green bird slipped back into the Sanct’s feathers as she held the idea up to the ceiling’s stained glass light, the way a jeweler at Mellerio dits Meller might examine a diamond.
Céleste was watching closely too. Close enough to see that the bracelets on her arms weren’t bracelets at all. They were ideas. When La Fée Verte turned, they shimmered with dozens of dreamlike scenes. Jean’s flaming dress soon joined them.
“What kind of muse takes ideas?” Céleste wondered.
“Our kind,” Rafe said softly.
“C’est la vie!” Jean let out a sigh. “Such is the price of an evening here. All gods require sacrifices. Better lighting up her wrists than locked inside our skulls, no?”
Céleste wasn’t so sure. Magic was real. She knew this now, beyond a doubt, and she also knew that any real thing could be stolen. The true question was how. Did Rafe mean for them to walk up to La Fée Verte and twist the thoughts from her arms?
If so, he’d chosen the wrong Enchantress.
But the other thief made no move toward the bar.
He strolled, instead, toward a wall of velvet curtains and pulled them back, revealing a ballroom where the floor had been enchanted to look like a night sky, where dancers created their own constellations with each bright step. “Come, mademoiselle. Let us dream the night away.”