Chapter 7

Tigers Don’t Change Their Stripes

By the time Céleste returned to Père Lachaise, its gates had opened to welcome the cemetery’s earliest mourners. She did not have to dig her key out of her coin purse, which was now so light, she’d nearly forgotten it in the cab of the second taxi. She’d spent the remainder of her francs on the ride home from Place de la Concorde. There was nothing left for her to bury.

It was amazing how much better her body felt as she walked down the lane, drinking up the smell of dewdrops. The morning was fresh and glittering.

“Where the hell have you been?”

A statue rose from the roof of a nearby tomb, and Céleste flinched before she realized it was Honoré. Dark circles were cemented under her friend’s eyes—her evening had been just as sleepless. Without the wonders.

Céleste had already composed her confession for the statues: I abandoned my friends and wore Rafe’s shadow and stole magic from a fairy and took a taxi to a street that should not exist. Then I fenced imaginings to a shady sorcerer who divined my past and offered me a future. I must keep forging dreams—night after night after night—if I want to stay alive.

She no longer tasted rust, but something else weighted her tongue. Rafe’s warning: Magic is madness to those who can’t see it, so act with care.

Honoré wouldn’t send her to an asylum, but she wouldn’t believe Céleste either. The thought of how her friend might react brought a laugh.

The other Enchantress jumped from the tomb, scowling. “It’s not funny, mon amie! I’ve been worried sick! I thought you might have gotten trampled in the mob, and I was all set to go back to the theatre when Sylvie told me she saw you with Rafe.”

“He helped me distract a policeman so the officer wouldn’t notice Sylvie. We went out for a drink afterward, and the night got away from us.”

Honoré’s eyes narrowed. “It looks as if your dress did too.”

There was an edge to the other Enchantress’s voice as they wound down the path toward their grave. It would’ve been easy to mistake for jealousy—envy as green as her ragged gown—but Céleste had told Rafe the truth. She and Honoré were like sisters. Nothing less. Nothing more. This was a more protective gesture.

“There were some… costume changes…” Céleste said delicately. “But Rafe was a gentleman—”

“Rafael García is trouble,” Honoré said flatly.

“No more trouble than you or me,” Céleste reasoned. “Or Sylvie.”

The youngest Enchantress was asleep in her corner of the tomb, wearing the necklace she’d nicked the night before. Diamonds and sapphires reflected the sunlight every time she snored.

The remains of the tarte au chocolat sat on the central tombstone. Two days old. Mostly melted. Céleste helped herself.

“Both of you are going to turn my hair gray,” Honoré groaned. “Where did Rafael take you last night?”

“A salon.”

“Where?”

“Why does it matter?” Céleste paused to lick chocolate from her fingers.

Honoré’s lips went thin.

“Somewhere on the Left Bank. The place was full of painters.” Neither of these things was a lie. “Rafe showed me some of his work.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

Just stardust.

The other Enchantress sighed. “He was always full of it, when we were younger, always making these grand plans. Starting an artists’ colony in the Americas or escaping on the Orient Express and painting his way around Europe. All three of us were going to go to Constantinople, when my brother got old enough, but—” Honoré caught herself then. Her fist ground into her palm—the one that had gone smooth at the center, not because she knew her future but because the horns of her dragon ring had rubbed it raw.

Any other time, Céleste would have let this silence stretch, let sleeping beasts lie and orphans dream. “But what?” she whispered.

A stricken look settled on Honoré’s face. “It all turned to shit. He ran away, and… well, I was wrong to trust him.” She looked like she was about to say something more, when Sylvie started to stir. A whole stack of books slid off the youngest Enchantress’s mattress. “Just be careful with Rafael, mon amie. Don’t get too charmed by him. Tigers don’t change their stripes.”

The flaming ones do, Céleste thought. If anything could transform a person, it was magic. The boy Honoré had grown up with in Belleville wasn’t the man who’d swept Céleste up in his very own shadow, though she could not help but pause at her friend’s phrasing: He ran away. Had Rafe abandoned her in the salon on purpose? Had he had second thoughts about sharing his employer’s spoils?

The covers of the fairy books gleamed gold when Céleste started gathering the volumes from the mausoleum floor. Their illustrations struck her differently now. So did the painting of Ophelia waiting on her easel, still in its sketched stages. The drowned woman’s lines looked ghostlike—more haunting now that she knew the truth about her own health.

“You’re supposed to stack them in a rainbow!” Sylvie sat up and started rearranging the fairy books to her liking. “Crimson, red, orange, yellow—”

“I know how rainbows work.” Céleste smiled at the memory of a salon guest wearing one as a cape. She wished the youngest Enchantress could have seen it. Along with all the other dreams she’d walked through last night.

There were still a few imaginings in her jacket, but she couldn’t pull them out without unfolding the bloodstained pocket square first. She probably should’ve tossed the kerchief away, before Sylvie went rifling through her pockets, but Céleste wasn’t sure how long she had until she’d need it again.

Sylvie placed the crimson fairy book at the top of the pile. There was a gilded knight on its cover—his sword held out over a headless dragon. Fairies, flowers, and stars swirled around what would otherwise be a violent scene, but what drew Céleste’s gaze the most was the winged woman hovering like a teardrop over everything.

“Does Rafe paint rainbows?” the youngest Enchantress wondered. “He seems like he would, with all those colors on his fingers.”

That had been Céleste’s first impression too.

“I’m not sure,” she answered.

“What does he paint these days?” Honoré asked.

“He showed me a fox.”

This made Honoré snort. “Is that a metaphor?”

Maybe. She still wasn’t sure how Rafe was able to shape his shadow or what he earned with the ideas he stole. His employer hadn’t uttered a word when he tossed those dreams into the fire. He didn’t pour Rafe a glass of wine, nor did the artist seem eager to linger for one—his silhouette leapt for the door as soon as the flames ceased sparkling. He only stopped at the end of rue des Ombres, at the border of sunlight. Seeing him standing there, with such rigid shoulders, reminded Céleste of a painting she’d finished some months ago. The subject had not been Ophelia but Orpheus, the man who’d gone to hell and back to rescue his wife’s soul. All he’d had to do to escape death was keep his eyes down and keep walking…

Rafe did glance over at Céleste as she stepped into the morning sun.

“Well?” she asked. “Should I accept his offer to meet the Mad Monk? Or should I wait until he’s actually in a convivial mood?”

“That was convivial, for him.” Rafe exhaled. “Practically a bouquet of sunshine and roses compared to my first meeting.”

“I’ve seen corpses with friendlier smiles,” Céleste said dryly.

For some reason, this got her a laugh. “Yes, well, as I told you before, my employer is difficult, but you managed to get some decent terms. The Mad Monk will keep you from an early grave—”

It was Céleste’s turn to laugh. She said nothing of Père Lachaise.

Rafe’s chin dimple deepened as he frowned. “If you don’t believe me, read the papers. He’s been tending to Russia’s crown prince for years.”

She looked at the yawning darkness over Rafe’s shoulder, where the door’s keyholes were back to their endless rotation. “What’s the catch?”

“For you? Nothing. Like I said, your terms were decent. If you’d like to join me tomorrow evening, let’s meet on the Pont Saint-Michel at midnight. If not…” Black hair swept into Rafe’s face as he gave a quick bow. “Well, it was nice knowing you, Céleste Artois.”

He stepped into the sun then, turning into just as much of a sleepwalker as Jean had. Céleste held back to watch; the doorman at Hôtel de Crillon flagged down a cab for him before reciting some address in Montparnasse: “Two Passage de Dantzig.” That street seemed real enough. Rafe’s amnesia had too…

He hadn’t been completely truthful though.

There was a catch.

Céleste stared at the other two Enchantresses, wondering how she’d be able to explain her nocturnal absences. She might be able to sneak away for a night or two. But ten? Twenty? More? Honoré was too sharp not to notice.

“The fox was a fox,” Céleste answered, trying to make her voice sly. “This time.”

“What else would it be?” Sylvie blinked.

Honoré rolled her eyes. “He did like doodling them, if I remember correctly. A fox chasing its own tail—he called it his sigil.”

“I like foxes,” the youngest Enchantress declared. “I like Rafe too.”

“He’s asked me back to the salon, this evening,” Céleste said lightly. “I think I should go.”

Sylvie grinned at this.

Honoré did the opposite.

None of what Céleste had said was a lie, but this didn’t stop her stomach from turning. Neither did another bite of the birthday tart. What was the alternative though? Letting everything rot? Painting absinthe-colored lily pads until a stray cough spattered them red?

No.

If she played this new arrangement just right, she could survive.

She could handle a charming thief and a shadowy sorcerer.

She could have her cake and eat it too.

Magic was everywhere, it seemed.

As Céleste wandered through the city that evening, making the walk from the cemetery to the Seine, she found herself pausing every few blocks. Had that alleyway always been there? What about that strangely fruiting tree by the Bastille? Or the poster for a venue called Cabaret d’Ailes—which boasted women with songbirds swirling from their wings? When Céleste did a double take at this advertisement, she could have sworn the drawing’s subjects had moved. The stained glass windows of Sainte-Chapelle were moving as well, shining from the inside out and spinning like a kaleidoscope, as she walked toward the Pont Saint-Michel. Despite the late hour, the bridge was almost as busy as it had been that morning, when she’d watched Jean Cocteau’s horns dissolve.

Rafe was perched close to this spot, his legs dangling over the balustrade. He was all tense lines, hunched over a notebook and furiously scribbling with a pencil. Was it a sketch or a sentence? Céleste couldn’t tell. He snapped its pages shut and tucked the book into his vest as soon as he saw her approach.

“You’re early,” he said, by way of greeting.

She joined him at the balustrade, listening to the hush of the river beneath them. Rafe’s hair was not tied back tonight. It wasn’t shining yet either. The strands were nearly as dark as the waters below. So was the stubble on his chin—which did nothing to soften his jaw, only brought its edges into sharper relief. 7B. That would be the pencil she’d choose to capture Rafe. Perhaps 8B for his black eye. The injury looked worse than before, but when his gaze landed on Céleste, she felt something bright.

“How would you know?” She hitched up her skirts and swung her legs over the ledge to sit next to him. It wasn’t very ladylike, but Rafe grinned, offering an elbow to steady her. “Did you manage to fix that watch of yours?”

“I wouldn’t dare!” he said, then nodded back toward the cathedral, where two towers rose downriver. “Not when I’ve got some perfectly tuned church bells to tell me when it strikes twelve.”

“They don’t chime this late,” Céleste said.

The thief kept smiling. There was a strange scent on him, she realized, now that she sat so close. Smoke, but not the ruinous kind. It was more like the incense priests sometimes burned at mass—only spicier.

“Au contraire.” He waved over the water. “They ring when the Quartier Secret opens, but only if you have ears to hear such things. La Fée Verte doesn’t start Enlightening her guests until midnight.”

“So who woke you up this evening?” Céleste wondered.

His smile vanished then. “Who do you think?”

“He really doesn’t have a name?” Throughout the day, she’d taken to imagining it as a smear of soot, just like the sign of his hidden street or the absolute black of his masque: XXXXXXX.

“No. And even if he did, I wouldn’t speak it here. There are too many ears.” Rafe glanced back to the foot of the bridge, where the Fontaine Saint-Michel split the street in two. Its statues stayed still. Almost as rigid as the thief’s own arm. Céleste could feel the sculpt of his muscles under his shirt—she could see a scar too, streaking his forearm, all the way to the rolled sleeve.

These were more than just the marks of a painter.

They were trouble.

She wondered, again, if there was any merit to Honoré’s warning. If she’d been wrong to trust Rafe… But what would happen if she pushed away from the thief now? She needed his shadow to slip into the Vault of Dreams undetected. Even more immediately, Rafe’s arm was the only thing between her and the Seine. While the waters were beautiful—carrying the reflections of the quai lamps—they were also deadly for someone wearing so many petticoats.

So Céleste kept her elbow entwined with Rafe’s, linked almost as closely as the fob chains of his pocket watch. “Let’s talk about your timepiece, then. If it doesn’t tell time, then what the hell do you use it for? Abandoning innocent maidens at sunrise?”

His grin returned at the word innocent. “That’s not its primary function, no. I found this watch at Saint-Ouen’s flea market, at a stall with knickknacks of the more magical variety. The Sanct who sold me the timepiece said he found it at Fifty-One rue de Montmorency—the oldest house in Paris. It belonged to the alchemist Nicolas Flamel.”

“The house or the watch?”

“The house certainly did,” he answered. “I’m not so sure about the watch, but alchemists work with gold, no?”

The timepiece flashed as Rafe fished it from his pocket and placed the open face on Céleste’s palm. Gears began to grind—tick, tock, tick. Hands twitched. Forward first, then backward, stopping exactly where they’d started: at eight forty-five.

Rafe’s brow furrowed. His voice dipped low. “That’s interesting.”

“What?”

“We have the same time.” He looked up from the clock—quick enough to make his eyes flint. “This watch is enchanted to tell you your fateful hour.”

“You want to know when you’ll die?”

The thief shook his head. “It doesn’t always mean death. The time marks something life altering. At least, that’s what the Fisherman of the Moon told me when I bought the piece.”

“Death is life altering,” she pointed out wryly.

“So are many other things. Fame, fortune, love, power, freedom…”

Rafe’s words drifted out over the river. Céleste couldn’t help but compare them to her own list: Every one of these was the perfect piece of bait for a confidence scheme. “And what is it you want your fateful hour to mark?”

Rafe looked back at the watch in her hands, hesitant. “I used to dream of establishing an artists’ colony, where you could paint whatever the hell you wanted without worrying about Terreur looking over your shoulder.”

“In the Americas.”

“Ah—I take it you’ve been talking to Honoré.”

“Not about the magic. I needed an excuse to get away this evening, so I told her you were taking me to a salon.” Céleste watched the other thief’s expression closely. “It turns out she remembers quite a lot about you.”

Something strange happened to Rafe’s face then. It softened. He looked almost eager—the way Sylvie did when she was waiting for a bedtime story. “Like what?”

“You liked doodling forest creatures,” Céleste replied lightly.

“What else?”

“She said you made plans to paint your way across Europe, but it all turned to shit.” Céleste could tell this was true by the way Rafe flinched. His jaw worked back and forth, while the muscles in his scarred arm seized. “You ditched Honoré, apparently. She warned me not to trust you, and I have to say, after that little mishap in the mist last night, I can’t help but wonder if she’s right.”

The Seine rushed on beneath them, all the louder for Rafe’s silence.

“Not a day goes by where I don’t wish that story had ended differently,” he said, finally. “If I could use this watch to turn back time, I’d do it in a heartbeat. As for our arrangement…” Rafe’s voice crackled as he looked up from the timepiece. His gaze had caramelized. “I don’t believe your hour has anything to do with your death, Céleste Artois. My guess is that it’s the opposite. I think you’ll help me complete this job, and then we’ll both get what we want.”

“An artists’ colony?” Céleste said testily.

“My priorities have shifted since Honoré last knew me,” he told her. “Magic has a way of changing everything, for better or worse. It cracks the world open like an egg and can do the same to you if you aren’t careful—”

“I’m not too worried about becoming an omelette,” Céleste broke in sharply. “What does make me wary is a man who expects me to believe my future is inextricably tangled with his. It’s a pretty weak line, all things considered.”

“Not everything is a script, you know.” Rafe’s answer was nearly as tight as his hand when he reached to take back the watch. That spiel about fateful hours might’ve been bullshit, but Rafe wasn’t faking the tension in his wrist.

The watch was worth more than gold to him.

Céleste kept holding on to the timepiece, just to see how hard he would pull. “What’s the real reason you recruited me, hm?”

“Because I don’t want you to drown in lungfuls of your own blood.” The chain between them went taut. Rafe raised his eyebrows. “Is that an acceptable motive?”

“Better,” she ceded, doubling down her grip on the watch. “But, given the fact that we only met yesterday, you need more backstory to make it believable. Add in a moving monologue… something about how you once had a sister who wasted away from consumption and saving me would be a way to heal your grief. That sort of thing.”

Rafe glanced at the strained gold chain between them. “So you want me to make up a dead sibling?”

“I want you to make me believe,” challenged Céleste.

Her balance was precarious. One strong gust of wind, and she’d be thrown into the river. She doubted the pocket watch’s fob chain would be strong enough to save her. As it was, the mysterious smoke smell wreathed around her, joined by ribbons of Rafe’s own shadow. The thief himself seemed to be drawing even closer.

“You want a fancy speech? Fine. I’ve been Enlightened for eighteen hundred and thirty evenings now. That’s five years, if you can’t be bothered with math. Five years of magic. Five years of living half a life—most days, it feels like I’m a shell of myself. And in the evenings? I have to lie to everyone around me to make ends meet. While Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso are upstairs creating masterpieces, I get sent to destroy them. Night after night after night, with no end in sight, with no one but my employer who understands what I truly am. As you saw, he’s not the warmest of companions.”

To put it mildly.

“So you’re… lonely?” Céleste’s hold on the watch softened a bit. “What, misery loves company? Is that it?”

“‘Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.’ That’s the original line from Faustus, if you wanted the scripted version.” Rafe was still tugging the watch—not away, but using its chain like a climber’s rope, pulling himself closer and closer. “Although for what it’s worth, last night was the first time in a long time that I didn’t feel miserable. It was nice to laugh with you.”

That could be worth something, Céleste found herself thinking, as the thief leaned in, wrapping them up in more shadows and smoke. His hand moved over hers, and Céleste’s pulse began to drum hard enough to make her believe the pocket watch actually was ticking in their joined hands.

“Our employer might think I have a bleeding heart, but that’s a hell of a lot better than none at all.” She felt the growl of Rafe’s voice through his fingertips. The gold between their palms began to feel warm, then warmer. “I don’t want you to die, Céleste Artois. I want you to help me finish this job so we can both live long full lives with champagne and fish eggs and the world as our omelette. Is that convincing enough?”

“I’ll take it,” Céleste said, trying to ignore the heat of the pocket watch—and failing. The timepiece’s gold was now burning to the point that if she held on much longer, she might end up with a winged hourglass singed into her palm.

She pressed the watch back toward Rafe’s chest. “As for our future, well, I suppose there’s only one way to know for sure if our fateful hours are truly the same.”

The thief smiled at this, the ink-drop tattoo under his left eye nearly disappearing. He unraveled his elbow from hers, tucked the timepiece into his vest pocket, and then threw himself off the balustrade. Céleste was too shocked to shriek. She peered down into the river. Muddy waters churned on, without Rafe. He’d landed on a second small ledge between the arches of the bridge instead, just beneath the N emblem wreathed in a stone garland.

“Come on, then!”

It looked like another dead end or a drop that would break Céleste’s ankles, if she wasn’t careful.

Hell, she thought, the Mad Monk could just heal those too.

Rafe waved up at her, and his shadow stretched from his sleeve—much like a street performer’s silken kerchief—all the way to the balustrade. It felt like a solid hand when Céleste grasped it, strong enough to help lower her to the pedestal.

“What in the world are we doing down—” She fell quiet when she saw the boat moored under the arch.

Something about the sight demanded silence. It wasn’t the craft itself—floating despite splinters and decades of peeling paint—but the woman who stood on its bow. She looked nothing like a figurehead from a pirate ship, though she was nearly as weathered. There was a net gnarled in her hands and a century’s worth of wrinkles on her face. Her eyes were milky, but they fixed themselves on the pair of thieves anyway.

“I was wondering when you’d wash up.” Her voice was water on stone.

Céleste wasn’t sure which one of them she was speaking to.

Rafe crouched. “Hello, Seer. Lovely evening for lurking, isn’t it?”

“I can’t read your future from there, monsieur,” she called back.

“That’s fine by me,” he answered. Then, under his breath to Céleste, he added, “Try never to board the Seer of the Seine’s boat, and if you must, make sure your pockets are full of soil. That way she won’t be able to touch you.”

The Seer cast her net with a laugh. It splashed into the Seine, then sank. “Céleste Estelle Artois has enough dirt on her hands as it is. She became what ruined her, but she stands to become so much more—she’s exactly where she needs to be.”

A faint breeze slid downriver, blowing away the purple smoke that plumed from the boat’s tin roof. The strings over the cabin door clattered too—not covered in beads, like Céleste first thought, but trash: shards of glass and fish skulls and rusted tin cans.

“Tell me, Seer, why did you send Céleste’s glove to rue des Ombres?” Rafe asked.

“The same reason you go there night after night, dizzy fox.” The Seer began tugging her net back in. “People so often think their futures are set in stone, that their stories are written in the stars before they’re even born, but stone can be worn away, and stars will turn to dust if you wait long enough. I can find my way back to land again. And you…” Again, it was impossible to tell exactly where her foggy eyes settled. “You can cheat death.”

“What is our employer searching for in the salon?” Rafe wondered.

“He asked me the same question.” The Sanct’s silver mask glimmered as she pulled the net back onto the deck. “I had no answers for him, and I’ll have no more for you unless you lend me a hand, Monsieur García.”

It wasn’t the Seer the thief locked hands with then, but Céleste. When Rafe’s shadow spread into wings, she was lifted with him over the river. They landed by the quai that lined the Latin Quarter. As Céleste clambered over a stack of crates, she could still see the Seer across the muddy waters, watching them. Her white eyes floated like the stars the fortune teller did not read.

Céleste tried her best not to shiver. “I thought our employer was collecting the dreams for their power.” But that didn’t make sense, did it? The reindeer with the lantern horns burst through her memory—a shower of sparks. “You think he’s hunting for something?”

Rafe leapt down from the crate he’d landed on. “La Fée Verte stole from him, years ago. A memory? An idea? I’m not exactly sure what. He isn’t either. But he’s convinced she keeps it in that sparkly cave of hers. He’s obsessed with getting it back.”

“He wants a specific imagining?” Her heart yawned at the thought of how far the Vault of Dreams stretched. “That—that’s a needle in a fucking haystack.”

“Hence why I asked for help. I told you the job was big.”

“‘Big’ is a word you’d use to describe an elephant… This is…”

“What?” Rafe quirked an eyebrow. “Were you going to say ‘impossible’?”

She had been.

But Notre-Dame’s bells began to toll midnight—the enchanted hour. Their song shimmered through the air, along with a flock of emerald-feathered birds. Rafe’s own wings pooled back at his feet as they passed overhead.

“At least you’ll get a good long life out of it,” he said.