Chapter 8

Structurally Unsound

Honoré Côte had no more knives left to sharpen.

There were fifteen of them lined up in the grave dirt at her feet. Even the cheese knives were pointed enough to draw blood. She wasn’t quite sure what to do now, except toss her whetstone back and forth between her palms. Back and forth. Back and forth. Céleste still wasn’t back.

Honoré had a bad feeling about it.

To tell the truth, she’d been on edge ever since they’d gone to see that damn ballet. The riot was unsettling enough, but it was Rafael’s appearance that really rattled her. And then his disappearance with Céleste. Honoré tried not to press the other Enchantress too hard after those first few nights when her friend was gone until dawn. Céleste was a grown woman, and she had every right to be where she pleased. Then a week passed. And another the same way. And another. There had been no new paintings in nearly a month. Céleste slept through the good morning light and most of the afternoon as well, and once she finally woke, she didn’t seem to be in the mood to paint. Or talk.

This posed a problem.

When Honoré pointed out that the Enchantresses could not sell a blank canvas, Céleste didn’t argue. She didn’t pick up her pastels either. She simply rubbed her eyes and said she was tired.

“Of course you’re tired!” Honoré growled. “Where have you been all night?”

Céleste’s silence had scared her more than any answer could.

Five whole years they’d been partners in crime—each trusting the other, even in lies—but Honoré knew there was more than one job in Paris for a forger. Especially a forger as accurate as Céleste. Rafael himself had worked for years at the Caveau des Terreurs.

Vault of Terrors.

The bar was about as cheery as its sign—a play on the name of the gangster who’d owned it. Honoré’s father had held court there, building a criminal empire with switchblades and false banknotes. He made Rafael draw fake deeds too in that sooty back room. It was a shitty studio, but it was one of Honoré’s favorite hiding spots. Rafael used to whittle wooden knights for Gabriel to play with under the drafting table, and he’d leave his knives out afterward so Honoré could practice with them. It was the only place she could get away with such a thing, where she could learn how to slash and slice and stab. A rehearsal, of sorts. She’d always had an eye for fights, the way some had an ear for music, but this was because violence had been Honoré’s lullaby for as long as she could remember. Too often her nights were spent in the closet, her mother’s winter coats pulled down from their hangers and turned into a makeshift bed. Not that Honoré did much sleeping. Her hands had covered Gabriel’s ears, while her little brother had clutched his knights.

You look just like him.

All that was coming back now, thanks to Rafael, and Céleste was still gone. Honoré had tried to be patient. She’d tried to sit around and wait, but her legs were starting to cramp, and she couldn’t stand to keep staring at her friend’s collection of empty dresses. None of Maman’s gowns were that fancy, Honoré thought, as she picked up her four sharpest knives. They went into her boots and up her sleeves, reinforcing her hands and feet. She’d gotten so used to the weight over the years that, without them, she felt structurally unsound.

She retrieved a fifth knife and moved to Céleste’s corner of the tomb.

She grabbed the nearest wig.

Sylvie perked up from her pillow, where she’d been staring at that book none of them could read. The green one. With the fairy on it. “What are you doing?”

Honoré wasn’t entirely sure. She didn’t wear wigs very often, and the hair on this one proved tough to cut. Chestnut strands fell to the floor in a ragged pattern. The hairpiece itself looked even more ragged when she fixed it to her head. Next was a Panama hat to shield her eyes and a moustache full enough to obscure the other half of her face.

“I’m going out.”

“I’m coming with you!” Sylvie declared.

“Absolutely not.”

“You can’t just leave me here by myself!” the girl wailed.

“I’m going to check on something to do with Céleste and… it might be dangerous.”

“She’s not in danger,” Sylvie said. “She’s with Rafe.”

“Céleste told you that?”

“No, the cats did,” Sylvie said with a straight face. “I asked them where Céleste was going every night, and they said she follows Rafe into a disappearing alleyway… Maybe? Or an erased street? I’m still learning their language. Did you know they have ten different words for ‘mouse’?”

Honoré clenched her jaw. Why must Sylvie be so childish? Granted, she was a child, but this whole bit about the cats had gone a story too far. And if it was true? If Céleste was following Rafael around Paris’s darker streets and refusing to say so? Well, then, that just confirmed Honoré’s fears.

She picked up a sixth knife.

“Rafael worked for some nasty people when we were younger.” He might claim to be a penniless painter now, but Honoré knew better than to believe him. “I need to make sure Céleste doesn’t get caught up with them too.”

“Why do you keep calling him that?”

“Rafael? That’s his name.”

A frown drifted across Sylvie’s face. “Well, the cats say—”

“Will you stop with the talking cats?” This was too loud, Honoré realized. The youngest Enchantress shrank into her blanket, her book tumbling to the floor. “I’m sorry, Sylvie—I just—this is no time for make-believe. Céleste could be in real danger. I have to go.”

Belleville was a neighborhood of fighters.

It had been so for nearly a century… ever since Paris swallowed up the wine-making village and squeezed its workers dry with demands: Bake all night. Fill our cups. What else are your short lives for? It was as if the bourgeoisie hadn’t learned anything from that first revolution at all. As if they didn’t expect the working class to fight back again.

They had.

And while that second revolution was short, so short that it was nearly forgotten, it still scarred Belleville’s walls. Bullet pocks. Defiant graffiti. There were small hand-drawn skulls all over the neighborhood, surrounded by the words VIVE LA COMMUNE 1871. Honoré had learned her first letters by tracing them. Her blood ran through these streets—literally. Legend had it that Honoré’s grandfather had been shot right here on rue de Belleville, for daring to believe in better wages and women’s rights.

Of course, that was merely a legend.

He could have just as easily been killed by gangsters, the way Honoré’s other grandfather had. Or he may have been the gangster doing the killing. Honoré looked down at the silver dragon ring on her right hand. Her only heirloom. For five whole years, she’d worn it, until the metal had become another part of her. The bones of her middle finger were shaped by it, as was the pad of her palm, where the bottom kissed her closed fist. There were other marks too, passed down from when the ring had crowned her father’s hand instead of hers.

It wouldn’t be wise to wear the beast here, in its old lair. So she pulled the ring off and slipped it into the pocket of her trousers before she walked into Caveau des Terreurs.

The name hadn’t changed, but the establishment itself was smaller than Honoré remembered—though it hosted the debauchery of almost a hundred people. The rickety corner piano was the same, right down to the sticky stains on its keys. Sand was still scattered across the dance floor, and the dozens of tables were covered—as always—with poker hands and glasses of spirits. Red and green oil lamps cast a sickly glow over the customers. Most wore the same outfit: Bénard trousers, a waistcoat fitted over a striped sailor shirt, a flat cap, a scarf, and multiple pockets for multiple blades. The men had a single blue dot tattooed under their left eyes. The women wore black ribbons around their necks.

She did not see Céleste sitting among them.

She tried not to recognize any other faces.

She knew the barmaid though. Eleanor had lived a few doors down and had always been serving tea to her rag dolls. Playing like a proper girl, Terreur once growled. She grew into a conventional woman too. Her breasts started filling out at the same time as Honoré’s, but she didn’t try to hide them, didn’t hate the way they drew men’s eyes. She treated the gangsters of Caveau des Terreurs much like she had her dolls—pouring drinks and talking to unhearing ears. She’d snuck Honoré lemonade on occasion, winking as she passed the bottle over the bar top. Honoré had always drunk it. Always tried hard to smile back, but not too hard, in case one of her father’s men was watching…

“Excuse me.” It wasn’t difficult to make her voice masculine. Husky. Smoke from the lamps and every other memory here clawed down Honoré’s throat. “Have you seen a young woman around recently? She has very fair hair—almost white—and she’s about my height.”

“No.” Eleanor shook her head and went on polishing glasses. “No one like that here.”

“Are you sure?” Honoré pressed.

A loud CRACK sounded across the room, followed by the shattering of glass. Some drunk fool was using barware as target practice. CRACK, CRACK! Honoré did not jump at the sound, and she wondered if that was a mistake. Eyes were already beginning to drift in her direction.

“No one has white hair here,” the barmaid said. “Most of us don’t get old enough.”

“She’s young,” Honoré repeated. “Twenty-four.”

“You may not reach that age if you don’t leave, monsieur. This is Apache territory, and they don’t take to trespassers kindly.”

But Honoré wasn’t a trespasser at the Caveau des Terreurs. She was Fear’s Bastard, and if she’d been his son, she would be seated at the tables over there, crying ink and never tears. Men don’t cry and bitches don’t fight. (Back), her father had meant. Bitches don’t fight back.

He’d been wrong on both accounts.

Honoré leaned farther over the bar top. Like the buildings outside, it was covered with signs of violence. Gouges where blades had been. A patina of splattered dark stains. Wine and blood were both difficult to get out of wood. Someone had carved up one of the largest red spots with what they thought was a witty epitaph: Terreur is dead, long live Terreur!

“Would you happen to have any lemonade?” she asked.

Eleanor almost dropped the glass she was polishing. The rag went limp in her other hand. “No,” came the careful words, “I haven’t served that in years…” Her gaze flicked over Honoré’s shoulder, then back to the bar top. “What are you doing here? Did you not get my last letter?”

The scrap of paper tucked in the empty Château Robert bottle? Wedged against the buttresses of Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix like an offering? Her fingers had trembled when she’d opened it. Her lungs had seized when she’d seen the words. Gabriel made his first kill today. Stay away, or you might be next. She could still remember the sound of the bottle breaking.

She still felt its shards in her heart.

“I’m not looking for a fight,” she lied.

“There’s one looking for you,” Eleanor murmured. “I swear on the saints, I haven’t seen your pale-haired friend. Is that all you wanted?”

Of course not. Honoré could feel her heartbeat around at least three of her knives—faster and faster. Once upon a time, she’d sat here, admiring the way Eleanor moved like sunlight on water, even though neither of those elements could be found behind Caveau des Terreurs’s bar. There was a mirror past the liquor bottles, and Honoré watched it now. The card games behind her had slowed.

“What about Rafael? Have you seen him around?”

The frown lines that appeared on Eleanor’s face were deeper than Honoré remembered. “Who?”

“The forger.”

The woman on the other side of the bar kept frowning. Could she really have forgotten?

“The García boy,” Honoré pressed. “He stole all those travel posters from Gare de l’Est and put them up in the back room. Wouldn’t shut up about Constantinople. You used to tease him that his imagination was always running in circles…” She glanced back down the bar, looking for that stupid sigil. “That’s why he carved this.”

The graffiti was far more elegant than the rest of the markings in the wood: a fox chasing its own tail. Eleanor hardly glanced at it though. She began polishing her glass again, even though there were no streaks left.

“There’s been no hide nor hair of him. You should make yourself scarce too. The men are on edge, even worse than usual. The killings have spooked them.”

Honoré lifted her eyebrows. “Killings?”

“You haven’t heard?”

No, but murder didn’t seem like it should be news here. Much less something to make an Apache quake in their gold-buttoned boots.

“Bodies have been turning up all over the city.” Again, this didn’t sound terribly suspicious. It didn’t explain the tremble in Eleanor’s voice. “Saint-Germain, Montparnasse, the Champs-Élysées.”

“Could be another gang looking to expand their territory,” Honoré reasoned.

That was a big expanse though. And the neighborhoods the barmaid had just listed were the province of the rich. Policemen cared there.

Eleanor shook her head. “The bodies… they’re not normal. The first one they discovered made the police call the Louvre to see if the museum was missing a mummy. As if some sarcophagus had tumbled out the door and rolled all the way to the Champs-Élysées. But how else could you explain a corpse that looks like that?”

Honoré found herself shifting to the edge of the barstool. “Like what?”

“Dry as a desert. No blood. No stab wounds. No bullets either.” Eleanor shuddered. “The police haven’t even been able to identify the victims. The papers are keeping quiet too, but Séverin’s cousin has an ear on the force. He says the killings keep happening every few weeks. So, yeah, the men are spooked.”

Honoré looked back in the mirror. There were plenty of worn spots in the mercury—places where it was easy to see ghosts. This bar had more than its fair share, thanks to Terreur. Her father had made a name for himself, knifing his way to the top of Paris’s fiercest gang, and even now that the fucker was dead, he wasn’t gone. Not the way Honoré had wanted him to be, when she’d stabbed him. His blood scarred the bar. His moniker had become a title. His daughter looked just like him, and his son did too.

Gabriel.

Oh, Gabriel.

Her younger brother was sitting behind the piano, tinkering with its keys the way he sometimes had when he was little. “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” he’d played on his own. He had the ear for music. His fingers were longer now. They moved more ferociously through the notes, playing the opening chords of “Valse des Rayons,” which would soon get the patrons performing La Danse Apache. Horrid dance. Brutal dance, so brutal that it broke tables and sometimes left bruises on the women’s necks.

Gunshots and murderous rumors hadn’t made Honoré flinch, but this did.

“I’ll keep my eyes open for your white-haired friend,” Eleanor murmured as she put the glass back. “I’ll write you if anything changes. I promise. Now go!”

Chairs were scraping back. Girls with ribbons knotted around their necks were getting pulled onto the sandy dance floor, and Honoré’s own throat felt tighter and tighter. She knew the steps. Knew them all too well, outside the dance. Did Gabriel? If she hadn’t plugged her little brother’s ears, oh so many years ago, would he play this filth? Would he have chosen to stay?

Honoré should have left this place sooner—ten years sooner—with her mother and brother at her side.

As it was, she made a quick exit.

She walked away from the piano’s wail, wanting so much to be different. At least she’d been wrong about Rafael. A relief. She wondered what kind of stuff he painted, now that he was no longer in Belleville. She should pay his salon a visit. For old times’ sake. And to check in on Céleste. Maybe it was better for her friend to be spending so much time with other artists, to start working on work of her own instead of always selling herself as someone else. She had the talent. She’d needed the money to nurture it, back when they’d first met, which was why Honoré had suggested forgery. They had plenty of francs now. They could stop stealing anytime they wanted.

But if Céleste really had turned over a new leaf, why did her sketchbook stay blank? Why wouldn’t she describe the salon Rafe took her to when Sylvie asked about their evenings together? Why did she always slip out of their tomb without saying goodbye? Why did she hail taxis at rue de Bagnolet so Honoré had no way to follow?

No…

Something still didn’t sit right.

A restless red feeling stirred in Honoré’s chest while she walked. Shadows fluttered on the other side of the street. The moon was playing tricks with Belleville’s alleys—Honoré swore she saw someone there, a flitting presence at the corner of her eye. She refused to move faster. If someone was stalking her, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of running. She wouldn’t let her thoughts turn to bloodless corpses, much less vampires, because, of course, that was fucking ridiculous.

Wasn’t it?

A cat darted across the lane.

Honoré exhaled.

Then she heard an unmistakable click.

The sound was tiny and tinny and followed by a voice that made her skin crawl. There was a drawl to the way the gangster spoke—sparks on silk. It set Honoré’s neck hairs alight. “Leaving so soon, monsieur? You didn’t even stay for a drink! The barmaid seemed quite upset.”

Honoré knew that voice.

She knew that face.

She’d cut it in half herself.

It wasn’t a vampire she found when she turned, but Rémy Lavigne. The gangster was standing several meters away, holding a golden revolver. Lazy weapon. Though maybe he’d been put off knives ever since hers carved that hideous line down his right cheek. The scar was puckered and purple—dragging off Rémy’s chin and over his beetle-bright eye.

His gaze crawled over Honoré, but it didn’t glint with recognition just yet. “What’s your business here, eh? Fancy folk like you don’t come nosing around Belleville after dark.”

Fancy folk? Honoré fought back a laugh. True, her suit was bespoke, but Rémy’s yellow boots had to be worth just as much, with their polished leather and gold buttons. They flashed as he stepped toward her.

Good.

Get him closer, just like last time.

“I was looking for someone,” she said.

Night sharpened the edge of Rémy’s cap as he paused. He was alone; Honoré guessed this—partly because the gun stayed pointed at her moustache but mostly because Rémy was notorious for doing his work solo.

His yellow boots flashed one more step.

Almost there.

She needed the element of surprise. Something to throw this hunter off-balance. “I was, in fact, looking for a Monsieur Rémy Lavigne. To pass on the news of his great-uncle’s death. He was bequeathed quite a large estate, though I’m afraid that if I can’t find him, these assets will go to the government.”

This got the gangster’s attention. He snagged on the sentences, his scar scrunching with confusion. “Estate? But… I don’t have no great—”

Honoré struck.

She hit the revolver with her fist. It went spinning over the tram tracks. Honoré spun too, grabbing Rémy’s red scarf in the hopes that she could use it to choke him to the cobblestones, but the fabric slipped out of her sweaty palm, and the gangster unraveled from it too.

Her knife was only half out when he lunged, and she bought more time by tossing her straw Panama hat into Rémy’s face. His blade slashed it to splinters. Her own knife flashed. Her arm burned. Shit! Rémy had managed to land a blow. He’d gotten better over the past six years, since they’d last fought.

But she had too.

Honoré ducked and dodged and hit and stabbed. She dove for the gangster’s kneecaps, aiming for a tendon. He kicked up, and the edge of her blade caught one of his boots instead. Three gold buttons scattered onto the street beside his gun. It might have been a worse wound than the tendon; Rémy cared far more about his clothes than he cared about any living thing.

He howled accordingly.

From there, the fight took on a bestial tone. Rémy’s attacks turned erratic. Honoré too had to lean into her anger. Her hurt. The cut on her arm pulsed like a Gregorian chant: Stab! Stab! Stab! For so long, it had only been tree trunks and straw men and Céleste, who held knives like flowers. Now Honoré could let herself go into the wild thorny places that wanted to keep drawing blood.

It was too easy to see the past on these streets.

Her grandfathers were cast in the mercury shades of a daguerreotype.

Her father, always polishing blood off his ring.

Her mother, wearing a scarf to hide her cuts as she walked from the fromagerie with a basket of camembert.

Rémy, as a boy, breaking up stale bits of bread so he could lure strays.

The little black cat she’d never gotten a chance to name.

Herself. So small. So…

Shit. Honoré stuttered when she realized that the cat and the girl were solid, standing at the edge of a nearby alley. She lost her own footing then, tripping on Belleville’s cobblestones. The entire street slammed into Honoré’s spine. Then Rémy was on top of her, just like before, only there were no skirts to shove up. No skin to distract him. He wrenched Honoré’s knife from her hand and turned it on her.

“You’re going to pay for what you did to my boots,” he said with a rancid breath. “They cost an eye. Maybe two. Tell me what you’re doing here, and I might spare your sight.”

She knew he’d do no such thing, if the truth came out.

The knife pressed hard into her chin.

Rémy’s smile grew as he began to carve, but the cut didn’t get very far. The blade stopped as soon as it caught the edge of Honoré’s fake moustache. An entire end flapped up, and the sight of her facial hair peeling off made him stop. Stare. See.

His rotten grin vanished.

“Anne?”

Even as a child, she had found the name ill-fitting, as clumsy as the frocks she ruined in Belleville’s muddy gutters. She’d left it behind when she escaped, drifting from place to place, name to name, because she knew the Apaches would be listening for any whisper of Anne. Any hint of the little girl with blonde braids and skinned knees.

Rémy grabbed her bleeding chin. “Oh… shit!” The gangster’s lips twisted into a snarl. “It is you!”

“Anne is dead,” she hissed.

Rémy laughed. “You will be soon, though your brother will kill me if I kill you first. He was quite a wreck after you left.”

There was still a knife hidden up her right sleeve, and though Rémy had pinned the arm with his knee, Honoré found she was able to work the blade into her palm. All she had to do was keep him distracted until—

Rémy let out a shriek.

His knife jerked away from Honoré’s face as a streak of fur flew into him. He fell back, clawing at this new attacker.

It was a cat.

It was the cat. From the alley entrance. Not black, like she’d first thought, but ginger. And tailless. It looked very much like the untamable tomcat from Père Lachaise, the one Sylvie liked to describe as a tiger. Given the way Rémy was screaming, the description was perhaps more accurate than Honoré had believed. The orange animal had its teeth sunk deep into the good side of the gangster’s face.

“Honoré!” Her true name rang out over the cobblestones. She looked up to see Sylvie crouched between the tram tracks, reaching for the golden gun.

“What are you doing here?” Honoré untangled herself from Rémy’s thrashing legs and scrambled toward the girl. “Don’t touch that!”

Too late. Sylvie threaded her fingers through the knuckle-duster that doubled as the gun’s grip. The pistol was cocked, and the little wavy dagger that served as its bayonet shivered when she tried to aim.

“It’s pretty, for a gun! It feels light too! Like a toy!”

“A toy that kills people,” Honoré reminded her.

“Anything can be a weapon!” the girl chirped back.

“Hand it here!”

Sylvie bit her bottom lip instead. “Are you going to kill him?”

Rémy was rising to his feet. The orange tomcat vanished back into the night, as suddenly as it had come, but the animal had left its mark. Several marks, in fact. Blood covered the gangster’s cheeks, as if he’d been crying. Murder gleamed in his one good eye as he started toward the girls.

“Give me the gun, Sylvie,” Honoré said urgently.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“If I don’t shoot him, he’s going to stab us!” Honoré had her new knife in her hand, just in case, but the weapon felt different with an eleven-year-old nearby. It would be too easy for Sylvie to get cut. And she wouldn’t bleed sugar here, that was for damn sure. “He’s going to stab us, and we’re going to die!”

“No,” Sylvie said, as if this were simply an ending that didn’t suit her.

She raised the pistol high.

Rémy paused. A wise move, since the barrel was aimed at his chest. Honoré’s own heart thrummed with uncertainty. Was this a dream? It felt like a dream, as if she’d fallen asleep on her mattress, sprawled among her knives. That would make so much more sense than Sylvie playing target practice here in Belleville.

“Go away!” the girl shouted at Rémy, as if he were a fly hovering around some charcuterie. “Leave us alone!”

The gangster wavered.

Then he turned on his yellow-booted heels and ran.

“There,” Sylvie said, as if she’d fixed everything.

If only.

Honoré watched Rémy round the corner, back toward Caveau des Terreurs, where the piano was still raging.

“Come on, ma rêveuse.” Sylvie didn’t put up a fight when Honoré confiscated the weapon. She took the girl’s hand next and pulled her down the street. “We have to go.”