Honoré had seen a lot of horrible things in her twenty-odd years of life. Teeth wrenched from men’s screaming jaws. Her mother’s own skull cracked like an egg and oozing over the hearth. Black fur peeled away as if it were apple skin.
But she’d never before seen a horror like this.
La Fée Verte held the shard of mirror in her palm. The fizzing gold magic she’d used to summon the memory had faded. The glass was now black. Black and swirling. Honoré could no longer see the skeleton, but she couldn’t shake the sight of its eye sockets nor the darkness that crawled through those holes like beetles, hungry for any final scraps of flesh. It was a testament to the steeliness of Honoré’s stomach that she managed not to vomit when she opened her mouth.
“Who was that?” she whispered.
“A Sanct called La Belle. She was trying to establish herself in the Champs-Élysées—she’d put the blueprints for the theatre in Auguste Perret’s head a few years back, and they’d just finished building it—”
“I meant the… the…”
“The black hand?” La Fée Verte’s own hand closed over the glass. Hard enough that Honoré kept waiting to see blood. “I don’t know for sure. I have my theories, but even if they were correct, I couldn’t tell you. Long ago, I burned his very name away.”
Honoré’s shiver had nothing to do with the ice-covered walls, which had frozen around the two of them at the other woman’s command. She could see Sylvie’s elephant silhouetted on the other side, along with the birds, swirling and swirling, like the frost from her own breath.
It was a far better sight than La Belle’s corpse.
Dry as a desert. No blood. No stab wounds. No bullets either.
“So there’s a real fucking vampire loose in Paris, huh?”
La Fée Verte didn’t laugh, the way Honoré had in the alley near Foyot’s. “Vampires are the stories your kind tell, the same way my imaginers call me a fairy. But the truth goes deeper than that. Magic does too. It goes all the way down through a person’s marrow, past their beating heart, into the miracle that is being alive. Into that sacred space between body and being.”
“A soul?”
“Many call it that, yes. A better term, perhaps, is ‘anima.’ It is the unique power of you.”
Honoré considered. “You’re saying I’m magical?”
“Everyone is.”
“So why isn’t the whole world pulling smoky-cocoa elephants out of their heads?”
“Everyone is magical,” La Fée Verte went on, “but only Sancts can cast spells. I use my powers to host this salon, where my patrons can dream of higher things, where they use their anima and shed it, as one might shed a hair.” She nodded at the bangles on her arms. “It’s not so different from prayer, in some ways. There are even Sancts who glean their magic at altars.” She traced the bracelets—up, up, up—until her fingers hovered above her crescendoed collarbone. There was a musical curve to her lips too, as she smiled at Honoré. “My temple just so happens to have cake.”
“And dragons.”
“Yes. Cake and dragons—two very essential elements.”
“I never figured those things could go together,” Honoré admitted.
“Whyever not?”
Because éclairs make terrible swords. She glanced back at the wall, where Sylvie’s silhouette sparkled past the frost. The girl had called her Mademoiselle Cake at least twice since they’d stepped inside the salon. It wasn’t nearly as annoying as Honoré pretended it was—she’d never meant to christen herself after the patron saint of pastries, yet the name still fit in a way she couldn’t shake. Just like the silver ring that slithered around the knuckles of her middle finger.
“None of the dragons I’ve met have had much of a sweet tooth.” She tried to say this in a teasing way, tried not to remember Maman’s swollen jaw or the rival gangsters with blood dribbling down their chins.
No, she looked back to La Fée Verte instead.
The Sanct was wearing only a thin green shift, but she didn’t look the least bit cold, even with frost gathering on her eyelashes. She hardly blinked as she regarded Honoré. It felt strange to be stared at this way. To be studied, not as a threat but as something else. Something… softer. As soft as the smile that stayed on La Fée Verte’s face.
“Well, you strike me as someone who could break the mold. Or at the very least recast it. Do you mind if I take a closer look at your relic?” the Sanct asked, when she reached out her hand.
Honoré stared at those fingers, so slender, tapered like candles. No wonder her own skin caught flame when they touched. Was it magic? It certainly felt like magic, glittering up her veins, as their hands joined. Her ring grew wings, and there was a matching flutter in her stomach. She could count La Fée Verte’s breaths—one, two, three. Heat grazed everywhere the dragon was not.
“This looks like Revolution-era handiwork,” the Sanct said, after a moment’s examination. “How did you come by it?”
“Terreur.”
“A Sanct?”
“My…” Honoré hesitated. It had been years since she’d spoken the word aloud, but better here than beneath Rémy’s blade. She felt that she could let down her guard with La Fée Verte, just a bit. “My father.”
The Sanct looked down at the dragon again. There was something in her eyes that told Honoré she knew about the marks the ring had left. How the bruises had healed, but the girl had not. How Honoré feared that if she ever peeled back her flesh, she’d find the beast engraved into her very bones.
“And how did he come by it?”
“His father, I expect.” To tell the truth, she wasn’t quite sure where this inheritance came from. Thank God her father had never figured out his ring was a magical relic—that he’d never truly turned its jaws on her.
The beast’s fangs bared wide, as if it had heard what Honoré was thinking.
La Fée Verte released her hand. “The Fisherman of the Moon might be able to tell us more.” She caught Honoré’s quizzical look. “He’s a merchant in Saint-Ouen who makes his living trading enchanted antiques: Glass slippers. Compasses that point to what your heart wants. Those sorts of things.”
Honoré’s own heart was twisting, spinning, trying to catch up with everything she’d discovered. “How many Sancts are in Paris?”
“Fewer and fewer these days.” La Fée Verte looked at the mirror shard, which was back to reflecting her own face. A deeper sorrow shimmered just past the gold. “I drove this darkness out of Paris many years ago—since then it’s become known as the City of Light—but he’s grown stronger in exile. Strong enough to start trying to re-establish his territory here. He’s failed to find a foothold in the Champs-Élysées, but he keeps testing my wards.”
“In Saint-Germain and Montparnasse?”
She could tell her guesses were correct by the way the other woman’s brow arched.
“I’ve heard rumors,” Honoré explained.
“If that’s the case, then it’s not just Sancts under attack. He never did know when to stop…” Her voice drifted, in and out of some murky memory. “I have to protect my imaginers.”
Honoré could see why. Even when she shut her eyes, she could see that dark hand reaching, taking… and when she opened them again, she saw the elephant’s shadow. Sylvie was on its back, raising a cocoa cup high in the air. Was… had she sprouted butterfly wings? Honoré’s chest ached at the sight, as if her heart had always been too small and now was trying to grow a size.
“I know you understand,” La Fée Verte said softly.
Did she? “It’s just—it’s difficult for me to wrap my mind around. You. The Quartier Secret. All this magic. Even now it’s hard to believe.” Honoré swallowed. “I don’t think I can give you any fancy dreams. I’m not like Sylvie. No one ever read me fairy tales when I was a child.”
The wooden knights Gabriel had entertained himself with didn’t count. Not after their father caught on to the fact his son was playing with “dolls.” His boot stomped most of them to splinters. It had stomped Honoré’s pinky too, when she’d tried to save one, so her finger was crooked from that day after. Forever changing the way she held her knife.
“I don’t need your imaginings, Honoré. If you had been raised on fairy tales, then you’d know that no story is without its struggle. I chose you, at the fountain, because you used this dragon to protect not just yourself but Sylvie too,” La Fée Verte said. “That is your power.”
Again, Honoré wasn’t so sure. She looked down at the long-broken knuckle. The ring—seeming to sense her thoughts about knights—spilled over to the old wound, covering her hand like a gauntlet. When she made a fist, she discovered the silver felt molten. When she pressed it into the opposite palm, she found the metal solid.
No boot could crush this. Bullets and blades wouldn’t leave much of a dent either.
It bent only to her will.
If Honoré concentrated hard enough, she could shape the metal, guiding it just as she had during the battle. She could spread it up her arm and over her chest. She could sprout talons from her fingertips and wings between her shoulder blades. She could make herself strong enough to face demons—both old and new.