Chapter 17

Where Poverty Is a Luxury

Céleste could not go back to her grave.

She couldn’t even make it as far as Place de la Concorde’s obelisk. She was coughing up too much blood, filling handkerchiefs at a rate that sent her heart racing. Did most people waste away this fast? Or was this simply all the time she’d stolen coming out in thick garnet clumps? Ruby streaks. Vermilion edges. She’d never realized before how much blood was like fire. Its colors consumed your vision so that you could not look away. Why were endings so mesmerizing? She thought about the book Sylvie had snatched from the case. Céleste was glad the youngest Enchantress hadn’t read much further… that she didn’t have to see… this…

Rafe was watching though. He watched her the way he’d watched that windmill inferno. His eyes were almost the same color as his shadow when it spilled onto the stones of Place de la Concorde. And just as flat. Again, Céleste thought of a snuffed candle, though she was fairly sure the other thief remained Enlightened. XXXXXXX had made no move to reverse any of the curses he’d placed upon the pair, nor did he stop them when they limped back out onto the rue des Ombres. They were lucky to be alive.

For now, at least.

“Guess I don’t need those enchanted rubies you promised,” she croaked, when Rafe fished a fresh handkerchief from his pocket. A paper fluttered to the ground as well. “My lips are bright enough.”

The other thief did not laugh. He knelt to pick up the paper—it held the sigil she’d sketched not even a day ago. That damn fox running around and around, never quite catching up with itself.

A sob escaped Rafe’s throat when he saw the drawing.

He crumpled onto the stones, into his too-still shadow.

His wingless shoulders shook.

Those weren’t the tears of someone who’d parted with a few enchanted knickknacks. No, this was rawer. It was… real. The same kind of grief Céleste had felt when she’d told the other thief about her parents’ château: I lost everything.

Had they?

She balled the handkerchief in her fist as she sank onto the stones beside Rafe. The backs of their hands touched. “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d said those words out loud. Much less in earnest. “I—I didn’t mean for him to see the windmill.”

He took a shuddering breath.

At least he was breathing.

It was hard to forget the image of him hooked like a cow’s carcass at a butcher shop. Going all leathery. His complexion was much improved, despite the red rimming his eyes.

“It’s my fault.” The artist’s fingers crunched the borders of his sigil. “I let you in.”

Somehow, Céleste didn’t think Rafe was talking about the building that had just burned. He was probably wishing his lines about tangled fates were bullshit, right about now. If he’d just left her bleeding on the steps of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, none of his dreams would have gone up in smoke.

“Monsieur!” It was the doorman from Hôtel de Crillon, wandering down the sidewalk to check on them. “Is this woman bothering you? Should I flag down a cab?”

Rafe folded the fox sigil and stood. “Yes.”

Céleste coughed. She must look a sorry sight—did the doorman think she was a beggar or a prostitute? Either way, he’d probably try to call the police if she lingered on the curb. She didn’t think it was a good idea to slink back into rue des Ombres either, not while the passage still smelled so thickly of smoke. Better wait for XXXXXXX’s anger to cool. But wait where? Père Lachaise was out of the question, and Rafe’s windmill must be nothing but ashes by now. Thanks to her. He’d be a fool to invite Céleste anywhere else…

“Christopher Marlowe was full of shit, wasn’t he?” she said, looking up at the other thief.

His mouth quirked at this—the shape looked strange amid Rafe’s bruises. “If by ‘shit’ you mean legendary plays that are still quoted centuries later… Then, yes, I suppose the playwright of Doctor Faustus was full of it.”

“Misery does just fine without company.” She waved her crimson-covered rag again. “Go on, then.”

“You’re coming back to my studio with me. Obviously. I’m not going to let you sit here and wallow.”

“You’re not?” She faltered. “But you just said you were sorry for letting me in—”

“I never said I was sorry.” Rafe’s voice had a fierce edge. “You saved me in there, Céleste.” He looked down at the folded fox in his hands, his words going softer. “I need you, still, and thanks to your Enchantresses, that arrangement is mutual. If one of us fails, both of us do. Like it or not, we’re in this together. We’re in deep. Might as well go a bit deeper.” Rafe tucked her drawing into his pocket and offered a hand to help her stand. “Come, mon amour. Let’s go home.”

Two Passage de Dantzig was not a house.

Nor was it a windmill.

Rafe García lived in a building designed by Gustav Eiffel. It had stood by the engineer’s tower once, serving as a wine pavilion during the Exposition Universelle of 1900. After the fair, the structure was dismantled and rebuilt off a much quieter street. It sat behind a set of ivy-strewn gates, though these were almost never closed. La Ruche was open to all and had been so named because it resembled a beehive. In shape, yes, but also in the constant hum of activity. Its honeycomb rooms buzzed with artists, models, clochards, anyone who needed a roof over their head.

A category that now included Céleste.

“I used to dream of a place like this,” she said, as Rafe led her past a sculptor hammering away at a piece of stone in the courtyard. “My acceptance letter to Académie de La Palette arrived just before my father died, so I came to Paris after the funeral, but, of course, there was no money for tuition. No one would take me seriously without it.” Not even the academy’s director, who’d twisted the ends of his very real moustache as he explained there were no scholarships available. Perhaps she should try to find a patron?

His suggestion had sounded simple enough.

The reality was that Paris’s salons were crowded. Especially Twenty-Seven rue de Fleurus. Countless artists clamored for Gertrude Stein’s attention. To be hung on her wall was a crowning achievement. She was a kingmaker. King, Céleste had soon learned, because there were no paintings by women on display. There was hardly any space for women in the main foyer either. Wives and girlfriends and mistresses were shuttled off to a separate room, where they were entertained by Gertrude’s partner, Alice.

Céleste managed to escape this fate, elbowing her way to the chair by the white-tile fireplace. Madame Stein didn’t throw her sketches into the fire, but her words burned the young artist’s ears: “I’m afraid you don’t have what it takes. Though you do have a fascinating face… perhaps you’d let Matisse try to capture it?”

She fled the Twenty-Seven rue de Fleurus shortly after.

She might have abandoned Paris altogether, if she hadn’t been held up in a nearby alley.

“No one except Honoré,” she amended. “But Honoré takes everything seriously.”

“You still could have come to live at La Ruche,” Rafe said. The cab ride from Place de la Concorde had seemed to revive him a little. “They don’t charge rent to stay in the building.”

“That sounds too good to be true,” Céleste replied.

“Well, there are enough leaks in the roof to make up for it, but those help with the fact there’s no running water. As our friend Jean likes to say, ‘Poverty is a luxury here!’”

Céleste didn’t see Monsieur Cocteau inside, but she recognized several other guests from La Fée Verte’s salon as she followed Rafe to his studio. There was Guillaume Apollinaire—a poet who’d taken to smiling at Céleste every time they passed in the leafy corridors of the Quartier Secret. It was not the same, in these crowded halls of turpentine. The large man had to shift his muscular frame to let Rafe and Céleste pass. He frowned as they did.

“Rough night, Monsieur García? I had too much wine myself, I think…”

Not wine, Céleste thought wistfully. Smoky cocoa. The blue elephant—like all of Sylvie’s other imaginings—did not disappear with the mist each morning. Instead it had become a fixture in the Quartier Secret, pouring drinks behind the bar, which had stretched its space accordingly.

Rafe García’s studio had no such leeway. The room was the size of a closet, but, unlike some of La Ruche’s other nooks, it had a window. A pot of geraniums sat underneath to catch the aforementioned leaks. Their petals would be impossible to paint without cadmium. It was the most expensive shade of red. The most poisonous too.

Céleste coughed into her handkerchief yet again, wishing she could still blame hay fever.

“Welcome to my sunlit life.” Bright rays washed over Rafe’s face as he stepped into the room. The light was glorious in here. “I’m usually not Enlightened during the daytime, so I spend most of those hours sleeping. And painting. I know it’s not much.”

And yet, it was.

Every available inch of wall was covered with landscapes. Saw-toothed mountain ranges. Sand-whipped deserts. Jungles growing over ancient cities. A sky full of stars falling into a vast blanket of snow. Waterfalls misting out into rainbows. There were more localized scenes as well, mostly churches and catacombs. Céleste could even see their ill-fated windmill—it wasn’t the focus of the piece, but it was there, its blades peeking over Montmartre’s poster-splashed storefronts.

The lower-left corner of each canvas was signed Raf.

“Your name is missing an e,” she pointed out.

Again, he did not laugh. He pulled her picture of the fox from his pocket and pinned it up on the wall, smoothing out its wrinkles with care. “As I said before, there’s no indoor plumbing, but you’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”

Generous, considering the fact that Rafe’s bed was a mattress shoved into the corner. Too small for the two of them to use without touching. Not that Céleste had much room to be picky… her body was starting to feel as crumpled as the handkerchief in her fist. She sank into the pile of blankets and coughed again. The geranium was close enough to tremble.

“It might not be that long,” she told the other artist, when he sat next to her.

The mattress dipped beneath his weight.

It was less fire, she felt, when their shoulders touched (Mon Dieu, she didn’t want to think of flames. Not now.), and more light. They both sat awash with midmorning sun—bright enough for Céleste to notice that Rafe’s bruises had vanished. His tattoo was back to a single tear.

“You underestimate yourself. If you go back to rue des Ombres tonight, he should let you drink from his cup,” Rafe said. “That silver tongue of yours saved our lives. If you hadn’t spoken up when you did…”

What?

Céleste wondered. It was curious that Rafe hadn’t made any move to salvage his stash. If their employer wanted the key to immortality so badly, then couldn’t Rafe have traded the secrets he’d hunted down for the rest of the windmill? Why had he chosen to let all those curio cabinets and manuscripts burn instead? Was it because he had no other choice?

“Why do you work for him?” she asked. “There are easier ways to get diamonds.”

“I work for myself.”

That was rich. Even if he wasn’t. Céleste looked around the rentless studio. “So, what? After you find our employer’s missing idea, he’ll hang your paintings in the Louvre?” XXXXXXX was probably a kingmaker too. For artists and actual emperors. She’d certainly heard him discussing Tsar Nicholas with the Mad Monk often enough. “Raf García and the enchanted landscapes! Art historians can’t resist a good mystery, you know. They’ll eat up that missing e—”

“I don’t want to be famous.” He cut Céleste off, sharp as a pair of sewing scissors. “I want to be free.” There was anger in Rafe’s voice, but it wasn’t directed at her. It went deeper. It made the thief clench his hands into fists. His eyes strayed to the fox painting. “Free of this half-life spent forgetting who I am over and over and over again. I’m so goddamn sick of being a husk!”

Most days it feels like I’m a shell of myself. He’d worded the sentiment differently that night on the bridge, but Céleste understood. She thought of Monsieur Apollinaire, who’d just now tried to introduce himself to her in the hall—even though he’d dedicated a poem to her two nights ago. The man recited it after sipping smoky cocoa, the stanzas taking shape in ribbons of cloud. They’d faded, after a few hours. Same as Jean Cocteau’s ram horns or Duchess d’Uzès ever-changing hair colors.

Rafe’s own hair remained black—a raven-feather shade. She’d never seen it in such full sun before. Like everyone else, they’d stayed strangers this side of sunrise, stuck that way until his midnight memories returned at dusk.

“You want to be completely Enlightened.”

“That would help.” The thief sighed.

“Why doesn’t our employer let you see magic in the daytime?” Obviously he could, if Rafe was sitting here on the mattress talking about such things.

“He claims it’s because he doesn’t want La Fée Verte noticing me, but really it’s about control,” Rafe told her. “I’m at his mercy every sunset. Life would sure be a hell of a lot easier without my regular bouts of amnesia.”

Céleste bit her lip. She wasn’t so sure. She used to feel free with Honoré and Sylvie—but things had gotten strained since the other Enchantresses had been welcomed into La Fée Verte’s salon. Now that the windmill was gone, it would be even worse. She no longer had the luxury of relying on Rafe’s spare dreams, which meant there would be no more midnight macarons at Stohrer. No flying off to explore the gilded halls of Versailles. No learning the basic conjugations of cats.

If Céleste and Rafe were going to finish this job, they would have to keep using each other as an excuse to disappear.

Play lovers. Be lovers, for all I care.

She did care.

She’d said she was sorry on the curb, but the apology didn’t feel like enough. It didn’t convey the ache Céleste felt as she looked around Rafe’s studio, where colors bloomed in the most inventive ways. “Are you sure I can stay? I—I wouldn’t want this place to burn.”

“It won’t,” Rafe said, nudging the potted geranium with his foot. “There are too many damn leaks.”

Her laugh was bloodless.

His smile caught sunshine.

“What happens when you forget me, tomorrow morning? When you wake up and find a strange woman in your bed?”

She was suddenly very aware that they were sitting there, on the edge of Rafe’s mattress. Their shoulders were no longer touching, but that was only because the other thief had turned to take her in. Brown eyes twinkled above his tattoo. His grin had gone a bit sideways—cheeky.

“I expect I’ll be utterly delighted,” the thief said. “And I doubt it will be difficult to convince me to share this studio. For you, Céleste Artois, I’m an easy mark.”

So very, very easy.

She wasn’t even sure who leaned in first, only that his lips were there. They’d rehearsed this scene so many times, beneath opal streetlamps and shooting stars and flowering ceilings. It felt second nature to Céleste. Then again, it always had. But Rafe surprised her by moving past her lips, instead kissing the soft skin just beneath her earlobe. His breath grazed her neck, catching the curve of her collarbone. Céleste’s chest started to sparkle just like a lit fuse.

The feeling went down, down, down…

This was usually the part where Rafe’s shadow swept over them, where the pair pulled apart and disappeared into the Vault of Dreams. But the other thief’s silhouette spilled across the mattress, moving only with his body’s own motions, kissing the arc of her neck, wrapping his hands around her waist, pulling her so close that their outlines melded together on the bedsheets.

We aren’t pretending anymore.

Céleste reached for the buttons of Rafe’s own shirt. The top ones came undone quite easily, revealing scars that only made the muscles beneath that much more impressive. The language of knives. What story did they have to tell? She might have asked the other thief, but there was no room for words in her throat, only a moan, as Rafe’s kisses followed that lit-fuse feeling, down, down, as his fingers traced the outer edges of her thighs, moving slowly but surely inward. Céleste’s spine curved like those carnival swan boats. Her chin tilted up. Her mouth parted with a gasp.

“Oh!”

The geranium shuddered again as Rafe pushed off the pot to reach for the laces of her corset. Céleste’s thoughts went poison red.

“Oh!”

Her exclamation was sharper, sharp enough to make Rafe stiffen. “What? What’s wrong?”

“The blood.”

Rafe’s eyes found her lips. There must be stains there—she’d been coughing up so much—but he didn’t flinch. It took every ounce of Céleste’s strength to push the other thief away.

“I could… I might make you sick.”

“I don’t have to kiss you on the mouth.” His voice simmered. “There are plenty of other places to explore.”

Oh, Céleste was well aware. The ache she felt beneath her belly had nothing to do with his paintings. One touch there and she might explode.

“What if I cough?” She hadn’t since coming to rest on Rafe’s bed, but it was only a matter of time. “We have to be more careful.”

Blood, after all, was far messier than paint. As much as Céleste wanted to lose herself in these bedsheets, she knew it was dangerous. Rafe might get consumption, yes, but it could be even worse than that.

I will be so much worse.

“You were right. In the windmill. We got too comfortable with our arrangement, and I slipped up today, when I saw our employer killing you. I—” She swallowed. “I don’t want that to happen again.”

The other thief looked ready to argue.

He sighed instead. “Our employer isn’t omniscient. It is possible to hide your thoughts from him… It’s like the stardust trick, but opposite.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me before?”

“I’ve been distracted,” Rafe said, working his jaw back and forth. His gaze burned almost as hot as her want. “As loath as I am to admit it, you have a point. We’ve got to stay focused. We have to find that goddamn dream.”

Céleste almost didn’t return to rue des Ombres that evening.

Rafe’s mattress was comfortable despite the sleeping arrangements. Or maybe, perhaps, because of them. The pair had settled into the bed back-to-back, but sometime during their dreams, they’d turned to face each other. She woke in dusk’s violet light to find their foreheads touching. White hair tangled with black, but the pillow beneath remained crisp.

She hadn’t coughed once.

Céleste’s consumption caught up with her when she climbed out of bed. Fresh wet in the crusty clots of the handkerchief. Rafe stirred at this sound, his fob chains falling across his vest. The top buttons remained undone. Céleste wondered if he normally wore such shirts to bed—complete with a magical watch tucked in its pocket—or if he’d made an exception for her.

She wished he wouldn’t.

She wished for a lot of things. It would’ve been nice to have more of a warning, about how ruthless XXXXXXX could be, though Céleste supposed that wouldn’t have made much difference. Better to go back to the last time Sylvie blew out a birthday candle—so all three Enchantresses could discover magic together. Again, that might not have changed things. She’d still been dying then, and try as she might, Céleste couldn’t just wish her consumption away. Dreaming might be surviving for someone like Rafe García, but no matter how much she wanted to stay in bed with him, she knew XXXXXXX was right.

Fantasies would not save her.

Unless she kept taking them to the nameless Sanct.

So Céleste found herself slipping out of La Ruche’s ivy-wound gates and returning to rue des Ombres. She’d never entered the tunnel by herself before. Was that why the door at the end looked so different when she knocked? Reddish light cast through the keyhole, and there was… piano music.

Céleste wasn’t sure who was more surprised when she walked out of the tavern’s supply closet—herself or the barmaid. The woman almost dropped the carafe she was pouring. Her face paled to the point that Céleste almost offered an apology: Sorry for bursting out of your barware cupboard.

But then she saw who was being served.

XXXXXXX sat at the end of the bar. He looked more human than before—his cheeks rounded and ruddy—but Céleste’s basest animal instinct warned her that she could not be sorry. Not the way she’d been with Rafe. An apology followed by skin touching skin. So bare and exposed… She pushed back this thought too, wishing the neckline of her gown weren’t so plunging. That it didn’t make her neck look so swanny in the bar mirror.

“Ah, Mademoiselle Artois, welcome to my new territory.”

“It doesn’t look that new.” Cobwebs fluttered from lamps. The piano cried out for a tuner. The stool wobbled when Céleste took a seat beside her employer.

“New to me,” the Sanct amended. “Eleanor, would you pour some wine for my guest?”

“Yes, Terreur.”

A name! Céleste tried not to look surprised as the barmaid reached for an unopened bottle of Chardonnay. This was harder to manage, when her employer snapped his fingers and Eleanor froze. Strained. The black ribbon around the other woman’s throat looked far too tight.

“No, no. Céleste here deserves the special reserve.” The Sanct gestured at the carafe that sat on the bar top. Eleanor moved—immediately—to pour it. Was it the same wine he’d served Céleste at the first meeting? The color was similar. The tavern’s crimson lamplight left a strange sheen on the liquid. Stabbing shapes. “She’s had quite the day. As have I.” Terreur turned toward her. “I stumbled across this quaint place not long after our last encounter. They serve the most delicious vintage.” He nodded toward the glass. “I think you’ll appreciate it.”

Thanks to years of pulling confidence schemes among the upper crust of Parisian society, Céleste knew you were supposed to swirl older wines. Smell them. Sip. Savor.

Instead, she swallowed as fast as she could.

She only paused to breathe when the glass was empty.

When her lungs were better.

“Are you hungry?” the Sanct asked. “Of course you’re hungry. You’re always hungry. You know, you’re much more suited to this work than Monsieur García. He tried to run from this life, but you sought it out. You took a damn taxi.”

Céleste ran her tongue over her teeth. She didn’t feel like eating, but she didn’t think that was the type of hunger her employer was talking about. It wasn’t what set her on the edge of her stool when he reached for the ends of her hair.

His touch was nothing like Rafe’s.

It was hard not to shrink back, especially when the strands in the Sanct’s fingers turned black.

She could see Château Artois and herself locked outside its gates, but this wasn’t the only memory. There were others: The time she’d broken into her father’s office and sipped enough whisky out of his crystal decanter that she vomited. A night at the opera, where she’d gotten a visiting British viscount good and drunk off champagne before convincing him to invest in a “newly discovered van Gogh.” Her last lunch at Foyot’s, where she’d feasted on caviar before she sold the fake Eugène Delacroix painting to a fellow diner. Herself bragging to a statue as she’d buried the coins.

Terreur smiled at these sights.

“You’re a taker, Céleste Artois.” He let the thoughts fall back. “I don’t have to pull your strings to get you to steal. It’s already in your nature. You’re the one I would have chosen.”

Not to kill, he meant.

“I will take some dinner, if you’re offering,” she said lightly, trying to ignore the feeling that she’d already bitten off more than she could chew.

The Sanct next to her laughed. “The food here is shit, but I’ll be moving on to better venues soon enough.” Every word he spoke made her think of a wolf’s fangs—how sharp they were after that first taste of flesh. “As soon as you find what it is I’ve forgotten.”

“The thought La Fée Verte took from you?”

His laughter vanished.

His toothiness stayed.

Humans were born with holes inside them—so said her thieves’ creed—but Céleste was beginning to believe Sancts were too. All the power of gods, and they still sat at bars, drinking and devouring.

“Do you have any idea what it looks like?” Céleste pressed.

“It’s… large,” the Sanct said. “Other than that, I cannot say. I only know what it is not. The place it should fit in my mind… It echoes.”

So does the Vault of Dreams, Céleste thought, but for all its vastness, the cavern did seem to have some sort of order. The songbirds strung the dreams up newest to oldest, and so far, she and Rafe had been staying close to the stairs. “How long has it been gone?”

“Thirty years.”

“Thirty?” She’d have to go deeper into the cavern, then.

Much deeper.