Chapter 19

Here There Be Monsters

Sylvie of a Single Name did not mind being an orphan.

Or so she told herself.

It hadn’t been such an easy role when she was younger, constrained to the gray halls of Saint Francis’s Home for Children. There was no one there to tuck her into the sterile white sheets of her dormitory bed, or kiss her softly on the forehead, or read stories about toads who turned into princes and stars that sang lullabies. She hummed such things to herself back then, to keep from thinking about food. Glorious food. It was better than listing all the things she could not have—the way Noelle always did in the adjoining bed. Croissants. Pain au chocolat. Cheese. Leg of lamb. A yule log. A mother. A father.

Children in fairy tales rarely had parents either, but this didn’t seem to make them sad. Au contraire—those orphans were free to explore. They could stow away on ships to the New World, or live in seaside caves that could only be accessed at low tide, or become a member of a wolf pack and howl at the moon anytime they pleased. They could answer adventure’s call without a parent’s worried inquiries to the police.

Sylvie had learned to avoid such authorities, thanks to Honoré and Céleste and their less-than-legal lifestyle. She ran free through Paris’s streets, picking pockets while pretending to be the lost daughter of a raja. She liked the idea of being a princess, and the lie was so bold that people sometimes believed her. A few even reached for their purses to help her buy a train ticket, but by the time they looked up, Sylvie was gone, running away with the coins they would have given her.

That had been before.

Now the coins she slipped into her pockets sported the Sun King’s face—fished out of a wish-granting fountain that had long gone dry. Would the Fisherman of the Moon have traded for them? Sylvie felt a little bad for stealing from the Sanct’s booth, but she probably wouldn’t have found the fountain’s courtyard without the map she’d snatched. It showed Paris, mostly. Paris as she’d never seen it. The fourth island floated up and down the Seine, always sketched in a different spot. There were catacomb entrances dotted over arrondissements that weren’t supposed to have tunnels. There had been a faint gray windmill in Montmartre when Sylvie first stole the parchment, but somehow the spot had since been blotted with ink. Or soot. Sylvie wasn’t sure what the markings were, but they were all over the map, spattering almost every section of the city aside from the Quartier Secret.

Sylvie spent most of her hours there—sleeping in a hammock of vines until La Fée Verte’s guests arrived. Plucking their hairs was much more fun than picking pockets. Even if the imaginers saw her, they didn’t seem to mind. But the green birds were territorial, taking up her airspace in a mad rush, until Honoré had intervened.

“You can’t steal from La Fée Verte,” the older Enchantress said with a sigh.

“I’m not,” Sylvie replied.

“Don’t be cheeky—”

“I’m not,” she repeated. “The ideas are growing out of the imaginers’ heads.”

“Because of La Fée Verte’s magic,” Honoré explained. “She needs their dreams to power this salon. It’s like Céleste said: ‘We do not steal from local boulangeries if we want them to keep selling us pain au chocolat—’”

“Stohrer magical pastries are so much better!” Sylvie chirped back, mostly to see Honoré roll her eyes and to see her tiny silver dragon do the same.

Sylvie had taken more care after that, only taking her own dreams—the way Rafe García did whenever he explored the landscape room, placing them alongside that shiny pocket watch of his and then slipping away to kiss Céleste. Sylvie wasn’t sure what happened next. More kissing, probably. That was what people did when they were in love. Right?

But what did Rafe do with his ideas?

Your dreams are worth far more, especially if you save them.

Sylvie tried her best. Every time she pulled a shining strand from her head, she wrapped it around her wrist—the way La Fée Verte did—and when her arms ran out of room, she started stashing them away. Not in the songbirds’ salon. There was a far safer place on the other side of Paris.

La Banque d’Ossements.

It had been weeks since Céleste or Honoré had made any deposits in Père Lachaise’s graves. They hadn’t made any withdrawals either; there were still francs hidden all over the cemetery. Sylvie buried the Sun King’s golden face alongside them. She didn’t want to get dirt on her dreams though… Those she stored in Honoré Côte’s mausoleum. The other Enchantresses had been visiting this campsite less and less—once Céleste had moved to La Ruche to take up art in earnest, Honoré had seen little reason to stay there. Marmalade made up the difference, claiming much of the tomb as his den.

I shall allow you to store your things here, oh hunter mine. Especially your spare cans of pâté.

The bookseller’s guide had cleared up their conversations greatly, now that Sylvie knew about tail accents and whisker inflections and the mice-carcass offerings that signaled undying loyalty. She’d tried not to wrinkle her nose at the tiny gray bodies Marmalade brought her. The proper response—according to The Found Words of Fable and Lore—was to offer something of “reciprocal value.” Sylvie settled on an enchanted macaron.

Marmalade did wrinkle his nose.

They’d been fast friends ever since.

The tomcat was still difficult to understand at times, since he’d been born without a tail. The rest of the strays in Père Lachaise used to make fun of his accent—so he’d had to be defensive to make up for it. Hence his tattered ears and quick bite. Or, as Honoré so sarcastically put it, his taste for human flesh. He never scratched Sylvie though. He told her stories instead. About men who twisted shadows and women who shone like the sun—who’d been given titles like Osiris and Rah. Or Hades and Apollo. About young children like Sylvie, who’d slipped through the cracks of the world, who’d gone missing and discovered magic.

She’d found plenty herself. Most of the pink ideas Sylvie pulled from her head, she stored here. Under mattresses. On shelves meant for boxes of ashes. Inside the cracks in the central tombstone. By the beginning of September, the mausoleum had run out of room. She was starting to see why La Fée Verte’s salon was so infinitely spacious…

Sylvie was starting to notice other things too.

She was no longer so tired come dawn, even after she spent an entire night dreaming. There were no dark circles around her eyes when she caught glimpses of herself in mirrors. Sometimes there were even sparks… a trick of the light, surely. Or the glass. She’d learned not to trust reflections after discovering a compact that showed Sylvie other Sylvies. The girls who’d stared back were caught in different lives. One was starving in her orphanage uniform, still. Another had cheeks plump from a mother’s cooking. Sylvie had tried not to watch her too long—it was just the magical version of Noelle’s sad chorus. Better to focus on what she did have.

Wings. A talking cat companion. A whole magical city to explore. A glass roof over my head… and lots and lots of dreams.

Sylvie lay back on the main gravestone and stared at them, the way she and the other Enchantresses used to watch stars, making up new constellations to add to the observatory ceiling. Honoré’s were mostly shaped like knives.

The memory made Sylvie laugh.

Then sigh.

Marmalade curled up next to her.

What’s wrong? he purred.

“I miss my friends.”

But you see them every night.

“I know, but… it’s like they don’t see me.”

Because you wear an invisibility cloak?

Céleste had asked Sylvie to imagine a pair of these a few weeks back—and she loved the idea so much that she’d conjured another for herself. And then another. And then another. It was easy to lose them—there were at least ten identical garments crumpled in various spots around Paris.

“Even when I’m not wearing the cloak,” Sylvie said. “Honoré is too busy trying to be a knight, and Céleste is too busy disappearing with Rafe.”

After their visit to the lost circus, the oldest Enchantress had insisted on staying close to the salon. Unfortunate, given Honoré’s rule: Never go out alone! It’s too dangerous! Sylvie figured she wasn’t breaking it, technically, if Marmalade came along with her to explore Versailles. She also figured Honoré would figure differently, which was why she failed to disclose the fact that Céleste and Rafe were… busy.

She’s not disappearing with him. The cat paused. Not yet. Her soul is still whole. Her name is still hers.

Sylvie frowned. The night past the glass pressed closer. “What are you talking about?”

Rafe’s curse.

“Curse?” Sylvie paused at this word, not because she didn’t understand it, but because she’d never really thought too much about the sour side of magic. She always walked extra fast over the Saint-Michel bridge whenever that old wrinkly Seer called to her—Daydreamer! Daydreamer! Give me some days, and I’ll tell you if your dreams come true! Certain objects made her shiver too. The compact mirror—after she snapped it shut—or the way Honoré’s ring sometimes stared a little too hard.

But Rafe didn’t make her feel like that.

Rafe was funny. He brought her cloud crème éclairs. He painted her whiskers and giant piles of sugar she could make snow angels in. He let Sylvie hold his pocket watch and see her fateful hour—half past twelve, precisely.

The man is… not himself, Marmalade said.

“Is that what happened to my last name?” Sylvie wondered. “A curse?”

It would be a better story than being forgotten. Or worse, discarded on the orphanage steps like an order of milk. If there had been a note tucked in her baby blanket, Sylvie had never seen it. She’d seen other records though, tossed into a wastebasket with the remains of the headmaster’s midnight snack: bitter orange peels.

I doubt that, Marmalade said. You’re only getting brighter. He tilted his nose at the overhead imaginings. You’re becoming more Sylvie. Rafe is shadowed.

Cats could be cryptic sometimes. Sylvie suspected it was entirely on purpose. “Shadowed?”

Like the spots on your map. The cat hopped off Sylvie’s lap and padded over to the unrolled parchment. Rafe goes to this one every morning. His paw hovered over a sooty line in the eighth arrondissement, small enough to look like the slip of a pen.

“Well,” Sylvie said, “if Rafe is cursed, then we’ll just have to figure out a way to break that curse…” It sounded like something a plucky heroine with butterfly wings and a talking cat companion would set out to do. “I know he and Céleste have already kissed, so it’s probably not that.”

Probably not, Marmalade yowled. Besides, it would have to be true love’s kiss to be magical.

On the map, the shadow road looked like the exact right place to start an adventure. Now that Sylvie was standing in front of the Hôtel de Crillon, she wasn’t so sure. The dark arch before her seemed to suck up the light of the nearby gas lamps. It made Sylvie pull her invisibility cloak even tighter around her shoulders. Her cat companion stared at her anyway. His eyes were as orange as the heart of a candle.

“What’s back there?” she asked.

Marmalade growled—more of a feeling than a word.

He hissed when Sylvie stepped closer to the alley. Cats do not go there.

“I’m not a cat.” She wasn’t a coward either… She couldn’t be, if she wanted to find the best bits of magic.

So she hugged her invisibility cloak close and tiptoed into the tunnel. It looked like a dead end, at first. But when Sylvie’s eyes started to adjust to the darkness, a door took shape. It kept taking shape—the keyholes changing again and again. When Sylvie knelt to peek through, she felt as if she were watching slides from a magic lantern. A study with a roaring fire. Icebergs floating in an ocean. Piano songs playing from a tavern. Desert sands piling into dunes.

She sat back, dizzy. Normally, when Sylvie came across a lock, her fingers grew greasy. It was the only reason she wore pins in her hair—to bend and twist them until she heard that oh-so-satisfying click.

But this looked far too big for a bobby pin.

Just then, Sylvie heard footsteps. Not from the everywhere side of the door, but hers.

“How long do you think La Fée Verte has been harvesting dreams? How far does the cavern go?”

It was Céleste. Sylvie smiled and nearly waved, before remembering she was invisible. She paused instead, watching as the oldest Enchantress walked with Rafe. They weren’t laughing or holding hands, the way they always did when they slipped off to the salon’s leafier corners. No. They looked tired. Rafe looked even more than that. He looked… less.

There was something about both artists that made Sylvie stay silent. She pressed herself flat to the side of the tunnel as the pair passed.

“There’s no telling with Sancts,” he said. “They don’t age the way we do.”

“It must be nice, having a key to immortality.”

A steely look flashed over Céleste’s face before she knocked on the door. THUMP. THUMP. Sylvie’s heart hammered too. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t just throw back her cloak and announce herself.

But then the door opened.

Sylvie crept after her friends. She didn’t step into a vast desert or a desolate sea, but there was something overwhelming about the space, something that kept her pressed into the corner, watching in silence while Rafe and Céleste walked to a wing-back chair. What were they doing? Pulling dreams out of their sleeves, handing them over to some dark hand, which then tossed them into a fire.

Sylvie shrank back as the imaginings flared—sparks turning to sparks. It didn’t make sense. Rafe had said she should save her ideas, so why was he letting these burn? And what about Céleste? This was far worse than stealing bread from a local boulangerie…

She must be trying to break Rafe’s curse. That was it. The oldest Enchantress never did anything without good reason. Her costumes were chosen with care. Her paintings were precisely flawed. Her bedtime stories always had a surprise twist at the end…

The man rose from the chair.

Sylvie of a Single Name knew what hunger looked like. In Saint Francis’s Home for Children, it had been ladder ribs and lips licked dry. Feral stares. When she’d escaped to Paris’s wider streets, she hardly recognized her reflection in the shop windows—sharp, ready to break. Not so much inside as outward. Smashing glass. Sinking her teeth into fresh crust. Ripping. Tearing.

This man was all that. Only, he wasn’t a man, Sylvie realized, as she saw the black Sanct masque around his eyes. He was the kind of darkness that made stars pale. He looked like he could eat stars with those incisors. Bones too. Snap, crunch. So why not names? Why not the souls themselves? It was a silly thought, Sylvie knew, but terrifying too. Far more terrifying than rifling through the old headmaster’s wastebasket.

Céleste was watching the exit. Sylvie didn’t like her friend’s locked-in look. She liked it even less when the hungry Sanct pulled a set of keys from his belt and started moving toward the door.

Was he the reason Céleste had asked for those invisibility cloaks?

Sylvie huddled by the coatrack, hoping hers would hold up. Her lungs burned. The key ring jingled. Stars grew in Sylvie’s eyes as she squeezed them shut. Don’t eat them, don’t eat me, don’t, don’t, don’t—

Hinges squealed.

A cool breeze tickled Sylvie’s cheeks. She cracked an eyelid. Gold. So much gold splashed carelessly over doorframes and ceilings and windows. This must be Versailles; its gardens sat shrouded in mist, waiting for the sun to wash over them with yet another gilded layer. Sylvie had gone exploring here, a few weeks back, fluttering beneath god-vaulted ceilings while Marmalade marked his scent across the Hall of Mirrors. Mine now. The palace wasn’t a long flight from Paris. She could get back to the city quickly enough with the butterfly wings she was wearing.

Sylvie slipped into the ballroom.

The hungry Sanct had paused at the center of the parquet floor. Flames danced onto the candelabra as he snapped his fingers. Strange… Sylvie didn’t remember Versailles being so dusty. Or so cold. She shivered as Céleste crossed the space to meet with a second Sanct. He was striking. Not beautiful, but charged. His eyes, and the surrounding masque, were electric blue. They flared when he raised his hand in the sign of a cross. His monkish robes did too—revealing wings that reminded Sylvie of a cockroach.

His voice skittered.

Her skin crawled.

What were they doing? Praying? She’d have to ask Céleste later, when the hungry Sanct wasn’t breathing down their necks.

Sylvie exited the ballroom, into another that looked just like it. Then another. Then another. Until she found a set of crimson-carpeted stairs that led to a large pair of doors. Freedom! She threw herself into the sky—fast enough that the hood of her invisibility cloak flew back. A streak of fuchsia. A dash of orange.

She began to notice other colors as she flew higher.

The last time she’d visited Versailles, she’d been so overwhelmed by its gold that she hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of the building. This morning, the palace was achingly blue. The same bewitching shade of the priest Sanct’s eyes. Had he enchanted the stones somehow? Had he stripped all the gilding too? The outside ornamentations had dulled to a drab olive color, matching the surrounding trees. There were far more of these around the palace grounds than Sylvie remembered, and as the sun rose higher, revealing more of her surroundings, the truth dawned on her.

This was not Versailles.

She swung back around a series of spires, rooftops shaped like foil-wrapped bonbons. She’d never seen crosses like that in France—with three crossbeams instead of one, the bottom bar hanging on by a thread. Panic flickered in her chest, matching the pulses of masque light from a nearby window. Céleste was still there. The priest Sanct was still chanting. The door with the changing locks yawned behind them. Still open…

But then the prayer ended.

Wait! Wait for me! Please! Sylvie didn’t dare scream this as Céleste turned. She didn’t even whisper. All she could do was watch through the window as the oldest Enchantress exited through the magical portal. The hungry Sanct followed.

The door didn’t just close when he shut it.

It vanished completely.

Sylvie’s map of Paris would be no help now… She watched with a sinking heart as the priest Sanct stepped through the opening into the blue palace’s next room. She knew then that she’d chased this adventure just a little too far.

Here there be monsters.