The Final Pages of
The Unbreakable Curse of RafXeX García

Raf XeX García was dying.

Dying without living.

He stumbled out of the Caveau des Terreurs, clutching a stolen moment in one hand. A pink-haired icon swung from the other. Tick, tock, tick. The sands were trickling too fast. His strength had ebbed. He couldn’t hold on to an entire hour. It was all he could manage to drag himself out of Belleville. Finally. By the time the automobiles began moving again, Rafe was bracing himself against the outer wall of Père Lachaise, wondering if there was a point in pushing much farther. His chin stubble was stiff with blood. That would only grow worse as the day went on, along with so many other things…

The watch’s hourglass had trickled out, matching the gravestone engravings just past the gate. Rafe slumped by the wall to catch his breath and then laughed at the thought—ha!

What a shit fate.

That had always been RafXeX García’s curse. His fatal flaw. Not the knifing nor the stealing nor the lies, but the fact his eyes always wandered to the sky, hoping for something better. Today it was as gray as Céleste Artois’s gaze. As heavy as his own lids. Growing heavier. Darker. Would there be a light at the end of the tunnel? he wondered. Did he even have enough soul left to reach it?

An orange blur.

Whiskers.

These brushed against his bloody face, and Rafe’s vision cleared enough to see the tailless tom in his lap. Several other cats perched on top of Père Lachaise’s walls. There had to be almost twenty of them.

“Oh.” Rafe cleared his rusty throat. “Hello, Marmalade.”

“Rowr?”

“Well, it all went to hell.” He glanced back up at the sky. “Terreur’s still got a heart. He’s got his goddamn dream too.” Again, Rafe thought of Céleste’s eyes and what a fool he’d been, hoping for the best. “I expect he’ll be attacking the salon soon—”

Marmalade let out a yowl, and several strays leapt off the cemetery walls. They flashed across the boulevard, fanning out in all directions. To sound the alarm, Rafe realized. He wasn’t sure how much good the Whisper Network would do at this point, but he supposed it was better than sitting beside a bunch of graves, waiting to die.

RafXeX García was better than that too.

Marmalade spilled out of Rafe’s lap as he pushed himself to his feet and edged to the curb to catch a taxi.

The first hint of smoke drifted through the cab’s windows by the Bastille. The fortress itself was over one hundred years gone, only a commemorative pillar standing in its place, and when Rafe looked above this, he could see the clouds souring. No rain. Only that horrible choking black that brought back memories of his windmill. I will be worse. I will be so much worse. Terreur was many terrible things, but he’d never been much of a liar.

This burning was so much worse than that morning in Montmartre.

Rafe’s taxi was just turning down Boulevard du Palais when he caught his first glimpse of flames. A giant ball of fire barreled past the cab. The driver did not flinch. Rafe did, when he realized what he was seeing: a blue elephant screaming its last.

The animal wasn’t real, he knew, but this didn’t stop his hand from tightening over Sylvie’s charm as he watched the creature crumble through the cab’s rear window. The charred remains of mannequins followed, no longer dressed in designers’ dreams. By the time the taxi stopped at the Pont Saint-Michel, there were so many torched imaginings swarming the bridge that Rafe didn’t bother crossing. What good did he think he could do? Not even God was lending a hand. The cathedral’s statues did not come to La Fée Verte’s defense when Terreur caught the muse over the river.

Rafe watched their battle from below, until the smoke became too thick, as thick as the center of a fortune teller’s crystal ball. He didn’t need to see the end. He wouldn’t have seen any of this at all, if he weren’t dying… He’d be on the other side of this bridge, admiring the sunrise with Jean Cocteau and all the other imaginers, blissfully unaware of what they’d just lost.

No more midnights filled with magic.

No more fairies, no more tales, no more paintings come to life.

Nothing more for his soul to soar for.

There was a set of slimy stone steps by Rafe’s feet. He sank onto the first one and clutched Sylvie’s likeness tightly, letting the pocket watch dangle from the opposite hand. He thought of Céleste then. His heart went to ashes. Rafe couldn’t exactly fault her for handing over that nightmare and damning everything. He knew what it felt like to see your life so instantly unraveled. All those nameless sketches fluttering past Saint Stephen’s Basilica… He understood the lengths a person would go to, to take their future back. He’d been to Venice’s wandering canals and Siberia’s howling forests and the Vatican’s cryptic library. He’d combed the golden grasses of savannas and the New World’s blooming prairies. He’d learned languages long lost to desert sands. He’d come so fucking far, only to end up right here once more.

Yet what hurt the most was how much RafXeX García wanted to stay.

With her.

Still.

“Come to trade your fortune, dizzy fox?”

Rafe started at the voice. Slick as eels. Closer than the water. When he lifted his gaze, he saw the Seer of the Seine standing at the bottom of the lichen-laced staircase—pupilless eyes, no boat in sight. The Sanct’s bare feet stood on Parisian soil. There was a net in her hands, as always, but she had yet to catch anything. The woven fibers shimmered strangely. The fingers looped through them weren’t gnarled, and Rafe was startled to see that the rest of the Seer’s skin was just as smooth. She looked centuries younger without those wrinkles.

She looked… familiar.

Rafe could’ve sworn he’d seen that face before; but for the life of him, he couldn’t place it. For the life of me. Ha. “It’d be a shit deal for you, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t know shit, Rafe García. Not like I do.” The woman cast her net into the hazy waters. “I’ve waded in it for a long, long time, but I’ve been patient. Weaving fates and tasting rust. Waiting for the white hand to flip the cards. Waiting for this day—oh yes.” She gazed back out into the smoke, swaying. The lines of her net went taut. “I’ve found my way back to land again.”

Because La Fée Verte’s wards were finally broken.

There was a break in the smoke too, and Rafe could see Terreur rising above the cathedral’s bell towers. The heartless bastard had won.

“You were right about Céleste,” he told the Seer.

“The turner?”

“She cheated death, just like you said she would.” Rafe glanced at the pillar where they’d stood that first evening. The Seine parted quickly around this stone, sweeping the broken bodies of birds in its currents.

“That was not Mademoiselle Artois’s fortune I told.” The Sanct began pulling her net in. Something heavy had gotten tangled there—judging by the way her biceps bulged. “You can cheat death, Rafe García. You hold such a power in your very hand.”

He stared down at his trembling palms. Sylvie of a Single Name stared back. Rafe wasn’t sure if she could see him or not, if she could hear what the Seer of the Seine was proposing. A terrible choice, a chance to stay… He hated himself for even considering such a trade…

“I can’t,” he croaked.

“I’ve seen differently,” the Sanct by the water said. “Don’t be a fool, Monsieur García.”