Light Fantastique (4 page)

I am Marie St. Jean. I am twenty years old. I have brown hair and hazel eyes. I like
pain au chocolat
and
cappuccino.
I am myself, not my role. I am Marie St. Jean…

She opened her eyes to see she now stood in the hallway in front of the dressing room she wanted to avoid. Had she walked here without recognizing she did? Panic shot in an arrow's line from her stomach to her throat, to which she raised a hand. Wait, that wasn't one of her regular gestures, was it? The script fell to her feet, and when she knelt to retrieve it, she saw the stage direction on the page in front of her—
“Henriette: raises hand to throat.”

“Are you having difficulty, Mademoiselle?” a soft male voice asked with an American accent. Marie wasn't one to faint, but the hallway swam in front of her eyes, and the last thing she saw before she blacked out was a metal death's head leering over her.

Chapter Four

Théâtre Bohème Townhouse, 2 December 1870

“Where is she?” Lucille swept into the room. Papers swirled in the eddy caused by her flinging the door open, and Iris dove to pluck her
Greek Pottery I—Prehistoric through Archaic Periods
notes from the floor so they wouldn't end up under the Frenchwoman's boots.

“I take it you mean Marie, Madame?” Iris asked in as polite a tone as she could muster while she straightened the stack in her hands. She reflexively looked around for her gloves, as she typically did when Lucille was near.

“Yes, Marie. She is needed to read through the play this morning.” Lucille's black gaze swept through the room as if she could make Marie materialize from the books and notebooks that covered every surface.

“I think she was headed to the theatre to review the script.”

Lucille's brows drew down in a black V. “The Théâtre Bohème is a large building, and she could be anywhere.”

The defeated expression that flickered over Lucille's face made Iris blurt out before she could stop herself, “I'll help you look for her.”

“
Bien.
”

Now Lucille beamed at her, and Iris wondered again just how much of what Lucille did and said was real and how much an act to manipulate others. She was coming to a ratio of about seventy to thirty percent unreal to real. Iris found Lucille to have a dizzying array of expressions like her own mother, but unlike Adelaide, Lucille didn't always seem to feel the emotion she projected.

Or did she?

“I need a break from this, anyway,” Iris mumbled.

“Pretty girls do not mumble,” Lucille said, and her voice and accent were juxtaposed in Iris's mind over Adelaide's.

“I said I need to take a break from this organizational effort,” Iris said and enunciated clearly, perhaps exaggeratedly. Not that her schoolwork looked very organized.

Lucille either didn't notice or chose not to respond. She swept out of the room, and Iris followed her after making sure no notes flew too far. She glanced up the staircase toward the atelier, as Marie called it, where Edward worked on his aether-based lighting system. He hadn't come down to dinner again last night, or to breakfast that morning. She'd been so focused on her exams she didn't remember the last time she saw him, and now guilt sagged between her chest and stomach.

“Lucille, are the servants feeding Professor Bailey?” she asked.

“I believe so, yes,” Lucille said over her shoulder. “He says he is getting close. But he has been approaching
close
for months now and never reaching it.”

“I know. I'm worried about him.”

“As well you should be. He seems possessed by a certain madness.”

Lucille's words made Iris's stomach clench, and she almost stumbled on the stairs. “What kind of madness do you mean?”

“He is one who will always lose himself in his work. It is not a bad thing, Mademoiselle, but men like that require extra care. And patience.”

They reached the front hall, and Lucille turned to Iris so suddenly Iris almost bumped into the older woman.

“Sometimes no matter how hard we try, we are not enough.”

“What do you mean?” Iris asked. She found her gloves on the side table where she'd set her books the day before.

“You cannot hope to change him if you want to truly love him. Many women have ended up in unhappy relationships because they think they can transform a man into what they want him to be. In some cases, you merely have to accept.”

Iris nodded as though she believed the woman's words, but she didn't allow the disappointment they engendered to take root. She didn't want to think that this would be her life with Edward, not seeing him for months at a time, always wondering if he loved her more than, or at least as much as, his science. She loved archeology and him equally—at least she thought she did.

Some impulse made her ask, “Is that what happened with Marie's father?”

Lucille barked a laugh and opened the front door. “Ha! No, mademoiselle. We had an arrangement. I wanted a daughter. He wanted a no-strings-attached dalliance. It was not a traditional arrangement, but it worked for us.”

“What if you'd had a son?” Iris followed Lucille along the sidewalk. “You can't determine the gender of a baby.”

“There are things one can do, but you are too young and innocent to know of them.”

Iris fought to keep her shoulders from slumping, as they wanted to do when she ran up against the wall of women's wisdom she was “too young and innocent” to be worthy of learning. It was one of Marie's favorite conversation-avoiding tactics
.

I guess I know where she learned it from.

The gloom of the theatre enveloped Iris along with the smells of old wood and the paint the scenery-smiths were busy using for the new production pieces.

Lucille paused in front of the ticket window and flared her nostrils. “There is something… You take the main auditorium and backstage areas.”

“Where will you search?” Iris asked. She reached through the connection she had with Marie but couldn't feel anything.

I should be able to feel her if she's nearby unless she's asleep.

“The dressing rooms and passages.”

“Secret passages?” Iris took her hand. “Oh, let me search with you! I knew there must be some in a building like this.”

“No, Mademoiselle, it will be too dangerous.” Lucille's eyes flashed like faceted jet beads in the flickering gaslight. “You stay where you can run if you need to and tell Marie to get back to the townhouse as soon as you find her, if you find her and we are not too late. I fear he is back!”

“Who?” Iris grabbed for Lucille, but the theatre owner had already dashed into the hall beside the ticket booth.

Who is
he
? What is going on here?
Iris moved toward the auditorium through the nearest door, but a chill settled on her shoulders like the gaze of a malevolent spirit.

Don't be silly, you're letting your imagination run away with you.

But evil spirits belong in the myths of the past, not in the scientific present, don't they?
Whatever was happening, she felt a flicker of Marie's panic and hastened into the auditorium.

* * * * *

Marie woke inside Corinne's dressing room. Her mind wouldn't let her think of it as her dressing room. For one thing, the other actress had been much too fond of lace and gauzy fabrics. Marie didn't know how much stuff Corinne had stashed in this room, but she guessed it would be enough to keep some very lucky ragpicker fed for a month. If Lucille didn't sell it first, but would she want to attach herself monetarily to a doomed woman's possessions?

That's not a useful thought, and many women will be happy for such luxuries, especially right now.

Marie propped herself on her elbows and saw she lay on the chaise lounge to the right of the door. She kicked a pair of stockings to the floor. The script lay on the dressing table, but it was thinner than she remembered.

What…?

A movement in her peripheral vision made her straighten to full alertness, but the only person she saw when she turned her head was her own reflection in the full-length mirror that made the wall at the back of the room. That was why Corinne had liked this dressing room—she could admire herself from every angle and observe which men never took their eyes off her. Yes, Corinne knew how to find out who worshiped her and who merely saw her as a prize. It was one of the few things Marie admired about her.

Marie put a hand over her heart, which tap danced below her corset. How did she get here? The last thing she remembered was—

Now the mirror shimmered, and Marie dashed to the door, but the handle wouldn't budge.

I'm locked in!

She allowed herself one terrified glance over her shoulder, and her heart nearly froze its frenzied tarantella.

The same death's head from the hallway stared back at her.

No, not a death's head, a metal man's head. An automaton?

She decided someone played a cruel trick on her, but she didn't know of a passage behind the mirror. Lucille denied the existence of one, and Marie had never been able to find an entrance to it.

“Whoever you are, sir, I do not appreciate your prank,” she said with as haughty a lift to her chin as she could manage. “Remove your mask at once. This theatre belongs to Madame Lucille St. Jean, and we do not abide trespassers.”

The death's head approached from behind the mirror, which seemed to stretch and bend around it. Marie knew mirror effects and could concede it moved, but whoever this was manipulated it like they'd…

“…built it?” Marie murmured. She'd heard of a workman who'd been killed during the theatre construction, long before her mother had bought it with the help of one of her patrons, a stately duke who was long passed at this point.

No, no, let's not think about another dead man.

She tried to ram the door with her shoulder, but it wouldn't budge. Of course. The theatre had been constructed just before the Revolution, and they'd made the doors extra strong in case either side wanted to pay to keep prisoners there.

The air warmed like the inside of a toaster oven, and a droplet of sweat trickled from beneath Marie's hair line and down her cheek. Now she couldn't look away from the mirror, where the ghost stood and watched her, a rapier at his side.

“Are you going to kill me, sir?” she asked.
Maybe if I can draw him out, I can disarm him and then get hold of his mask.

“Why would I kill you? You're banging yourself up beautifully without my help.”

Indeed, Marie knew her shoulder and arm would be bruised. “Then why not show yourself all the way?”

The air clouded, and Marie darted to and fro looking for the source of it, the flame that could grow and consume the theatre in a matter of minutes. She'd entered to find burning candles—what if one of them had tipped over? But her movements slowed, and she felt as though she pushed through a tub of the greasy substance actors used to remove the stage cosmetics. The smell—earthy sweet and familiar—tipped her off that no wood burned, and she found the fainting couch just before she collapsed.

“You know that smell?”

The voice was back, and Marie used every one of her upper face muscles to pry her eyelids open a sliver. The sneering automaton face hovered in front of her.

Sick familiarity forced a memory to mind, and she struggled not to swim into it, but something weighted her body while her spirit floated above. “Go away,” she murmured.

“What do you see?” the strange being asked.

“I'm in a club, a gentleman's club. It's the night, the first night I met him…” The words tumbled from her mouth in spite of her trying to keep her lips sealed in her lolling head. The smell of Parnaby Cobb's own personal tobacco brand, which he managed to get from his North Carolina plantation in spite of the ongoing war, threaded her past to her present.

“Sleep now, my beauty,” the ghost crooned. “And may your conscience light your dreams.”

* * * * *

Club L'Or, Paris, 16 May 1868

Marie entered the club, and although she kept her cloak around her and hood drawn, a murmur followed her like the foam at the crest of a wave—“Fantastique! It's the actress from the Bohème. But what is she doing here?” She knew her cheeks must glow as brightly as the lamps in their beaded red silk shades, which cast everything in a lurid, ruddy glow, but she pressed on. She didn't know what she felt, only that the emotion originated somewhere in the center of her pelvis, clawed its way through her stomach, and clogged her throat, from where it scratched at the corners of her eyes. But she held her head up as her mother had always taught her.

“You are a fatherless female from a culture no one understands. You have nothing and everything to lose, so must never let them take anything away, least of all your pride.”

She had lost everything. She had given it to him as a stupid accident, and now she would swallow her pride to retrieve it.

Finally she found him. She should have known he would be at a table in the farthest corner, from where he could survey everything like a king. And of course a woman sat on either side of him. She'd heard he collected them. Their looks, like alley cats dressed up to be noble tigers from the far side of the British Empire, almost broke her composure because she saw her own future in their empty eyes and painted-on smiles. At least it would be if she continued her current course. Her mother would try to protect her, but she knew what kind of reputation actresses had, and it would only take one slip, one bad decision to fall into that role as easily as she had all the others that had been presented to her.

“Give it back,” she said, the speech she'd rehearsed vanished in a puff of cigar smoke and whiff of expensive perfume.

He tapped his ash into a—what else?—gold-rimmed square ashtray. Everything about him said controlled extravagance—just enough to show his wealth, but not to a gaudy extent. “Give what back?”

“I'm not going to say in front of these creatures.”

He dismissed the women with a wave of his hand. “Go find drinks for yourselves, Mademoiselles. Fantastique and I have business to discuss.”

They scooted away with languid attitudes, but Marie caught their angry glances.

You're welcome to him, girls.

For girls they were, younger than she. She removed her hood and sat at the edge of the banquette cushion, but he gestured for her to move closer.

“Come now, I don't bite,” he said. He shook his empty glass at a waiter and held up two fingers to indicate another should be brought for Marie.