Light Fantastique (8 page)

“Monsieur, you presume. And you haven't said how your family drove you to gamble.”

But she didn't draw her hand back, and he trailed kisses from the delicate soft skin between her index and middle knuckles down to her wrist. Now he was close enough to see the blush did extend down her neck, and he wished she wasn't wearing a cloak, that he could see more of her chest and the delicate pink she would turn when she thought of him kissing other things, for that particular maneuver hadn't failed him yet. When he reached her wrist, he allowed one tooth to lightly graze her skin before the final kiss. She shifted, her breath quickened, and he wondered what unladylike sensations he made her feel.

“Marie!” Lucille's call drew them both to their feet like marionettes jerked to attention.

“I have to go.” Marie drew her hood over her head and disappeared through the door beside the stage.

He sat to allow the evidence of his ungentlemanly feelings toward her subside and smiled. He might have told her more than he had any other woman, but he still hadn't revealed the extent of his juvenile stupidity even if she did make him fuzzy in the head like a young buck. He'd always liked actresses and hadn't hesitated to bed them, but he promised himself he would be careful with her.

It's always best to not bite or sleep with the hand that feeds you…or her daughter.

He returned to the orchestra pit and picked up his violin. He hadn't seen anyone in there, but he found a note when he opened his case.

You may think Mademoiselle St. Jean is another of your games, but she is not for you. Stay away from her, or your true nature shall be revealed.

Chapter Nine

Théâtre Bohème, 2 December 1870

Marie walked quickly, every step a delightful torture due to the sensations at her core and between her thighs.

Mon dieu,
what was that about?

The answer came before she wanted it to: it was her usual pattern. Due to her stupid talent, men saw in her what they wanted. Johann Bledsoe liked actresses—she'd read that in Cobb's dossier on him—and she was playing a woman who had been caught up in the same great passion she inspired, at least in the sensationalized version of the Hector/Henriette story
Light Fantastique
told.

She had to stop due to her tears obscuring her vision in the dim passage. There was no point in tripping over her own disappointment and twisting an ankle or worse—she was deep enough in the bowels of the theatre now that no one would hear her calling, and it was possible that they wouldn't find her for days if she injured herself.

It had felt like an honest conversation, two people deciding to trust each other just a little, but as with everything in the theatre, it was an illusion. The only real part was that she might find herself attaching more to her idea of him. He had an artist's soul—that much was apparent, and it was enough to keep drawing her down a destructive path like water in the inexorable groove of the sewer.

That's a lovely image, and trying to find the good, pure part of a man beneath all his
merde
has never gotten me anywhere.

She stopped her mind from following that notion and paused between two set pieces. She glanced around to make sure no one saw her. The cool air and quiet settled around her, and the smells of musty wood and decaying paper and paint did nothing to dispel the feeling of being in a tomb.

Where old sets go to die, and now I descend into Hades,
she thought for the hundredth time before pulling open a trap door and allowing her foot to find the first of the narrow steps in the darkness.

Unlike the wooden stairs leading from her most-used sewer passage to the other end of the theatre basement, these were of stone, and she wondered again who had built them and for what purpose. She'd asked Zokar when he gave her directions as to how to find his camp, but he'd only told her that they were there before the theatre and probably extended farther toward the surface to a long-destroyed church or monument. That was the most logical explanation for why she always had to walk through a city of the dead to reach him.

Her torch was in its customary place at the bottom of the stairs, as was the little tin of matches that always held just two—one to light the torch and another in case the first didn't work. It was all he'd allow her to keep there, and if neither lit, she wasn't meant to visit him that day. She wondered if he somehow manipulated them or the torch to keep her from coming at inconvenient times. There was nothing she'd put past him, and she thanked whatever god might be listening that he was on her side.

The torch lit with the first match, and the words scrawled along the walls, souvenirs from when the passage was used as a prison during one of the uprisings, seemed to jump out at her. Most were pleas to God or other supplications, but she paused at one and traced it with her finger, her usual ritual.

But I loved him.

They echoed her own feelings of betrayal and frustration, and she wondered what woman—or man, which she allowed the possibility for since she'd known enough actors—had scratched the words so deep she still hadn't found the bottom of their despair with her fingertips.

The passageway led her deeper underground, and the walls took on a natural stone look.

Although she knew the bones had not been disturbed in a long time, she always held her breath and tiptoed through. She stayed alert for the rattling noise that would indicate they came to life like in the cautionary tales about girls who would get lost in the catacombs and fall prey to angry ghosts. Marie had started exploring the underground areas around the theatre as soon as she could get enough time away from her watchful mother and give her governesses the slip. She had a good sense of direction and soon figured out what passages led where and which were dead ends or too full of sewage at certain times of the year. Lucille never approved of these explorations, and keeping an eye on her daughter was one of the primary motivations for allowing Marie to start acting.

Now through the catacombs, Marie had to focus on the scratches on the walls again. They seemed random here, but she knew how to discern their patterns. She didn't know how Zokar did it, how he changed the way she reached his camp every time, but she'd found out once that following her previous trail and not following the lines in the strange language on the walls would lead her to one of those dead ends or disgusting sewers. One time she'd needed to bathe in citrus water for a week before she felt like she shed the smell just from being near it.

Finally a warm glow at the end of a tunnel so long she felt she must have gotten something wrong told her she was close. She inhaled the scents of wood smoke and food cooked with spices that made her feel warm all the way from her nose to her stomach, which growled. Her little ham and cheese roll hadn't lasted long, and her mouth watered.

As always, Zokar was there to welcome her with a warm embrace. His wife Saphira offered a bowl of hearty beef stewed with those wonderful spices.

“I could hear your stomach a mile away,” he said, and she felt his words rumble through his barrel chest. His full black beard was streaked with more gray than the last time she'd seen him, but his face looked just the same, as did Saphira's.

“What's the news?” Marie asked him and followed him back to the fire in front of his tent, one of many in the large cavern that seemed to be natural, even to the vent at the top that drew the smoke. It always felt backwards to ask him what was going on since he lived underground and she on the surface, but he was always more informed.

Out of necessity, he'd told her.

She was so used to seeing him jovial that when a scowl crossed his face, she stepped back and nearly tripped over a goat pen. He steadied her elbow, and Saphira only shook her head. She never spoke, having come from Romania, where her tongue had been cut out for a supposed lie—a common punishment inflicted on the Romany who lived there as servants and then as slaves. She'd been one of the lucky ones to escape, and Marie was always conscious that her heritage made her vulnerable to scapegoating and the unjust punishments that came with it.

“What's the word on the siege?” he asked and sat with a heavy sigh on one of the makeshift chairs, a crate covered in blankets.

Marie settled on the one next to it. “It's a stalemate. Some supplies are able to come in through the underground and airships, but not nearly enough, and I fear the people will riot soon.”

He nodded. “And the theatre? Is Lucille having theft problems?”

“No,
Maman
hasn't mentioned any. She is doing well, her usual self. I don't know what her network is telling her, but she doesn't seem to be too worried. She's busy with the start of the next production.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Lucille will proceed with her plans no matter what silly army dares to disrupt her.”

Marie wanted to ask why he was always so concerned with her mother, and she'd formed a theory through the years, but he always evaded her questions. Now she had more pressing things on her mind, but she had to tread carefully. Zokar and Saphira didn't ever admit to being able to work magic, and they became offended if anyone asked.

“I'm the female lead of the play,” she said.

Zokar drew his brows together but didn't say anything, just waited for her to continue.

“And I'm worried that I'm not going to be able to keep myself from slipping too deeply into the role.” She looked into his coal black eyes for some sympathy, some sign of understanding.

“Did Lucille not train you how to manage your talent on the stage?”

Marie relaxed slightly and handed her now-empty bowl to Saphira. Previously, if she had brought up her troubles, he would only offer her empty assurances.

“I am afraid if I tell her what I can do, she will draw me further into it and make me keep going with it. All I want is to escape, but I tried that and it didn't work.”

“No, you came back.” He shook his head again. “Silly girl. Your good heart will be your downfall.”

“But I don't even know if I have a good heart. I don't know what kind of heart I have, what kind of person I am, and I won't know until I can live my own life.”

“And what of a young man? A family? Children?” Zokar gestured to the camp.

Marie knew that half the people there were related to him by blood or marriage. Somehow he knew her better than most, so she could be honest with him. “I think that's something I want someday. A normal life. But I don't seem to attract or be attracted to normal men.” She rubbed the back of the hand Maestro Bledsoe had kissed, and the memory and resulting sensation made her shift on her hard seat.

“That's another problem.”

“Yes, but I need help with the stage thing first. Do you have any…advice?”

Zokar and Saphira exchanged looks, and Saphira shook her head.

“You are not ready for some truths yet,
cherie
, and I need you to help me first.”

Marie squashed her disappointment, but she nodded. “I owe you much, not least for saving my life when I got lost down here all those years ago. What do you need?”

“Only for you to keep an ear out. I know your mother has her spies. Perhaps you can help find something that has been lost. Or has wandered off.”

A goat bleated, and Marie asked, “An animal?”

“Not quite. I've been working on an automaton that can think and act like a man.”

Marie shuddered. “Why?”
Real men are trouble enough. Why do we need fake ones?

“Because we have jobs that need to be done, and our numbers are getting less and less with our inability to live openly. Young people are leaving the camps, some in disgrace, and some with their own reasons.”

“Can I see it? The automaton?”

“That's the problem. It's either wandered off or gone missing. Since its trail went cold, I cannot find it, but something as wondrous as that will not stay hidden for long. I need to find it before the
gadze
government does and tries to turn it to non-peaceful purposes.”

“I'll do my best.” Marie stood. “Thank you.” She thought about what she had seen in the hall and in her dressing room, but she wanted something solid before she told Zokar anything or at least to be able to tell him where to look. The theatre and its myriad hidden passages was a big place.

Zokar hugged her again. “Any time, little one. I will walk you back to the stairs.”

* * * * *

Johann left the theatre. The strange notes left in his violin case unnerved him more than he wanted to admit. Did they have anything to do with Frederic the jealous violin player? If so, why didn't the man want to confront him openly? That was how Johann preferred to do things—air grievances and sort them out, either with words or with fists. He'd gotten good at fighting without damaging his hands.

These French are crazy.

With his thoughts as tightly wrapped around him as his cloak, he didn't see the dark figure that approached him until he ran into it.

“Oh, Maestro, I didn't see you. This snow is falling hard.”

“Doctor Radcliffe, I apologize.” Johann stepped back a pace. “I hope I didn't injure you.”

“Not at all. I was just seeing if there was anything on the sidewalk I might have missed after the earlier tragedy, but I think Inspector Davidson and his men picked up what little there was to find.”

They walked back toward the townhouse, but Radcliffe hesitated before they turned on to the walk leading up to the front steps. “May we speak privately elsewhere?” he asked.

“Of course. Where did you have in mind?”

“Follow me.” Radcliffe led him to a clinic a few blocks away and unlocked the door. “Several of the city's doctors fled before the Prussians boxed us in,” he explained. “One of them left this space, so I moved in.”

Johann stripped his gloves and cloak and hung the latter on a hook by a stove in the main room, which Radcliffe added coal to and stirred back to life. Thankfully the office was still warm from the morning. “I knew you were doing something to occupy yourself, but I didn't pay much attention to what.”

“Yes, you've been busy with keeping out of sight and making sure Professor Bailey stays stable.”

There was no judgment in his tone, only observation, and Johann wondered how much the doctor had noticed. Like had he seen how Johann looked at Marie, or how she looked back at him? He thought he could still taste her skin on his lips, especially the salty dew that came to it when he made her blush all the way down to her—

“Would you like some tea?” Radcliffe asked. “I have the good English stuff.”

Johann blinked to clear the memory of the desire in her hazel eyes from his brain. “Tea would be perfect. How did you get it, and what are you using for water? I thought it was regulated at this point.”

“Some of my patients can't pay in money because they're using it for the goods smuggled in on the airships, so we barter.” Radcliffe filled a kettle from a bucket in the corner. “I get water from the pump down the road once a day. Boiling it seems the best way to approach it at this point. At least the Prussians haven't figured out how to block it at its source yet. Paris is a canny old city.”

“Right.” Johann stood by the stove and warmed his hands. The temperature seemed to have dropped several degrees while he was in the theatre, and the chill stayed with him.

Or maybe Mademoiselle St. Jean had warmed his blood.