“I’m flattered, monsieur.”
“Don’t be. You knew I’d come for you. They all do.”
“All of whom?”
“Coyness doesn’t become you, Demi. The girls I paint know I will come for them because that’s exactly what they want. After I paint you, you’ll be immortal, your name on every man’s tongue. You’re a rising star, but I will turn you into the sun.”
“Sounds hot.”
His grin widened, went darker, if that was possible. “Oh, little one. You have no idea.” He returned to the couch, taking up a sketchbook and leaning back. “Stand there, one hand on the table. Don’t look at me. Look at . . . oh, say, that painting.”
Bemused, I did as I was told. He shook his head in annoyance and walked to me quickly, his gloved hands businesslike and cold as they posed my arms and changed the angle of my torso. I’d felt like an object ever since arriving in Paris, but under his posing, I felt less like a morsel or a doll and more like a vase of flowers that just wouldn’t cooperate. When he’d finally contorted me into the correct pose, he returned to the couch and began sketching, the pencil’s rasp harsh in the silence.
“I thought Bludmen weren’t allowed in Mortmartre,” I murmured through mostly closed lips.
“And yet here we are, you and I. The thing is, once you’re in, it’s awfully hard to get you back out. And if you were here all along and have never taken off your gloves and can’t be seen to smile very often under your mustache, no one ever looks closely enough to tell. It’s the beauty of daimons; since we’re no danger to them, they don’t really notice the difference.”
“And none of your . . . subjects has ever noticed?”
He stopped sketching to glare at me from under heavy brows. “You say subjects, but you mean lovers.”
“I am a student of history, monsieur, and I understand that an artist’s muse often finds his bed as well as his brush.”
He chuckled as he made angry slashes with his lead. “A muse is a muse, and a portrait subject is a thing. One is more trouble than the other. Your head should be tilted, Demi.”
I dutifully tilted it. Maybe he was gay? He certainly didn’t look upon me with lust, at least not the open, crass sort I’d grown accustomed to when performing. But there was something deeply sensual in his close scrutiny, in the calculations going on behind his eyes. Whatever he wanted, it wasn’t some giggling daimon dancer. And whatever path he chose, I suspected, would be thorough and purposeful and would allow no turning back.
When I shivered, he only murmured, “Hold still.”
It might have been ten seconds or ten minutes or ten hours later before the mad scritching stopped and he looked at me as if I was a person again.
“You may sit.”
I stretched and twisted, cracking my spine in four places. Odd parts of me were asleep, and my eyes were dry as if I’d held them open too long at the beach.
“Tiring, isn’t it? Holding one attitude too long.”
I shrugged elegantly. “I’m a performer. I perform.”
Lenoir nodded thoughtfully. “So you do.” I was about to sit and lure him deeper into conversation, hoping to discover more about his past and how he’d hidden so long in plain sight and if he knew any other Bludmen in Paris, but he stood abruptly and tucked his sketchbook under one arm.
“I’ll expect you tomorrow morning. Before nine, while the light is still good. Take extra blood, as I’ll want pink in your cheeks and lips. I’ll have a costume ready. I utterly defy you to be shy.” He slipped a card into my hand and turned for the door with a whirl of his gray coat. A breath of lavender and anise trailed him, and I took two steps toward his retreat.
“You wouldn’t care to stay, monsieur? I could order up a teacup, perhaps a cigar?” Considering that he’d most likely paid through the nose for the privilege of my time, I didn’t want him to leave disappointed.
He didn’t turn back to me, merely shook his head as he put on his top hat. “Bonsoir, mademoiselle. I need you rested. Do not disappoint me.”
And with a tip of his hat, he was gone, footsteps echoing against the copper as he hurried down the stairs.
He was one of the strangest men I’d ever met.
And despite Vale’s dire warnings, I was riveted.
Last night, I’d been anxious to flee the giant elephant and hide in my room. But tonight the door was locked from the outside, and no amount of banging on the metal brought any sort of help. With my patron gone under his own odd auspices and no use for the sleeping powder in my pocket, I settled into the plush circular bed in a huff to flip through racy postcards, pornographic playing cards, and books about sensual bootblacks and burly firefighters who caught and ravished swooning women. I’d found an elegant hatbox brimming with such gems sitting on a tuffet, and it felt more than a little surreal, reclining in a metal pachyderm and staring at photos that were currently the height of vulgar pornography but showed less than a geriatric lap swimmer’s bathing suit from my own world. If these guys saw my triangle bikini, they’d probably have an apoplexy.
So that was one more thing I could “invent” in Sang.
I was grinning to myself and planning a cabaret-style version of Beach Blanket Bingo when the door opened far below and footsteps tapped up the circular stairs. I’d never moved as fast as I did then, tossing the photos and cards and books back into the hatbox and shoving it under the bed before the owner of the footsteps appeared. Even if it was just Auguste or one of the daimon girls, I didn’t want to be seen looking at porn.
“La Demitasse?”
I groaned silently. It wasn’t a familiar voice, but it carried the same apologetic ownership as the duke’s had. Charline must have double-booked me, the greedy bitch.
But wait.
I didn’t have to put out or even fend him off. Just play nice for a few minutes and feed, then use the sleeping powder. They’d sent up room service that paid for itself.
I grinned. “On the bed, monsieur,” I cooed.
A red-faced elderly man appeared around the screen, cane in hand. I patted the bed.
“Mon dieu, but you are even prettier up close, ma chérie. Can you believe I’ve never met a Bludman before? I’ve long waited to make your acquaintance.”
I stood and draped an arm around his neck. “And I yours,” I whispered into his ear.
It was too easy. Far too easy. One caress, and he had what he needed, while I earned a full belly. I sprinkled a few grains of sleeping powder over his head, and soon he was snoring softly on the bed, fully dressed and cheeks enflamed with imagined passion. With a grimace of distaste, I gave him a thorough pat-down but found nothing useful. A wallet, several nice handkerchiefs, a horribly creepy-looking condom that looked as if it had been used before stuffed in a small book of Saint Ermenegilda’s better quotes. There wasn’t a whiff of Bludman about him or the stench of magic and catacombs.
Before descending the stairs, I slipped a calling card from his wallet and used his handkerchief to dab the blood away from the little rip in his neck. I would add his name to the “Innocent” column of my spreadsheet. He said he’d never met a Bludman before, and oddly enough, I believed him. In six years among Crim, Tish, and the people of the caravan, I’d learned to read faces, and as far as I could tell, he hadn’t lied.
I slipped off my boots so I could take the metal stairs silently. Pebbles bit into my stockinged feet as I fled across the uneven cobbles to the back door of Paradis. With one ear against the door, I made certain that it was quiet inside. The only thing I wanted less than to further entertain the old man was to encounter the other girls doing the walk of shame and have to answer questions about why I was so quick at my work. The hallway seemed empty, and I turned the doorknob as slowly as I could, knowing after last night that it had an unfortunate tendency to squeak.