When I slept, I dreamed of dark angels and deep wells of wine, floating with bones. And dancing. Always dancing.
Heavy knocking roused me, just a little. My eyes were smeary, my limbs forged of lead. I tried to move, but I was all tangled up on my bed.
“Demi? Are you here?”
I had to swallow a few times to find my tongue. “Entrez. Or something,” I called, struggling to figure out which way was up. My head felt as if it was stuffed with wine-soaked cotton balls, heavy and wobbly.
The curtains parted, and Vale appeared like a giant bat: upside down and flapping. I laughed my ass off.
“Oh, no, bébé. What have you done?” The words were lazy, slow, and overloud, as if he were shouting underwater, and yet his steps were oddly fast as he crossed the soft rugs to reach me.
“Might still be a bit drunk,” I answered, staring at his boots, which were wet and caked in filth. He’d come from the sewers under the city, then. “And you’re getting shit on my rug.”
Warm hands caught me under my knees and behind my shoulders, and my stomach flipped for a dozen reasons as he set me upright, or what I had to assume was upright, as everything suddenly ceased being upside down. He kneeled, his golden-green eyes boring into mine like corkscrew grass. I opened my mouth a little, hoping he might kiss me while I was too drunk to act surprised about it. But instead of settling his lips over mine, he simply breathed me in.
“Drunk on what?”
I licked my lips, marveling that the champagne and wine and anise and wormwood and red blood could merge to taste like candy, hours after the fact.
My voice went low, playful. Rebellious. “This is Paris. What do you think I’ve been drinking? Café au lait?”
“Absinthe. Mon dieu, bébé. How much?” He shook my shoulders, making my teeth rattle like the bone dice Louis had shaken in a cup in the pleasure gardens.
I wiggled out of his grasp and turned onto my hip to splay myself gracefully over the bed in a similar attitude to the pose I’d adopted for the artist. I’d sat this way for hours, my face frozen in a teasing Mona Lisa smile, waiting like Pavlov’s dog for the moments when Monsieur Lenoir would set down his brush and refill my goblet with a splash of his potent cocktail. Funny, how things as normally repellent as red wine, absinthe, and blood could mix together and not curdle in the glass. But the taste was a thousand times better than any ingredient alone, and the high was the opposite of caffeine.
And it only got better, each time I had it.
“How much, Demi?”
I shrugged elegantly and nearly fell off the bed. “Just a glass.”
Vale leaned close, his face more serious than I’d ever seen it. Normally, I was the stiff, controlled diva, and he was the mischievous brigand, the clown. But now I was loose as a goose, and he was so tightly wound you could almost hear the gears grinding inside.
It struck me as funny, and I swallowed a giggle and poked his nose with my finger and said, “Boop.”
Vale was so tense he was all but vibrating. “Demi. Mon dieu, woman. Will you never listen to me? Not even once? Absinthe is serious, bébé. It is poison. It is dangerous.” His hands cupped my face, but again, the kiss didn’t come. With his thumbs, he pulled down my eyelids, and I rolled my eyes. “Drink all the bloodwine you want. Get drunk every night, preferably in my vicinity. But I’m begging you never to take absinthe again.”
I wrenched out of his grasp and rubbed my eyes. “You’re totally harshing my buzz, man.”
“You could go into a coma, Demi.”
“Your mom’s in a coma.”
“You could die.”
“I’d die happy.” I flopped back again and rolled my head over the pillows, my attention caught by what I thought was a brass octopus offering me millions of diamonds.
Vale’s hand cupped my scalp behind the sweat-plastered curls, pulling me forward and out of the little reverie inspired by the glittering chandelier. “I wouldn’t,” he said with a heavy gentleness. “And neither would your friend Cherie. Have you forgotten her already?”
That finally broke through the dizziness—that anger. “Of course not. Of course I haven’t forgotten her. She’s like my sister!”
“And are you any closer to finding her? Have you done a single thing today, asked a single question? Or have I been running around Paris, spending my hard-earned francs to buy up teeth, in the hopes that you’ll see how much I care for you?”
I pushed away from him, but my arms were too weak to have any effect. He only held me tighter. But he couldn’t stop me from talking. “I don’t know where to begin, Vale! This life eats me up. There’s not a spare moment. I’m lost and dizzy and exhausted and constantly hounded, and I’m still no closer, just rolling old men’s bodies, my hands deep in their moist pockets. Just waiting every moment to be kidnapped, to be stolen away like a child in the night.” Something knocked at the back of my brain, and the sudden realization would have taken me to my knees had Vale not been holding me. “Oh, shit. I should’ve just let the elephant take me away. I had my chance, and I totally blew it. It’s what I want most, and it terrifies me. I just had to fight, didn’t I?”
“You are a fighter, bébé. Do not blame yourself for following your instincts.”
“But I do. And these teeth—are they even hers? Will they bring me any closer to finding her at all? If I stop to think about it for even a heartbeat, I nearly go mad with grief and frustration. But the absinthe quiets it. Only the absinthe and your mouth give me any peace at all, you bastard, and how dare you throw it back in my face?”
I wanted to shake my head, but I wanted his hands on my body more, so I let him hold me there and give me a significant look that made me feel even more warm and loose-limbed than I already was. I swallowed hard and sat forward, and Vale’s hand slipped around to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking my cheek. “Please, Demi. Please, bébé. We’ll look harder. But no more absinthe.”
My lips parted as I leaned forward to kiss him, and he jerked back. “Why, Vale? I don’t understand . . .”
“I can taste it on your lips.”
“So?”
“So I want nothing to do with wormwood and blood.”
I moved forward again, murmuring, “Don’t be silly. Lenoir said—”
He stood smoothly, from his haunches to his feet before my eyes could track him. He’d managed to lay me gently on my pillows, but I felt the loss of his touch so keenly. “Lenoir,” he breathed. “What else did he tell you, bébé?”
“That it was harmless. That the stories weren’t true. That Bludmen weren’t . . .”
“Weren’t . . .?”
I sighed. “I forget the word.”
“Of course you do. He wants you to forget.”
“He doesn’t. He wants to paint me. Wants to make me an even bigger star. Wants my portrait hung in the Louvre, surrounded by crowds.” I was in his arms again before I could blink, my head cradled against his shoulder like a child.
“What he wants,” Vale whispered in my ear, “is for you to give in completely, a little at a time.” He placed my head back down, and I puddled limply amid the down pillows. With infinite care and a face as hard and sad as weeping stone, he drew the covers over me.