“Where are you staying?” Luc asked.
“The Mark—just up the road.” Gaston shrugged.
“Not the Pierre?”
“Nope,” said Gaston. “Full up.”
“I suppose everyone’s in town.” Luc sighed. “You’ll be happier at the Mark. They’re quite discreet.”
“It’s adequate,” Gaston allowed. Gaston stood by the window, arms crossed, leaning casually on the sill. “Luc, we should be going.”
“So soon? You’ve only just arrived.” Luc’s voice had turned bitter.
“You’ve kept them waiting long enough.”
“They can be so impatient, for immortals.”
Gaston’s face was implacable. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
Luc glanced at Itzy.
“Going?” she squeaked.
Luc waived her worry away. “A convocation. Nothing more. Gaston’s been sent to collect me. Everyone’s waiting. Apparently, I’m a little tardy.”
“He wouldn’t leave your bedside,” Gaston explained. Something in his eyes caused Itzy’s worry to return tenfold. He turned to Luc. “I can carry you, if need be.”
“I can manage myself.”
Luc stood, stretching, and Itzy gasped. Emerging from his shoulder blades were a pair of mismatched, bulbous nubs. The odd, stunted feather jutted out here and there. They reminded Itzy of her Aunt Maude’s arthritic hands, the knuckles swollen and painful-looking.
Luc turned, and she looked away quickly, her heart in her throat.
“Well, there you have it, Itzy.” His voice was sad and low. “The fever has lifted the clouds from your eyes. The truth isn’t always pretty.”
Luc nodded to Gaston, who threw open the window wide. Luc pushed past him, his feet alighting easily on the stone ledge. He stood, grasping at some unseen handhold, and began to climb.
For a moment, Itzy was alone with Gaston. She considered asking the angel one of the million questions on the tip of her tongue, but her determination abandoned her and she merely hugged her knees to her chest.
He gazed at her silently.
“I gather you’ve been quite ill, Itzy. He sat by your bedside the entire time, you know. Talking you through it, whispering you his secrets—anything to keep you from slipping away. He refused to leave—even when commanded.”
Itzy blinked. Her head hurt.
“Tell me something,” he said, his copper-colored eyes unblinking. “Are you worth it?”
72
Alone, Itzy swung her legs over the bedside, her head woozy. Flinching, she put weight on her ankle, easing herself up. It was stiff, but the pain was gone. The skin was puckered and pink where Paris had bitten her. When she stood, her head spun. Flashes of black skirted her vision, quick and unexpected, and she sunk into Luc’s chair to steady herself. Pulling open the drawer, she saw her clothes had returned from the laundry, pressed and perfectly folded. Little tags had been ironed into the lining discreetly: 1804.
Like camp, she thought.
These were the clothes from her basement adventures, but they bore no evidence of the soot and rips she had endured in the unspeakable pipeworks. Her favorite pair of Levi’s were just as they should be, almost as if it had never happened.
She pulled open the next drawer, and the next.
Someone had thought to reorganize.
Blinking, she looked around the Blue Bedroom.
Her camera was nowhere in sight.
Gulping, Itzy opened the closet door. Last she knew, the closet had been host to unthinkable noises—scratching and skitterings that made her skin crawl. But perhaps her Leica had been stowed in there while she was sick, for safekeeping.
The closet’s light blinked on cheerily on its own and shined its golden light down upon the contents. There was the usual rack of Aunt Maude’s fur coats—a few of which had fallen and seemed to form a nest on the floor along with her old duffel bag. There was an obvious indent where something had slept. Itzy wrinkled her nose and craned her neck, staring into the darker recesses. The light barely reached the end of the closet, but there appeared to be nothing besides her aunt’s collection of steamer trunks.
Frowning, she shut the door.
On top of the dresser was a small vase with an elegant bouquet and a card. The card was embossed with a name—PIPPA BRILL. Itzy ran her fingers along the raised letters. Get well soon, it said in perfect, slanted script.
The flowers were brown and wilted. How long have I been sick?
Itzy threw on her Levi’s and picked a T-shirt at random, messing the neatly ordered stack. She lifted the tarnished hand mirror and instantly regretted it. Dark circles were birds’ nests beneath her eyes and her face was gaunt and pale. Her illness had brought out more strands of silver hair, she saw; it was now a pronounced shock at her brow.
Gray hair and a governess, she thought grimly. That’s a first.
Her teeth would need brushing, and a shower would be dreamy after her long convalescence, and she also felt the faint pangs of hunger beginning to stir. But first, she needed to find her camera.
73
Itzy stood for several moments in what used to be the living room. Aunt Maude’s suite had been redecorated. Gone were the toile couches, the thick velvet curtains, the fusty standing lamps.
Here now was Versailles in all its splendor. Gilt mirrors hung from every imaginable space on the walls. Chandeliers dripping with crystal hung from the ceiling, and the ceiling itself was painted with frescoes of dead kings. The floor was magnificently tiled in a checkerboard of black and white marble, and from somewhere Itzy heard the unmistakable sound of a lute.
Yet the room was oppressively dry and hot.
Aunt Maude’s fireplace had been revived, but there was no pleasing scent of wood smoke. The ashes had been allowed to accumulate and the fire was acrid and stung her nose. Strange powders and scorched herbs were sprinkled about the carelessly piled embers. These threatened to roll free of the hearth, as they apparently had been allowed to before—the marble floor was singed and pitted with black burns. A large bellows lay off to one side, the shadows from the fire dancing on its pleats making it appear to breathe.
Itzy stared into a mirror. It was old and the reflection distorted; her face was wavy, one arm was longer than the next. The girl who stared back at her was a stranger. Her head felt light, and she debated returning to her sickbed.
Cautiously, Itzy made her way down the hall. Even her aunt’s priceless art was gone, the picture of Itzy as a child in Brittany nowhere to be seen, and for a moment—since the memory of that sunny day was not one she could recall anyway—Itzy wondered if she’d ever seen the picture at all. A faint cloying, unpleasant smell was in her nostrils—smoke, she reasoned. From the fire.
Itzy paused.
She heard humming coming from her aunt’s rooms, a sort of tuneless waltz.
She could turn around now, she thought. Was she really certain her camera had been moved? Had she, for instance, checked under her bed? Under is a place, Itzy, her father’s words returned to her. He would say them whenever she was searching for something, and inevitably he’d be right—she’d find her shoe, or her school books, hidden under something else.
The humming grew louder, and she realized her governess must be emerging from the bathroom.
Under is a place, Itzy.
She started backing noiselessly down the hall, one timid foot after the next. Beside the missing photo, her foot touched something small and soft. A cold sinking feeling filled her gut as she prodded the thing, not daring to look down. She didn’t have to. She knew just who it was.
Mops let out a throaty growl.
Just then, her governess rounded the corner ahead of her and stopped.
Under is a place called Hell.
“Itzy!” her governess was saying—if indeed this was her governess.
For starters, she looked like a million bucks.
Her voice rang out with a throaty resonance, like a nightclu
b singer, and her face—her high cheekbones and dewy skin—sparkled with the light of diamond dust. Her lips were puffed and pink, beneath a perfect nose. She wore a sleek and shiny leather catsuit that accentuated her trim waist and bountiful bust and finished in tall black boots. Itzy could see herself reflected once, and then twice, in the patent leather.
Itzy narrowed her eyes. “What happened to you?”
“I just needed some time to get back on my feet.” She reached for Itzy’s shock of white hair and ran her perfectly manicured fingers over it, a lingering touch that sent goose pimples down her neck. Itzy recoiled. “You see, while you rested, I’ve been gathering my strength,” the governess whispered, her eyes as dark as ebony.
Itzy wrinkled her nose. The smell had grown worse.
“We have a surprise for you.” She smiled. Her teeth, little white Chiclets, chattered in her jaw. “Don’t we, Mopsie?”
Itzy had forgotten the dog who now plodded by her slowly, nails scraping on the parquet floor.
“A surprise?” Itzy’s stomach clenched. She never did like surprises.
The governess beckoned Itzy, and Itzy found her feet moving down the hall and into her Aunt Maude’s bedroom.
The room had been emptied of Aunt Maude’s elegant bed, emptied of everything. Ragged strips of wallpaper were all that remained, hanging limply from the wall. Coils of wire for space heaters snaked across the floor. A screen carved the room in two, made from pleated fabric stretched upon metal bars, and from behind that Itzy could make out a cluster of powerful lamps. The only other piece of furniture was a large vanity to one side of the room, its vast mirror enshrined with lit globes.
“In here, dear,” she said. The governess was standing beside the door to a closet.
The closet stretched out into the darkness. Itzy hesitated.
“Don’t like the dark?” The governess smiled, snapping her fingers. The closet light fluttered on.
Before her, a dress.
But what a dress! Itzy’s breath caught in her throat. The garment hung languidly from impossibly thin straps on a wooden Carlyle hanger. Silver silken fibers came together in a plunging neckline and a tailored waist and continued into a puddle of liquid metal upon the floor. Shimmering crystals were scattered everywhere, like an explosion in a diamond mine.
The best kind of dress, Itzy thought, as she drew near. The kind of dress that leaves nothing to the imagination, while inspiring the minds of everyone around it.
A small crinkle appeared on her brow. Her eyes darted to the governess and then eagerly back to the hanger. “It’s beautiful,” Itzy whispered.
“Quite. For the party.”
Itzy was only half-listening. Her arm had reached out to touch the glimmering fabric on its own; it was cool to the touch, and heavy.
“Party?” Itzy asked, her voice dreamy and thick.
“Tomorrow, Itzy.”
The dress was twinkling, sparkling in the low light, sending barbs of radiance out into the shadowy depths of the closet, which seemed to have no end.
“Tomorrow?” Itzy asked.
“Yes—tomorrow! July fourteenth.”
The dress slipped from her fingers and they ached to feel it again. “Bas-Bastille Day?” Itzy blurted.
“Ah, I see you know your French history.”
“My father teaches it.”
The governess laughed her throaty laugh. “Really? I can’t wait to meet him, then. I wonder, though—so few people seem to get it right. We’ll have lots to talk about!”
“He’s in Paris,” Itzy squeaked.
The governess nodded solemnly. “And what might he be doing there?”
Itzy lowered her eyes, embarrassed suddenly. “Research,” she mumbled.
“Paris is such a dangerous city, don’t you find? Lawless. Filled with savages. I do hope he’ll take precautions.”
Itzy blinked. She had never thought of it that way. “I’m sure he will, ma’am.”
“Yes, I’m sure he will. Shame he’ll miss all the fun.”
Itzy admired the woman’s smooth, polished skin, her perfect eyelashes. A lock of her platinum hair fell off to one side of her temple in a coy little curl.
“Would you like to try it on?” the governess asked. Her voice was low, conspiring, utterly bewitching.
“M-me?”
“Of course, Itzy. It’s yours. I had it made for you.”
Itzy looked at the dress longingly. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. The fabric sparkled even in the low light of the closet and seemed to defy logic—being both weightless and woven of silver and thousands of crystals. It was a dress at home in the dark. The flickering lights of a cocktail party would set it aflame. It was a dress for a movie star—
Something clicked.
“I-it looks like Marilyn Monroe’s,” Itzy squeaked.
Marilyn had worn it in flickering black-and-white footage Itzy had seen. She was performing for a roomful of politicians in a way that made Itzy both uncomfortable and thrilled.
Happy Birthday, Mr. President
It was 1962, the year she died. Itzy thought of that famous clip, the scratchy footage, the overexposed look, as if the very air were on fire.
Ava had told her some of that night, the night Marilyn had sung to the president. It was at Madison Square Garden, late in the evening, and Marilyn almost didn’t make it at all. She had been delayed—waylaid, actually—by a raving devhil lurking near the stage entrance. So many devhils surrounded the president, Marilyn had confided to Ava, that she had to be ever-vigilant. They came out of the woodwork when he was around.
When she finally made it up to the mike, shimmering, hair slightly tousled from battle, the host introduced her as “the late Marilyn Monroe.” The man must have had a crystal ball, for a short few months later, the demons would get her for good.
The governess was peering intently into Itzy’s face. The surface of her eyes were glassine—dark, congealed pits. Familiar pits. It was the blackness of the ash bin, Itzy realized, the darkness from her childhood. It was the darkness that took things. Itzy felt her stomach clench. These were eyes of the wicked, the devious—not at all human. Itzy took a step back, tripping over Mops.
“I’m more of a jeans and T-shirt girl,” Itzy whispered.
“A pity. Still, I bet you’ll change your mind. I hear you are particularly fond of Ms. Monroe.” The governess’s smile suddenly lacked any humanity.
She knows about the tunnels, Itzy realized. It’s as if she’s in my head.
“My camera seems to have gone missing,” Itzy said, jutting out her chin.
“Camera?”
“Yes—it was by my bed before I got sick. You didn’t see it, did you?”
“Perhaps you should ask one of your little friends,” the governess hissed.
“I’m sure it’ll turn up.” Itzy’s forced herself to smile. “I’m sure I’ve just misplaced it.” Under is a place, Itzy.
“Itzy?”
“Yes?”
“You haven’t thanked me for the dress.”
“Oh. Th-hanks for the dress.”
“Itzy, we must work on your manners.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Remember, gratitude is the only appropriate emotion for a child of your circumstances.”
The little hairs on the back of Itzy’s neck rose. Her aunt had said the same thing in her letter.
74
Itzy’s heart drummed loudly in her ears as she raced back to her small bedroom.
Itzy hadn’t bothered to read her Aunt Maude’s letter twice; she had been relieved, in fact, that the tiresome old woman wouldn’t be around to grumble about her studies and dole out useless chores to keep her hands from being idle. She had never liked her aunt—and the feeling seemed to have been mutual. Now, however, Itzy found herself wishing something she would never have thought possible—wishing that her Aunt Maude had never left, that her summer at the Carlyle stretched out ahead in tedious, tiresome, and predicable
ways, that the woman’s toile couches were back where they belonged and her smell—the smell of old newspapers and the twang of her perfume were here, returned, where they belonged. And the truth now, that Aunt Maude had saved her that night in Brittany—not her mother at all, as she had always thought—nearly took her breath away. Her mother had not even thought to save her. She had fled to save herself.
The camera wasn’t under her bed.
It wasn’t anywhere.
Itzy was crying, tearing apart her dresser, upending entire drawers upon the floor. The orange box from Ava containing her Hermès scarf clattered to the floor, the splendid silk spilling out. Itzy bent down and unfurled it. Scarlet and golden feathers floating on a sea of slate gray. She tied it around her neck, rising.
Remember, gratitude is the only appropriate emotion for a child of your circumstances. The words raced through her mind.
Where was her aunt? Where had she gone?
She tore the sheets from her bed and even lifted the complaining mattress, heaving it on its side against the wall. Still, there was no sign of her camera. Wheeling about, Itzy scowled at the closet door. There was no place left to look. She threw open the door determinedly and set about ransacking it.
Fur after fur came flying out. The dank nest on the floor held what appeared to be a bone, and she kicked it away, disgusted.
All that remained were her aunt’s steamer trunks.
Hadn’t Johnny said her aunt always traveled with them?
There were half a dozen of them of various sizes, a matching set, stacked at the far end of the closet. Rich brown leather with golden initials patterned upon their sides. The first was empty; Itzy could tell merely by hoisting it, but all the same she opened the brass latch and peered inside. The second, the same.
But the third—the third was larger than the rest. Itzy could barely maneuver around it to find the side with the clasps and lock, but needn’t have bothered. The trunk’s lid was open a crack—whatever was inside was too big for the top to close properly.
Got you, Itzy thought.
Sometimes when you look for something, you find something else, her father also said. He was very smart. He was a professor.
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