For now, though, he thought with relief, there was still the gentlemen’s club. He was on the way there now to meet Django and Hippolyte; his best friends, determined to shake him out of the slump he’d been in, had promised him a night he would never forget. Knowing the caddishness of his friends and their louche, lotus eater-like existences, he didn’t doubt it.
For himself, a night rich in wine and song would come as a relief from his work. Unlike his friends, he did not come from old money, and the only reason he could live the life he did was due to his talent—Emile was the finest architect in Paris; some would say in the whole of France. His latest project, a hotel in the Art Deco style which was now the fashion, was his masterpiece. Begun a mere four months ago, Emile’s unerring eye for design meant that although the grand opening was still a year away, the hotel was already booked solid for the next five years. Five years. Emile thought about that now, and it cheered him to think of it.
At his gentlemen’s club, the maître d’ hótel took his coat and hat and directed him into the lounge, where fires crackled in the grate, and the room smelled of warm brandy and expensive cologne.
Django, his oldest friend, waved him over. “Bonsoir, old man. Come sit with me and play a hand or two, s’il te plait. Hippolyte is, as usual, late.” There were cards laid out on the table in front of him—a game of bridge—but Emile smiled and shook his head.
“I don’t seem to have the effort in me,” he said, sitting opposite his friend. Django eyed him.
At thirty-two, Emile had the weary sadness of someone two decades older. His work—although he loved it—exhausted him, taking up most of his time. Now that he thought about it, perhaps it was not surprising that Iseult had strayed—she had never seen Emile except on the weekends, and even then he had been preoccupied … Emile brushed the thought away. He wasn’t ready to think that way yet; he wanted to wallow a while longer in self-pity.
“So, where is this club you’re insisting on dragging me to tonight?” He smiled at his friend as Django gathered up the playing cards and stacked them into their wooden box. Django smiled wickedly.
“It’s Le Cabaret d’Hiver.”
Emile was horrified. “Django, have you gone completely out of your mind? None of us can risk being seen there!”
Le Cabaret d’Hiver was Paris’s shame; its debauched sexual shows were the talk of the town. Located in the Pigalle, near the famous Moulin Rouge and twice as scandalous, its place on the Boulevard de Clichy was enough to seal its fate as a den of iniquity and degradation. To be seen publically attending such a place was social suicide but, of course, its lure was irresistible, and the threat of public shame didn’t stop the bourgeoisie from seeking out private shows.
Django smirked. “Emile, for once, stop worrying about your public persona and give yourself over to the relief one can find at such a place. There is nothing more guaranteed to make you forget Iseult and Gaston than a night experiencing such carnal pleasures of the flesh.”
Emile shook his head and gathered his bag. “No, Django, I cannot—”
“Yes, you can.” Hippolyte was there then, his hand firmly on Emile’s shoulder. “We insist. Just relax, friend, and let us take care of everything.”
Emile had always been a little afraid of Hippolyte. The man stood a good head taller than himself— and Emile was not a diminutive fellow himself—and possessed a quiet strength that Emile had always suspected could explode into a fiery temper if pushed. He nodded now, not wanting to test that theory as there was a curious, burning look in Hippolyte’s eyes that dared him to dissemble.
Django drained the last of his brandy and stood. “Why wait any longer? Gentlemen, shall we?”
Back inside another cab, squeezed between Hippolyte and Django, Emile wondered what he had let himself in for but as the car pulled through the crowded winter streets, he felt his spirits lift with the thrill of adventure. He hadn’t been born so high that he didn’t enjoy a little raucous fun now and again and Le Cabaret d’Hiver certainly promised that.
The ornate entrance promised much. Wood elves and nymphs were twisted around trees covered in frosted leaves, all of them carved out of stone. Emile could not help but run his hand over the carvings. Freezing cold to the touch, they nevertheless felt almost real—stone hard, of course, but Emile got the impression as he ran his hand over the leg of a tree elf that she might come to life and slap his hand away.
“Are you coming in, St Jacques, or are you happy to get your rocks off with a statue?” Hippolyte and Django roared with laughter, and Emile smiled, feeling a little embarrassed. He nodded to the doorman, who inclined his head graciously and directed them to the cloakroom. Hippolyte and Django removed their hats but not their coats.
“You will need it, to begin with,” Django said with the air of someone who had frequented this place before. Emile made a silent note to ask him about that, but then they were walking into the main club and Emile gave a gasp.
Inside, the light was an ethereal blue, the walls sparkled like diamonds, and the entire place looked like some sort of winter wonderland. The tables were of white marble, the chairs covered in furs, and vast chandeliers of tiny diamonds sparkled overhead. Emile was entranced by the atmosphere—even though it should look like a grotto for Santa Claus, there was something more ... Emile struggled to find the word. Sensual? Dangerous?
Beautiful, otherworldly, sloe-eyed youths moved around serving drinks and catering to the guests, all of whom looked as stunned and as entranced as Emile at their surroundings. At the far end of the room, a small stage stood, a plinth covered in white fur. It was in darkness but as Emile and his friends took their table and the wait staff brought them vodka shots served in glasses made from ice, a spotlight began to shine on the plinth, and a nymph, swathed in white, came to arrange the fur pelts on it. There were a few catcalls from the audience and the nymph smiled at them, an intoxicating beam of pure love. She curtsied to them and disappeared and the lights dim again. A low rumble of disappointment went through the crowd, and Hippolyte chuckled. “Impatient lot tonight.”
Emile looked at his friends. “You’ve both been here before then?”
Hippolyte and Django glanced at each other, then Django nodded. “We have. A few times over the years. The club only opens for two weeks in winter, hence the name, Le Cabaret d’Hiver. Tonight is the first night—Christmas Day always falls directly in the middle of those two weeks—then at one past midnight on New Year’s Day, everyone who works here vanishes until the next year, and the club is shut up.”
Hippolyte looked at Emile. “What’s really strange is that those decorations you were admiring at the entrance. They disappear too—overnight. Solid stone. No one knows how they do it, but if you come down to the Boulevard after they’ve been moved, you would never know they’d been there.”
Emile was both enraptured and alarmed. “They just … vanish?”
“Into thin air. It’s magical.”
Emile shook his head, laughing. “In that case … how could we miss this opportunity?”
Django laughed and clapped him on the back. “Quite, dear fellow. Çe sera incroyable.”
Hippolyte said nothing but raised his glass to his friends. Emile turned around in his chair, scrutinizing the club, wanting to take in everything, and now he began to notice other details.
Some of the nymphs were sitting with the clients, their hands moving over the clients’ bodies with a feather-light touch and the men themselves looked as if they were experiencing the most intense orgasms of their lives, quite openly and without shame. Emile saw huge glass bowls of what he had assumed at first were ice cubes, but upon closer inspection, he saw that, no, they were bowls of sex toys—dildos, ball gags, and handcuffs, to name a few, all crafted from ice. He watched in shocked and aroused amazement as one of the men began to fuck one of the nymphs with a large ice cock, the nymph writhing and moaning as he plunged it deep inside her divine body. Emile could not tear his eyes away from her shaved cunt, swollen and ready for
the ice dildo.
Emile felt his own cock respond to the sight, twitching and thickening inside his pants. He caught Hippolyte watching him with an amused look. “Glad you came?”
Emile shrugged and tried to look nonchalant, but in the next instant the club was plunged into darkness and a spotlight, a hazy blue light, appeared, trained on the stage. Music, a strange, discordant violin song, began to play. Slowly sliding onto the stage, a group of nymphs danced, their movements slow and sensual, forming a group around the plinth. They rose and seethed like an ocean swell above it, stretching their lithe tiny frames into impossible shapes until falling again to the floor. In the center of them, a woman, her curvy body the color of midnight oil, began to sway in time with the music. Her skin was blue-black, her bare breasts full and firm, her hips wrapped with strings of diamonds and pearls. Her face, the expression focused on her dance, was the most exquisite thing Emile had ever seen. Full plum-colored lips, dark, endlessly dark eyes rimmed with the thickest black lashes, her hair, platinum white, cut short in pin curls around her face.
Seraphine.
The name came into Emile’s mind as he watched her undulate and perform, and then she began to sing. A deep purr, her voice built from almost a whisper until the entire room could hear her. She sang in a language that Emile could not identify—neither French nor English for sure—and her song curled its way into his brain, sending shivers through every synapse. His entire body responded to hers. His heart thumped so heavily in his chest that it pounded in his ears, to him a drum beat that accompanied every sway of her hips, as lush and fleshy as they peeked out from her skirt of pearls. She ran her hands up the inside of her thighs and his cock stiffened almost painfully, pressing hard against the heavy cotton.
Emile watched, enraptured, as she completed her song to enthusiastic applause. Then she stood at the microphone and smiled—and Emile was lost. Her eyes roamed over the crowd and then settled on him. Her smile grew softer, more intimate, and she held out her hand to him.
Emile forgot everything else in the world; the club, his friends, his shattered heart, and went to her. Her cold hand closed around his, and he shivered, every cell in his body reacting as if an electric shock had passed through him.
Seraphine led him off the stage into a labyrinth of corridors of ice to a room. Emile stumbled along after her, not knowing—or even caring—where this goddess took him as long as her hand stayed in his and his skin was touching hers.
The room that she led him to was also constructed from ice but to his surprise, as Seraphine removed his coat, his jacket, and then his shirt, he wasn’t cold at all. She moved the palms of her hands over his skin, his hard chest, his stomach, until she reached his fly, then, looking up at him from under her lashes, she removed his rock-hard cock from his pants and sank to her knees.
The moment her warm mouth covered him, Emile knew he was in trouble. Her gentle movements, the way her tongue flicked and teased his cock … Oh, God, Emile thought, all rational thought leaving him. He touched her hair, feeling how soft it was, then her skin. Velvet, he thought, midnight velvet.
Seraphine looked up as he groaned and smiled. He noticed her dark eyes weren’t black or brown but the most intense navy blue and her pupils was ringed with silver. They burned into his as she sucked him to completion and he came into her mouth in great spurts, shuddering and groaning. He had little time to recover. Seraphine led him to the bed—a vast ice block covered with so many furs that it was surprisingly soft when he lay down.
He stroked her delicious curves and bent his head to take one of her nipples into his mouth. Her breasts were firm, pointing up into hard peaks, and now he saw they were both pierced with tiny rings of diamond. The stones were hard against his tongue but he didn’t care. She tasted of fresh air and water as he trailed his lips down to her belly. He noticed with surprise that her skirt of pearls was not an item of clothing but simply grew out of her skin to weave around her lower half and cover her sex. He looked down at her. Who was she? What was she?
Seraphine smiled up at him, a slightly snaggle-toothed smile that nevertheless made his entire body react.
“Come inside me,” she said, and the sound of her voice made his cock, which had not gone flaccid in the slightest despite her milking of him, become even more engorged. At her command, he parted the strands of pearls and found her sex, glistening with her arousal. Emile sighed at the sight of it, so scarlet and plump and ready for him. His cock traced along her slit and then plunged deep inside her.
Oh, the feeling, the sweet, sweet velvet of her cunt as her muscles tightened around his penis, drawing him in deeper and deeper. Emile could not help screaming her name as they fucked, slowly at first then harder, their bodies undulating and moving in rhythm. Emile stared down at this glorious woman as he thrust harder, watched the way her breasts, her belly moved. God, she was divine.
Her fingernails dug painfully into his back, but he didn’t care. He wanted her to hurt him, to possess him entirely. He neared completion, and she smiled up at him.
“Come on my skin, Emile, my love. I want your love on my belly.”
Emile pulled out and came with a shout of victory, spilling his seed across her dark skin, and even his own mortal semen looked like it shone with a million diamonds, sparkling like a galaxy of ice particles in it. Seraphine massaged it into her skin, moaning softly, rubbing her hands from her softly rounded belly down between her legs. Emile watched her touch herself, feeling utterly drunk on her.
“Seraphine … my love …”
He bent his head to hers and they kissed for the first time, their breaths mingling, their tongues wrapping around the other’s, tasting each other. They made love again slowly, sweetly. Finally, as Emile felt exhausted and spent, Seraphine pulled his head down to her chest and stroked his head. He fell asleep breathing in her scent of ice and water and moonlight, knowing that if he did not wake in the morning, he would gladly welcome death.
Emile did wake the next morning—back in his own bed in his small one-bedroom apartment in the 6th Arrondissement. He turned over onto his back and shivered. The French windows to his balcony were open, the white drapes billowing in, a freezing wind chilling the entire room. Emile stumbled out of bed but instead of closing the windows, he stepped out onto the balcony. Snow was falling as a silent blanket over the city, a white out so thick that Paris disappeared beneath it. Emile stood on the balcony letting the soft flakes fall onto him, soaking his nightgown. Every time the snow touched his skin, he was back there in the club with Seraphine, making fiery love in a room of ice.
The snow had muffled the sounds from the street and from his fifth-floor balcony; Emile stretched his mouth wide and shouted her name over the rooftops of his beloved city.
He spent the day at home, reading, and in the evening he bathed and dressed carefully, choosing a dark green velvet blazer which brought out the color of his blue eyes and the salt-and-pepper of his dark hair.
At half past eight, he walked down to the lobby to find Django waiting for him. Emile smiled at his friend in surprise. “I didn’t know we were meeting tonight.”
Django was pale and shaking. He shoved a newspaper at Emile. “Take a look.”
Emile took the paper from him and opened it out. His whole body turned to ice.
Assassinat Brutal au Cabaret d’Hiver! Belle danseuse morte!
Brutal Murder at the Cabaret of Winter! Beautiful Dancer Slain! “Ah, non, non …” he moaned, dropping the paper. The photograph on the front page was of Seraphine, her intense navy blue eyes staring into the camera with an unreadable expression. Emile stared down at it, hot tears in his eyes. He looked up at Django. “I cannot believe it … what happened?”
Django was staring at him. “Emile … my friend, Seraphine was indeed murdered, but the newspapers tell us she was killed before we went to the club.”
“Impossible! How could it be? We were at the club only last night. Something must have happened in the early hours of this m
orning … why are you staring at me like that?”
His friend had paled so much that his skin was tinged with blue. “Emile … we were at the club a week ago. Surely you know this?”
Emile stared at his friend. A week? He had been asleep for a week? No, it could not be! “There must be some mistake,” he stammered, but even as he spoke, he suddenly knew it to be the truth. Seraphine was dead, and he had lost a week. He prayed those two things weren’t connected.
He spent the next few days before Christmas working, trying to erase the memory of Seraphine … or the dream of Seraphine; he was no longer sure. No, it cannot be a falsehood, he thought, how would I have known about her unless I did lie with her on that bed of ice? He could not fathom how he had slept for a week, nor how such a vital woman could have been taken so brutally. Who would want to destroy such beauty?
After three unsatisfying days working at the hotel, he sent the workers home for the holidays, promising them they would be rewarded for their hard work and telling them to enjoy the time with their families. He was glad of the solitude as he walked around the empty hotel, admiring the work and the new Art Deco designs that he had created. When it was finished, this hotel would rival the Ritz in his plushness, its fine dining, and exquisite luxury, but now, he just enjoyed the solitude of it. He came to the reception with its startling décor of mirrors on three sides of the room, all in the Art Deco style. He stared at his reflection in the mirror in front of him. He seemed to have grown taller, more erect, his hair thicker and fuller, his face more refined and handsome. He smiled, and his reflection became almost radiant.
Then suddenly he started violently. Out of the corner of his eye, an old man shifted into view … at least, what he assumed was an old man. Emile whirled around to find … no one. His own reflection, now with startled eyes, stared back at him. He relaxed and another movement caught his eye. He stopped, realizing the reflection was his own. He slid his eyes to the corner, trying to study the reflection. He could not make out his own features, nor could he reconcile the stooped figure as the same as the one he could see directly in front of him.
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