She went back through the ocean gate, toward the wailing of terror and despair. Toward her daughter.
Uncharming
Delilah S. Dawson
The magician wasn't in his shop when his next sweet obsession slipped through the front door. She ducked into the darkness as they all did: shyly, clutching a wrapped package as tenderly as a sick babe, and perfuming the air with her terror and bewilderment.
It always took them that way—losing their magic. And Monsieur Charmant thrived on it.
From his underground laboratory, the magician twisted his mustache and shivered in anticipation as the girl pushed the door open with one hand and a shudder. The sound of her slippers on the boards nearly sent him over the edge as he removed his lab coat and shrugged into his natty red-and-white striped jacket. He could imagine her there, seeing the dark bowels of the alchemist's shop for the first time. She'd be beautiful, off-balance, fresh from the surgeon and still wearing the tracks of her silvery tears.
First she would see the heads of carousel horses crowding by the door, their lips pulled back in fury, showing fangs. She'd gasp and stumble back, knocking into the chair where unfortunate humans sat to trade their blood—or worse things—for coin. Oh, how fast she would gulp and lurch away when she saw the collection of antique surgical instruments hanging on the wall, rusty with long-dried fluids, reminding her of what she'd just lost. Perhaps next, she would seek the safety of his bookshelves only to find grimoires made of daimon skin and jars of dead floating things blinking back at her. Or perhaps she had woken the hound that waited behind the counter, grinning, tongue out, to growl at just the right time.
He was an artist of torture, this magician. He'd built his lair as lovingly as a conductor conjures an orchestra for just this purpose: to drink the fear and hopelessness of each new girl who entered his shop to bargain her past against her future.
A low growl went up, and a feminine shout signaled the perfect moment for the magician's entrance. After adjusting his bowler and straightening his bow tie in the mirror, he took the stone steps up, throwing open the door in the floor with a wave of his arm. As his head crested the boards, he found the girl just where she was supposed to be, backed into a corner and held captive by the monster hound. But instead of cowering and crying, as they so often did, she had stolen an umbrella from the stand and was fencing the ravenous dog-beast as if she thought she had a chance of besting it.
Foolish girl.
Beautiful foolish girl.
Oddly intriguing, damnably delicious, beautiful, foolish, foolish, foolish girl.
“Arretez,” he barked at the dog, and it froze. “Dormez.” It fell over, already snoring, the floorboards shaking beneath its massive shoulder.
But the girl didn't toss down her umbrella. She pointed it at him and twitched her hips like a great cat preparing to pounce, the wrapped package flopping over one arm.
“Charmant,” she spat like a curse.
His name was heaven on her trembling lips. She hated him. But she feared him more. And he drank it in like wine, his perfectly curled mustache twitching as he bowed deeply.
“Charmed, I'm sure. Welcome to my shop, mademoiselle. Je suis a vous.”
Turning his back on her, Monsieur Charmant strolled behind his counter and held out a hand invitingly. The scale waited, tared to deny the girl what little riches she might know from here on out. Usually, at this point, the girl minced forward and handed over her bundle gently, dashing away tears as the paper was unwrapped.
But this girl—she threw it at him. The package hit Charmant in the face with the weight of a halibut and slapped wetly to the glass counter, opening a tiny starburst crack where the bulk of it landed. That was the moment the daimon magician's heart cracked, too.
He would have this girl. He would possess her. And more than just the amputated limb that fell from the brown paper as he pulled the twine bow loose.
“Ugh.” She drew away, disgusted by what had, until a few hours ago, been her tail.
Charmant looked up at her. At the part of her that still lived, that still blushed a delicate lavender. Every daimon was born one color but could change, like a chameleon, as it suited them or as emotions took them. She wore violet like a cloak of dusk. And he would see her disrobed.
Her tail, on the other hand . . .
“They all turn that color, when they're removed. Dead white. Just a chunk of meat.” But his fingers caressed it from the still-bloody base all the way to the delicate stinger as if it was the finest ivory. His own, still-attached tail curled in desire, held slightly behind him where she couldn't see.
“Weigh it and pay me for my meat, then.”
His lips turned up at the corners under his mustache. “So anxious to leave me, mignon? I am a powerful man. I know things.” One eyebrow quirked. “I have friends.”
She took a deep breath and straightened, wincing only slightly at what must have been considerable pain. Oh, how he longed to see the line of stitches. Would it be neat or crooked? Was the wound puckered the color of wisteria, still dotted with a bright red line? He licked his lips at the thought, lifted her tail onto his waiting scale, and leaned heavy fingers on the metal edge.
“Don't cheat me, alchemist. I know what you are. I know what you know. I know what you consider friends.”
“Oh, but you really don't.”
Her gaze challenged him, and he took his thumb off the scale and stepped back, both hands in the air.
“Seven kilograms. That's sixteen hundred francs, payable—”
“No!” She rushed past him, her floor-length gray skirts snapping. The brush of her sleeve against his guaranteed she'd get her way. At least at first. He could wait a little longer to cheat this girl.
The scale read eighteen pounds, and the girl's skin burned over a fierce magenta as she pointed. “Eighteen pounds, you monster. You'll take your pound of flesh, but you'll pay me for every drop of blood I've shed.” Charmant nodded and stretched out both hands to rewrap the tail, but the girl smacked his fingers with the umbrella she still held and muttered, “Don't touch me, any part of me. I'll have enough of that tonight at the cabaret.”
“Eighteen hundred francs, then. In silver.”
“No. In trade.”
She was lavender again, the perfect foil to the acidic chartreuse of his own skin. His last girl had been the green of spring grass. And this new girl wanted trade. How utterly delicious.
“What do you wish in trade, Mademoiselle . . . ?”
She took a deep breath and pointed with a shaking finger. “My name doesn't matter. And I want that.”
The necklace in the glass case wasn't the flashiest of pieces, but the gold was real and the opal was cursed. It was worth twice what her tail was, even once he'd processed it into the many expensive components that, had she known of them, would've turned the girl's stomach and sent her running from his shop, from Darkside, from Paris altogether.
She had taste. But, yes, the opal was cursed. He held a hand to his heart, pained.
“You drive a hard bargain, mademoiselle.”
“Madame.”
She held out her hand, and he wanted to kiss every blister, run his tongue over the cracked skin between her fingers. He did the math in his head. A madame with hard-used hands, willing to amputate her tail and enter the cabarets? She was desperate, possibly a widow, at the very least destitute. Yes, he would give her what she wanted. Or what she thought she wanted.
Her fingers flicked open and closed. “The necklace. Now, s'il vous plait.”
Charmant kept his face neutral, his eyes flat as he used a scrap of velvet to withdraw the opal from the enchanted cabinet that protected him from the more troublesome effects of his trinkets. The lovely thing about alchemic magic was that one could truly kill with kindness, if one knew the right sort of spell. Without touching the stone or the chain, he arrayed the necklace on his counter in an enticing curl. She snatched it up as if he might change his mind and fastened the gold link
s around her swanlike throat, tucking it down the neck of her gown where it would nestle like a newborn snake against the crushable little bones.
“You know, madame—”
“My task is accomplished. Au revoir.”
He tipped his hat. “A bientot, madame.”
She spun and marched to the door, her balance still off as she pushed through and disappeared. It would be at least a week before she'd learn to sway her hips properly without a waving tail. Another week still until she'd healed well enough to learn the dances of the cabarets, including the ones she would dance on her back.
In three weeks, he swore he would come for her.
* * * * *
He found her in the fourth-best cabaret. His costume was flawless, from the black silk topper to the perfectly tied cravat to the fashionable indigo of his skin. It was hard for him to hold on to such a dark color, but a few grains of the right powder helped. She was lavender, of course. Settling into a different skin color was all but impossible when a daimon was in pain. She'd be lucky to accomplish periwinkle until she had healed, much less show any grace performing the steps of dances that had not yet become rote. Good. He liked her that color, like a morning flower waiting to be tenderly defiled by a hummingbird.
It was intermission, and he ordered a drink and settled at the bar. The girls mingled with their patrons to the tune of a brass gramophone, their voices musical and cloying. He saw through it, but he saw through everything.
“You look lonely, monsieur.” The girl looked up at him through long, red feathers glued inelegantly to her plucked eyelashes.
“Then you're not looking hard enough,” he answered, spinning away from her and taking his drink along on the hunt.
He stalked his prey across the waxed floor, edging past tuxedos and sidling past wide skirts engineered to lift quickly without the trouble of petticoats. He saw no one but her. He heard no voice but hers, her laugh still strangled with the pain of a creature cornered. He sipped the steaming liquor in his glass but tasted only her blood, a delicacy he'd kept for himself when divvying up the meat and magic of her tail. He could smell her now, so close.
“Coco, bebe, I must tell you a secret,” a young man said as he leaned in toward the delicate petal of her ear.
Charmant muttered a few choice words under his breath and flicked his fingers towards the fellow's hat, which flew across the room on a breeze no one else felt. When the fellow turned away to fetch his costly topper, Charmant took his place.
“Mademoiselle Coco, I don't believe we've met,” he said, a genuine smile stretching his lips, which felt naked without his trademark curling mustache. But she would've remembered that, and he was banking on her forgetting, even if it took a dash of powder from the right packet in his pocket.
“Ah, but you already know my name, monsieur.” She looked down, a clumsy coquette who hadn't yet found her feet in flirting. The thing he called his heart jerked in his chest.
“Please call me Thierry.
She tipped her head. “Thierry, then. You look familiar. Have we met?”
Fear flashed behind feathery lashes. Did she recall the hunger in his eyes as he watched her in the shop, or did she seek to hide her other life, her old life, the one that had hardened her hands and heart? As much as he loved her fear, he hated her doubt.
“This is my first time in the Moulin Bleu, cherie. But I find that I like what I see. Perhaps you would indulge me with a private audience later?”
It was a bold move, but they were both bold, in their own ways. She raised one eyebrow and straightened her spine as she had in his store.
“I do not give private audiences, monsieur. If you'll excuse me? Intermission is nearly done.”
Chin up, shoulders down, she sashayed to the curtain. He sipped his drink and watched her over the steaming rim as she slipped behind the velvet.
Intermission was not over. And neither was his game.
* * * * *
Monsieur Charmant could not sleep, could not dream. His laboratory called to him.
She called to him.
There had to be a spell somewhere that would work, a powder or distillation that would draw her out and bind her to him. It was odd, how he didn't want to steal her and force her; he wanted to lure her and possess her forever. Rolling out of bed, he slipped into his robe and through the hidden door to his cutting table. The bristles were thick on his lip and chin, dark black against the acid yellow. Each night, he took out his brush and cup and soap, daubing his face with thick cream and shaving it away with a sharp razor. Each morning, the damn thing grew back, stubborn as Charmant himself, stubborn as his acid yellow skin. Each night, after shaving, he closed his eyes and forced his skin to shiver over indigo, placing a grain on his tongue to hold the color long enough to pursue the violet girl who obsessed him.
His Coco.
Most dancing girls chose new names, extravagant nicknames that they hoped to see on posters one day, hanging in the streets and lauded in the newspapers and magazines. But Coco? Where could a Coco go in the cabarets? No one would whistle through two fingers for La Coco. Not if she kept flubbing every dance scene, snarling through every comedy act, insulting every suitor.
Not if she kept turning down him.
He was drawn to her every night, but she sidestepped him and avoided his questions and laughed away his concerns for her calloused hands and sleepless eyes. She gave away nothing, and her dancing did not improve a bit, and he liked her the better for it.
Monsieur Charmant was unaccustomed to being denied what he wanted most. And it was driving him mad. How else could he coax the damnable creature? Her fire was what called to him. But her fire was also what drove her away. Up to his elbows in grimoires, he couldn't find quite the right thing. It wasn't love he wanted. It wasn't compliance. It was utter possession that still left her eyes fiery, her chin high, her wound unhealed for his pleasure. And that's when it occurred to him. He knew someone who might be able to help.
He was almost out the door when he remembered he was still barefoot, in his nightshirt.
What was she doing to him, his Coco?
* * * * *
With his hat brim pulled low and his skin a threatening shade of red, he stared out the window at hill after hill of boring moor grass, willing the train to hurry faster toward the dreadful creature he sought. The witch had settled in London, although few knew it. He had his ways of discovery. And she owed him for a tricky bit of magic ten years gone.
A day's worth of the fastest travel available felt like ten years. He would miss the show at the Moulin Bleu tonight, but if he found answers, it would be worth it. Not only would Coco be his forever, but if the trick proved successful and repeatable, there's no telling what he could earn in trade. Money had been important to him once. Now it was power and possession, the tang of owing that hit the air every time a client gave more than they really had. His hunger for fear, for terror, was what had originally led him down the dark path of alchemy. But it wasn't about sustenance anymore. He was a connoisseur, and he had wicked needs.
By the time he disembarked outside the tall walls of London, he was hungry enough for fear that he walked too close to old women, glaring at them with yellow eyes. Each tiny gasp was a drop in the ocean of his desire, and he longed for more. Whistling a few discordant notes, he called a host of feral rats upon the company and struggled not to laugh as the frantic humans ran in all the wrong directions, screaming. Sated, he walked right past the guards at the gates in the chaos.
Ducking under an outcrop in the cliffs below the towering city, he squinted, hunting for the right stone. A drop of blood rubbed on the dirty gray rock was all it took to open a crack into the catacombs so similar to those under Paris and yet so different without the beautiful mosaics and intricate configurations of bone. So plain, these Londoners. He slipped in like a maggot into the eye of an ossified corpse.
The witch's secret was the same as his own: the best place to craft magic is deep underground. She
had no shop topside, but he'd heard she kept a grand studio of magic and herbs deep under the heart of Londontown, where the bones of mighty kings and queens slept and withered. She was here, somewhere; he could feel it thrumming in his blood like a moth battering against a lantern. The witch had needs, too. And since he had brought her choice gifts, he knew they could palaver.
Monsieur Charmant was surely the most dapper creature to grace the catacombs in decades, at least while alive. He passed some moldering carcasses long gnawed to the bone and stripped of everything magical. Poor London. With so few daimons, most of the magic was held in the hands of the fiends, and all of it was stolen. A charmer could buy powders and charms, tinctures and wands, a word here or there. But a daimon's tail was the root of magic itself. That's why the girls had to lose them before they joined the cabarets, of course; no client would wish to pay for the time of a woman with any power.
Although he'd never been in these particular tunnels before, Charmant carried a compass that led him, step by step, toward the witch's lair. His leather-soled shoes tapped the rock with jittery impatience, and whenever something dripped on his dashing red-and-white striped suit, a whisk of his fingers and a few murmured words sent it from his shoulder to the floor with a rude splat. He liked it underground well enough, but he preferred his stone-walled lairs to be clean and have a little style besides.
“Who's that tip-tapping on my bridge?”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere and held a hint of a smirk. She wanted to play, did she? Bon. He could play.
“It is a stranger, lady. And I have in my possession the one thing you can't possess.”
Her cackle echoed eerily. “That so? How charming.”
A light blinked on like the goddess of fireflies, leading the way. He followed, grinning.
“So my reputation precedes me. You know that I'm serious, then, Erzabet.”
The light grew, and a twisted shadow fell over his lizard-skin shoes.
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