Shadowseer: Paris

by Morgan Rice

  Pinsley went over to him and sat down without waiting to be asked.

  “Pierre Duchene, right? The actor?”

  Duchene shrugged. “That’s me. Have a drink with me?”

  “I have one, thank you,” Pinsley said, lifting his beer mug. He took a chair opposite. “I thought it was you. I saw you in something. Romeo and Juliet, wasn’t it?”

  “You must have been in Paris a while, friend,” Duchene said. “I haven’t been Romeo for almost a month.”

  Pierre tried to look as sympathetic as he could. “What happened?”

  “They said I was too much of a drunk to do the job!” the actor replied. “Can you believe that?”

  Right then, Pinsley could believe it only too easily. The man in front of him was clearly a longstanding drunk, and he could imagine the director of the play not wanting him anywhere near his performance.

  Still, he had to say the right thing, keep this man talking. “That’s too bad. You must be very angry about it.”

  “Angry?” Pierre said. “I am furious! I am wroth! I will do such things, what they are, yet I know not.”

  “That’s Lear, not Romeo,” Pinsley pointed out. He decided to be more direct about this. “And do the things you would do for revenge include murder?”

  “Maybe if I could get my hands on that fat director!” Pierre said.

  “What about the actresses?” Pinsley said, his tone suddenly sharp. “What did you do to them? You know that at least two, possibly three, have been murdered?”

  “What?” the drunken actor practically fell out of his chair. “What are you talking… no, that didn’t have anything to do with me.”

  “Really? Where were you last night?” Pinsley asked. The other man was drunk enough that he might just blurt something out if Pinsley pushed him.

  “What?” Pierre looked unsteady, like he could barely make sense of the question.

  “What about the night before that?” Pinsley pressed. “Where were you while these killings were taking place?”

  “I was here, of course,” the actor said. He looked worried, as if he couldn’t be sure about even that much of his life. “I must have been. I always am.”

  There was an easy way to check, of course. Pinsley stood and went back to the bar. “Was Monsieur Duchene here last night?”

  The bartender thought for a moment. “Yes.”

  “All night? He couldn’t have slipped out?”

  “He drank until he passed out, then he slept it off on the floor. After a while, you get used to that kind of thing in my trade.”

  Those words hit Pinsley like a blow to the stomach. He’d been hoping that this lead, as slender as it was, would bring him to the killer. The disappointment of it not panning out was only made worse by the thought that if the killer kept to their pattern, another actress might die that night.

  “Do you know of anyone else with reasons to hate the performance of Romeo and Juliet?” Pinsley asked.

  “A dozen people,” the bartender said. “Two dozen. M. Lachelle upsets people as easily as an actor drinks wine.”

  “But is there anything that would be enough to kill over?” Pinsley insisted.

  “How’s a man meant to judge that?” the bartender demanded. “I could tell you all the rumors in the world, but the things men kill over are sometimes small things, trivial things. How can we know which are going to matter?”

  Pinsley knew that the other man had a point. He’d seen it enough back at Scotland Yard, with the worst crimes being committed for reasons that only made sense to the people committing them.

  He realized then the difficulty of what he’d been doing, chasing around the city, trying to follow up rumors of people who might have a reason to hate the performance. He simply didn’t have enough time to follow every one of them before tonight’s performance, and the possibility of another murder.

  That thought made Pinsley realize that he was running out of time in another sense, as well. A glance at his pocket watch told him that, if he was going to take Kaia to the theatre again tonight, he needed to get back to the hotel soon. He’d been a fool to think that he could investigate in such a way, just letting rumors of actors with grudges lead him this way and that across the city. He needed to get to the heart of this. His only hope was that a return to the theatre would provide new information. Perhaps speaking to the director would help, in spite of the man having thrown him and Kaia out of the place earlier.

  He made to leave, but the bartender called over to him.

  “You look familiar, but I’d know your face if you’d been in here before.”

  “I’m new to Paris,” Pinsley said.

  “It must be someone else… it’s going to bug me for days. Who do you remind me of… ah, I have it. There’s an actress, Olivia Fabien. She looks so much like you, and, come to think of it, she’s English too. Her accent is better than yours, though.”

  Pinsley froze at those words, all thoughts of leaving suddenly forgotten.

  “Olivia?” Pinsley said. “You know Olivia?”

  “Why, do you?” the bartender said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if those weren’t words that simultaneously made Pinsley’s heart swell with hope and fill with worries.

  “I… I’m her father,” Pinsley replied. He didn’t know that for sure, of course. This could be an entirely different woman, but the similarities seemed too great for it to be simple coincidence. What were the odds on her having come here, though?

  The more Pinsley thought about it, however, the more he realized that it wasn’t as unlikely as all that. If Olivia was an actress, then it was entirely plausible that this might be the kind of place she would frequent. He had to take that chance.

  “Her father?” the bartender said.

  “I only recently learned that she was in Paris,” Pinsley said. “I don’t suppose… do you know where she lives?”

  “I don’t know,” the bartender said. “I shouldn’t just give out the addresses of young actresses like that.”

  “Please,” Pinsley said. He couldn’t keep the desperation from his voice. “I’ve been looking for her for years. I need to find her.”

  “I suppose it’s all right,” the bartender said. “She lives in a building on the Rue Saint Cecile, north of the river. Number… hey, Ricard, which number does Olivia Fabien live at again.”

  “Fifty-three,” a man called back.

  Pinsley’s heart sang at that news. He had a possible address for his daughter. A part of him longed to simply go there now, and try… well, he wasn’t sure what to try.

  That lack of certainty was part of why he didn’t go. The other part was that there was still a chance that someone else might be killed tonight. He needed to get back to the hotel, and then to the theatre. Olivia was important, but this… this couldn’t wait.

  Rushing out of the bar, he hailed a carriage back to the hotel. As it rumbled along, he thought about Olivia, and about Kaia. They were more alike than he wanted to admit, both headstrong, both more likely to do what they wanted than anything Pinsley said. Then there was the case. He’d run out of leads chasing around out of work actors. Now, he just had to hope that there was something at the theatre.

  When the cab pulled up outside the hotel, Pinsley alighted and paid as quickly as he could. He rushed inside and found Madam Farge there behind the reception desk.

  “If you’re looking for your girl, she went out, not long ago. A few minutes or so. She thought I didn’t see her, but I did.”

  “And you didn’t stop her?” Pinsley said.

  “I told her the dangers, and she still chose to go,” Madam Farge said. “I’m not trying to control what she does.”

  “Damn it,” Pinsley said. “Which way did she go?”

  “How would I know?” the landlady countered. “Maybe she went left out of the door?”

  It wasn’t much to go on, but Pinsley knew that he had to try. Heading out into the street, he looked around, trying to guess whi
ch way Kaia might have gone. The problem with her being led by instinct, or whim, or… yes, he would say it, some power of her own, was that it made it impossible to establish her movements through logic.

  The best he could do was to hope that, if it really had been just a few minutes, some of the same people might still be on the street, and might remember her. A newspaper seller not far from the door to the hotel was an obvious place to start.

  “Have you seen a young woman come out of the hotel in the last few minutes? About this tall-” Pinsley didn’t get further than that before the newspaper seller reacted.

  “Ah, the pretty one who seemed to be following the other woman.”

  Pinsley didn’t know anything about another woman, but that sounded like the kind of thing Kaia might do, so he nodded.

  “That’s her. Which way did she go?”

  The newspaper seller pointed, and Pinsley set off, as quickly as he dared.

  “Have you seen an English girl go past here?” he asked some passersby, and then then realized the problem with that. Kaia’s accent was more French than his now. “No, not English, a pretty girl, well dressed, but with an accent like a Parisian docker?”

  They shook their heads; obviously it was no use asking someone walking along, because they wouldn’t have been here when Kaia passed. Pinsley tried a café instead, on the basis that people there were more static, and might be watching the people going by.

  “Has anyone seen a girl go past?” he asked. “Seventeen years old, in a pale dress, with blonde hair, and out alone.” That might help to identify her, since most young women had chaperones at this hour.

  “There was a girl,” a man called back. “Very pretty. She said she was waiting for her friend, but then rushed off.”

  “Which way?” Pinsley asked, and set off again as soon as the customer pointed.

  That got him down another street, and this was what finding someone in a city was, because it wasn’t like out in the countryside, where there might be footprints or disturbed foliage, the way he’d spotted ambushes back in Crimea. Instead, it was going from person to person, trying to find someone who had seen the right thing. That was harder when he didn’t have his contacts from London, but he could still do it.

  Pinsley had to believe that, especially if Kaia was following someone. That could mean all kinds of danger for her. What if she was following another potential victim for the murderer? What if she was following the murderer themselves? That thought made Pinsley hurry more.

  When he came to a crowd of people who were standing around, chatting with one another, he asked again.

  “Did a girl come this way?”

  “Yes,” a woman said. “Rude she was, too, pushing her way through in a hurry.”

  “Which way did she go?”

  Pinsley set off in the direction of another pointing finger, looking around for the next group of people who were likely to have been there long enough to see Kaia. He found them in the form of a street chess game.

  “Did a girl come past here?” he demanded.

  “There was one who interrupted like you before,” one of the players snapped.

  “Which way did she go?”

  “I’m trying to concentrate,” the player insisted.

  Pinsley glanced at the board. “It’s mate in five if you play knight to F6. There, now you don’t have to concentrate. Which way did she go?”

  The player looked down at the board, looked up at him, and pointed mutely. Pinsley hurried off to angry sounds from the crowd behind him. He kept walking briskly, only stopping when he saw a flower seller.

  “Did a girl come past here?” he asked. “Seventeen, blonde hair, talks with an accent that doesn’t match her clothes?”

  “There was a strange girl who asked if I could see someone who wasn’t there,” the flower seller said.

  “Where did she go?”

  The flower seller pointed to a stonemason’s yard. “There. She went there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Kaia tried to be as still as one of the statues around her, barely even daring to breathe as the two shadow-possessed people in front of her greeted one another.

  “Welcome,” the stonemason said. “As you can see, all is in order.”

  “In order?” the young woman said. “What about the Shadowseers?”

  Even if the rest of this hadn’t already held Kaia rapt, that word would have caught her attention. Could the shadows themselves lead her to the Shadowseers, and to her sister?

  “They are gone from Paris. They will not interfere,” the stonemason said.

  Those words were like a dagger to Kaia’s heart. She’d hoped so much that she might find the Shadowseers, and now they weren’t even in Paris?

  “Gone where,” the young woman asked, and it was exactly the question that Kaia wanted the answer to.

  “To a city in the country of Bavaria called Munich,” the stonemason said. “Bavaria. Munich. Such a strange thing humans do, to pin the world down with words like that.”

  “Words and light and order,” the young woman said, in a tone of absolute distaste. “Their kind has imposed itself on this world more and more. In the old days, our kind would come through, and the world was filled with beautiful darkness. Now, there is light, even at night.”

  She gestured, and Kaia realized that it was in the direction of the faint glow coming from the gas streetlights.

  “Hateful things,” the stonemason agreed. “But soon to be gone.”

  “Assuming the Shadowseers can truly do nothing to stop this,” the woman said.

  “I told you, they are not here. They left to find the relic.”

  Even from her hiding spot in the dark, Kaia could see the worry on the woman’s face.

  “And if they find it? There is no point in opening portals if they can simply shut them down and cut us off from the spaces beyond.”

  “You worry too much,” the stonemason said. “They do not know yet that they need the girl to wield the relic, and they do not have her. By the time they find her, if they find her, this will be done.”

  “It will be done for me tonight,” the woman said, and Kaia thought that she heard sadness there.

  “Your sacrifice will echo within us,” the stonemason replied. “It will pave the way for a new world here.”

  Kaia tried to make sense of all of that, but where could she even begin? The first fact that sank in was that the Shadowseers weren’t in Paris, but in Munich, in a completely different country. To find them, she and the inspector were going to have to travel again.

  As for the rest of it… Kaia wasn’t sure what to make of it. The shadows talked as if they had come from somewhere that wasn’t this world, but what did the rest of it mean? What portals were they talking about? Were they talking about some kind of door to the place where the shadows came from?

  Another question came to Kaia: who was the girl? Was there some girl out there who could stop the shadows?

  Kaia was still thinking about that when a voice sounded, only a pace or two away from her.

  “What are you doing here, girl?”

  Kaia turned sharply, and found herself face to face with a middle aged, aristocratic looking man in a frock coat and top-hat. She felt the waves of shadow pouring from him and realized too late that if there could be two of them without her realizing, there could just as easily be three.

  Kaia almost froze, but she’d been in so many dangerous situations in the last few weeks that it seemed that her body had started to react automatically when in them. She pushed the man away and then darted among the statues, trying to lose him among the human forms there.

  She darted past them, the way she might have pushed her way through a crowd. Kaia could hear the sounds of the shadow-possessed aristocrat following, and she tried to slow him by pushing over a statue as she passed. She heard him curse, and smiled to herself as she turned, trying to make her way back towards the yard’s gate.

  The stonemason was standing
in front of it, his hammer and chisel still in his hands.

  “No escape that way,” he said.

  Kaia darted back among the statuary, leaping over a block of stone. Her dress snagged on it and she tumbled, but she rolled back to her feet quickly. The young woman was there in front of her then.

  “You can’t go this way, either.”

  Kaia turned at bay, but now all three of them were closing in on her, and the aristocrat had a cane in his hand whose weighted head looked as though it would make almost as good a weapon as the stonemason’s hammer.

  “We weren’t expecting you here,” he said. “We thought we lost you in the Marais district.”

  Kaia had never set eyes on him before. Did he think that she was someone else?

  “I thought that someone was following me,” the young woman said. “I couldn’t quite see who, but I knew there was someone. And it turns out to be you.”

  “I don’t know who you think I am,” Kaia said.

  “Oh, don’t play dumb,” the aristocrat said. “Should we kill her now?”

  “No,” the stonemason replied. He seemed to be in charge, and the sense of utter wrongness coming from him seemed to be the strongest. Maybe he was inhabited by the most powerful shadow? “I want her to see this.”

  He took a length of rope out of his apron and bound Kaia’s wrists while the others watched her to make sure that she couldn’t strike out. He tied her to the arm of another statue, so that it looked stupidly as if she were holding hands with it. Testing out the ropes, Kaia barely felt any give in them at all.

  “You should feel honored,” the woman said. “You are about to see things most mortals never see. You will see the death of a shadow, and the opening of a portal to our realm. You will be the first to glimpse it, in the moments before your end.”

  “The death of a shadow?” Kaia said.

  “These things have a cost,” the stonemason replied. “Opening a way to the between spaces that will last? There is only one way, and it requires sacrifice.”