Karen Chance - Hunt the Moon

“I do not sink zat would do any good,” Francoise said, looking thoughtful. “ ’E is very strict wiz his designs.”

“But?” I said, because there’d clearly been one in her tone.

“But ’e is on lunch at ze moment. . . .”

“And?”

She pulled something out of a drawer and dangled it off one finger. “And I ’ave his keys.”

She waved one of the other girls over to cover for her, and in less than a minute, we were past the back counter and into the fitting area, where I had to stop to deal with my shadows. The two golden-eyed vamps had been loitering nearby all morning, pretending to be part of the scenery. They weren’t doing it particularly well. Everybody else was in shorts and T-shirts, in respect for the 120-plus-degree heat wave outside, while they were impersonating the Men in Black.

Still, we had a truce; I pretended I didn’t notice them, and they didn’t crowd me too closely. But enough was enough. “Out,” I told them abruptly.

“We have to do a check first.”

“Then do it and leave.”

“Why?” One of them demanded. He was one of the new guys and I didn’t know his name. “What are you planning to do in here?”

I blinked at him. “It’s a dressing room. What do you think I’m planning to do?”

“That doesn’t explain why we have to go.”

“Because I might be trying on some clothes.”

“And?”

“And I might have to get naked!”

He just looked at me for a moment. “You are aware that we’ve seen it, right?”

“OUT!”

As soon as they’d left, Francoise unlocked the door to Augustine’s workroom and we scurried inside. It was a lot like the man himself, a flamboyant sprawl of creative excess, which in this case involved bolts of expensive fabric, bins of precious trims, heaps of glossy furs, and assorted sparkly things. There were tables holding materials, whiteboards covered with sketches and some half-assembled mannequins looking like war victims in the corner.

But I didn’t see any sewing machines or other nonfabulous equipment. Only a couple of tomato-shaped pin cushions that buzzed around our heads as soon as we entered. Like they knew we weren’t supposed to be there.

Francoise waved them away and they floated over to the back wall, where they huddled together ominously. Then she pulled back a curtain, and I promptly forgot about them and the vamps and even my aching body. Because Augustine was a bastard, but he was a brilliant bastard.

“Ze spring line,” Francoise said with a flourish worthy of a TV spokesmodel.

I didn’t say anything, because my mouth was busy hanging open. Okay, I decided, maybe I’d misjudged the guy. Because obviously he’d been busy.

I recognized some of his staples: a nude sheath dress with black lace fans embroidered on it that opened and closed every few seconds; a bunch of kicky little origami dresses that constantly reworked themselves into new shapes; and a selection of jeweled columns of what looked like liquid ruby, sapphire and diamond, the last so bright it was hard to look at.

But the real story this season was obviously the seasons themselves.

A nearby pale blue gown was printed with a swirl of autumn leaves—russet, gold and rich, earthen brown. But the leaves didn’t just move; they also didn’t see any need to actually stay on the fabric. They tumbled down the garment and spilled out into the air, swirling around the dress in one last, brief, ecstatic dance before finally vanishing.

The same was true for a shimmering white gown that shed glistening snowflakes whenever I touched it, and a grass green one with sleeves formed of hundreds of fluttering butterflies. But the real showstopper was a pale pink kimono with a Japanese landscape hand painted onto the silk.

Francoise had been watching me with an amused tilt to her red lips. “ ’E is good, no?”

“He is good, yes,” I breathed, as the kimono shimmered seductively under the lights.

It would have been beautiful on its own, but the scene had been magicked to change as I watched. Snow melted from the bare branches of a tree, which sprouted leaves, and then delicate pink and white blossoms. They hung there, trembling, until blown off the surface of the dress by a summer’s breeze.

But unlike the images on the other dresses, these didn’t almost immediately disappear. They hung in the air for a long moment, creating a sort of train effect that gradually vanished maybe three feet behind the dress. And when I caught one on my hand, I swear it was petal soft, with weight and substance, before it melted away into nothingness.

“Zees is one of ze special orders for ze ceremony,” Francoise said, reaching up to flip over a little card affixed to the hanger.

“Is it . . . is it mine?” I asked, fervently promising every deity I could think of unswerving devotion if only it said my name. I could look like a Pythia in that dress. I could take on the world in that dress.

“Non,” Francoise said, squinting at the card.

“Whose is it?” I asked, breathing a little harder. And wondering whether said individual might be open to bribery. There was still a week and a half to the big day. Maybe Augustine could make another dress for whomever—

“Ming-duh,” Francoise read, scrunching up her face. “Or’owevair you say eet.”

“What?” I snatched the little card and stared at it, hoping she’d just mangled the pronunciation. But no. The card bore the name of the leader of the East Asian Vampire Court.

Goddamnit.

“But . . . but she’s Chinese,” I protested. “Why would she want a kimono?”

Francoise gave a Gallic shrug. “You wanted it,” she pointed out. “And she ees also ze head of ze Japanese vampires, is she not? Perhaps eet is—’ow you say?—diplomacy.”

I looked at the dress, which had cycled back to the winter stage again. It was no less lovely, despite the relative bleakness. The black branches were a beautiful contrast to the shell-pink silk, and on the one slashing across the skirt, a bluebird had paused to delicately preen its feathers.

It was achingly, desperately beautiful, and there was no way, no way at all, that anything I wore was going to compete. That wouldn’t have bothered me quite so much if it had been going to someone else. But Ming-de wasn’t just one of the world’s most powerful vampires. She was also one of the women I strongly suspected of having been among Mircea’s lovers.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, she was also an arresting, delicate porcelain doll of a woman. Even in her normal clothes, she made my five-foot-four frame look Amazonian and cloddish, and my reddish blond coloring look washedout and common. And in this—

Okay, it was official. My life sucked .

Francoise noticed my expression and frowned. “We’aven’t seen your dress yet,” she pointed out. “It may be even better.”

I shook my head. “It won’t be.”

“You don’t know zat,” she said impatiently, sorting through the other gowns and sending a cloud of multicolored magic into the air.

There were a lot of them—it looked like business was booming—and I didn’t know when Augustine might be back from lunch. I plowed in to help her. “I came by for a couple of reasons,” I said, as we furiously flipped tags.

“Vraiment? Qu’est-ce que tu veux?”

I explained about the night’s events. “I wanted to ask about what Pritkin said,” I finished. “You were in Faerie a while, right?”

“Too long,” she said darkly.

I hesitated, not wanting to poke at old wounds, because Francoise’s trip to the land of the Fey hadn’t been by choice. One of the things the old legends got right was the Fey’s poor reproductive record, which you’d think wouldn’t matter so much to beings who lived as long as they did. But apparently that wasn’t the case, because they had no compunction at all about kidnapping anyone they thought might be able to give them a little help.