Delilah Dawson - Wicked After Midnight

“Oh.” I was mortified that he’d been there all along and extremely grateful that the lights and our banter and my moaning hadn’t woken him. “I’m sorry, Bea. I didn’t know.”

She shook her head and smiled, then pointed at the door, then at Blaise, then put her finger to her lips.

“I won’t tell.” Bea raised her eyebrows at Vale. “ We won’t tell.” She exhaled in relief and hugged me. “Wait. Are you in trouble? Is someone . . .” I wasn’t quite sure how to ask the questions I wanted to ask. Was someone trying to hurt the boy? Or was she trying to protect him from knowledge of her nighttime business? How could a young boy grow up in a cabaret and not know what his mother and the other daimons did to earn their place?

Her eyes shot to the door, then back to Blaise. Her hands flew up briefly before clenching into fists. She shook her head sadly. She pointed at me, then Vale, then Blaise, then raised a hopeful finger to her lips.

“No worries, honey. We’re leaving. We won’t bother him again, now that we know he’s here at night.”

For just a second, her eyes went impish, her eyebrows shooting up. Her message was clear. She knew exactly what we’d been doing. I blushed, and she smiled sweetly and patted my arm. She gave the sign for Thank you , hugged me again, and slipped around the boxes to pick up the limp boy. Cradling him against her chest, she slipped back out the door as quickly as she’d come in.

Vale and I watched her go with matching frowns and crossed arms.

“I wonder why Bea is so scared,” he finally said.

“I’m going to find out tomorrow.”

He chuckled. “Good luck, bébé . Even for a mute, Bea is locked up tighter than a Kraken’s arsehole.”

I swatted his arm, then clutched it. “You won’t tell, right?”

He patted me, just as Bea had. As if I was a child. “I’m a professional brigand, bébé . Keeping secrets is what I do best.”

I raised my eyebrows at him and stared hard at his mouth. “Maybe second best,” was all I said.

Falling asleep at Paradis wasnever easy. The high of performing, the dizzy fizz of the absinthe, my worries about Cherie, my mixed feelings about Vale and Lenoir, the secretive whispers and bare feet of the daimons returning from their assignations: no matter how long I stared at the patterned ceiling of my room, things never coalesced into a complete picture. It was like being too close to a Monet painting, and I couldn’t step back to see what all the smeary dots meant.

Tonight, at least, my body was exhausted and sated and deliciously boneless. Part of me was utterly shocked at what had happened on the trapeze. Most of me felt a grand sense of relief. Being around sex and lust day after day was pretty boring when you weren’t feeling it yourself, but this was different. Unlike the men in the audience, Vale liked me for more than my body. And yes, I knew I had a crush on him. Back in Criminy’s caravan, I’d dreamed of a man—not a boy but a man who was dangerous but safe, funny but effective, strong but willing to support me instead of caging me. To think that I’d found all these qualities in an entirely hot man I didn’t want to eat? Unbelievable. And after tonight, I had to hope he felt the same way. Surely a man didn’t do that to a woman on a trapeze without caring about her?

The fact that he’d willingly ingested my blud also spoke volumes. Other than Maestro Casper Sterling’s time in the caravan, when it’d been a bit of a joke how willing he was to trade blud for temporary freedom, I’d never known a non-Bludman besides Tish who was willing to risk the trade. Could Abyssinians even be pushed toward madness by blud? Veruca the sword swallower was the only other Abyssinian I’d known, and she’d mostly kept to herself.

For the millionth time since waking up in Sang, I wished for a laptop and a fast Internet connection. It was painful, not being able to access information immediately in a private manner. I wanted to know more about Paris, about Paradis, about Lenoir, and mostly about Vale. I chuckled at the ceiling, picturing what a wild brigand’s Facebook page would look like. And then I thought about how in another world, there would be fewer places where my best friend could be hidden. Technology made things more transparent, but magic only obscured things further.

I dreamed of dancing in a grand ballroom, a huge, bell-shaped dress swirling around me. But I couldn’t see the dark figure who held me in the cage of his arms.

After sleeping in and enjoyinga good scrubbing at my ewer the next morning, I sauntered into the theater to find an enormous chandelier hovering a few feet off the ground.

“I kind of thought you guys were joking about this.”

Charline tapped her pen against her notebook, which was her polite way of showing annoyance, now that I was a star. Just a few hours ago, as I’d drunk my blood and smiled at an innocent and still-sleepy Blaise, they’d delivered my finished poster to my room. It was like the gorgeous love child of Mucha and Lautrec, with “La Demitasse” emblazoned across the top on a banner and an overly stylized version of me doing the can-can with impossibly bent legs and, of course, the dreaded cup on my hat.

It was possibly the only thing more ridiculous than the giant chandelier, which had been cleverly fashioned to include plenty of places for me to sit, swing, dangle, and contort. And Charline had already handed me a sheet of paper covered in her tiny, perfect script, outlining exactly what I was expected to do. I folded it up and tucked it into my corset.

“Can I go now?”

Her face screwed up, and she went red all over. “Of course you cannot go! We have a new show to rehearse! The entire theater is sold out, including the boxes. This poster is being pasted on every wall in the city. They say princes from all over the world will be flying in on their private dirigibles. We’re planning a masked ball. You must be perfect.”

“I’m always perfect. And Lenoir is expecting me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Lenoir can wait. Now, on the chandelier and into position.”

I glared at her and lifted my lip to show a fang.

“If you please, Mademoiselle Demitasse,” she added, although it pained her.

I stared longingly at the door, where Auguste waited, hat in hand. All too easily, I could imagine Lenoir waiting in his attic, mixing his paints, pouring our absinthe, watching the sunlight move across my empty chair while his cats stared disdainfully at the door. My own distress bothered me more than his anger. He couldn’t ruin me now, even if he didn’t finish the painting. But I wanted him to finish it, wanted to spend those swooning, magical, timeless hours under the spell of his brush and the dark scrutiny of his cloudy eyes. Whether it was the fellow feeling of the only other Bludman in the city or the pull of a knowing and charismatic older man, I felt the distance between us like a slender string pulling me from afar.

“ S’il vous plaît , Demitasse.” Charline waited, arm out invitingly, skin the warning red of a stop sign. “I’ll call out your marks.”

I sighed. “Of course. But only once through. And then I must go to Lenoir.”

“Of course,” she answered with a cold smile. “But first, you earn it.”

When I finally reached Lenoir’sdoorstep, I knocked with trepidation, hoping the bruises on my arms and legs would fade before the master could paint them. Practice had taken longer than I’d hoped, and my anxiousness to finish had meant that I’d made foolish mistakes. New equipment always meant new sore spots, and Lenoir’s low-necked gown would show dark blooms that most Sangish clothes covered up. I didn’t want him to see me any less than perfect.