Delilah Dawson - Wicked After Midnight

“For you, bébé ! For you!” The shout was sharp, and he strangled it quickly. He looked me up and down in my ridiculous costume and chuckled bitterly. “We both have issues with men who want things we don’t wish to give, I suppose. Except I run away from mine, and you run right toward yours and start sucking on it.”

I exhaled in a growl and poked him in the chest. “I like you, but you make it so damned hard, Vale! Everyone else here worships me, and you just push and push and push.”

“I could not have said it better myself.”

“I thought after last night—”

His grin curled up, his eyes dancing. “What about last night?”

“I thought we’d found something good.”

“Oh, we did. I would like to find it again.” He licked his lip, and my knees nearly melted.

“Then stop pissing me off and pushing me away, and start wooing me, you ass.”

I spun around to flounce away, but he caught a fistful of my bustle and yanked me back. No man I’d met yet in Sang would have dared it, but he held me there with a chuckle.

“As you like, bébé . Leave with me now, and I’ll woo you in the most romantic place in Paris.”

Stifling a yawn and twitching my skirt out of his grasp, I turned. “More romantic than the catacombs?”

“Oh, you’ll enjoy this place. It is dark, private, and filled with surprises. It was once a fortress, then a palace, now a national treasure. And at this time of night, you can touch . . . whatever you wish.”

He pulled me close, and the breath caught in my throat. “You want to break into the Louvre?”

His hands tightened on my waist. “Break in? We won’t break anything. It is considered trespassing only if they catch you. And no one ever catches me.” He held up the duke’s ticket, which I had slipped into my pocket moments ago. “These are directions to a painting’s placement in the gallery. Let’s go see what it is that so interests your duke, shall we?”

“He’s not my duke.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” he whispered in my ear.

I borrowed a cloak andsome boots from Blue’s empty room and felt the first fine thrill of being bad. We left through the same door I used for my assignations, and I stared up through the rain at the copper elephant with foreboding as we slipped around its giant legs, Vale’s fingers entwined with mine. Lights shone from the portholes and hung from the ornate headdress and enameled howdah on the pachyderm’s back, and I saw what looked like a gazebo on top. I’d never been up there, but then again, all my suitors really wanted were my teeth and my body, not the foolish pretense of romance. I ducked back under the umbrella.

Once we hit the street, Vale whistled for a conveyance—a cheaper one than I’d used before and so small that we were stuffed together, touching from shoulder to ankle. Vale gave the dull-faced driver an unfamiliar address instead of giving the museum’s name, and the trap took off at killer speeds, leaving a puff of violet smoke hanging in the gaslight behind us. The machinery was so loud that we had trouble hearing each other, but there was a new intimacy to being so close and doing something so normal. He was wearing his striped pants and vest, and the umbrella sat sentry between our knees like a bony chaperone.

In lieu of talking, he walked his fingers up my arm every time I paid attention to something else that wasn’t him. Each time I swatted him away, we both knew it was only a matter of time before I would pretend to stare at something else.

Rain dotted the roof as the conveyance pulled to a stop, and Vale slipped a franc into the man’s filthy fist and helped me down. My boots slipped on the cobbles, and I tried to orient myself. As usual with Vale, we were in a dark alley in a place where no lady would go during daylight.

As if reading my mind, Vale opened the umbrella over my head and pulled me deeper into the shadows with a murmured “Quiet, now, bébé . I would normally go underground, but I am attempting to woo you, which requires a giddy stroll through an evening rain, yes?”

I glanced at the soot-streaked bricks and piles of bones and rocks. “It’s just like I always dreamed—slimy carcasses and all.”

“I would kiss you to keep you silent, but around here, we might be eaten.”

The words sent shivers to dance along my spine, but I took his hint and went quiet as he pulled me into a maze of ramshackle buildings and fallen walls. There had been a fire here; my nose told me that more than my eyes did. But they were rebuilding, and the scaffolds and piles of stone and wood left plenty of shadows to shield us from prying eyes. When Vale lifted the edge of a manhole cover, I realized why he’d encouraged me to leave my bustle at home and tried to put on a brave face as I followed him into the yawning hole.

Once we were both underground and standing on stone, he produced a metal object from his pocket. With a few flicks of a switch, a fire bloomed, and I was delighted to see my first cigarette lighter in six years. He hooked the umbrella over my arm and handed the lighter to me so that he could replace the manhole cover above, and I admired the flower and vine design chased in the brass. I almost asked him about his green pendant before remembering that he had given it to me, and I had broken it the same day during an attempted murder. Oops.

With a heavy clunk , the tunnel went pitch-black around my small flame. Vale landed beside me. He took the lighter gently, careful not to hurt me or let the fire go out, his fingers caressing mine.

“It’s not far,” he said, and I shrugged.

“I’m pretty tough.”

He pointed to my borrowed boots. “I would not wish you to get blisters.”

That small kindness reached past my cold heart, the warmth spreading as he held out a hand and guided me over a puddle. Rain plink ed overhead, and further down the tunnel, I could hear more water moving. As we walked, Vale held up the lighter to show me an ancient rock wall that subtly curved.

“We are just outside the base of the original fortress. A great daimon king built it to protect the city from humans who wished to overrun it. Legend says the daimons repelled the humans with magic and by catapulting bludrats into the human armies.”

“That’s smart. Ratapults.”

Vale laughed, and it warmed the cold tunnel like a blast of sunshine. “Come, my clever bébé . You’re about to see the inside of the gentleman’s loo. Brace yourself.”

We turned off into an empty chamber with a high ceiling. Vale handed me the lighter before whipping away a moldering old cloth to reveal a wooden ladder, which he leaned against the stone wall. He climbed carefully as I waited below, holding up the lighter to enjoy the rare chance to see him from a different angle. He was about twenty feet up when tiny rays of light struck his face in a sunburst pattern, shining through a drain. After putting his ear up to the ceiling, he slid a chunk of stone to the side with a grunt. A beam of light shot into the chamber, illuminating a beautiful mural of daimons in medieval armor, rippling flags held aloft by their tails.

“It’s clear, bébé . If you’d care to join me?”

I clicked the lighter shut, tucked it into my pocket, and started climbing. On Earth, I couldn’t imagine how terrifying this entire outing would be: navigating a treacherous city after midnight with a strange and dangerous man, followed by tromping through the sewers and climbing thirty feet into the air over stone and into a government building. But considering who I was and where I was, it was an exciting trip. And that’s when it hit me: I was about to have unfettered access to the greatest art museum in the entire world of Sang.