Wicked After Midnight

“Demi?”



I grunted, and he spun around to stare at me.



“Mon dieu, bébé. You look like a child with an ice cream cone.”



I shrugged but didn’t stop drinking. He looked half disgusted and half proud. When footsteps sounded on the stairs, I dropped the fuzzy carcass and got back into fighting stance, but Vale merely straightened and held the blood-spattered claw at his side.



“Quite a welcome, Charmant.”



The daimon who rose from the floor like a devil born from hell looked as if he belonged in a barbershop quartet, but evil rolled off him in waves. He tipped a straw boater at us, mouth twitching under a spectacular mustache and skin the color of Mountain Dew.



“Oh, customers? Tut. I was just letting my pets out for a little walky.” He glanced around, noting the carnage of pony-sized vampire poodles with one raised eyebrow. “They don’t breed bludhounds like they used to, you know.” He turned back to the hole in the floor and shouted, “Coco! Bring the broom and dustpan. Again.”



After the bludhounds, I wouldn’t trust anything spit forth from that dark rectangle. A heavy clanking from deep below got louder until a copper orangutan emerged, hobbling on long arms like crutches. It clambered over to me with red eyes blinking impatiently and held out fingers that clicked open and shut in annoyance. With a last pull at the sluggish blud, I placed the drained body in its grasp, and it swung down the stairs, enveloped in the darkness. A series of meaty rips and grinding noises made me glance away.



“I should charge you for that, you know,” Charmant said with a fussy and exaggerated sigh, and Vale laughed.



“For what? Destroying illegally bred bludhounds? The gendarmes would pay us in gold for that.”



“Gendarmes are more easily bought than bludhounds. Why are you here, brigand? Come to buy more teeth for your collection?”



I stood and shot Vale a measuring look. He had neglected to mention he had come here to pay this devil with cash. He shrugged unapologetically.



“I’m here to inquire about a gold pin seen around town. The crest is a raven’s skull with a top hat and bat wings.”



Charmant rubbed filed black nails against the sharp lapels of his red-and-white-striped jacket. “Pish-posh. Sounds enigmatic.”



“You know what it is, and you’re going to tell us.”



Charmant’s mustache curled with his smile. “Am I, now?”



The clockwork orangutan clattered back upstairs and gently shoved me aside with a knuckle and an apologetic, tinny “Ooh ooh.” It picked up another bludhound and carried it downstairs over one arm like a coat as the two men glared at each other. I wasn’t sure how or why, but the copper ape looked downright sad.



Vale crossed his arms, the silver claw dangling over his taut bicep. “You’ll tell us, yes.”



Charmant finally giggled, an oddly mad sound. “Depends on what you’re going to give me for the information, I suppose. A few of her fangs? A tube of your mixed bastard blood? A favor? Your firstborn? Perhaps you have a unicorn horn or a selkie skin to trade or some lovely Yssian scales?” Charmant’s eyebrows waggled like dying caterpillars.



Without a word, Vale reached into his shirt and withdrew a silk scarf, testing its weight on his palm. Charmant snatched it up without touching Vale and unwrapped it like a kid at Christmas.



“Oh la la,” he purred. “A bludmare’s lucky horseshoe. A fine trade, indeed.”



Charmant caressed the rusty U in a thoroughly unappetizing way, then tucked it lovingly into his jacket and dusted off his hands. Turning on one heel, he disappeared into the hole in the ground, tail slithering, snakelike, behind him. I was about to protest his abandonment, but Vale put a hand on my arm and shook his head. After a few moments of silence, the orangutan swung up and knuckle-walked to Vale. Its long arm extended, a folded card grasped in dexterous fingers. Vale opened it so we both could read it.



“Anatole Fermin, Artificer, Boulevard Saint-Germain.”



“Do you know who that is?” I asked.



Vale shook his head, angry. “Let’s go find out.”



The orangutan held open the door, its mournful red eyes tracing our steps as we left, as if somewhere under the metal plates and gears, the thing had a heart and had lost all hope long ago.



“Ooh ooh,” it said again, and I wasn’t sure if it meant good luck or good-bye.



Tears pricked my eyes for a reason I couldn’t name, and I held out a hand. The orangutan’s fingers softly wrapped around mine, its eyes blinking up.



“Thank you, Coco,” I said as we hurried away.



* * *



Outside, even the dim light of a cloudy afternoon felt suddenly bright. Vale pulled me aside in the doorway of an empty shop and licked the pad of his thumb to scrub at my face.



“Back off, Mom.” I wriggled away.



“You’re covered in wolf blud, bébé. We’ll never make it to Saint-Germain unless I can clean you off a little.” I sighed and held up my face. To my surprise, he planted a kiss on my lips before dabbing at me again and again with his thumb. “Thank heavens you were wearing burgundy today.”



My eyes were drawn to a flash of golden skin through his black jacket. And beneath that, blood. Half-Abyssinian blood that smelled all kinds of wrong. I wrinkled up my nose and grabbed him.



“You bit?”



He shrugged. “That’s what killed the last one. I told you, bébé. My blood is dangerous stuff.”



“It won’t turn you into a . . . like, a werewolf or anything, will it?”



He snickered and pulled my jacket over my chest, buttoning it up to my chin. I hadn’t been so covered up since the carriage ride with Cherie, and it rankled. And choked. I tried to yank the stiff collar away from my throat, and Vale gently pulled my hands down.



“Do not worry about me. Worry about you.” He caught my hand, his thumb caressing my palm. “If you lost your gloves, use your pockets. It’ll be easier if you act like you’re not the famous lone Bludman of Mortmartre.”



I smiled to myself. The second Bludman of Mortmartre, actually. But he couldn’t know about Lenoir.



We hurried out of Deep Darkside, and I didn’t look back. Except at the end, because I had the strangest feeling, as if we were being followed. I didn’t smell anything unusual, but after being attacked by gigantic rabid monster poodles, I wasn’t going to start trusting reality.



The world brightened even more noticeably as we passed under the archway and reentered the colorful domain of the daimons. Street after street, Vale pulled me along by my elbow, silent, intent on his errand.



Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. As we reached a quiet place on a bridge, I murmured, “How much did they cost you?”



“Ne t’en fais pas, bébé.”



“What does that mean?”



“Don’t worry about it.”



I stopped and, God help me, stamped my foot. “I know what it means, ass! How much, Vale?”



He turned to face me, gone from gruff to amused in a heartbeat, thanks to my little snit.



“A gentleman doesn’t name prices.”



“Well, I just . . . I mean . . . thank you.”



He grinned, a spark of humor back in his eyes. “De rien, mon chou.”



“I’m not your cabbage. Cabbages don’t drink blood,” I grumbled.



“So you do know some Franchian.” He eyed the slant of the sun and jerked his chin toward the other end of the bridge. “If you want to find out who this mysterious Fermin is and get back in time to perform, we must hurry.”



My eyes were drawn to the water as we scurried over the river. I couldn’t help jealously eyeing the carefree daimons and children laughing in large paddle boats shaped like demented pink swans or tossing crumbs at regular ducks and geese from dinghies floating in the teal-blue water. Bathers reclined on the grassy shores in straw hats and the sort of half-revealing bathing suits no one in Sangland would touch, even if they had a death wish. Sure, they were guarded by an electrified fence and a guard with a seawater gun and a bludrat net, but they still looked mostly relaxed. I’d spent one giddy night at the Tuileries and one brief and stolen night at the Louvre, but no one had ever offered to show me the beauties of Paris during the daylight, and it made me desperately sad. I hadn’t been born a creature of the darkness.



Soon we were on the other side of the river. The Tower loomed over us, closer than I’d ever seen it, spindly and wrapped with wires and lights and spikes to keep the pigeons from roosting. Surrounding the elevator at its base was an unwieldy metal generator crackling with electricity like something out of Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. After another block, the palpable buzz in the air subsided, and we entered a district that smelled of coal, fire, and iron. Some of the storefronts had been hollowed out and equipped with iron gates to show soot-stained daimon blacksmiths, swordsmiths, and jewelry artisans hard at work pumping bellows and hammering cherry-hot steel with a cacophonous clanking that felt like horses galloping over my brain.



“Ugh. Please tell me we’re not going to hang around here long.”



“I do not know what we’re looking for, really. This is Boulevard Saint-Germain. I haven’t spent much time here, for obvious reasons.” He nudged me in the side. “At least it’s not the leather-tanning district, n’est-ce pas? Or the one where they process civet and ambergris?”



As we passed between the forges and storefronts, reading every sign, the sun slowly sank. We didn’t have much time left before I was expected to be in costume and on a chandelier. When we came upon a blacksmith taking a rest on a bench outside his forge, Vale bowed slightly and said, “Pardon, but do you know where we might find the artificer?”



The blacksmith grunted, his thick tail twitching against the cobbles. “We’re all artificers, monsieur. Which one in particular?”



“Anatole Fermin.”



The blacksmith pointed a black-singed finger down the street, ahead of us.



“Idiot got himself crushed. They are moving his junk now.” He shook his head, his curly mustache and muscles making my heart ache with thoughts of the buff but kindly strong man, Torno, back at the carnival.