Light glowed within, illuminating finely dressed patrons seated at the bar and around candle-topped tables. The walls were supposedly spelled to keep the noise from leaking out onto the street and into the neighboring buildings along it.
My escort walked past the front entrance.
Fear was soon replaced with curiosity as I was led down the tight alleyway beside the dark florist and around the corner to a metal flight of stairs. If anything, after another night spent tossing and turning with inescapable images of flesh-eating mist falling from a rippling sky, I could do with the distraction.
We climbed all the way to the third floor, the door opening with a quiet creak. “After you,” the gent murmured, his bushy mustache hiding his lips.
I nodded my gratitude out of habit and waded into a dimly lit hall. Brass lamps lined the bowing walls between a long row of closed plum-colored doors.
“Down the end and to your left. She’s waiting for you.”
I turned back, but found no sign of the monocle wearing fellow, whom I assumed might have been Morin’s husband. The wood floor groaned beneath my slipper-encased feet. The sound of laughter and clinking glasses drifted up the stairwell from the bar below. But other sounds could not be heard. At the end of the hall, I stopped, each breath growing slimmer.
The rooms must have been spelled for privacy, too.
Perhaps a distraction wasn’t what I needed after all. A night of unbroken sleep and a week to make more plans and better sense of all this sounded much better.
“Have you any idea of the time?” came a shrill voice and a cloud of that apricot perfume. “I was beginning to think you might have escaped Darold’s escort.”
“I, uh...” Before I could form proper words, Madam Morin’s hand curled around my wrist and tugged me into a large room. “Wait, I think we should talk about something,” I said, and swallowed as I studied the piles and rows of garments and lace and wigs choking nearly half of the room. “First, I mean.”
Waving my request away, Morin released me. “In case you haven’t noticed, the third floor is predominantly staff quarters. This is where you will arrive and leave. Quickly now”—a wary look was given to the door I’d been dragged through—“there’s no more time for dawdling.” She then hurried me behind a privacy curtain in the corner of the room and thrust the heavy velvet closed. “Your client arrives any moment, and he does not like to be kept waiting.”
A dress flew over the curtain and landed upon my head.
After enduring Rolina for so many years, I was more than skilled at handling those with no patience. Yet alarm speared through me at the mention of he.
Struggling into the filmy mixture of elastane, lace, and organza, I snapped the peach concoction into place over my arms and hips with a wince. “Skies squash me,” I whispered, turning to the side to inspect the skintight bodice in the scratched mirror. “I look like a peacock.”
A volcano of organza and ribbon rose at my waist to then spill beneath my hips. It fell to the floor to barely cover my toes.
The curtain was ripped open.
Morin’s crimson lips pursed as she eyed me. “Hair up,” she said, a finger in the air as she circled me. “Leave a few curls out. He is sure to love the kiss of winter-touched hair over a slim neck such as yours.” Lowering to the floor, she clucked with disapproval as she attempted to pull the skirts down. “No shoes. Too tall as it is.”
Straightening, her shrewd gaze dragged slowly over my physique. Unaccustomed to being so overtly scrutinized, I lifted my chin and curled my fingers into my palms to keep from covering my breasts. Which were at risk of bursting from their lace and satin enclosure, no matter how tightly wrapped. “Just how faerie did you say you are again?”
“I...” I frowned because I hadn’t, while wondering why it would matter. “I don’t know.” I tried not to laugh as I said, “A lot?”
A brow raised, Morin licked her teeth. “Show me those ears.” Lifting my hair, I did as requested, and a smile that appeared more hungry than pleased lit her green eyes. “Whatever you are, dear darling, you’ll certainly pass as full.”
Said ears heated and filled with my racing heartbeat as I attempted to ignore unwanted thoughts of what awaited.
“Come.” Turning, she beckoned for me to follow her back down the hall to a room at the very end near the exit. “Finish preparing in here. Hair, rouge, you know what to do. Hurry.”
The door slammed. Powders plumed from pots upon the once white and now stained furniture surrounding me.
There was only one other creature present. A male who sat at a stretch of mirror-lined tables edging the far wall. He’d paused in applying kohl to his eyes, and met my gaze in the mirror. “Fresh meat?”
I looked at the trays of glitters and powders scattered before him, unsure what to do. “I’m...” I swallowed thickly. “I think I might be sick.”
“Sit down,” he said with a scowl, then returned to lining his bright-emerald eyes. “You’ll ruin our tips with the scent of vomit clinging to us.” He was a faerie, or at least half, judging by the near-point of his ruby-studded ears.
I did as he said, but my hand shook as I reached for the jar of rouge brushes. Instead, I shoved it in my lap and stared at my reflection. My cheeks, high and sharply curved, were drawn, making my soil-dark eyes appear black.
I bit my lips to bring back their color. I could certainly do with the rouge. A ghost. My client was about to meet with a wraith. I was about to meet with a stranger, and I...
I couldn’t move.
Silence permeated like another flesh-eating mist. I twisted my fingers while silently reciting my letters in an effort to quell the unease noosing around my throat.
The male’s rich voice was gentler when he eventually spoke once more. “The first night is always the most daunting, but you never know...” He set the tiny brush back into a vial. “You might enjoy it.”
“Do you?” I asked, unsure why but needing his answer all the same.
He laughed, a buttery sound that both jarred and soothed. “Darling, do I look like I hate it? It’s the best job I’ve ever had, and believe me,” he huffed, “I’ve had many in my hundred years of existence.”
At that, I turned on the cushioned stool to better look at him. He appeared not a drop older than twenty-five years. Though that was no surprise. Even half-fae could live a few hundred years before signs of aging slowly took hold.
The male twisted on his stool, too. His thigh-high leather boots creaked when he reached down to his feet.
His focus sharpened on my face as he paused in tying the maze of laces. “Who in the skies are you, innocent one?” He sniffed. His neck rolled as he straightened, gaze brightening. “Such dark eyes for such a seemingly pure soul.”
I refrained from saying I wasn’t pure. I couldn’t be when I was more grateful than distraught over Rolina’s demise.
The door burst open.
Morin cursed viciously. “You haven’t done your hair.” I watched her scowl in the mirror. “Or so much as touched your face.” She looked over her shoulder into the hall, her complexion paling when she stared back at me and chewed her red-painted lip. She sighed. “Never mind. We’ve no time. Come.”