The Absinthe Underground, page 23
Esme’s eyes widened for a moment, and then her face wavered above Sybil. In the distance, Sybil heard Lucien call out her name, but then Sybil let the darkness take her.
PART FIVE
Beginnings and Endings
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Esme
Sybil shouldn’t have survived the stab wound to her side. Esme knew that. She’d read about such injuries in the medical textbook Lucien had loaned her from his library. She’d also been poring over Lucien’s books about Fae, frantic for any knowledge of Fae boons, as she tried to discern if Queen Mab had tricked her.
She was still no closer to answers.
All she knew was that, somehow, Sybil wasn’t dead. She was asleep on her couch in the clock tower apartment. She was still breathing. She just wasn’t awake.
She tossed and turned sometimes, crying, whimpering, muttering words, but not waking up. Esme watched, concerned, puttering, trying to read or put a clock back together, but really unable to do much other than worry.
Lucien came by daily—now bathed, shaved, and dressed in expensive-looking clean clothes—bringing groceries and meals. He spent hours with Esme, telling her about his adventures in Fae. Esme had decided she liked him quite a bit, but she wasn’t sure how his being around would change their lives if Sybil ever woke up.
When Sybil woke up.
Yes, it was when not if. Esme had to believe that was true.
More days passed. A week. Two.
Lucien told her how the Absinthe Underground had been shut up after Maeve disappeared. It was rumored the club was cursed, and what was left of it after the fire had been thoroughly looted. The great carved doors stood open, and birds nested in the sign. The patrons, dancers, and drinkers had moved on to other clubs, and the Absinthe Underground faded into legend. It was now a memory, a fever dream for the city of Severon. Though Maeve’s image still looked out from posters hung all over, immortalized by artists.
Spring fully arrived, and Lucien brought flowers for their table. Esme repotted all her mint plants, and finally leaving Sybil alone for the first time since they’d got home, she went downstairs to pay their rent for the next month from the money Maeve had given them.
She was just coming back upstairs from paying the landlady when the door to their apartment opened.
“Esme?” Sybil said, looking confused as she peered into the hallway. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair wild from sleeping for so long. But she was there, up and walking, and Esme cried out in joy to see her.
✦ ✦ Sybil ✦ ✦
Sybil’s heart soared as Esme flung herself into her arms. Despite Esme’s height, she curled around Sybil, burying her face in the gap between Sybil’s shoulder and collarbones.
“I thought I lost you.” Esme’s voice was a ragged, broken thing. “You’ve been asleep for so long.”
“How long?” Hot tears rolled along Sybil’s skin. Whether they were hers or Esme’s, Sybil didn’t know.
“Weeks.”
Weeks? How had she been asleep for weeks? Not that it really mattered. All that was important was she was here, now.
Sybil pulled Esme’s body against her own. As Esme sobbed, Sybil stroked her hair, making soothing noises. Her body ached, but her side didn’t hurt, and her mind was clear. She was wearing clean clothes, which meant someone, Esme certainly, had been taking care of her. Sybil was mildly embarrassed at the thought of what that might’ve entailed, but she pushed the feeling down, embracing instead the giddy relief of being at home with Esme.
“Are you sure you’re really here?” Esme lightly touched Sybil’s shoulder, her jawline, her cheek. She was so achingly lovely in that moment. Sybil wished for a paint brush and a canvas, to capture the fragile hope and desperate joy on Esme’s face.
Sybil swallowed hard. “I’m really here. You could never lose me. I’ll always find my way back to you, Ez.”
“You’re wrong if you think I’m ever letting you go again.” Eyes blazing, Esme moved her hand from Sybil’s cheek to the nape of her neck. What a thing it was to have a girl like Esme look at her like that.
Sybil rested her hand on Esme’s waist and stepped closer. The crisp scent of mint leaves and dusty old books filled Sybil’s nose, smelling of home and Esme. “Ez—I . . .”
Sybil trailed off, not sure if she could reveal her secret heart, even after all they’d been through. She had wanted to cross this line between them—the boundary between friends and so much more—many times, but fear always held her back. Fear of loss, rejection, or ruining the life they already had.
“Yes?” Esme said, her eyes not leaving Sybil’s.
Sybil inhaled sharply, drawing up all her courage. This was more terrifying than facing dragons or power-hungry green faeries, but she had to do it. She had to leap. “I’m sorry,” she breathed.
Esme brushed a piece of hair behind Sybil’s ears. “You don’t have to apologize for anything.” Her voice was so soft, so tender. It offered everything Sybil wanted, but Esme didn’t understand, she couldn’t.
Sybil caught Esme’s hand, twining their fingers together. “But I do! I have so much to apologize for! I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I grew up rich or that I didn’t write my father to help us. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you my mother was Fae like Maeve, or Queen Mab.”
“I doubt your mother was anything like the two of them.” Esme lifted one eyebrow quizzically, like she was studying a clock problem or reading a newspaper article that she didn’t agree with.
Tension lifted, ever so slightly from Sybil’s heart. “That’s true. She preferred dancing barefoot under the stars to conquest or dragons, but I’m half Fae . . . not that I really know what it means.”
Esme considered Sybil, her eyebrows coming together, all seriousness. “I know,” Esme said gently. “Lucien already told me about your mother.”
“That rat!”
Esme laughed. “Don’t be angry with him. When you wouldn’t wake up, we tried everything to cure you, including perusing a handful of books about Fae illnesses and medicines Lucien discovered in the Great Library. He confessed you were both half Fae—though I’d already suspected it. How else would you be able to open a door between worlds or convince Queen Mab’s dragon to let you ride it?”
A small, rueful laugh left Sybil’s lips. “That was handy, certainly, but I’m sorry you had to hear it from Lucien. I wanted to tell you.”
“You’ve hardly been in a position to tell me anything. The most you’ve said for weeks is snoring. . . .”
“Esme! Take this seriously. You know what I mean.”
“No, Sybil, you listen. Please. I know what you mean, but I also know it doesn’t matter at all. I don’t care where you come from or who your mother was. I mean, yes, you probably should’ve told me, but I know why you didn’t. And, yes, I’m objectively curious about what it means to be half Fae and we really should discuss Lucien’s theory about your grandfather crafting Queen Mab’s jewels—”
“That’s a good theory.”
“Isn’t it? And, I’d love to know what other abilities you might have. . . .”
Sybil absolutely wanted to know too. “Perhaps we can discover those someday, if we open a door into a different realm.”
“Or go back to help Chloe escape.”
“Exactly. But, Ez . . .”
“Yes?”
“That’s not all I need you to know.”
Esme leaned in, so their foreheads were touching. Sybil closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of Esme one more time before she crossed the final gulf between them.
“What else?”
“I . . . I need you to know that I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first moment I saw you. And that I still think about kissing you all the time. Every moment of the day.”
There. The words were out at last. Esme could do with them what she would.
Esme’s eyes widened for a moment, and then she laughed. It was a clear, giddy laugh.
Oh no. No, no, no.
Sybil shrunk into herself.
Laughing wasn’t good. No one wanted to offer the fragileness of their heart and get laughed at.
Don’t cry.
A flush of shame colored Sybil’s cheeks. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just— Forget it. We can just be—”
Esme gripped Sybil’s hand, pulling her close. Sybil’s heart started sprinting again at the touch.
“We can be what?” Esme asked softly, leaning in so her lips were beside Sybil’s ear.
“Friends?” Sybil said in a small voice.
Esme’s mouth grazed ever so lightly over Sybil’s earlobe. Sybil thought she might pass out. It was the most singularly intimate thing anyone had ever done to her. “And what if I don’t want to be just friends?”
Somehow, Sybil found her voice. “Oh, what would you like to be then?” she managed, as Esme’s lips trailed lightly down her neck. She leaned her head back as Esme kissed a line to the hollow between her collarbones.
“Lovers? Life partners? Something that is large and lasting and just us against the world.”
“Yes,” Sybil exhaled. “Yes to it all. Always.”
Esme stopped kissing Sybil and looked up. Sybil held her gaze for only a moment before they hurtled into each other’s arms like waves breaking on the beach.
Their first kiss was tender, ravenous, and aching all at once. Sybil was breathless from it, and her lips moved over Esme’s as their bodies molded together. She tasted like mint, as Sybil had always imagined. As Sybil took a step backward, Esme followed. Together, they slammed into the hallway wall, their lips pressed together. Esme kissed Sybil like she was essential. Like she was air and water, like Esme had been missing both for too long.
In her seventeen years, Sybil had kissed people of all genders, but no one made her blood dance like this. No one made her yearn in this way. No one felt like home so entirely.
Their kiss was a delicious storm of a thing. Hands, lips, mouths entwined as Sybil tried to tell Esme every small and every vast thing she hadn’t been able to say over the past year.
I need you. You’re everything to me.
“Why haven’t we done this sooner?” Sybil asked when they finally separated.
“I wanted to,” Esme confessed breathlessly. “Believe me, I did. But I was too scared of losing you or being just one more dalliance.”
“Are you scared anymore?”
Esme shook her head. “You’re here now. My fear is gone.”
Sybil’s fear was gone too. On the other side of that fear was freedom. The boundless giddy freedom she’d longed for her entire life. Sybil still felt like she was dreaming. Maybe it’d all been a dream, and she’d wake up, convinced she’d been to Fae, ridden a dragon, and then kissed the girl she loved. “Are you sure this is real?”
“Entirely,” Esme said, leaning in for another kiss. She held Sybil’s bottom lip between her teeth for a quick moment, and Sybil threaded her hands into Esme’s hair.
Esme took Sybil’s hand, leading her back into the apartment. “Come with me. I’ll show you how real this is.”
Heart still galloping along in her chest, Sybil followed Esme into the apartment, shutting the door softly behind her.
✦ ✦ Esme ✦ ✦
Many hours later, Esme woke up. Sybil slept with her back to Esme on the couch, snoring softly. A rush of tenderness filled Esme, and she adjusted the blanket and curled around Sybil, fitting their bodies together like two gears meant to work in sync.
“Hi,” Sybil said sleepily, stirring awake just as Esme started to drift off again. She rolled over and propped herself up on one elbow.
Esme felt suddenly shy, though it was Sybil, her best friend. But becoming lovers had changed things.
“Hi,” Esme whispered, brushing a curl off Sybil’s forehead.
A long awkward silence stretched between them, and then they both laughed. Esme knew with that laugh, they’d be okay. They’d figure out what this thing between them was soon enough, but for now, Esme was fine to kiss Sybil and save talking and sharing more of her feelings for later.
When they finally got up and dressed, they settled onto the couch, mugs of tea and pastries that Lucien had brought by yesterday in hand. Outside, the gaslights of Severon were on, as another exciting night took the city in its grasp. The clock tower struck ten, shaking the flowers on the table and the pictures on the wall. Jolie slept on the couch next to Esme, and Oliver played with a piece of paper, chasing it all around the floor. Lucien had taken Jean-Francois and Estella to look after while Esme took care of Sybil, but that had been weeks ago. Esme had a feeling those cats were living at Lucien’s house permanently now.
“What do you want to do tonight?” Esme asked, looking at Sybil. “Perhaps find an adventure somewhere in the city?”
Sybil took a long sip of her tea and gripped the key around her neck. “You know,” she said, looking around their apartment. A smile flitted across her lips. “I think I’ve had enough adventure at least for a little while. Can we stay in tonight?”
Esme raised her teacup and clicked it against Sybil’s. “I’d like nothing better.”
And so that was exactly what they did. Though Esme thought maybe, on a different night, or maybe many years from now, she might ask Sybil to open a door to Fae again—far away from Queen Mab’s palace, of course—so they could explore somewhere new and Esme could finally get some of her many questions about how it all worked answered.
But that was for a different time, a lifetime from now perhaps.
Tonight, was for being at home, with her cats, her clocks, and the girl she loved most. Even if she knew that there were many more adventures waiting for them. Someday.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Absinthe Underground has been living in my head for a long time, but it took me more than a decade to chase the story down. The first glimmer came to me back in 2012, when I went to an exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum called “Posters of Paris.” This exhibit was a lively celebration of fin de siècle or Belle Époque Paris (~1890–1910, though historians argue stridently about these exact dates), and the galleries were bursting with colorful posters from Toulouse-Lautrec, Mucha, and many other artists. I adore these posters—my teenage bedroom, college dorm rooms, and first apartments were all covered in them—and this exhibit captured my imagination on every level. I wondered: What would it be like to have lived during this wild, wonderful time? What artists, writers, and thinkers might I have run into in the decadent night clubs of 1890s Paris? What would it have been like to spend a night drinking absinthe?
With these questions in mind, I wandered the exhibit, but it was on a tiny, plain-looking card that I found a story. This card explained (to roughly paraphrase) that gangs of poster thieves stole these exuberant posters, ripping them down from the street to sell to collectors. With those sentences, I had a vision of two thieves, cutting a poster down from a busy street, and then disappearing into the night. This image was burned into my brain—who were these thieves? Where were they going? What happened to them after the theft?—but, you can hardly build a book from just that.
It wasn’t until 2022, when I was looking at Toulouse-Lautrec’s painting, “At the Moulin Rouge” (google it, it’s lovely), that my eyes snagged, as always, on the green-faced woman in the lower right corner. Staring at her, I had the thought, “What if this was a portrait of a real green faerie, trapped in our world and captured in her true form by Toulouse?” With that flash of inspiration, I knew how to tie my poster thieves book to absinthe and the world of Fae. Although The Absinthe Underground is entirely fantastical, here are a few real-world things I included in it:
✦ ✦ The Posters, Thieves, and Poster Dealers ✦ ✦
In The Absinthe Underground, I mention posters by Toulouse and Mucha, though neither of them created posters like the one I depict (the famous “Le Chat Noir” poster I describe in the book, for example, is by Théophile Alexandre Steinlen) and many other artists were making posters at this time. These prints were hung around Paris (at first above public urinals, believe it or not, and then eventually on the cylindrical Morris columns that are so iconic, and also on the sides of buildings and in other places). Crowds would gather to see new posters go up each week, and from there it was a short leap to thieves stealing them (there was even a famous anarchist who published a guide on how to get the posters down) and collectors buying them.
✦ ✦ The Night Clubs ✦ ✦
Belle Époque Paris was full of wild night clubs, from well-known cabarets like the Moulin Rouge to other more macabre places that had coffins as drinking tables, catacomb-like Gothic vibes, and ghostly, hellish themes. The Absinthe Underground club is an amalgamation of these sorts of spaces, and these clubs were definitely places of freedom, art, decadence, delight, and danger; and, they were also spots where conventional social rules and roles were challenged.
✦ ✦ Absinthe ✦ ✦
Absinthe was and still is known as “the green faerie,” and many historical figures drank absinthe in copious quantities—including Van Gogh, Wilde, Manet, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Hemingway, and many others. Degas, Manet, and Picasso all painted versions of absinthe drinkers, each work of art showing some of the wear and tear an absinthe-heavy lifestyle can have on people. Absinthe is credited by some artists of this time as a muse, but it’s also famously the ruin of many others. Absinthe itself gets a bad rap, though it is not toxic on its own. However, in the quantities many people drank it during this time, it proved very dangerous indeed. By 1915, absinthe was banned in many European countries and the US (though you can now buy it in most places).
✦ ✦ Queer Culture in 1890s Paris ✦ ✦
There are many wonderful articles and books about queer culture during this time period, and the appearance of things like lesbian bars in 1890s Paris offered spaces for queer people to thrive. One thing I wanted to do in The Absinthe Underground is show that queer people have always existed in history, and I drew much inspiration from Toulouse-Lautrec’s drawings, sketches, and paintings of everyday life for queer people. Images like his “At the Moulin-Rouges, Two Women Waltzing” and his “Le Lit” and bed series inspired many of the scenes and moments between Sybil and Esme in The Absinthe Underground. It is my hope that in their story and through their deep love for each other, I’ve crafted a reflection of many of the relationships that existed so long ago, even if these stories were not always allowed to be part of mainstream narratives.
