The Absinthe Underground, page 9
Some part of Sybil wanted to tell Esme she didn’t have to go through with it. But Sybil bit back those words. And so, there they were, standing in Maeve’s dressing room in the Absinthe Underground, a few hours and many cups of tea after their breakfast. Bright midday sunlight slanted through the windows, casting golden daggers across the floor. Mercifully, Sybil’s hangover wasn’t as bad as it’d been earlier. Now she could at least turn her head without wincing. The air smelled like Maeve’s orange blossom perfume, and lilting violin music played on a phonograph in the corner of the room.
Maeve sat at a dressing table, doing her makeup and looking perfectly ordinary today. None of her red curls were out of place, and her moss-green eyes were lined with a careful hand. Sybil stood behind Maeve, watching her every move in the dressing table mirror, looking for any sign of her Fae self to shine through. But there was nothing, just the lovely, elegant woman Maeve had first presented herself as.
Beside Sybil, Esme had a notebook out and was peppering Maeve with questions. She’d written the questions down before they’d left the apartment, neatly recording each in her tidy script.
Now Sybil glanced over, reading the questions again:
✦ HOW DOES SYBIL’S KEY OPEN THE DOOR INTO FAE?
✦ WHAT—EXACTLY—DO YOU WANT US TO STEAL?
✦ HOW DO WE OPEN THE QUEEN’S VAULT?
✦ HOW ARE WE NOT GETTING CAUGHT ONCE WE’RE THERE?
And the list went on from there. Sybil was relieved that nowhere on the list was the question she hoped Esme would never ask: Why does Sybil have a key that opens a door into Fae in the first place? That question carried with it so many others—most of which Sybil wasn’t ready or able to answer.
Pushing through her anxieties, Sybil dragged her attention back to Maeve’s explanation of what she needed them to steal.
“The main things I need you to take,” Maeve said, “are Queen Mab’s crown jewels—a magnificent jeweled tiara, two chokers, several ropes of pearls, earrings, bracelets, and thirteen rings—which are going to be in her bedroom, in a vault behind a painting above her fireplace.”
“Is that all?” Sybil asked. “Just an enormous pile of jewels? Won’t someone notice us carrying them out? Or that they’re gone?”
“Not if you secure the three other things you’ll need before you go to Fae.”
“Three other things?” Esme said, shooting Sybil a worried look. “That wasn’t what you told us originally.”
Maeve shrugged and resumed powdering her face. “I’m telling you now: you’ll need these small things in order to steal the larger one.”
“What are they?” Sybil asked. “And how will they help us?”
Maeve glanced over at Sybil conspiratorially. “First, you’ll need a book from Lucien’s house so you know the words to open the door into Fae. I’d retrieve it for you, but the place is locked up tight, believe me.” Here Maeve held up her left hand and took off her glove. A nasty bite mark, blue and black around the scabbed edges, stood out on it.
“What creature did that to you?” Bile rose in Sybil’s throat. She hated the sight of blood. “We signed up to steal things, not fight monsters.”
Maeve waved her injured hand casually. “It was one of Lucien’s Hob-Locks. Hungry for blood, I suppose, since your brother has been gone. You share Lucien’s blood, though, so you might be fine. Once you get into the house, Lucien’s journal is on his desk, in the library.”
“How do you know it’s there if you couldn’t get into the house?” Esme asked. “What if he took it with him?”
Sybil heard a note of hope in her friend’s voice. Like this entire enterprise might hang on whether Lucien’s journal was there or not. Sybil had her doubts about that. Surely, Maeve wouldn’t let a little thing like a journal get in the way of her plans.
“He didn’t,” Maeve replied. “I peeked through the study window and saw it on his desk. I just can’t get through his wards, but I think you two will do fine. Just look out for the traps in the house.”
“Traps?” Esme put her pen down forcefully. Sybil shot her what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
Maeve painted her lips a deep raspberry color. “Oh yes, there are lots of magical snares in Lucien’s house, but you’ll figure them out.”
Sybil wasn’t so sure about that. Lucien had been making traps since they were children, and they’d grown increasingly more complex over the years. But how had he learned about making magical ones? Was her brother a magician? Was that how he’d opened a door between the worlds?
Calling Lucien a magician seemed silly, but what else could he be? He had Hob-Locks—whatever those were. He retrieved magical items in another realm, and he knew words for opening doors into that realm. All that sounded quite thoroughly magical. She longed to talk to him again, to hear about what he’d been up to for the past few years, and to demand explanations for why he had abandoned her in their father’s house.
But first, of course, she had to find him.
Beside Sybil, Esme sighed and picked up her pen again. She wrote Magical Traps? on the page beneath her other questions.
“Right,” Sybil said, fidgeting with her key. “So, first we steal a notebook from Lucien’s library. What’s next?”
“After you have Lucien’s journal,” Maeve said, finishing applying her lipstick and standing, “you’ll need a magical bag, which will allow you to transport the crown jewels out of Fae undetected.”
“How does that work?” Esme asked at the same time Sybil said, “What does this bag look like? Where will we get it?”
Maeve picked up a hat and pinned it onto her curls with a hatpin. “It’s a small blue leather bag, embroidered with some flowers and birds. Quite unremarkable actually.”
Something about the description rang a bell in Sybil’s memory. She’d seen a bag like that recently, but where?
“It’s got a charm on it,” Maeve continued, “that hides magical items while you’re in Fae. If anyone in Fae stops you, they’ll just see a handful of pebbles in the bag. Collectors have been looking for it for centuries, ever since a story about it came out of Fae and made its way to this world. Lucien found it on a recent trip and mistakenly traded it for another item to a collector.”
Sybil thought back to the night before, when she’d been selling the posters and looking over all the items on Antoine’s shelves. “It’s at Antoine’s, isn’t it?”
“Clever girl,” Maeve said, nodding. “I would’ve stolen it myself, and was planning on doing so last night, but now, I’ll have you take the bag instead.”
“Can’t we just buy it from Antoine?” Esme asked.
“Certainly not. If he knows we want it, he’ll start to ask questions. If he were to discover its value, he’d never part with it.”
“Even if it only works in Fae?” Esme pressed. “What use is it to him? Can’t you just say you’re smitten with the bag’s design and you want it?”
Maeve shook her head. “Antoine is so desperate for anything that’s collectible, he’d never let me have it, no matter how much money I offered.”
“Won’t the bag be much too small?” Sybil asked. The little bag in Antoine’s study would barely hold one bracelet, much less the entire collection of crown jewels. “Do you really need all the jewels?”
Maeve frowned at Sybil, as if she were a teacher and Sybil were a student who wasn’t paying attention. “Of course I need all the jewels! That’s part of our deal. Once you open the vault in Queen Mab’s room, grab the jewels, stuff them into the bag—they’ll fit, trust me—and open another door back to this world. It should really be simple enough. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss.”
“Why we’re making a fuss?” Esme repeated, then looked up from her notebook. “Won’t the jewels be guarded? What if we get caught? If everyone in Fae looks like you—”
Sybil jumped in, knowing what she was really asking. “If everyone looks like your un-glamoured self—”
“My true self.” Maeve sniffed.
Sybil nodded. “Your true self, yes. And we look like our very human selves, how will we not be caught immediately? Are there any other mortals in the Fae realm?”
Maeve trilled a laugh. “Of course there are mortals in Fae, ridiculous girl. There always have been. You’re not the only mortal with a key between our worlds, and many centuries ago, there used to be thousands of doors between our worlds. The High Fae even used to send their children on grand tours in your world so they could enjoy themselves here. Why do you think there are so many half Fae and changeling children in your world?”
At that, Sybil bit hard on her tongue, holding back the question that had almost popped out about her own mother.
Maeve continued, oblivious. “Of course, there was eventually strife between our people and yours, and it was agreed between the human magicians and the High Fae that the doors would be closed. Only a few magician families were given keys—and those got passed down through the centuries. Any mortals in Fae now have either been there for generations, or they’ve stumbled through a forgotten door left unlocked. They are the companions of some Fae, the ensorcelled playthings of others, the adopted children of many—but you are correct that you two will draw attention, especially if you’re in the palace. Which is why you must be quick, and which brings us to the third item you must steal before going into Fae. You need something to open the queen’s vault. If Queen Mab’s personal guards—the Nightshades, or just the Night as everyone else calls them—find you trying to steal the crown jewels, they’ll throw you in the dungeon or kill you on the spot.”
Esme’s note-taking stopped abruptly.
“Kill us on the spot?” Dread sat like a cannon ball in Sybil’s stomach. She’d known this job would be dangerous, but not deadly. Rather than meeting Esme’s eye, Sybil asked the only logical question that she could form: “What could we possibly steal in our world that will open a queen’s vault in Fae?”
Maeve picked up a perfume bottle and sprayed herself with it. More clouds of orange blossom scent filled the air. It was almost cloying, and Sybil yearned to open a window. “As I mentioned earlier, the queen’s vault is locked in two ways—it’s tied to the time of the year and can only be opened on the evening of the Spring Equinox, and it is secured with a scent lock.”
“What’s a scent lock?” Sybil asked.
“Exactly what it sounds like—only a rare perfume will open the vault.”
Esme piped up a bit. “Fascinating! It’s a mechanical sort of magic. Does this mean if we get the perfume, we can open the vault, as if we were Queen Mab herself?”
“Correct,” Maeve said. “No one has been able to do it before now, however, because the perfume you need is an enchanted scent made from fruit grown under the moonlight in Queen Mab’s orchards during the winter months, when no fruit should grow. It contains the essence of shadows and impossible things within it, and exactly two drops of it—and only it—will unlock the vault. Queen Mab wears a small bottle of the perfume around her neck at all times—”
“How in the world are we supposed to get it then?” Sybil burst out. “Steal it from the queen?” She was all for adventures and danger, but this sounded too risky even for her. Surely, the queen would be guarded. It was one thing to steal her jewels from a vault, another entirely to steal something from around the queen’s neck.
“Ahh, there’s the wonderful thing,” Maeve said. “I believed for a very long time that Queen Mab had the only bottle of this perfume in both realms. But one of the queen’s perfumiers went missing centuries ago. It was rumored he’d escaped to your world with his collection of scents, including one that unlocks the vault.”
Understanding crashed over Sybil. “You’ve seen it then? Another bottle of Queen Mab’s perfume?”
Maeve beamed at her. “Precisely! Lucien took me to the Severon Museum last month, and there’s a bottle of it on display in one of their upper rooms—in the decorative arts galleries, near the clocks and starlight paintings. Those humans don’t even know what they have. It’s labeled incorrectly, but I’d know it anywhere. You’re looking for a tiny midnight-blue perfume bottle inlaid with stars, and it has a crescent-moon-shaped stopper. There’s a small bit of liquid inside it still, which should be enough for our purposes.”
Esme had gone very pale. “You want us to break into the Severon Museum?”
Sybil wanted to say something reassuring, like surely stealing from the museum couldn’t be harder than taking the crown jewels from Queen Mab, but she suspected that wouldn’t sit well with Esme.
“As soon as possible.” Maeve moved toward the door. “Do you have any other questions? I have a meeting before the club opens and must be going.”
Sybil glanced down at the list of questions Esme had written out. Only one remained. “How are we not getting caught once we have the jewels?”
Maeve waved a hand. “You’re clever enough to figure that out. I have complete trust in you. I’ve left Lucien’s address on my dressing table. Do try to hurry with all this. Remember, if you don’t get the jewels back to me in the next two days, I can’t return home and you don’t get paid.”
Sybil started to reply to that, but Maeve hurried out of the room, leaving Sybil with the barest outlines of a plan and much less confidence in herself than Maeve seemed to harbor.
CHAPTER TEN
Two days before the Spring Equinox
Esme
You’re telling me Lucien—your brother—lives here?”
They stood outside a three-story house that dominated a corner in the Lapis District. It was within walking distance of the Absinthe Underground, and they’d come right over after talking to Maeve. Esme’s stomach flipped, and she tried not to gawk at the enormous mansion.
How could Sybil’s brother afford such a place? What sort of life had Sybil run away from? What sort of traps might be waiting inside a place this large?
Esme nibbled on one of her fingernails and took in the details of Lucien’s home. Carved flourishes and flowers framed the doorway. Even the door itself was ornate, with its brass flowers and a unique arched shape. Gold leaf decorated parts of the door, and the facade of the house was covered in the palest of green marble, like the entry hallway at the Absinthe Underground.
“Subtle,” Sybil said, as she walked up the front steps.
Esme goggled at Sybil. “You think this is subtle?”
“For Lucien.” Sybil shrugged. “I suppose that’s the Hob-Lock?”
She pointed to a small scowling face made of bronze, placed above the doorknob. It looked like something out of a scary story—half demon and half elf—with rows of pointed teeth.
Esme shuddered at the nightmare creature, and she had no idea what to say about Lucien’s extravagant house. Severon was a city where great wealth and crushing poverty lived side by side. How could someone spend so much money on a house, while children starved in the streets? That certainly didn’t fit into the vision of Sybil’s life Esme had imagined. But then, she was learning her friend had all sorts of secrets she would’ve never guessed.
Sybil studied the Hob-Lock. “Maybe we do this?” In the space between blinks, Sybil jammed her palm onto one of the Hob-Locks’ teeth. Its eyes flew open, and it crunched its metal jaws down with a flourish, causing Sybil to cry out.
“Welcome home, Master,” the Hob-Lock said in an unctuous voice. “Your blood is delicious as always.”
Esme wrenched the Hob’s mouth open and yanked Sybil’s hand out of it. As she did so, the front door to Lucien’s house swung open.
Sybil clutched her palm, which had a several teeth marks in it and dripped blood. She looked at the blood, her face paling. “We’re in.”
“At what cost?” Esme grumbled, handing Sybil a handkerchief to wrap her hand in.
“Worth it?” Sybil said.
“We’ll see about that.”
Esme closed the front door, and they stepped into a shadowy foyer. The air was musty, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in weeks. Sybil banged into a table. Something toppled to the floor and shattered.
Esme pulled a candle stub and matchbook from her pocket. She struck a match, and the glow of flame illuminated her and Sybil’s faces.
“Can’t we just open a curtain?”
Esme shook her head. “And risk someone seeing us in here? Aren’t you the experienced thief?”
Sybil snorted at that. “Let’s hope so. Shall we go forward?”
“Careful. We don’t know what else is waiting inside this house.”
“You’re just saying that because the door tried to eat me.” Sybil grabbed a large black umbrella from the bronze bucket by the door and brandished it like a sword with her good hand. “Don’t worry, I’m armed!”
Esme laughed and held the candle up, moving it slowly through the air. Gilded mirrors and paintings hung along the walls, wreathed in shadows. An ornate staircase curved upward in front of them, and dark rooms stretched along the first floor. Hopefully, Lucien’s library was around here somewhere.
Esme’s light fell on a stack of books resting on an entryway table. She picked up the closest one—Eckleton’s Guide to Fae for Travelers. Well, that was certainly convenient. There wasn’t enough light to read by here, but she intended to pore over it later. She slipped the book into her coat pocket. The other books piled on the table were also about Fae—some of them children’s stories, others academic treatises—and they reminded Esme of the piles of library books she kept by the door of their apartment.
A pair of muddy boots lay at the bottom of the staircase, resting sloppily, as if they’d just been kicked off someone’s feet. A man’s plaid jacket was draped over a painter’s ladder that looked very out of place, leaning against the banister in this fancy home. Sybil’s hand lingered on the jacket in a way that made Esme feel very, very lonely. Over the past day, Sybil suddenly had a real family. One she might see again or go back to. One she might leave Esme for.
