Grim Lovelies

by Megan Shepherd

  “We’re in a car wash near the Porte de Clichy,” Beau said. “We have seven, maybe eight minutes until the rinse cycles are done.” He gave a shrug. “I couldn’t think of any other place to hide.”

  She nodded. This was all Beau knew—​the world of cars. The brushes helped. They closed off that terrifyingly big world. Water rained down on the windshield like a spring shower, and she felt like she was back in her turret bedroom during a good hard storm. She breathed in the comforting smell of cleansers.

  “We lost the crows?”

  Beau ran his hand over the steering wheel fondly. “I told you I could drive.”

  She cocked her head, looked at him a bit differently. Her whole life, he’d been like a brother to her, the kind who teased her about dust bunnies. She’d never seen this side of him: confident behind the wheel, dangerously fast. What else didn’t she know about him?

  The brushes outside swayed in their rhythmic dance back and forth.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “The scrying crows’ whispers will have spread to Castle Ides. It’s only a matter of time before Viggo and Hunter Black go to the townhouse and see what happened. And then they’ll be looking for us. They’ll think we killed her.”

  A cold feeling returned to Anouk. She looked sidelong at Beau. If he hadn’t done it, then who had?

  She swallowed. “I wish Luc were here.”

  “Well, he isn’t.” It was unlike Beau to snap like that, and it made Anouk realize that he felt Luc’s absence as keenly as she did.

  She took a deep breath. “We should go to Cricket’s apartment. She’s the oldest, after Luc. She’ll know what to do.”

  “Won’t her apartment be the first place they’ll look for us?”

  Anouk shook her head. “Not necessarily. It’ll take them at least an hour to get to Rue des Amants. Besides, I lied to Viggo today. I told him Cricket was out of town.”

  Beau raised an eyebrow. “Lied? You?”

  Anouk smacked him on the arm.

  He feigned being hurt, but then his expression turned grim again. He tugged on a ruffle on her apron. “This will need to go. Your dress too. You can’t walk around like that, covered in blood. We’ll be stopped by the police.”

  Anouk tugged off the apron, balled it up, and threw it in the back seat, but the blood had soaked into her dress too.

  “I don’t have other clothes.”

  Beau thought for a minute. The soap cycle ended, and another rinse began. Through the snaking watery lines, Anouk could almost make out the city lights beyond. Terror started to claw up her throat again as she thought of the crows, of the danger, of the unknown city, but there was an exhilaration with it this time. Wasn’t this what she had always wanted? To be out in the city? To walk among the Pretties? The loud machines of the car wash rumbled to a stop, the final drips rolling off the car.

  Beau rested a hand on the gearshift. He eyed Anouk’s clothes, tapping a finger against the steering wheel.

  “It’ll be okay. I know a store we can go to.”

  “But we don’t have money.”

  “We don’t need it at the place I have in mind.” He drew in a long breath. “It doesn’t open for another few hours, but they might open it for me.”

  There was apprehension tucked into his voice. Once again, Anouk acknowledged that, as well as he knew the map of the city streets, and the Pretties’ traffic signals, and their rules of driving, he was almost as innocent as she was when it came to how anything actually worked in their world.

  A green light turned on, and he drove out of the car wash slowly, both of them checking the empty skies, back into the dark streets of Paris.

  Chapter 7

  Anouk pressed her face to the car window as they made their way through the city. Beau stayed off the wide thoroughfares where the crows might find them again, instead rumbling down side streets through the Porte de Clichy, into Batignolles, past the Théâtre de Paris. Even in the early morning, the city was alive. Street sweepers in green overalls with matching caps pushed plastic brooms. Electric lights illuminated back rooms of the bakeries and patisseries, where Anouk glimpsed women with flour on their arms. The next square was overtaken by open-back trucks overflowing with buckets of multicolored blooms and vendors in thick coats haggling over bouquets of peonies and anthuriums, lilacs and Peruvian lilies. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she was back in the courtyard with Luc.

  And then, all too soon, Beau turned down a side street and the market was gone. The lane was impossibly tight, hugged on both sides by squat buildings leaning on one another’s shoulders.

  “Maybe we should go to Rennar,” Anouk blurted out, surprising even herself.

  “Rennar? Are you mad?”

  “He didn’t seem dangerous at the party.”

  But that wasn’t quite true, she thought. He hadn’t seemed malicious, but dangerous? She swallowed, thinking of that dark eye-shine.

  “Well, he is,” Beau said flatly. “We aren’t going to the Royals.”

  The tight lane spilled out onto a curving road, and Anouk checked the skies. Clear. Tall iron fences rose on either side of the street, behind them vast, dark expanses heavy with the shadows of trees.

  “Is that a forest?” she asked.

  “A garden. Forests are only outside of the city, in the country, I think.”

  She stared at the iron gates. The garden seemed to stretch on forever; how much vaster must a forest be than this? Luc had told her stories about forests, wild places that were the domain of wolves and bears and hawks. She half expected to see the glint of red eyes watching from beyond the gates. Beau went around a traffic circle and then rolled onto a bridge. Towering trees changed to monuments of white marble that glowed even in the darkness. She leaned forward, trying to take it all in at once.

  Beau stopped the car abruptly. “This is it.”

  Anouk pressed her face against the window and gazed up at a six-story building that took up an entire city block. Dazzling lights lit up the words she had seen on boxes that Mada Vittora brought home.

  “‘Galeries Lafayette,’” she read reverently. “But we can’t shop here. It takes money to buy clothing.” She didn’t have to mention that Galeries Lafayette was the most expensive department store in all of Paris.

  “Wait for me to come around.” Beau climbed out of the car, checking the skies again, and opened the door for her. “Mada Vittora doesn’t use money here. She has something called an account. Whenever I bring her here, she takes the clothes and they keep track of everything and send a monthly bill to someone. They know me here. They’ll believe me.”

  “But she’s gone.”

  “They don’t know that.” He looked anxiously at a giant lit clock face on the opposite building. “And by the time the news spreads, we’ll be far away.”

  Anouk climbed out of the car, scanning the skies for telltale dark wings. None, but her pulse wouldn’t calm. Except for a few cars and delivery trucks, the street was quiet. No shoppers. No doormen standing at attention. The department store was dark inside.

  “The sign says they don’t open until nine.”

  Beau’s eyes scoured the street, slicing back and forth. Looking for crows. Listening for the roar of a gunmetal-gray motorcycle. A jogger ran past them, wearing tight clothes and white headphones. The woman slowed as she approached, jogged in place a few beats, and then turned sharply and started sprinting back the other way.

  “It’s the blood,” Anouk realized, touching her dress. “I scared her. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  Beau went to the glass door, shading his eyes to see inside. He pounded on the door. “Hello!”

  She couldn’t shake the image of how the jogger had turned and run. Like she was a criminal. A murderer. Heat started to flush up her neck.

  “Hey, you! Let us in!” Beau called to someone inside.

  The door was thrown open by an ogre of a man who towered over them with arms like thick hams and no perceptible neck.
He wore dark glasses and carried something strapped to his belt that it took Anouk a moment to recognize. A gun? Yes, that was called a gun.

  “We’re closed.”

  Beau lifted his hands, taking a step back. “We need help.”

  The man stared at the blood on Anouk’s clothes. “Are you hurt, mademoiselle?”

  “Oh, no, it isn’t my blood,” Anouk explained.

  “We need to go shopping,” Beau added.

  The man stared at them like they were playing some demonic joke. But then he took off his glasses and squinted at Beau. “One moment. I know you, don’t I? You’re Vittora Antona’s driver. Apologies, monsieur. I’m just the night security guard. It’s my job to keep people out until we open. You understand.” He strained his stubby neck back toward the car. His voice fell to a reverent whisper. “Is she here?”

  “No,” Beau answered quickly. “She’s sent me with her . . . her niece. Who’s visiting from the countryside. As you can see, we need some new clothes. Immediately. And . . . discretion.”

  “Of course. Right away.” He touched a piece of machinery in his ear, whispered something low. In another few seconds, the click of high heels approached. A slim woman with a tight bun and navy-blue dress came to the door. If she thought the blood on Anouk’s clothes or the fact that Anouk was barefoot and missing two toes was odd, she didn’t bat an eye.

  “Vittora Antona’s niece, yes? Very sorry to keep you waiting. Usually if madame wishes us to open the store early for her, she calls in advance. Fortunately I was already here, ordering for our spring collection. Come. Follow me.” She tapped the same machinery in her ear and hissed into it, “Round up every sales associate you can. There’s a few of them setting up the Cartier display. I don’t care if it’s early. Now!”

  Anouk entered the department store in a state of heady shock.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed.

  It was more a cathedral than a store. A stained-glass cupola sparkled over four stories, balcony after balcony after balcony after balcony, each packed with dresses and blouses and, oh, the shoes. Anouk found herself spinning in a circle to take it all in. Even with half the lights off, it was all glittering glass and marble. And the perfume! Hundreds of delicate little glass bottles, each more glamorous than the last. Anouk grabbed a bottle and sprayed it.

  Beau sputtered at the perfume in his face.

  “This way, mademoiselle.” The Pretty in the navy dress waved them toward a contraption that looked like a staircase but was moving, each step climbing above the other, and Anouk stopped short. The Pretty glanced back at her with an odd look, and Beau grabbed her arm and pulled her onto the moving stairs.

  “Try to act normal,” he whispered.

  “Is this magic?”

  “Sort of. It’s called an escalator.”

  The stairs moved steadily, lifting them high over the perfume counters into the endless balconies. The lights on the top floor came on. Electricity wasn’t magic, Luc had explained to her once, but it worked in much the same way. It had rules to it, just like magic. It could be used only for certain things, and there was always a cost. Anouk gripped the moving handrail, dizzy.

  And then the stairs ended abruptly, nearly spilling Anouk off. The Pretty waited primly. Behind her were racks of clothes of every size and color with names Anouk had seen on boxes and bags: Givenchy and Dior and Prada and Louis Vuitton.

  “We’re in a hurry.” Beau grabbed a striped dress off the nearest rack. “This will do. We’ll take this.”

  Alarm crossed the Pretty’s face. She snatched up the dress, hung it back on the rack. “Oh, no, monsieur. Oh, no. That won’t do at all. It’s from last season!”

  “Yeah, Beau,” Anouk said. “That won’t do at all!”

  He sighed, glancing back over his shoulder at the front door as Anouk grabbed a skirt with gold trim. The Pretty followed behind her, pulling more clothes off the rack, explaining how this would accentuate mademoiselle’s long legs, this would flatter her fair skin, this would hide—​if she’d pardon the observation—​her meager bosom.

  Anouk caught a glimpse of her face in a mirror, gaunt and pale and splotched with blood—​Mada Vittora’s blood—​and her stomach lurched.

  “This,” she blurted out. She grabbed the nearest dress. Black, long-sleeved, with white cuffs and a small, round white collar. “He’s right: we really need to go.”

  The Pretty held her tongue. It was one thing to chastise a driver, but not a client’s niece, even if she happened to be inexplicably covered in blood. She smiled tightly. “Certainly. And would mademoiselle be wanting some shoes?”

  Anouk wiggled her eight toes. “Yes. Something easy to walk in. Something flat. Oh! Oxfords.”

  The woman touched the intercom in her ear. “Brigitte? Oxfords. The Burberry ones. Size nine. To the second-floor dressing room.” She motioned down the hall. “You may change here.”

  She led them toward a door that had a sign reading SALON PRIVé; it opened into a single dressing room surrounded by crimson velvet curtains and floor-length mirrors. The Pretty extended a hand to help Anouk step onto the platform. She cast a withering look back at Beau.

  “Surely you’d like to wait outside, monsieur?”

  Beau went red. “Right.”

  “I’ll hurry,” Anouk promised.

  The woman was already untying the bows and buttons of Anouk’s maid’s costume. She peeled the bloodstained clothes off Anouk’s limbs and then produced a packet that contained a damp cloth and scrubbed the blood off her arms.

  “I’m sorry. The blood is . . . it’s . . .”

  “No need to explain, mademoiselle,” the Pretty said crisply. “I assure you, we cater to all sorts of clients with all manner of particular needs.”

  She helped Anouk into the black dress and did up the buttons on the back. It was made of a fine, soft fabric, heavy but not stifling. Anouk adjusted the white collar around her neck. The dress fit her slim figure well, and she blinked at herself in the mirror, stunned. She’d never seen herself in anything but a maid’s costume.

  “Gorgeous. Yes. And look at those legs. Do you have a boyfriend? You’ll have to get rid of him if you do. He’ll simply be too jealous. Ah! Here’s Brigitte with the shoes. You’ll need socks too. High ones will balance out the short hem.”

  The Pretty produced the shoes and a roll of soft black socks that extended all the way above Anouk’s knees, leaving only a few inches of thigh.

  “Yes. Magnifique. Let me write you a receipt.”

  The woman disappeared while Anouk couldn’t stop staring at the mirror.

  No silly bows, no frills, no ribbons except the black one holding back her hair. She tipped her chin up. Something about the dress, simple though it was, made her feel bold. No wonder Hunter Black favored dark clothes. She could imagine another life in this dress, envision herself selecting creamy white dahlias at the flower market, climbing into an airplane waiting to whisk her off to somewhere exotic, sitting at a corner café beneath a red-and-white-striped awning, served coffee and macaroons just like anyone else.

  But something was missing.

  Her eyes fell on a satin jacket on a nearby rack. It was a bold red, made of a quilted fabric that caught the light. Heavy embroidery in dazzling colors hugged the shoulders and arms. There was something undeniably masculine about the jacket, especially the embroidery that wasn’t neatly stitched but a little wild, threads running together like spider webs. She stepped down from the platform and walked around to look at the back. The embroidery continued in even more vibrant blues and greens and oranges, cascading along the jacket’s soft curves in the shape of some mythical creature with wild curls of mane and wings and thorny teeth. If such a creature had a name, she’d never learned it.

  Something beautiful and monstrous.

  Gargoyle, she decided.

  She snatched it up.

  The Pretty came back in, an envelope in hand, with Beau behind her. He stopped cold in the doorway, eyes on the gap of
thigh between where Anouk’s skirt ended and the socks began. His mouth opened, but whatever he was going to say never came out.

  Anouk slid the silk jacket over her shoulders. Yes. Now she felt right.

  “I’ll take this too,” she said.

  The Pretty looked stunned. “But mademoiselle, that’s from the menswear collection. It’s a custom piece for an exclusive client coming in later today. It’s a Faustine original embroidered jacket. The price is . . . is . . . well, it is priceless. Non, it is simply impossible.”

  Beau snapped back to himself. “You heard her. She’s taking it.”

  “But—”

  “She’s taking it.”

  Anouk turned away from the infinity of her own face in the mirror and met his eyes, feeling uncertain.

  “Yes. I’m taking it,” she announced, testing out this strange feeling of power.

  She grabbed Beau’s arm, pulled him toward the escalators.

  “Send the bill to the usual address,” he called back to the saleswoman, “and add a tip for yourself. Double the commission!”

  Anouk jumped on the escalator, Beau behind her. She stretched out her arms like wings, taking the steps two at a time. The security guard at the bottom held the door open for them.

  They tumbled out into the street. The sun was just rising. More people and cars were out now. An engine that sounded like a motorcycle’s revved and Anouk jerked around, but it was only a woman riding a Vespa, not Hunter Black.

  “Cricket’s apartment is in the Eighth Arrondissement,” Beau said.

  Anouk looked at the busy streets, the flashing traffic signals that kept changing, the eyes that seemed to peek around corners—​was that someone in a top hat?—​and then down at her oxford shoes. She looked back up at Beau. “We should hurry.”

  Chapter 8

  Paris looked different during the daytime. At night it had been shadowed corners and grim streets, but now that the sun had risen, Anouk started to notice little things she hadn’t before: a horsehead door knocker, a lazy cat blinking in a window, schoolchildren struggling under heavy backpacks. They entered a neighborhood that had fewer monuments and more shops and cafés. It was dirtier, with vibrant graffiti on the walls, but Anouk liked it. Music played from a corner café where couples sat sipping coffee.