Baker Thief

by Claudie Arseneault

  “People thought you were involved in their creation,” Claire said. “Is that how you pay for this marvellous mansion?”

  “No. My wealth stems from my first invention.”

  “That’s quite a few years ago,” Claire stepped forward, hoping to impose enough to draw more helpful answers.

  “Yet no one imagined better,” Emmanuelle said, spreading her arms, “and every house needs power.”

  True enough, and one of the reasons exocores terrified Claire. Sooner or later, witches’ souls would provide for every building in Val-de-mer. They had to stop it before it came to that.

  “What are you working on now?” she asked.

  “Is this an interrogation?” So far, Emmanuelle had remained calm, her tone casual. An edge slipped into her voice now and she leaned forward, and although the woman continued with a quip, Claire immediately knew she’d had enough. “Have you been taking lessons from Adèle?”

  “I wish.” Oh no. She had not meant to say that. The mask made her daring, and now she thanked the relative obscurity hiding her intense flush. She was the worst liar, and too impulsive to boot. Emmanuelle quirked her eyebrows and Claire hurried to another topic. “Please. I’m trying to understand all this energy science. I need your help to track down who could fabricate the exocores and where.”

  “We know who. Montrant Industries created them.”

  “Montrant is a front. They exist, but you can’t find their owners and employees. There’s never any name attached! No director, no scientists, nothing! Even their factory is a fake.” Words spilled out, days of frantic research and investigation blurted out all at once. Her hands flitted through her hair with them, and she stepped forward. “I don’t have proper access to their files, no idea where they would be, and no time to stalk the few officially involved hoping to find a culprit. I-I need better, and I need it now.”

  “You’re… something special.” Emmanuelle tilted her head to the side, brow furrowed into a puzzled expression. “So you seek to discover who fabricates exocores because… you want to steal more? Provoke them? Why did you think I would be your chance to find a faster path to them?”

  A lump blocked Claire’s answer as it dawned on her how much information she’d given away. It should’ve been the other way around! But while she had never studied interrogation techniques under Adèle, Emmanuelle clearly had. She’d flipped the conversation over, knocking Claire off balance and opening the door for a big slip. No more. Claire spread her legs then crossed her arms with a huff, trying to steady the panic swirling at the bottom of her stomach. She stared down at Emmanuelle, ready to calmly reassert control of the situation.

  “Never mind that! Just tell me about your research. Don’t all scientists love to do that?”

  “If that was a universal law, we’d have heard of the ones behind exocores, wouldn’t we?” Emmanuelle replied, still utterly calm, as if the shifts in Claire’s emotions were of no import to her. “You’re trying to dodge my questions.”

  “I am. I don’t see any reason to answer.”

  “Neither do I.” Emmanuelle smirked and leaned back. “What a troublesome stalemate.”

  Her smirk smothered Claire’s sympathy, giving full berth to a burgeoning anger. She stalked forward, scowling. Lives were at stake here, whether Emmanuelle Duclos realized it or not, and Claire didn’t intend to waste her night in verbal sparring, especially not with someone better at it than her. She grabbed the bed with a single hand, shoved magic into her arm, and lifted the end off the ground with ease.

  “You misunderstand the power dynamics here,” she said, and Emmanuelle’s eyes widened in justified fear. “I did not come to hurt you, or break anything, but I need answers and I will get them. Please. This is not a game to me.”

  Emmanuelle half-slid, half-backed away to the other end of the bed, her smile gone. “I’m not convinced I can trust you with this information, and you’re not helping.”

  “I’m not asking for your trust.” Claire glared at her, putting all her fears and exhaustion and hope into the look, desperate to give it enough intensity for Emmanuelle to fold. She didn’t know if she had it in her to actually strike Adèle’s sister, or even flip the bed on her, and she did not want to find out. Emmanuelle held her gaze, unflinching, but her expression softened as seconds trickled by.

  “We try to create a flexible matrix interwoven with magic that could capture the sun and use it as a power source. Our understanding is incomplete, but magic flocks to certain live physical vessels and must have one to be used, whether by witches or as energy. This is why spell casters have a limited pool of strength. They can’t harness ambient magic, only what has gathered within them.”

  Emmanuelle’s brow furrowed as she continued and sank deeper in thoughts. Claire marvelled at how the woman’s technical explanation matched her lived experience: when she burned through too much magic, she became tired, unable to call more forth. Yet time dispelled that fatigue whether she rested or not—it was just faster if she slept.

  “We don’t want to use magic directly as power anymore,” Emmanuelle went on. “It proved too time-consuming and costly to ask witches to refill the batteries constantly, and… Well, after the Meltdown, it’d never pass the politics test. Even our project gets rejected as too dependent on witches when we apply for subventions, which is several layers of bullshit and—” She stopped, glanced at Claire single-handedly holding the bed, and licked her lips. “I’m sure I don’t need to explain why this is ridiculous bigotry to you. The point is, creating a matrix of magic that captures another type of energy—the sun, for us—means we only require a small amount of it, during initial production. And studies have already demonstrated how great magic is at transmitting or transforming energy from one type to another without much lost, so we think we’d have an efficient final product. But the matrix itself is proving to be a difficult beast to tackle, and I have no idea how any of this is supposed to help you, but there you go, that’s my research.”

  Claire stared at her, trying to parse through all the science jargon. They wanted witches to create a magical container to capture the sun and turn it into electricity. But magic was hard to imbue into physical objects. Claire only knew of two instances: Basir, who had transferred not only his magic but himself, and Clémence’s protective artefacts used to conceal the witches’ hideouts. Claire wondered what ol had used, and if it resembled the exocores.

  “Are you having problems finding the right receptacle for the magic?” she asked. “Objects aren’t supposed to hold it.”

  “Yes. And it is near impossible to do methodical research and testing for this. The materials used for the old witch-powered batteries only store raw magic, not other types of energy, and all our attempts with them failed. To be systematic, we’d need to study witches themselves, which would require either large scale statistics or invasive procedures.”

  Invasive procedures. She doubted that had stopped the exocores’ creators. With a shudder, she prevented her too-vivid imagination from detailing what that entailed, before she projected everything on Livia and panicked. “Right. These aren’t options available to you.”

  Emmanuelle tilted her head to the side and straightened up, her interest clearly piqued. “Not to me, no.”

  Claire sighed. Had she said too much again? It didn’t matter. She had her explanation, and while she didn’t understand the minutiae of Montrant Industries’ technique, she could see the general scheme of it: transfer people into gems without their consent, hold them in this physical shape, find a way to draw only the magical power out, transforming it into electricity. Did this mean they left bodies behind? Her stomach clenched from nausea, and her palms turned sweaty. She pushed aside thoughts of the more gruesome, technical details. She could imagine those later, alone and at home.

  She dropped the bed, certain Emmanuelle wouldn’t have anything else useful for her, and cringed as Adèle’s sister almost fell off it from the shock before quickly burying that guilt. Sh
e needed to find a way to crack the opaque shell Montrant Industries had built around the exocores. There had to be a network of activities still existing, starting with the capture of witches and ending with the production of new cores. But how to uncover it? Perhaps she should look at the places selling exocores. They had to be shipped in from somewhere, after all! Claire headed towards the bedroom’s private balcony, preparing herself for the rain, but stopped at the door as a thought struck. “Wait. Do you have any exocores?”

  Emmanuelle laughed, and the mirthful sound erased the tension hanging between them. “You’re asking me to tell you if I have any of those things you love to steal? Why would I answer?”

  Claire smirked and turned around with a shrug. “A girl can try. It’d have spared me the trouble of looking.”

  “I could call for help while you do,” she pointed out.

  “A girl can try,” Claire repeated, her grin widening. Even if Emmanuelle did find police officers or willing neighbours, Claire would outrun them with ease. She’d take the risk if it meant one more saved exocore.

  Emmanuelle stared at her in silence for a moment, evaluating Claire and the chances of catching her. It lasted long enough for Claire to shift awkwardly and worry help was already on the way after all, and Emmanuelle was just buying time. When would she have called them, however? No. Everything was fine.

  “I don’t have exocores here,” Emmanuelle said. “It’s silly, but I can’t switch to another power source yet. I’m still too attached to my little burner. This entire house runs on the prototype. Go check it out, if you don’t believe me.”

  Claire did believe her. She couldn’t explain why she trusted Emmanuelle’s word—something about her pinched frown, so similar to Adèle’s, or the candidness of being caught reading heavy science in her night robe. Perhaps Claire was deluding herself, but she decided to accept her instincts and trust herself, too.

  “One last thing… You’ll tell your sister I came, won’t you?”

  Emmanuelle Duclos nodded. Claire swallowed hard. She probably shouldn’t talk about Adèle, but when would she have the opportunity to get a message to her? Adèle wouldn’t give her a chance to say two words before trying to arrest her. Besides, she didn’t want Emmanuelle’s story to only contain “she threatened me for information.”

  “Tell her I’m sorry I broke into her house. But… tell her I’d steal that exocore again any day, and she’s right, that was always the point. She has good instincts.”

  Claire shoved the balcony door open and sprinted into the heavy rain. It soaked her instantly, seeping through cape, mask, and dress as she leaped off the railing and to the closest rooftop. She didn’t know if her words would only infuriate Adèle more, but she’d had to say something, to at least acknowledge she grasped what she’d done. And maybe, with a better context and understanding of what was happening, Adèle could one day forgive her.

  * * *

  Claire strode into her basement and threw her mask off. It fell to the ground with a wet slap, immediately followed by the heavy thump of her cape. Every piece of cloth on her body was drenched and she couldn’t wait to remove them all. She struggled to pull off her gloves, then fumbled at the buttons of her dress, fingers made clumsy by the cold rain that had seeped through, and undressed in a hurry. Claire flung her wardrobe open, grabbed a towel from the top shelf, and dried herself with great relief. Such awful weather. Just the kind of heavy downpour Livia loved. Claire closed her eyes and lowered the towel, fighting the void growing in her heart. Livia would see more of these terrible rainy days, she promised herself. She would never give up on her sister.

  Claire dressed back up, slipping into comfy pants and a loose shirt she usually wore only during the day, but not bothering with the binder or the removal of her hair colour yet. Presenting and being read as a man grated her more and more these days, and she wished she could’ve spent the entire week in Claire’s disguise or another nice dress. At least when it was the other way around—when her gender leaned towards male for several full days or weeks—she could stay as Claude all day. Her evenings were flexible. No such luck with the bakery, however. She should have made clear that her gender shifted from day one to avoid this problem and wished she had been more confident in her identity. So many others presented outside the binary without issues, so why not her? But doing it now, while Claire was being pursued, was a terrible idea.

  Once her drenched clothes were hanging to dry, Claire returned to the exocores. She’d avoided them since Livia’s disappearance, unable to deal with the sickening unease provoked by so many of them in a single place. It’d been subtle when she’d only had a handful, but ever since they’d covered her entire table the whole basement gave her chills—an excellent reminder of everything at stake, and how many counted on her. She worried about Livia, of course, but Claire couldn’t forget those who’d already paid for this inhuman industry.

  She wanted to do more than remember. Ever since talking with Basir again, she’d tried to imagine what the victims’ lives were like, stuck in a gem which drained their souls to power houses. Claire hoped that had at least stopped since she’d brought them here, but did the pain linger? Could they recall it, or their pasts? How sentient were they truly? She suspected the answer to that was “very”, which meant they’d heard or seen nothing but Claire rummaging and changing since Livia had vanished. Guilt overrode Claire’s unease, and she reached for the closest exocore, running her fingers over its surface.

  “It’s going to be okay, everyone.” She meant it. She’d find a way, no matter what. “I’ve been busy.”

  She sat at the table for hours, narrating the last days to imprisoned witches who might not even hear her. She had to, just in case. Claire poured out her fears and hopes and suspicions, and voicing it helped clarify her thoughts. The exocores never answered, but, by the time she was finished, Claire’s determination had hardened. She understood exocores, the potential tech behind them, and the pieces of her puzzle better now. She could do this. She thanked them for listening, moved to her desk, and reached for her large file on Montrant Industries. Dozens of notes, newspaper articles, and archive files, compiled for her perusal. Adèle would be impressed.

  “This is my enemy,” she said, to herself, to the exocores, and to Livia, wherever she was. “Somewhere in there or on the street is my damning evidence, and I’ll find it. I’ll find a link I can follow to the top. I promise.”

  -12-

  ET POURQUOI PAS MONTRANT?

  “Claire did what?”

  Adèle’s voice rang through the Parc des Bouleaux, where the quartier’s emblematic birch Soul Tree grew. The park spread behind an old theatre, and the greenery helped alleviate the dark mood instilled by the heavy clouds still hanging over Val-de-mer. Humidity and cold made it harder to breathe, but she hadn’t wanted to stay inside. She had managed to keep her calm during Emmanuelle’s story, her teeth clenching as her sister explained how the damnable thief had snuck into her manor and busted into her room while she was in a nightrobe, but that was too much. Adèle couldn’t believe the gall of this girl. How dare she? Breaking into Adèle’s flat and ruining her feeble sense of security was one thing, but doing the same to her sister? And worse, she’d—

  “Lifted the bed,” Em repeated with exemplar calm. “It did get a little scary then.”

  A little. A little. “I’ll find that no-good invader and—”

  “Adèle, calm down.” Emmanuelle laughed and grabbed her arm as Adèle’s strides lengthened, as if she could’ve run after Claire here and now. Her sister squeezed her arm, forcing a steady pace as they walked along the park’s pathways. “I’m fine. Of the two of us, I’m certain Claire had the worse night.”

  Hard not to believe it, with her level tone and bright smile. Em was as chirpy as if she’d had a massive scientific breakthrough. She had knocked at Adèle’s door early in the morning, in a flowing pink robe and beautiful hat, and insisted on “sharing some great news and checking out that c
ute baker.” Their first stop had thus been the Croissant-toi, and this time Emmanuelle did not miss the pun in its name. She’d spent the entire walk from Adèle’s flat to the bakery expounding on how adorable and uplifting it was for the name to say “believe in yourself”, provided you slightly mispronounced it as crois-en toi.

  Claude himself still worried Adèle. Their night out hadn’t helped, and this morning a faint smoke scent lingered in the bakery. Burnt loaves of rye bread from a distraction, he said, and Adèle hoped the fire hadn’t been too bad. Perhaps his mistake explained why he’d shown so little enthusiasm at meeting Em. New customers typically excited him, and, considering how interested in learning more about her he’d been, Adèle had expected huge smiles and a warm welcome. They did receive a free croissant, yet he acted like a man who knew he had to go through these steps but couldn’t conjure the energy for them. Whatever he didn’t want to talk about, it was worsening. Adèle promised herself to check back on him and she had found it hard to focus on Em’s chatter as they entered the park and set down a gravel path… until her sister had mentioned Claire breaking into her mansion.

  “I don’t care how horrible her night was. She doesn’t get to assault my sister like this. Are you sure she didn’t steal anything? Have you searched the whole house? You don’t even have an exocore!”

  “I’m sure. She only asked questions.”

  “And lifted your bed.”

  “Well, I wasn’t answering.” Anger must have flashed through Adèle’s expression because Em quickly added, “I think she’s scared, Adèle. You talk about an arrogant and mocking girl, and when she entered it’s true she had that air, like the world belonged to her, but it crumbled so fast. Under it she’s frazzled and desperate, and perhaps a little directionless.”