Sensational

by Jodie Lynn Zdrok

  Covered in blood all the same.

  Louis’s normally ruddy cheeks were the color of chalk. “I tried to help you stop it. You—you spoke.” He dropped his voice. “It’s too late, isn’t it?”

  Nathalie gaped at him, unable to answer. Being unprepared for the vision took something out of her. She was accustomed to visions of murder scenes. And yet, could one ever truly get used to watching one human kill another? Only as a mask, the way her Insightful father was used to fevered sailors, the smell of illness and sweat, and getting sick after healing them. That was his gift and his curse.

  She’d had to tell herself a lot of things in order to make sense of being an Insightful. Of what it was like to live in a world where most people didn’t have magic in their blood from Dr. Henard’s transfusion experiments. What it was like to have some singular ability that manifested because of who you were, how you thought, how you viewed the world. What it was like to be endowed with a gift that also demanded recompense and took something from you. How one tried to get used to seeing murder scenes through the eyes of a killer.

  Some days, she was out of things to tell herself.

  “I saw almost everything.” She glanced at the guard, distracted and searching the crowd. Her eyes jumped to the pillar. The head rested on it again, as if it were just another sculpture. As if it didn’t belong to the man she saw in her vision.

  The guard was looking past them, waving. Before they could turn around, two policemen advanced through the chaos, ordering everyone to step away.

  People scattered like ice cracks across a pond; the man who’d bumped the pedestal was nowhere in sight. Louis finished cleaning off her hands as best he could, and bunched up the handkerchief in his palm. He hooked his arm through Nathalie’s. “The guard was preoccupied with ushering people away and making sure the gentleman who slipped wasn’t hurt. I doubt he noticed anything other than you holding the head. I don’t know about anyone else. How are you feeling?”

  “Startled, but thinking clearly again,” she said as they retreated from the pillar. Nathalie met the gaze of a woman whose brow would be a question mark if her muscles could make it so. She had noticed. “For now.”

  Simone rushed up to them, much to the scowling disapproval of people moving in the other direction. “In between shoulders and heads bobbing, I saw the fuss at the pedestal. I think I did, anyway. I couldn’t tell for sure.” Her eyes went to Nathalie’s hands. “Did you…?”

  “Instinctively reach out and foolishly touch the head? Yes, because it’s still part of a human, or was, and—I don’t know. A reflex. I couldn’t help it. And the vision…” A pair of girls close in age to her walked alongside her and ogled. She held her tongue, waiting until they were outside and the girls strolled away. One looked over her shoulder before quickly turning away again.

  Nathalie looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping and continued. “He used a guillotine. Like the one at La Roquette, but smaller. Maybe a couple of meters high.”

  Simone put her hand to her mouth and stifled a gasp.

  “Who has a guillotine at their disposal?” Louis asked, stroking his own neck. “And who can carry a head into the Palais des Beaux-Arts unnoticed?”

  Nathalie shuddered. “I wouldn’t believe any of this if I didn’t see it. I saw it and still don’t fully believe it.”

  They walked back over to the Fontaine de Coutan, their moods so very different than when they’d left it not even ten minutes before. Somehow the surrounding architecture, striking and mighty, made her feel small. Not proud or inspired.

  Nathalie gave them an abridged version of the vision, promising more details in a moment, and moved past the row of chairs to sit on the edge of the fountain.

  She submerged her hands in the water and washed off the remaining blood. After thoroughly inspecting to make sure not one spot remained, she dried her hands on her beige linen dress, took a mint to mitigate the nausea that had overtaken her, and pulled out her journal. She wanted to capture the immediacy of this in case her memory interfered with it later.

  Simone and Louis sat beside her and watched the frenzied activity outside the Palais des Beaux-Arts. “People are obviously telling other people what happened,” said Simone, pointing toward the building. “As many are trying to get inside the building as there are escaping.”

  Simone glanced at Louis, who was neatly folding his bloodied handkerchief and placing it in a clean one. Simone jumped to her feet like she’d sat on a coal. “Uh, what are you doing? Whose blood is that?”

  “The victim’s,” he said with the air of someone who handled bloody handkerchiefs every day instead of books at The Quill. “I cleaned off Nathalie’s hands.”

  Simone put her hands to her mouth. “Why do you still have that?”

  “Evidence.”

  “His head is evidence.” She sat beside him again. “I’ve met you, Louis Carre. You want it as a revolting souvenir.”

  “Something to add to my morbidities and oddities collection? Perhaps that as well,” Louis said, putting the bundle in his pocket. He rinsed his hands in the fountain as Nathalie had done.

  Simone pointed to Nathalie’s journal. “Make sure you write that down, too. That Louis has questionable taste when it comes to acquiring mementos.”

  “We knew that, but I’ll note it anyway,” she said, smirking. She kept her eyes on the journal and exhaled, serious once again. “Now, I’m going to write everything down as I describe it to you. I want—I need to record as much detail as I can. Please let me know if I’ve left anything out leading up to the vision. Even small details.”

  She read to them what she’d written up to that point. They talked it through, Simone and Louis asking questions (“Where’s the body?”) and speculating (“What if it’s somewhere on the grounds of the Exposition? Or in the Seine?”) as Nathalie wrote.

  “Oh, it just occurred to me. The hair!” Louis tugged at his own ginger locks for emphasis. “He’s a clever killer, making such a statement. Think about your history studies. Specifically the Revolution of 1789.”

  He searched their eyes, but neither Nathalie nor Simone grasped the point he was trying to make.

  Louis ran his hands up the back of Simone’s hair and made a snipping motion.

  Nathalie gasped. “Of course. La coiffure à la Titus!”

  The style of hair, named for the Roman emperor Titus, came from the Revolution a century ago; it was short in back and combed forward in a tousled manner. First worn by revolutionaries, then adopted by fashionable women of wealth, the style was a nod to the democratic ideals of the ancient world. And an homage to the guillotine victims, whose hair was shorn prior to execution.

  “Loathsome,” said Louis. “Isn’t it?”

  Simone’s wide-set blue eyes seemed to grow bigger as she put a hand on his forearm. “Wait, the hair isn’t the only tie to the Revolution. The scarf, too!” She clasped her neck. “Like the red chokers they used to wear as a tribute to guillotine victims.”

  “And now, white made red with blood.” Nathalie regarded Simone and Louis. Each wore an expression of speechlessness that complemented her own bafflement. “Who would go to such effort? Be so ostentatious?”

  With a deep exhale, she resumed writing. The previous day was well-accounted for; she’d written in extensive detail about the abandoned shoemaker’s shop in the 19th arrondissement the three of them had explored. She also reached further back, to two and three days ago, and wrote down everything she could remember.

  How much time will I lose?

  “Oh, Nathalie, my selfless friend, I hope it’s nothing like last time.” Simone patted her on the back, glancing at the journal.

  Nathalie had only meant to write that, not say it out loud.

  “I don’t know what to expect this time.” She closed the journal and returned it to her satchel. “The vision was horrifying; they always are. But at the morgue, I’m used to having some control. I know what I’m going to do. I know when it’s going
to happen. I can prepare.”

  Louis dragged his heel across the ground. “And I took you out of it. Was that a mistake?”

  “Not at all. I appreciate how considerate you were, trying to help.” Nathalie gave Louis a reassuring smile. “I think you also kept me from being a spectacle.”

  Simone put her hand to her mouth for a stage whisper. “He’s best at making one of himself.”

  “One of us is considerate, and the other one makes jokes,” said Louis, pretending to take offense. “Have you ever been taken out of a vision like that? I hope I didn’t cause any harm…”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. People have bumped into me at the morgue a few times, and that’s interrupted it.” She stood, smoothing her dress. “I’ve never had any ill effects. I’m more concerned about what happens when I go to the morgue. I didn’t have a problem last time, but even so.”

  After she’d lost three days of memory, Nathalie had taken a five-month hiatus from obtaining visions at the morgue. Then the murder of a young woman, a girl whose build and features reminded her of Agnès, had jarred her more than most. Death himself couldn’t render the victim inelegant; even on a concrete slab, she somehow had a dignity that the morgue afforded very few.

  The victim had been found in an alley wearing a silver scarf made of wool. A scarf that was also a murder weapon. Death by strangulation, according to Dr. Nicot, who performed autopsies at the morgue. Nathalie had been stirred to do more than write about it, and so she’d touched the glass, ready to embrace the consequences.

  She’d had a vision, no different from those that preceded it, and lost a mere quarter hour of memory. Distinct warts on the murderer’s hands helped solve the case of Marie-Noëlle Fabron, age seventeen. Nathalie then decided to resume using her gift and had since been compensated as an “Insightful adviser.”

  “You also took off months, not hours last time. Maybe it’s too soon to acquire a vision,” Simone offered.

  Nathalie had thought that as well. Would she lose days again? Did the time away heal whatever the visions did to her mind, or did it have no effect at all? If she had a vision, would it be typical or deviate in some way? She had a decision to make. There was no logic, no path, no Guide Bleu for being an Insightful. It was experience, feel, and guesswork.

  She much preferred reason.

  “I’ll decide when I get there. I’m inclined to take the risk.” Nathalie searched her mind for a justification, because it was easier than thinking the worst. “Maybe it’s close enough in succession that nothing will happen.”

  There you go, telling yourself things again.

  A family with four children came beside them at the fountain. The youngest two reached over the edge. Nathalie watched as their hands plunged beneath the surface of the water. The same water in which she and Louis had washed blood from their hands. She winced when the children started splashing each other. She wished she could tell them to get away from this tainted fountain. Their mother gave them a sharp reprimand. The splashing halted.

  The other two children threw in some coins, announcing they were making wishes.

  Plop. Nathalie watched the coins hit the water.

  Plop. The man’s head dropping from the guillotine. The part she didn’t see.

  Simone and Louis rose, and as the three of them walked away, Simone spoke. “Perhaps you won’t have to do it a second time.”

  “True. Christophe will worry, insist on my health. You know how he is. Jules as well. Maybe what he discovered was enough.”

  “Yes and yes, but that’s not what I had in mind,” said Simone, adjusting the brim of her white hat. “Think about everything we’ve discussed—Jules may not have been called in at all. Christophe has a body down at the morgue. What if it doesn’t have a head?”

  3

  Nathalie had been so focused on the head of the victim at the Palais des Beaux-Arts that the notion of the body already being at the morgue hadn’t come to mind. “How did that not occur to me? You’re right, Simone. That could be what happened.”

  If so, Jules wouldn’t have been called to the morgue. He was, like Nathalie, a natural Insightful—the descendant of someone who’d gotten one of Dr. Henard’s blood transfusions. His gift was hearing thoughts through the touch of a head. For the living, he could read a thought for some duration leading up to the present. For the deceased, he was able to hear the final thoughts in the moments leading up to death. He assisted with suicides, too, tragedies to which Nathalie’s power did not extend.

  They strolled back toward the Seine, taking a route to the right of the busy Tour Eiffel. They passed the Monaco Pavilion, white with corners like miniature bell towers, and turned into a garden.

  “I wonder,” Louis began, “if they bring the severed head to the morgue, would Jules be able to get a thought reading?”

  Simone threw her arm around his shoulder. “Shakespeare quotes, bloody souvenirs, and grotesque questions no one has the answer to. That’s mon ami.”

  “A perfectly natural question, mon chou.” Louis hesitated. “Natural given the circumstances.”

  They walked past the wooden Norwegian chalet with its pointy, sloping roof. Nathalie supposed that was to help snow fall off. They exited the garden and took the Decauville Railroad, the diminutive open-air slow train that took visitors from one section of the grounds to another.

  While Simone and Louis counted aloud how many parasols they could see, Nathalie thought about Jules. Simone’s joke aside, she did wonder if he’d be able to use his power with only a head. He’d been working alongside her at the morgue since late March of the previous year. Paris had gained some notoriety after the Dark Artist murders, and rumors had spread that a “young Insightful” had helped solve the case. A multitude of Insightfuls then stepped forward, eager to help the police—who wouldn’t comment on getting any such assistance, from Nathalie or anyone else. “We prefer the realm of human reason,” Prefect of Police Lozé had said in a newspaper article pondering whether the Insightfuls had been turned away.

  That was for the public’s benefit.

  In truth, the Prefect of Police not only welcomed Insightfuls, but he’d also introduced compensation for them through a budgetary line item called “Miscellaneous Resources.”

  Nathalie was nevertheless surprised when, days after the article was published, Jules Lachance showed up at the morgue. Tall and lean, he had dark reddish-brown hair that sat whichever way it wanted to, along with a smile that was positively winsome. Christophe introduced him as a thought reader who might assist from time to time.

  So Jules was added to the cadre of anonymous Insightfuls (Nathalie only knew of Jules and M. Patenaude, Papa’s friend and the editor of Le Petit Journal) helping the city in some capacity, to the extent that the consequences of their powers allowed. Jules suffered temporary hearing loss for every thought reading he did and was only called upon for cases deemed important.

  Jules Lachance. Her colleague, then her friend.

  Now her beau.

  “Nathalie, what do you think about going back to the Exposition afterward?” said Simone as they disembarked near Pont des Invalides and walked toward an omnibus. “If you’re feeling well, that is. We didn’t actually see what we intended…”

  “Maybe,” said Nathalie, stepping on board the omnibus. “Otherwise, go without me.”

  Her mind was not on paintings at the moment. Simone tried, but neither she nor Louis truly understood what it meant to be an Insightful. They were casual about it at times, more prone to seeing the advantages over the drawbacks. Jules understood, needless to say, and it endeared him to her. His father was a German soldier his mother had taken up with during the Franco-Prussian War. (“I’m treasonous offspring,” Jules often said in a tone that suggested he was both joking and not.) The soldier had gotten Henard’s transfusions, one of the only Germans to do so, and passed it on to Jules.

  He’d left long before Jules was born. Whether he’d ever manifested his power, or whether he�
��d even made it back to his homeland, was a mystery never to be solved.

  “What was it like?” the man across from her on the omnibus said.

  To whom? He appeared to be looking at her, but he was also facing her. He had a thick black mustache, oiled to points at the end.

  “The head,” he continued. “You caught the head that fell off the pillar in the gallery. I didn’t get close enough to see it well. I recognize you, however.”

  Every set of eyes on the omnibus turned to her.

  She flushed, then was annoyed that her cheeks betrayed her so. What did he expect her to say? “Why don’t you go back and see for yourself? Maybe they’ll let you hold it.”

  Louis unraveled his gruesome souvenir. “I still have the blood on my handkerchief,” he said, waving it in the direction of the man. “Would you like to hold it?”

  The eyes on board switched from Nathalie to the man, who glowered as he folded his arms.

  Truly, though. If she’d seen someone catch a human head, she’d want to know, too. The man had no way of knowing the consequences of that reflexive act.

  Nor did she.

  She sighed. Being an Insightful had been a blessing and a curse from the start. Nathalie remembered thinking that even when her ability presented itself, long before she knew the reason behind it. She’d asked Papa about it, if he regretted making the choice to get Dr. Henard’s magic-imbuing blood transfusions. Regrets are like little slippery creatures, he’d said, that you have to hold more tightly or let go. Even if you set one free, it leaves a stain on your hand.

  Yet it was Agnès’s death that had put her ability, like so much else, in perspective. Nathalie both loved and hated her power to witness murders. Side by side those feelings existed, as if tethered by a rope; pull on one side and the other followed right behind, always equidistant.

  The devastation of realizing Agnès’s body was in the morgue, hearing Mme. Jalbert cry for her daughter, witnessing the knife plunge into her dear friend’s throat … those were the worst minutes of Nathalie’s life. She was able to reconcile her visions most of the time. Somewhere along the way she’d adapted and was able to file them away, probably tapping into the same mechanism of the mind that permitted doctors, nurses, policemen, and medical examiners to do what they needed to do.