“Hi,” he said. “Where can I put these?”
I stared at him, and he explained, “I have five of them. They’re pretty much all that survived the fire.”
Suddenly conscious that I was acting strange, I opened my mouth to mutter something.
He set the box on the nearest table.
“I’ll go get the other ones, and then I’ll be on my way.”
“Unh, thank you,” I stuttered. “Just a question—do you know where the fire started?”
“Downstairs somewhere. My first thought was that it must have started in the garage, but that’s where we found the boxes, and they are pretty much intact. We’ll know more once the insurance company expert takes a look tomorrow. It was probably an electrical fire. It’s really sad everything burned down. And Lydia’s family home. But hey, at least, you’re alive and you got your boxes.”
I cleared my throat.
“Unh, yes, that is marvelous.”
As soon as he’d left, I called Tristan from the bar’s mural phone. As per usual, he picked up immediately, but he sounded off, probably because he’d been sleeping. I figured this was as good a time as any to ask him my questions. The confusion had lasted long enough, and now, I needed answers.
“How were you the first one there, last night, when our house burned down?”
There was a brief silence before he replied.
“That’s because I live nearby.”
“Oh. And where is that?”
He didn’t answer.
“Anyway, I wanted to thank you again for saving us.”
“My pleasure. Is this why you’re calling me?” he said, sounding tired.
“In part. I also needed to let you know that I’m not going to be able to just let it go. That thing you and Dora Vinok got going, with the miraculous healing and the multiple identities and the boxes. I need to know. It’s starting to be too much for me to pretend it’s nothing.”
The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if there was a link between Dora Vinok’s business and my accident four years ago. The day before, I’d been happy to bury any strange event and just carry on with my life. The elevator accident had happened a long time ago and I’d moved on. But after last night, I couldn’t ignore the coincidences anymore. There were too many weird things going on in my life.
“Okay,” was all Tristan said.
“Will you talk to me and tell me what you know?”
He sighed, and I saw it coming, the moment when he’d evade the questions again. So I laid all my cards on the table.
“The boxes are here, you know. All five of them. The fire didn’t burn them. They’re not even a little singed. The fire chief just brought them over to me.”
“Oh, gods.”
“Yes. So. Either you tell me what you know, or I’ll open them now.”
There was another silence. I was holding the phone in a death grip and taking shallow, silent breaths, while my heart thrummed in my chest.
At last, Tristan spoke.
“All right,” he said, sounding a little defeated. “I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“No, you’ll tell me everything.”
“Not everything, but enough.”
Well, I supposed I’d have to trust him, whatever the story was.
“One condition, though,” he added. “Don’t open the boxes. Hide them in the storage room at the bar, or better yet, in the cellar, under a tarp, find a place, and do it now. And lock the door. I don’t want anyone stumbling upon them. And don’t talk about any of this to anyone in your band. Ever. Is that clear?”
I gulped. “Is it really that bad?”
“I don’t know it yet. It could be. Victoire, promise me you’ll put those boxes away right now.”
“All right.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up at dusk. Be ready.”
He hung up.
13
It was almost dark outside, but the Victory Bar was like our cozy little bubble. It was such a nice place, weirdly comforting. Sitting at a table with Sam and Thom, I felt as if I could relax a little at last.
Linus handed me a glass of ruby-red wine, but I shook my head. I wanted to keep a clear mind for the evening. So I grabbed one of the little pieces of bread covered in Saint-Nectaire instead and popped it in my mouth. The subtle, nutty aroma of the creamy cheese exploded, and I nearly moaned. I felt ravenous.
Linus set the two glasses of wine he’d brought in front of Sam and Thom before going back to the bar to get another glass for himself and another plate of snacks. We really needed that little moment of luxury after that weird day of sorting out our lives.
We’d called our parents, our banks and insurance companies, our landlady and our jobs. Thom’s car insurance would solve his key problem the next day. Elise, the farmer, had said she might know of another place we could rent, so we were waiting to hear from her. All our bosses and clients had been quite sympathetic. As soon as we had a car the next morning, we’d drive to Moulins and buy the basics we needed, clothes, toiletries, phones, a computer for Linus to work on. And we’d have to find new music instruments ASAP. It was a good thing we weren’t completely broke anymore, even though this was going to put a huge dent in our finances.
Tomorrow would be a really big day, but tonight, I had other plans, and my bandmates were curious.
“So, Vic, you’re going out with Tristan?” Thom asked, always the first to shoot.
“It’s not a date,” I said, having prepared a nice little lie. “We’re going to see a burlesque troupe some distance away from here. He said he wanted to include me more in the artistic side of the business.”
“Nice,” Linus approved, nodding.
Since he never lied, he didn’t really see why others would do it. Lying to Sam, though, was another story entirely. Of course, he immediately started cackling like a hyena.
“Right. Very believable,” he snickered.
I wanted to throw a piece of fresh goat cheese at him but worked hard to control my temper. He was wearing Tristan’s clothes, a dark gray long-sleeved shirt with a black wool sweater and dark slacks, and I didn’t want to ruin them. By the way, the nice clothes looked really funny on Sam, because he was very much still the same unkempt Sam I’d always known. He had dry, flyaway hair in a color that bordered on dark red. He was always in dire need of a haircut. And of a shave. He had a big mouth with big teeth and sometimes looked like an overenthusiastic dog. Except when he was sniffing something and wanted to tease. He could be shrewd, then.
“So, why do you figure he wants a closer work relationship with you? Do you reckon he wants to get into your pants?”
“Nope.”
“How can you be so sure?” Thom insisted. “I always figured this Clovis guy was more your cup of tea than over-the-top Tristan, but since Clovis seems to be out of the picture now, and I guess Tristan does have some nice qualities, when you like flaming drag queens.”
I looked at him, baffled, uncertain of what to say.
“Yeah,” Sam laughed, “good thing Clovis left some of his clothes lying around when he split. Otherwise, can you imagine yourself in that orange jumper of Tristan’s? Or—” he snorted “—the glittery platform shoes?”
They all burst laughing.
Holy boogie-woogie. I’d completely forgotten they didn’t always see the same things as I did when looking at Tristan. It seemed I’d completely underestimated that illusion thing Tristan had going. It was far worse than I’d thought.
“I’m sure it’s just a costume, and he dresses normally sometimes,” I said.
Linus shook his head, smiling. “I don’t know, Vic. I mean, when he came to save you last night, he swooped in clad in mauve snakeskin pants, with that pink wig, like he’d been sleeping in costume.”
“Anyway,” Thom concluded, “please give us a heads up if you decide to consort with him. And if there are puppies, please, please, keep one for me. I really want one.”
“Oh, yeah,” Sam said.
“I’ll want one, too.”
I shook my head and took a sip from Linus’s glass. Kids, they were all kids. And I couldn’t wait to hear the truth from Tristan. He’d better give me a very sound explanation for everything, because right now, the king was naked and it was too weird.
Half an hour later, the sun had set and the temps had plummeted even further. On the little parking place in front of the bar, the sandy ground was crusted with ice and the grass was rigid with frost. It was a good thing I’d borrowed some clothes from Elise, shoes and jeans and a burnt orange turtleneck that brought out the hazel in my eyes, as well as a warm, heavy coat with deep pockets where I could hide my hands. I felt a little more like a human being, even if my ankle was still sore and I wouldn’t be able to walk much.
Tristan’s car was waiting for us in front of the bar. He hadn’t been there long, just enough to set a bag in the corner, with more plaids and warm clothes and towels, he’d said, before indicating that we’d be taking his car. He was inappropriately dressed for the weather as usual, in a dark brown leather jacket, black wool trousers, and black leather shoes. I could only imagine how the others had seen him this time. They’d teased me earlier, but when Tristan had actually arrived, they’d behaved.
“Are you Tristan the flamboyant circus manager right now?” I asked him as soon as we were alone.
He gave a sharp laugh and unlocked his car. “Yes.”
“So how do you do it? Do you control what others see? What are you wearing? Am I seeing the real you? Does your car even look like a black sedan?”
He didn’t answer right away, and we got into his car. It smelled of leather and smoke from the devastating house fire.
“I do control what they see,” he explained while starting the car. “I project something. It’s like broadcasting. Coherence is key, and everybody needs to see the same thing for it to feel real. Or to be real.”
“Can you see it, too?”
“Yes. In one corner of my mind, I’m the colorful Tristan in day-glo yellow corduroy pants and a flowery shirt in all shades of purple. I can assure you it’s pretty unforgettable. My glasses are blue peacocks and I’m wearing a pale blue curly wig. I have a big nose and crooked teeth and dark brown eyes and the very beginning of a beer paunch, because of my job. I smell of tobacco and whisky. And I drive a lime-green convertible, in which one window has been broken and fixed quickly with cardboard and brown tape. But in another, more private, corner of my mind, I’m just plain old Tristan.”
“Is he the one I see? Plain old Tristan?”
He nodded and I laughed, because “plain old Tristan” wasn’t a very fitting description. He wasn’t plain at all. He was fine, lean and graceful, with a straight nose and delicate yet masculine features.
“Is that even your real eye color?” I asked, looking him directly, and somewhat rudely, in the face.
“Frankly, I’m not sure what you’re seeing. You should be seeing Circus Manager Tristan, but this particular trick doesn’t seem to be working on you.”
“To me, they’re this deep blue, with reddish undercurrents, as though I can see your blood vessels beneath the iris. And your pupils are weirdly responsive. On the night we met you, I mean, as Clovis, the band thought you were a stoner, but that’s not exactly it, is it now?”
He’d turned onto a small, less-traveled road that led out of town, and we were now gliding through total darkness, the dull flat fields completely swallowed by empty nothingness.
“Where are we going?”
“To my place. I hope it’s okay. I need to show you something. It will make the explaining easier.”
So he was really going to explain. I didn’t know what I thought about that right then. I was curious, but was I afraid? Not really. In fact, I felt safe with him, even though I really didn’t know him and he was, of his own admission, a very shady character. Sitting in the driver’s seat, he gave off weird vibes of cold mixed with nervousness, but even that wasn’t quite enough to worry me. Just as I had on the first night at the barn, before it became the Victory Bar, I had a strong sense of peace and belonging whenever I was around him.
A night bird crossed the sky and the darkness surrounding the car got even thicker. We’d entered a forest. And it wasn’t one of the overly domesticated woods you could find in the area, with these ramrod straight tall oaks raised purely for high-end furniture stores. No, this was the real deal: centuries-old trees with gnarly branches and roots like old arthritic feet bull of bunions. Even in the dead of winter, the woods looked alive, ready to jump at you through the silver mist.
“Atmospheric,” I murmured as Tristan hit the brakes before a particularly tricky turn.
Where we came from, in Dompierre, everything was flat and straight, but now suddenly, the road was winding around trees, steep low hills, and big rocks.
“I’m glad you like it.”
“It’s funny,” I noted, “because I thought I’d explored all the woods within a ten-mile radius around the house.”
I loved trees and forests and had wandered quite a bit around the house in the autumn before I’d experienced firsthand how domesticated everything really was in the area. The woods here weren’t woods, they were fields, tree factories.
Well, except for this one. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t discovered it on my own.
“Maybe we’re not in that same space you explored,” Tristan said.
“What do you mean? Is this an illusion, too? I thought your illusions didn’t work all that well on me.”
“No, this isn’t an illusion. It’s very much real. Almost more so than the world you know.”
“So this is a world I don’t know.”
“It’s my home.”
It was all kinds of puzzling, and I pondered in silence, watching the forest unfurl all around us.
“The night we met,” I remembered, “you looked like you’d just woken up and you didn’t really know where you were.”
“That’s because I had just woken up and I didn’t know where or when I was or even who I was supposed to be,” he said.
“Huh?”
He laughed. “I think you summoned me somehow when you arrived at the barn.”
“We summoned you? What are you, a demon?”
“There are no such things as demons.”
“But really? We summoned you?”
“No. Not ‘we.’ You, as in the band, didn’t summon me. You, Victoire, did it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, neither do I.”
The mist had gotten so thick that he’d had to slow the car down again. Now the headlights only revealed more fog. There almost wasn’t a road anymore.
“Wow.”
“We’ll be there in a minute.”
And then he stopped. It took a gust of wind moving the heavy dampness away for me to see the gates: tall, black, and very spiky on top, fantastically uninviting.
“Home,” Tristan said, as the gates opened themselves with a loud, almost feral screech of metal.
He smoothly started the car again. Under the tires, the road was rocky now, uneven. The trees on each side, though, looked more domesticated than those in the forest, and they formed a tunnel hugging the alley. As we made our way through, the headlights caught something at the end of the tunnel: the raised head of a majestic stag.
Just one second, and then it was gone.
When the car came out on the other side, I tried to spot the beautiful animal, but it had disappeared. And then the beauty of the scenery hit me, and I gasped. The full moon was shining bright and perfect in a clear sky, shedding dramatic light on a huge house sitting on top of a hill, in the middle of a very vast park.
“Yowza.”
“Home,” Tristan said again, his voice tinted both with pride and sadness.
“Very nice,” I approved. “Have you lived here long?”
“Since I was a child.”
“Does your family live here as well?” I asked, feeling slightly shy n
ow.
The expression on his face instantly made me want to swallow my own words again, but of course, it was too late.
“They’re all dead by now,” he just said. “Or estranged.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s been a long time.”
“So you live here all by yourself?”
He shrugged. “I have a cleaning crew and a whole squad of gardeners, and other people who come in regularly to take care of…various things for me. But the place is empty tonight. It’s better if you don’t meet. It would be unpleasant for everyone involved.”
I wondered why he was bringing me here if it was such a bad idea.
“So the day we met, all this about being broke and getting robbed when you bought the barn, it was all rubbish, wasn’t it?”
“I was making it up as I went. I thought it fit the absurd disguise I’d just given myself. I was not at the height of my reflexes that night. Imagine waking up in a place you know nothing about, have never been to in your whole life, and having to answer at the door when you feel like you’ve just been raised from the dead.”
“Were you? Dead?”
“No.”
I sighed in relief. Not dead was better than dead. I didn’t know how I would have dealt with visiting a huge empty castle-like house with an undead guy. Probably not too well.
“But don’t you live in the area? I mean, Dompierre isn’t far from here.”
He snorted.
“Victoire, your Dompierre isn’t even in the same plane of existence as this place. We’re in the realms now.”
14
The house that was more of a castle looked huge from a distance, but I really took its measure once the car had climbed the hill and stopped in front of it. With its four stories and round corner towers, all in white stone, and its steep dark slate roof, the building was truly impressive. I was pretty sure you could have ridden through the grand entrance on horseback in full armor, complete with spears and oriflamme. The steps leading up there, wide and majestic, certainly made it possible. And turning back to watch the park from the hilltop, I was seized once again by the beauty of the place. The landscape was gorgeous under silver moonlight, with orderly French gardens built around a series of round fountains, and surrounded by dense, dark woods. It seemed to extend in every direction without any limits in sight. Whatever “plane of existence” this was, and whoever Tristan was in this “realm” of his, he was obviously very well off.
Moonlight Binding Magic Page 7
