Moonlight Binding Magic

by Charlotte Munich

  Whatever it was, it seemed to make him happy, but I wasn’t sure I shared his enthusiasm.

  “Is it something you’re going to have to burn my skin over later?” I asked grumpily.

  He gave a dry laugh. “Oh, come on. It’s just a little burn. It’ll be gone in no time. And you won’t have to think about what you’re allowed to say or not. It’s more for your own comfort, actually.”

  I didn’t agree, and I didn’t like it.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to see the rest of your house. You’ll show it to me later maybe, one day, when you really trust me. This is not how I do hospitality. I can wait for you outside. In fact, I’ll let myself out now.”

  Maybe I was being harsh. He had given me and my band a place to crash after the fire. But only to ruin everything in one fell swoop.

  He made a face again, obviously displeased, but didn’t say anything, so I took my wounded feelings back to the hallway to retrieve my coat and then through the little door that led outside. I didn’t look back once, and he didn’t follow me.

  Outside, thin sharp clouds that looked a little like those wolf teeth cookies had gathered around the moon, some slashing through the marmoreal orb. Grinding my teeth and crunching the gravel under the soles of Elise’s shoes, I walked to the edge of the driveway, where majestic stairs climbed down the hill. It was tough, thinking I was faced with a maybe-problematic situation, but my way out of this enigma seemed to be through an even more enigmatic man, who didn’t trust me and whom I shouldn’t trust. The best thing to do now would probably be to investigate on my own, gather intel about Anubis, talk to Dora.

  I was going to have a big, busy day in the morning.

  16

  But the next day, it was already dark when I woke up, at five o’clock in the afternoon. All I remembered was falling asleep while Tristan’s car purred through the heavy mist on the drive back from his “realm.”

  He must have carried me to the back room of his bar, behind the stage. I’d been vaguely conscious of my bandmates snoring around me through the night. And now, I was groggy and disoriented, still wearing Elise’s clothes from the day before. At least my ankle felt fine.

  I must have needed the sleep after the weird discussions we’d had last night and after the fire the night before.

  I showered quickly before putting on another set of Elise’s clothes, mom jeans, and a moss green sweater. I tried to listen for any activity in the building. At first, I thought the guys must have gone about their business without waking me. But when I crossed the stage to the main hall, they were playing cards at the bar.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty!” Linus called affectionately. “How do you feel?”

  “How was your date?” Sam added immediately.

  Thom smacked him on the head.

  “It must not have gone too well, you idiot. She was passed out when he brought her back. Probably from the shock of seeing too many colors at once. Have you seen his outfit yesterday? It was wild.”

  I shook my head.

  “I told you it wasn’t a date. It was a work…thing.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Sam chanted, clearly not taking my word for it. “The burlesque troupe. How were they?”

  “Really good,” I said, leaving them to go make myself a strong cup of coffee.

  “Are you hungry?” Linus asked.

  “Vic, you can tell us the truth,” Sam insisted. “No boss in the world buys his employee princess dresses just like that. Or vintage music instruments for her whole freaking band.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Wow, I really needed that coffee.

  “He left them here yesterday when he brought you back,” Linus said, indicating a group of bags near the bar and on the bar.

  They were big canvas bags, and I’d seen Tristan pop them into his car trunk the previous night, just before he’d driven me back.

  I went to check for myself. I only had to open one of the canvas bags to let out a groan. There, neatly folded in a pile and smelling faintly of lavender, lay half a dozen pieces of clothing that looked handmade, hand embroidered, silky and lacy, the works. There was a silk mask on top, and even accessories at the bottom—a comb, a bracelet, a tiny bejeweled fan.

  “What the hell are these things?”

  “He said they’re old clothes that were wasting away at his place.”

  Oh. So that’s what he’d wanted to show me. Maybe these were peace offerings. Probably. Too bad I didn’t want them.

  “He found instruments, too,” Sam added. “A set of drums, a bass, a guitar, and even a ukulele.” He showed them to me in the corner of the room where I hadn’t seen them.

  I went over to check them out. They were state-of-the-art modern instruments. I didn’t know what I’d expected, probably a viola de gamba, a Stradivarius cello, and a set of military drums.

  Thom picked up the guitar with almost religious awe.

  “It’s a Les Paul from the fifties,” he murmured. “I might marry her if she’ll take me.”

  The guitar was plugged, and when he started playing, I had to admit it sounded wonderful.

  The ukulele was in a small mother-of-pearl case. It was carved and hand painted with skulls and flowers, really beautiful. I hit a few chords, enjoying the melancholy notes, before putting the cute instrument back in its case. This was all too much.

  “And we went shopping today,” Linus said. “We picked up some basics for you. I hope they’re your size, although, of course, you’re not going to find them as beautiful as the…princess dresses.”

  I made a face, and he laughed. But I had other, more pressing problems.

  “So the insurance sent you a new key to your car?” I asked Thom.

  “Yep.”

  “Can I borrow it later?”

  “What for?” he asked, more curious than suspicious.

  “I want to go…”

  I’d started to explain that I wanted to drive back to Moulins to check out Anubis again but stopped myself at the last second. My mouth was open, my brain was working, and I was pretty sure I could tell them everything. But it didn’t mean that I should.

  Sam’s mouth turned up in a huge, shit-eating smile.

  “She wants to go visit her Tristan,” he mocked. “See if he can put on those snakeskin pants again, maybe with that electric blue wig.”

  I shrugged. Let them think what they wanted. And at least Sam’s lurid explanation would deter Linus from coming with me.

  “Wear one of the princess dresses,” Sam advised.

  I just ignored him further.

  “What about band practice?” Linus asked.

  “I have a couple of errands of my own to run after the fire. I’m sorry I slept all day. You should have woken me up.”

  We agreed the band would meet as soon as I came back, because the bar opening was only two days away now, and we needed to rehearse with our new instruments.

  Since I didn’t have a mobile phone anymore, I made a quick phone call before leaving, to my insurance company. I wanted to know more about the origin of the fire. They confirmed that the expert had visited the house and that he, too, thought the fire hadn’t been an accident. It was arson, all right.

  I picked up Thom’s keys and set off for the industrial zone where Anubis had their offices.

  It was six fifteen when I arrived, how ironic. Everything was just as I remembered it: the giant neon sign featuring a jackal, the stuttering lights at the entrance of the storage area, the atmosphere of humidity and heavy quiet yet buzzing with electricity. But in the small office beyond the store windows, Dora Vinok had been replaced by another young woman in a dark blue pantsuit. This one was blond and gray-eyed. There was something about her that reminded me of a young Grace Kelly, but with red-rimmed plastic glasses, a frilly high-necked blouse, and a big golden brooch in the shape of a hummingbird on her lapel.

  I supposed it could be some disguise. I was starting to spot these people—people like Tristan and Dora. They
used fashion and details to anchor your attention, maybe to make you forget other, more important things about them, that they didn’t want you to see. It must be more difficult to alter one’s face, for instance. Tristan had seemed to say he’d given himself a new set of features in order to be “Circus Manager Tristan,” a trick that had worked on my bandmates. That first night, I’d seen his crazy outfit just as they had, but behind the extravagant glasses, he’d been the same person to me, in the same body.

  So I supposed I was staring at a woman who was trying to pass herself off as someone else and only partially succeeding as far as I was concerned.

  I marched on into the little office, ringing the bell as I opened the glass door with an energetic gesture, and plopped myself in the visitors’ chair in front of the blonde, who was now typing at an old computer.

  “Hi. I’d like to speak to Dora, now, please.”

  “Hi. And who are you?” she asked.

  “Victoire Destel. I’m an unhappy customer.”

  I said it as if I was one of Dora’s special customers, the ones who sent her on missions. The blonde cast me a worried glance. Obviously, she had never heard of me, and she mustn’t be ranking very high at Anubis, which was my luck.

  “Ms. Vinok isn’t here today,” she said. “She only comes into the office for delicate matters.”

  Interesting.

  “I have lost my phone and all my contacts. Could you help me out? Do you know where I could reach her tonight?”

  “No. I’m not allowed to do that. Tell me again, what do you want with Dora? Maybe you could leave her a message. She’s a rather busy woman.”

  “If you give me her address, I won’t tell her you’ve been using her nail varnish behind her back,” I said, nodding towards her impeccable manicure. “Unless, of course, you’re Dora herself, and you’ve gotten a little better at this disguise game since I last saw you. But I don’t think so.”

  The woman had stiffened when I’d talked about the nail polish, and now she was positively frozen, with a look of panic on her face. It was satisfying on two levels: first, I was messing with Dora and her people. And second, I was finding that I could still talk about some things freely after enduring Tristan’s confidentiality charm.

  “Come on,” I told Dora’s sidekick. “She’ll be even more furious if she hears I was here and you didn’t let me through. Dora and I, we’ve got some unfinished business to settle. Pinky swear, with plum varnish.”

  It was fun, being all tough bitch. I crossed my arms and waited while the blonde considered her options.

  After a deep sigh, she wrote something on a Post-it note and gave it to me.

  “This is where you’ll find her tonight.”

  I looked at the piece of paper before pocketing it. It was an address in Moulins.

  “She’s staying in this world?”

  Now the blonde was frowning and reconsidering.

  “It’s where you’ll find the portal,” she indicated.

  Oh. Great. Now I was in over my head.

  17

  Half an hour later, after checking five times this was indeed the place, I pushed the glass door to the Squeaky Clean Jackal laundromat in Moulins.

  The owners were obviously big on branding. A good two dozen cuddly jackals/dogs/fox-like animals were hanging from the ceiling at various heights, while others sat on the washing machines and the dryers, each holding different artifacts between their creepy little paws: drums, golden stars, dreidels, and a baby Jesus. This, at the beginning of February, when even the most negligent among the French know that it’s too late to be sending a Holiday card. (They only work until January 31st.)

  The laundromat was open 24/7, and currently, a skinny dark-haired student was reading and using copious amounts of highlighter, absorbed in his book and oblivious of his surroundings, while a whole load of pinkish clothes was turning and jumping happily in the washing machine drum in front of him.

  I greeted him politely. “You forgot a red sock in your load of whites? Happens to me all the time. Actually, I love pink T-shirts. I tried doing it on purpose, but it never works.”

  He frowned at me, then looked at his laundry, and jumped in alarm.

  “Soaking them in sodium bicarbonate might help, if you’re lucky,” I added helpfully.

  Now the poor guy was throwing his wet, soapy clothes into a giant rucksack. I felt bad for him.

  “Come on, it’s no big deal. It really happens to everyone.”

  But he scurried away, shaking his head, as if this was all my fault, and left me standing alone under the fluorescent light of the laundromat. Which suited me.

  Now. How to use one of those portal thingies.

  I examined the room carefully. I bent down to look inside each machine. I even checked the back door (it was locked) and the soap distributor (it was filthy). There was nothing weird about this laundromat, except for the decorations. I had no idea what a portal looked like. I only knew the Victory Bar was one, and most likely, I’d gone through another one the night before, while in Tristan’s car. But I didn’t know the first thing about how to use this one to get to Dora.

  I was sitting down in one of the gray-beige molded seats when the door opened on my right, and an elderly woman came in with a shopping trolley. She started uploading its contents into one of the big machines. Her collection of granny underwear was truly astonishing.

  “You come here often?” I asked her.

  “Often enough,” she mumbled.

  “Ever notice something weird?”

  “Weird how?”

  “People appearing out of nowhere or disappearing without reason? Or maybe a strange sense of peace and belonging?”

  Weird that I could talk about these things. Was Tristan’s charm not working?

  Or was this woman one of them?

  She pushed a pink lace bra of epic proportions with a multicolored unicorn patch on one breast into the washing machine, and I knew she had to be in disguise. Yes, she was one of them.

  “Spill it,” I said. “How do you operate this portal?”

  She gave a rumbling laugh.

  “You come with your laundry?” she asked.

  I skipped a beat. Then:

  “You need laundry to get to the other side?”

  She shook her head, tut-tutting at me, looking at me over half-moon glasses held around her neck by a rainbow-colored plastic chain.

  “Are you for real? Watch yourself. Ms. Dora doesn’t like it when her people misbehave or when they don’t read the manual. You gotta follow the instructions, lady.”

  I coughed.

  “I’m new.”

  She cocked her head.

  “You authorized?” she asked.

  “Of course I am,” I lied.

  “Find some laundry, then come back.”

  But I didn’t feel like procrastinating—I wanted this done. I kicked off my shoes, took off my socks, and put them in a washer.

  “That’s not enough,” the woman said.

  “Well, can you help me out a bit? Lend me a pair of knickers, something?”

  She shook her head. “No. It only works with your own clothes, your own laundry. That’s how she identifies us, makes sure we’re certified and authorized.”

  This was way beyond weird, but okay. I took off my (Elise’s) coat, her sweater, and stripped down to the bra Linus had bought for me, that was not only my exact size, but also surprisingly comfortable.

  “Hey!” the woman complained, protecting her eyes.

  “Sorry for the strip-tease.”

  I put the sweater back on and stuffed the new T-shirt I’d been wearing in the washing machine with my socks.

  “You think that’s enough?”

  She made a face, considering the load.

  “Maybe. You can try.”

  “Okay. Now what?”

  But she shook her head again.

  “I’m not helping you. You either got it or you don’t.”

  She’d come with her
own detergent and poured it inside the designated compartment before fiddling with the commands. I watched her.

  Put in laundry.

  Put in detergent.

  Push the button.

  How complicated could that be?

  And suddenly, the woman was gone.

  Her laundry was gone, her trolley was gone, the magazine she’d set on a seat was gone.

  So I went through the steps, doing exactly what the elderly housewife with the giant bras had done before my eyes. I put in detergent I bought from the very dirty distributor (it cost me five euros, a fortune). I fiddled with the buttons, chose a program, pushed start, murmured a quick prayer.

  Nothing much happened, except my white T-shirt was being washed at sixty with my purple socks, always a happy combination.

  I closed my eyes and tried concentrating. I thought about Dora, about the discussion we were bound to have. Nothing happened. Then I thought about Tristan. Had his “moonlight magic binding charm” really taken? I didn’t think it had. Didn’t his magic work on me? What kind of bond did we have going, seriously? What were the chances of a random rocker chick like me knocking on the door of an abandoned barn and summoning a handsome, weird, red-eyed, filthy rich…Fae. Elf? Genie. Type. Thing?

  No chances at all, really.

  Except I could feel something now, a strange sensation running through my body, touching things inside—not in a disgusting way, not exactly. It was more of a gentle metaphysical experience, as though a friendly ghost was working on my body, manipulating me, rearranging things. Yes, exactly, it felt as if the specter of an osteopath was healing my body, listening to my bones, and generally putting things right in an unprecedented way.

  I opened my eyes, and there he was: Tristan Rentier, wearing a tux, holding a glass of champagne in one hand and Dora Vinok on his other arm.

  Teleportation!

  Also, what in the name of groove was he doing?