“I’m surprised to see you again, Mr. Princip,” William says. He watches Nirav reach toward the wooden table with his empty glass, and at the last second, William slides a coaster expertly underneath it like a shuffleboard puck. “It takes an unusually strong person to hear no from Clarice DuBois twice.”
My interest is piqued.
Pax cracks open his luminescence, his smile filling this cold, bare room. “Well, we do have a wonderful business proposition for Mlle DuBois. We’re here to invite her to be a part of—”
“She’s not interested.”
The voice sounds like spiderwebs and smoke, and it comes from behind us. We turn.
Mlle DuBois is there, wearing a turban, a flowy silk gown, and carrying a lit cigarette in a long ivory holder. I can tell by the smell it’s a Gitanes, a brand of particularly stinky French cigarettes. She inhales, the tip glowing, then flicks ash on the floor dramatically. William huffs and rolls his eyes.
Pax stands and tugs at the lapels of his smart pinstriped suit jacket. Mlle DuBois offers him her hand, and his lips on the curve of her wrist makes her adjust her hips.
“Hi, Pax,” she purrs. It makes me feel… unsettled. Shaken, disturbed, like seltzer.
Why should I care? I don’t. I don’t care.
Clarice is young—far younger than I would’ve expected. She is twenty-one, maybe twenty-two years old, but her mannerisms and dark kohl eye makeup make her appear older. She has creamy skin, and she’s tall, and she moves like a willow in thewind, and it’s likely she’s never once had to deck a customer in the eye and make a run for it.
How in the heavens she can afford a place like this is beyond me.
Honestly, Stella.
Have you never heard of an inheritance?
Lots of money in bootlegging moonshine, there is.
Them stills print money. Her granddaddy knows his way around some corn mash.
“Mademoiselle DuBois, it’s good to see you again,” Pax says in his richest, boldest, most coffee-sounding voice. Her lips cock to match her hips, her eyes shine with sin.
“Oh, it’s my pleasure,Mr. Princip,” she says through smoke. She stresses that, now that he’s formally addressed her. “But I told you before: I’m not interested in your Bureau.”
“Ah, but you haven’t heard my latest proposition.”
Mlle DuBois flits her fingers against the tip of Pax’s nose. “Mademoiselle DuBois doesn’t need propositioning. She’s had enough of that,merci beaucoup. Mademoiselle DuBois needs…” Her eyes slide to those of us sitting on the couch, sizing us up. “… proposals.” She pouts.
Her French accent is fake. I know because Spirit shows me an image of a puppet. And if that’s fake, her gift could very well be, too.
Pax’s smile is electric. “Well, then, Iproposeyou join us at Julia’s Bureau.” His eyes are steady on hers. He is unblinking, using all his smolder, all his powers of persuasion. “What if I told you that our new business proposal is more of a… temporary partnership?”
“Well, I’m definitely more interested in temporary.” Clarice boldly straightens Pax’s shirt. “As you know.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Kiyoko’s eyebrows shoot up. But I’m not as worried about Clarice DuBois’s innuendo as I am about that word.
Temporary.
That word hits me like a punch. It hadn’t occurred to me how temporary all these new relationships must be, now that they are based on revenge. What a fool I’ve been, getting to know these people as if they could befriends. I feel my walls re-erecting, brick by brick.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Clarice asks. “Table turning? Spiritual healing? Phrenology? Communication with the dead? Partial manifestation of body parts? Acts of levitation? Apportation? Spirit photography?”
She’s rattling off this list like a tally of groceries.
Oy vey, this one.
“Or are you after my clientele?”
That one.
