Floats the Dark Shadow Read online

  “How many children?”

  “I’ve set aside a dozen files.” Michel took another sip of brandy, letting the liquid fire warm the chill this case gave him. “Recently another boy disappeared. He worked with his father in the catacombs, and the father suspected he sneaked back on his own, hoping to make extra money leading a sightseer through the ancient mazes.”

  “Many have gotten lost and died in the tunnels.”

  “Of course, but that is good cover for murder.”

  “Who else?”

  “A bouquiniste’s boy on the Left Bank seems the earliest. A chimney sweeper in the Marais, a seamstress’ daughter in Montparnasse.”

  “You think he takes both boys and girls?”

  “I could be wrong about the girls.”

  “What other boys?”

  “A bootblack’s son near the Sorbonne, and Dancier’s boy in training as pickpocket around the Opéra and the boulevards. Such various locations….” His hand tightened into a fist. How could he grasp this illusive killer?

  “Where then does he take them, and how?” Lilias prompted.

  “If he is a laborer, or disguised as one, he could knock them unconscious and carry them off in a cart or even a sack. If they are drugged, he might carry them in his arms, as if they were his own. He would be less visible in a carriage, but would risk being remembered.”

  “Some men can be hired for any errand.” She nibbled a madeleine.

  “Yes, or he might have an accomplice who helps him for love of blood or money.”

  “Then your kidnapper opens himself to blackmail or the chance of being turned in for a reward.” Lilias paused. “And the other opens himself to a blade in the night.”

  “Then the other loves blood more than money—the blood of children.” Michel frowned. “If there even is an accomplice.”

  “Where does he take them?”

  Michel caught her gaze and smiled briefly. He wanted her to know he appreciated this indulgence. The case was becoming an obsession. “If he has money, he can rent a room in the neighborhood he plans to hunt, but again he risks exposure or blackmail. I think he has someplace more secure. Perhaps a barge on the Seine, so he can take them away easily.”

  “We have been talking as if he is a stranger to these children. Someone they know could lure them more easily.”

  “It’s possible, but not with all of them. Dancier’s pickpocket would be sharper than that.”

  “Unless the lure was money. They were all poor.”

  “He may use a different approach depending on the child, or he may follow some ritual. It’s all conjecture.”

  When he said nothing more, Lilias lifted her delicate eyebrows. “So, you wondered if I had heard gossip about anyone with a predilection for children. Someone with a taste for violence?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I have not. But I will ask, discreetly.” She sipped her brandy.

  Michel knew that a wise courtesan kept aware of the professional houses. A possible protector could be recommended there, or she might be warned off someone cruel or stingy. Occasionally a protector asked his mistress to accompany him to the houses. It was well to know what each of them provided. What was allowed and what not. Which might be worth investment, if one were smart with money. Lilias was no fool.

  More reluctantly, he added, “I’ve also considered some sort of satanic cult.”

  “Ah, there I have intelligence.” That surprised him enough that she laughed aloud. She shook her head. “No, I have not been playing in such evil corners, but I have heard rumors that a Black Mass is to be held.”

  “A Black Mass?” Cochefert would turn cartwheels. “Where? When?”

  “Where is a deserted chapel, but I don’t know when. I do know the slithering snake who will perform the rites.”

  He guessed her reference. “Vipèrine?”

  “Just so.” She laid a finger softly to his lips. “That is all I know now. But I will take pleasure in playing the spy.”

  When she released the gentle pressure, he said only, “Thank you.”

  She rose and brought the brandy decanter, refilling their glasses. Michel sipped the rich liquid, grateful for everything she gave him. Lilias was an invaluable ally. She had first provided information on a young man who’d murdered a rich uncle for his inheritance. He’d also been known for the violent streak he indulged with prostitutes. Michel had asked her why she chose to help and accepted the small smile that was her only answer. Lilias was not implicated in any way, so he presumed the nephew had injured her, or someone she cared for. It might be no more complicated than that. Perhaps.

  Michel arrested the nephew, and that success was their beginning. A night of champagne and celebration became an affair of six months. Desire had not diminished. Lilias must entertain others, but he did not ask. He could not afford jealousy. Currently, she had no established patron, but she might at any time decide to secure one. Such a man would want sole rights to her bed and pay a small fortune for the privilege. She was already wealthy, but a woman on her own might never feel wealthy enough, secure enough.

  If she did decide she wanted a new patron, their trysts would end, but not, he hoped, their alliance. He told himself to enjoy the pleasure, to expect nothing beyond the night. But pleasure could be as addictive as absinthe.

  Michel knew she desired him. He could give her few gifts other than pleasure and lack of pretense. He took care never to leave her unsatisfied. It would not have satisfied him. As a gesture, he sometimes brought her small presents. Last time, a bouquet of early violets, dewy and sweet. A bag of roasted chestnuts in winter. Once, truly extravagant, he went to Debauve and Gallias, chocolatier to Louis XVI and Napoléon, and bought four chocolates in a miniscule box. The price was absurd. The tiny size made the confection seem all the more precious. Lilias had laughed with delight, but no more than she had for the violets.

  Perhaps next time he would bring his guitar and play for her.

  Lilias kissed him lightly, her lips tingling with brandy. She pulled him down to the rug in front of the fire and leaned over him. Her skin was fragrant with the lingering aura of amber and musk. Michel concentrated on the glide of her fingertips along his collarbone, the delicate tickle of her hair framing their faces as they kissed. He began the same sort of touch in return, elusive, almost taunting, across the arched fan of her ribs. He never knew if she would desire roughness or tenderness. It made her all the more alluring. All the more challenging. Her kiss drifted across his cheekbone. A soft exhalation teased the hollow of his ear. Then she bit his earlobe, sharply. He shivered as he felt his flesh reawakening.

  “No more talk,” she whispered.

  Chapter Ten

  Each one of my days like a flower that floats

  On the water, then sinks:

  What place could they find in my fate,

  This hope, this regret?

  ~ Jean Moréas

  VIVID yellow, streaks of sunlight glanced off the blades of the windmill. Their brightness gleamed sharply against the bruised purple clouds lowering in the sky. Deep violet shadows flowed along the dusty streets, the pools of color seductive yet strangely sinister.

  Theo lowered her brush, backed up, and contemplated the canvas. The cluster of houses funneling to the windmill lacked detail. The brush twitched restlessly in her hand, but she resisted the urge to elaborate. The clouded sky, jutting blades, the sloping planes of the roofs, would lose impact if she refined the buildings that curved down the hill. She liked the yellow door she saw far up the street. Her painting needed that sort of contrast on the right side, and it would echo the flashes of sun. Choosing a smaller brush, she added a rectangle of chrome yellow to the highest house. Too bright. She muted it so that it didn’t pull the eye away from the windmill. A few quick splashes of vermillion suggested geraniums valiantly blooming in the gathering darkness. The newly added yellow and orange gave the shadows a deeper glow.

  Stop, Theo thought. Stop. She put the brush aside.r />
  What would the Revenants think if she left the painting as it was? Only Paul would approve. Casimir would consider it raw and unfinished. Crude. She feared Averill would frown at it too. He most admired the delicate, decadent voluptuousness of Gustave Moreau. Theo had illustrated her cousin’s poems in exquisite, painstakingly rendered detail. But Paris was changing her work, changing her. She would still illustrate Averill’s poems in the style he loved, but her painting would go where it would.

  The church bells tolled four. There was still an hour before Matthieu came to help her carry back her easel and paints. She would read a chapter of her book then look to see if the painting really needed more detail. Theo turned the canvas around so she would not steal glances at it. She wiped her hands on a rag, then sat cross-legged in the shade of a chestnut tree. Taking an apple out of her satchel, she bit into the crisp flesh, juicy and tartly sweet. The bright fragrance distracted her from the odors of oil and turpentine that called her back to the windmill. Instead, a still life with apples floated through her mind. Patches of red, yellow, and pale green gleamed as she slowly ate the fruit down to the core.

  Finished, Theo searched deeper in her satchel for the book Casimir had recently given her. Drawing it out, she stared at the cover for a minute, reluctant to open it. Là Bas fascinated and distressed her. The novel was filled with weird obsessions and unsatisfied quests, overwrought one moment then strangely austere. But it was learning more about the horrific Gilles de Rais that made Theo steel herself before opening her bookmarked page.

  ‘Association with Jeanne d’Arc certainly stimulated his desires for the divine. Now from lofty mysticism to base Satanism there is but one step. In the Beyond all things touch… She roused an impetuous soul, as ready for orgies of saintliness as for ecstasies of crime.….’

  Theo doubted Jeanne d’Arc would be pleased with what she roused. She read on, descending into a darkness as grim as the catacombs.

  ‘Then as to being a ‘ripper’ of children…Gilles did not violate and trucidate little boys until after he became convinced of the vanity of alchemy.’

  “Is that an excuse?” Theo muttered under her breath. Apparently so, for the narrator thought that Gilles was no crueler than the other barons of the age.

  ‘He exceeds them in the magnitude of his debauches, in the opulence of his murders, that is all.’

  A shadow fell across the book. Startled, she looked up to find Averill standing above her. He bent close, lips to her ear, and his whisper sent a spark of excitement coursing along Theo’s spine. “I was born under so fierce a star….”

  Stepping into view, Casimir finished Gilles’ most famous quote “… that I have done what no one in the world has done or could ever do.” He sounded almost smug. A cat with cream on its whiskers—or a mouse under its paw.

  “You’re wicked, both of you. All three of you,” she chided, seeing Jules lurking behind them.

  They had crept up on her deliberately. Theo shielded her eyes as she gazed up at them, standing together, backlit by the late afternoon sun. She was still not fully emerged from the nightmare world of Gilles de Rais. Their words, his words, overlaid an image of star-spattered blackness in her mind. The teasing touch of fear mingled uneasily with the teasing softness of Averill’s whisper. Her heart was racing, and tiny shivers threaded from the hollow of her ear and down her neck.

  “What is happening?” Averill asked, nodding down to the book.

  Theo seized the offered refuge. She did not want to talk about the opulence of Gilles’ murders, so she turned to the opulence of his possessions. “I was amazed—he was even richer than the king.”

  “The richest man in France and the most profligate,” Averill said.

  “He bankrupted himself buying gem-encrusted books and extravagant robes embroidered in gold.” Casimir’s gestures clothed his own body in a flow of silks and velvets. “Every object in his possession was luxurious perfection. He devised flamboyant pageants where even the least of the pages was garbed like a king and built fabulous chapels for his angelic choirboys.”

  “He spent even more on alchemists who promised to make gold from lead,” a little smile twisted Averill’s lips, “and sorcerers who promised to summon Satan for him.”

  Jules closed his eyes as if praying, murmuring something inaudible.

  “What did you say, Jules?” Theo asked, wondering why he tried so hard to vanish. Sometimes it made him all the more obvious.

  Startled, he opened his eyes. His lips trembled, but he said, “He lost his soul to black magic. But he was forgiven.”

  “Forgiven?” Theo hoped not.

  “Yes…” Jules hesitated, “…at the end.”

  “Oh, he was executed,” Casimir assured her. “Far too mercifully throttled, then burned.”

  “But he knelt in church and begged them all for forgiveness.” Jules sighed and Theo thought she saw tears glistening in his eyes. “It was granted.”

  Jules had once wanted to be a priest. Averill was raised Catholic, and Casimir. Was that the reason they understood the excesses of Gilles de Rais better than she could? Like him, they had worshipped in vast cathedrals gleaming with golden artifacts. Like him, they breathed air perfumed with bouquets of lilies and drifting clouds of incense. Priests garbed in embroidered robes chanted rites in Latin, transforming the simple words of Jesus to an impenetrable mystery. Impenetrable to her, but not to them. Did the wafers and wine transform on their tongues to body and blood? Rather than the empty cross of the resurrection that she had gazed on, they lifted their eyes to Christ crucified. It was a world of confession and absolution. Of abasement and glory.

  A world of utter damnation—yet one where even the worst sins could be forgiven.

  “It’s obscene, his love of excess.” Theo frowned, still haunted by the images the book had painted in her mind. She stood up, dusted off her breeches. “His crimes were just as excessive.”

  “Beauty and evil in equal measure,” Averill mused.

  “Equal!” Theo exclaimed. She could not be blasé about the slaughter of innocents. “How can any amount of beauty equal the horror of those ravished pages and gutted choirboys?”

  Her vehemence made Averill glance away. Her heart plummeted at the small rejection. “Averill…” She stopped, hating the uncertainty in her voice.

  He met her eyes, apologetic, defiant. “Excess was a drug, a drunkenness. It was both a quest and an escape.”

  “It was a necessity,” Casimir declared. “Think of the void Gilles de Rais had to fill. How could anything compare in glory after Jeanne? The Maid touched his soul, bringing the incandescent light of God into his life.”

  “Then came the fire of her death—and darkness after,” Averill said. “It was God’s greatest betrayal.”

  Jules crossed himself, lips moving silently.

  “And Jeanne’s,” Casimir said. “Greater even than betrayal by a lover.”

  Theo remembered the anger and abandonment she felt when her California family died. She had raged at Death—but at them as well.

  “Her trial was a travesty,” Averill added, “and her death without mercy. The Inquisition built the platform high above the pyre, so that fire would torment her longer.”

  “Horrible. To burn a living saint.” Jules’ voice was a hoarse whisper, as if he could feel the smoke in his own lungs.

  Theo shuddered. “Horrible and heartbreaking.”

  Did Jeanne truly accept her martyrdom? Did her sense of betrayal rise with the flames? Did she, like Christ, feel forsaken by God? Theo had thought it solely Jeanne’s tragedy, but now she envisioned the fire, the pain, the scalding fury, the inner terror all radiating outward, consuming the hearts of those who had believed in her.

  “She is a saint,” Jules insisted. “She should be canonized.”

  “She is a heroine to me, too.” Spurred by curiosity, Theo asked, “You seem to get on easily with Paul despite his being an atheist.”

  “He who is furthest is also he
who is closest.” Jules' voice was low but filled with intensity. “I believe Paul will return to the Church.”

  “Return?” Theo frowned. She doubted Jules would be concerned about Paul returning to Protestantism. “Was Paul Catholic?”

  “Oh yes,” Jules answered. Averill and Casimir looked as flummoxed as Theo felt. It was impossible to think of Paul as other than his critical, iconoclastic self. But why had she presumed it was the Protestant church he had disavowed?

  “The Prussians burned his village during the war. Paul prayed for the Emperor’s troops to save it, but they ran.”

  “And so was born our atheist anarchist?” Averill mused.

  Jules nodded sadly. “It was a test of faith he was not strong enough to endure.”

  “He was not even ten years old,” Casimir said. “Young for a test of faith.”

  Averill said, “The Jesuits ask only for the first six years—then give the world the rest.”

  Theo shivered. “That’s so cold-blooded.”

  “Indeed. I can almost picture Paul as a Jesuit.” Casimir gave a short laugh. “Better he bring his fervor to literature than burn heretics at the stake.”

  “He is a lost soul.” Jules was whispering again.

  “We are all lost souls,” Averill replied.

  Casimir smiled. “But some of us are more lost than others.”

  “Like Gilles de Rais.” Jules reached out tentatively, almost reverently, his fingers hovering over her book.

  Theo wanted to escape from the despair of Gilles de Rais’ world, and from bitter memories of her own. She put the novel back in her satchel, ending the discussion. There was a moment of shifting silence then Averill gestured to her canvas, leaning against the tree. “So, Theo, you must show us your new painting.”

  With some reluctance, Theo turned the canvas around. There was another space of silence as they all studied it. Surreptitiously, she rubbed her palms against her trousers.