Page 22 of The Mask Falling

“Liar.”

“Fine. It does give me a little satisfaction.”

“I daresay you have earned it.”

I polished off the sauce with some more bread. As I did, I kept one eye on the customers through the sliver between the curtains.

For a while, nothing caught my attention. Then a medium passed a group of soothsayers, and I watched a note scrunch from one hand to another. The medium crossed the chamber and was gone. Not long after, having skimmed the note and finished his cup of saloop, the soothsayer picked up his coat and left in the same direction.

“I may have just found that link.” I shifted out of my seat. “Meet me at the church. Twenty minutes.”

****

In the short time I had been underground, clouds had stonewashed the sky. Snowflakes wafted around me as I shadowed the soothsayer, keeping him just in sight. When he waded through a snowdrift and into a backstreet, I followed my hunch and went after him.

The street was a dead end. I hung back in a doorway while the soothsayer waited under a lantern. Before long, a girl appeared and handed him a package from her satchel. He gave her an envelope in exchange. I retreated farther into the doorway so he could leave without seeing me.

That parcel would either contain numa or ethereal drugs. Either way, the girl had a supplier. This was the next link in the chain.

She tucked the money into her coat. At my end of the alley, she stopped, like a hare catching a scent. Before I could so much as tense, she sprinted between two cars, leapt up to catch the top of a barrier, and vaulted over it.

Using my gift to keep track of the girl through the walls, I ran straight for a parallel street. She had taken a path that wound through the courtyards of the nearest buildings. I pulled ahead of her, into a crowded section of the district, and hid behind a tree.

The girl reappeared outside a cookshop and peered across the street. Once she had judged it safe, she set off again. I tailed her at a distance through a pair of rusted gates. Even before I saw the silver lettering above them—le cimetière du sud—I knew what the place was.

The cemetery was a citadel unto itself. Tens of thousands of graves spilled across this part of Montparnasse, all of them from the centuries before the anchor descended on France. Scion mandated cremation or composting after death, to save on space and ensure its denizens were never tempted to speak to the dead. Grief and remembrance were permitted to a point, but believing that your loved ones might still linger was unnatural behaviour.

It was easy to stay out of sight among the headstones. I followed the girl to where a woman leaned against a mausoleum, pocket watch in hand. The girl presented her with a bundle of money, a phone, two fat purses.

As soon as I stepped into view, the girl was off like a shot. Her kidsman spun to face me, one hand on the hilt of the dirk at her side.

“Busybodies,” she said, “are bad for commerce. Fortunately, there is room for all manner of bodies in this ground.” She rested her boot on a ledger stone. “Why did you follow my courier?”

“No need for threats. I’m looking for a local,” I said. “Goes by the name of Mélusine.”

“Never heard of her.” Her knife rasped from its sheath. “Now, piss off, busybody. Before I slice the nose you stuck into my business.”

“I serve the grands ducs.” I stood as still as the graves. “Help me track Mélusine down, and perhaps I’ll put in a good report for you. Refuse, and I’ll be delighted to piss off . . . but so will all the merchants who would otherwise have bought those stolen goods of yours.”

Her expression changed.

“What are you?” she said. From her tone, my bluff was working. “A bounty hunter?”

I just raised my eyebrows.

Kidsmen were seldom risk-takers. They had gutterlings to do their dirty work. After trying to stare me out for a few moments, the woman let go of her knife and beckoned me closer.

It turned out that Mélusine was the leader of a small gang of hydromancers. Once I knew that, the search went smoothly. One roll of notes to an augur in a public garden, one whisper on the right corner and in the right ear, and I had a list of places Mélusine was known to frequent. The local open-air bath struck me as her most likely haunt at this time of day. Hydromancers were always drawn to water, especially large bodies of it. Just my luck.

The bath was an ancient-looking building, all columns and stone lintels. I walked into the foyer, wondering how the hell I was going to get beyond it, only to glimpse the receptionist on the phone with his back to me. Quick as a whim, I slipped under the turnstile and through a pair of sliding glass doors.

As soon as the gloom enfolded me, I smelled water. Pressing down my nausea, I pulled off my boots and socks, the floor clammy underfoot. I tried not to breathe too hard, or think about anything but my task.

There were no voyants in the bath itself—just a throng of amaurotics, all naked as the day they were born. But sitting alone in a steam room, I found a slender woman with an aura, combing her waist-length hair. A ring bridged her nostrils, and her brown skin was varnished with sweat.

“Mélusine?”

A flash of dark eyes through the gloom. She sprang up, like a fish leaping clear of a river, and I found myself pinned to the tiles, a crooked knife at my throat. I caught her wrist.

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