As soon as the words came out, I bit down on the inside of my cheek. The promise was another lie to protect her, like most of the lies I’d told her over the years.
“Actually, I don’t know what to do. I’m scared to death and tired. I’m so tired I could keel over.” Zosa’s head peeked out from her feathers. I wiped silver from my face and blinked. “And I feel like I just let fifty snails scuttle snot across my eyeballs.”
She nudged the bars.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Even as a bird, her dark eyes studied me. “I can’t believe I’m talking to a bird.”
She squawked as if she could understand me.
“All right, all right. A very clever, very spirited young lady trapped in bird-form.”
With one hand on her cage, one hand on the rail, I kept moving. After a few minutes, I found some stairs leading to the riverbank. I rested the cage on the ground so I could splash handfuls of water on my face.
“The time! What’s the time?” I shouted at a row of men with fishing rods. They all took a step back except one old man. “Not yet eleven,” he said with a toothless grin.
Three hours.
My hair hung in wet clumps around my shoulders. I combed through it and shoved it into a tight bun. I needed to think.
“What do I do?” I asked Zosa. I couldn’t storm into the hotel; I’d be recognized in an instant. I needed a disguise, along with help.
I thought of Bel and my chest ached. I wanted help so badly. Then I remembered where we were, what it meant.
The fishermen jumped back when I walked toward them, attempting to smooth out my dripping dress. “I’m in dire need of a large, colorful wig. Can someone kindly point me in the direction of Atelier Merveille?”
* * *
On the outside, Atelier Merveille was an elegant mix of frescoed stone and gold leaf. Stepping inside, however, felt like diving into a fancy, frosted cake. Gilded stairs gave way to taffeta-paneled walls dripping in a palette of sugared colors: mint, lavender, and cream. Dolled-up clerks gaped as I waltzed past, their shellacked cherry smiles dimming at the sight of my damp hair, the birdcage. Luckily no one stopped me.
I didn’t find Béatrice in the shoes, or with the powders and striped tins of crème de rose. I didn’t find her among the scarves, or exotic feathered hats, or near the swan tower of pearlescent macarons inside Salon de Patisserie. I found her in the dressing rooms, of course, seated amid a lavish heap of fabric. A towering pale purple wig sat beside her, bedecked with steel butterflies.
When she saw me, she jumped up. Her eyes grew at the splotches of silver on my neck. My face crumpled, overwhelmed with relief.
“Oh, I cannot wait to hear this.” She swished her wrist and her gears clattered. “Don’t make me force it out of you. Because I will.”
A clerk in a ruffled apron arrived with a tray of iced buns. Béatrice waved the clerk away then ushered me to sit. Instead, I paced as I told her the truth about my contract and how it never worked on me, then I went over every detail since I kicked the oranges. Aside from a couple of gasps and a bit of clucking, Béatrice listened, until I came to the part about choosing the cosmolabe.
She scoffed. “My soul’s desire is not fixing toilets.”
Over the past few days, I’d thought through everyone’s artéfact. What Alastair said made sense. “What if it’s not about toilets? You genuinely care about the people who work for you. I think your desire to always keep us together, to fix any of us who feel broken, manifests in your gears.”
Her mouth opened then shut, speechless for once. So I continued on with the rest of it until the moment I decided to find Béatrice here. I didn’t tell her about Margot. Bel had said he’d already tried and it made no difference. Still, I was curious. “What is it about this place that made you want to come here?”
With the flick of her finger, the steel butterflies soared from the pale purple wig up to the ceiling then descended in a column of steel, stacking neatly on her palm. Then a single screw untwisted itself from the top butterfly. Béatrice rolled it between her fingers. “I made all the butterflies myself, you know, adding a screw to each one. For a long time, I wanted to perform at the soirées and use them as a prop.”
“Perform?”
She shrugged. “Foolish as it was, I used to talk about it. I put together an act similar to the Illusioniste’s.” Her voice grew bitter. “Some saw it and called me Mechanique in mocking whispers.”