“Work, damn it,” I ground out. Then I felt something. Nothing like when I’d coaxed the purple awning from the painting of Céleste, but it was there. I let the magic drift up my wrist. Holding my breath, I touched the edge of the talon to the tip of one of Issig’s straining fingers.
A look of surprise came over his face. He folded into his clothes, shrinking. A second later, a small arctic tern stood still amid a pile of chains that no longer kept him prisoner.
I couldn’t believe it. It worked.
But there was no time to stand around pleased with myself. I shoved the talon in my pocket. Now, to get him out. Carefully, I lifted Issig and shut him inside the cage. When I carried him into the kitchen, an eerie silence greeted me.
The kitchen was empty.
I skirted around a shelf stacked with oysters abandoned in bowls of water. Tiny dishes of black caviar were smashed across the tile, muddled with cracked ivory wafers and bent silver spoons. Not a single worker in sight, until I walked through the kitchen doors to a lobby plunged into chaos.
“They did it,” I whispered to myself, then jumped back when three parakeets flew toward me. A stream of steel insects followed the birds, slicing the air like knives, then disappearing behind the aviary glass where more birds were shooting out in a steady stream, raging upward.
Hellas had opened the aviary.
A flock cornered a group of women, pecking at their earrings. At least twelve white peacocks surrounded another bemused guest who could barely hold them off with a charmeuse pouf. Birds were everywhere, dipping between doormen, pecking at brass buttons, and they were followed by a whirring mass of butterflies, all crafted from steel and a single gear.
I stared in awe at the suites along the second-floor balcony. As soon as each door opened, birds tore into the room. Disoriented guests ran out, panting, lifting their skirts, pulling on their shirts. One man even took off nude, desperately trying to don a frock coat while the filigreed buttons flapped along with his other naked bits.
Then I spotted Zosa, luminous as a sharpened gemstone. She favored one wing, but it didn’t slow her. Her bright gold body darted across the center of the lobby, squawking at a group of dull wrens, kingfishers, and cardinals. The birds listened. Zosa led them—commanded them like soldiers in her steadfast army—soaring across hallways and dipping into suite after suite.
Shrieks and screams filled the air, but the loveliest sight of all was the black-lacquered door held open by the steady stream of exiting guests.
Time for me to go.
I raced through countless hallways and ballrooms lining the lobby level. Candles burned purple flames and the carpet was dusted with feathers. My hands ached from carrying the cage, but a slow fire burned inside me, kindled by Bel, by my friends, my sister. It shone brighter than any candle flame, leaving no room for fear, only a simmering hatred stoked with every step.
I skidded to a halt in a familiar hallway and jiggled the knob on Alastair’s office door. Locked. Fishing in my pocket, I pulled out Béatrice’s gears.
Earlier, she’d dismantled two dressing room doors, locks and all. Then she instructed me as I took her gears and dismantled the other four doors. I didn’t have the same feel for the gears as she did, so they weren’t as speedy for me as they were for her, but the office doorknob was soon on the floor.
Once inside, I raced around the desk and stopped. My throat closed up. The third drawer down hung open. Empty. The infinite ledger wasn’t here.
The other five desk drawers also proved fruitless. So did the shelves, the curio, and the small armoire in the back with handles made of bronzed claws that clasped my fingers when I flung the doors open to more nothing. Alastair must have taken the ledger.
I dropped the cage at my feet. Issig cawed.
“Sorry,” I said. It was difficult to imagine such a small bird had all that power. Worthless power now.
I thought it would be enough. I’d watched Issig turn an itinerary written in Alastair’s purple ink to icy dust. I thought if I could bring him here, change Issig into a man next to the drawer, he could destroy everything.
But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered until I found the ledger. If I found the ledger.
Before I could consider what to do next, a little golden bird flew in and perched on the edge of a chair. My eyes welled at the sight of her. I felt her porcelain finger in my pocket, silently cursing myself for not burying it deep in the ground in Champilliers where no one could ever break it.
I touched Zosa’s feathers, desperately wanting to see her face. I gripped the talon and reached for her, but she hopped away.