Stealthily avoiding Maman, we crept to the end where the late arrivals were setting up. I recognized Madame Durand stacking aubergines from her garden. She turned up her ruddy nose when I kicked rocks to make a space. I put out the donation sign I’d painted along with an empty flour jar.
Old Durand had snickered, and I’d hated her for it. But Zosa ignored her. She hopped right up and began singing so beautifully that everyone stopped what they were doing to watch.
I’d been listening to Zosa sing for so long that her voice felt as ordinary as her snoring, but the people around us didn’t have the same reaction. A crowd formed. What a songbird! An angel! Remarkable little plum, people murmured. Then Maman appeared, and she was covering her mouth.
That’s it, I’d thought, we’re about to be hauled away by our earlobes. But Maman’s hand fell away and she smiled. Tears pricked her eyes, and I laughed in relief, and then at the sound of dublonnes clinking into our flour jar. All because of my sister.
I often wondered if Zosa remembered that day, if it had been as significant to her as it was to me. Now here we were, years later, standing before a prize larger than any flour jar filled with coins.
Moonlight cast Hotel Magnifique in shades of gleaming silver. Bel opened the black-lacquered door. With my hands gripping the invitation, the lights appeared crisp in a way they hadn’t before. I pushed my fingers past the threshold. No invisible wall.
“Greetings, traveler!” A woman’s obnoxiously effervescent voice chimed in my ears.
“Who was that?”
Bel glared. “Would you get on with it? You might be holding a sack of junk, but I’m holding a tiny person with rather sharp bones.”
When I didn’t make a move, he nudged me forward and I stumbled across the threshold. I opened my mouth to complain, but the words never came. The stink of fish was gone, replaced with floral scents and an undercurrent of oranges. And the sight . . .
This place wouldn’t fit inside that old alley, nor a space fifty times that size.
The hotel was a palace.
A colossal staircase curved up the back. Candle-stuffed globes dripped from overhead like shining grapes. Above them, gold trim and filigreed fauna decorated every speck of ceiling, while the surrounding walls were papered in dark flowers. As I stared at the wallpaper, the petals fluttered as if blowing in a breeze.
The sights were almost too much to take in.
Mercury glass partitions hugged the perimeter, creating intimate seating areas filled with pink fringed cushions. One partitioned space contained a life-size chess set, its realistic queens dressed like goddesses in flowing robes.
Along a back wall, a series of alcoves housed plush banquettes. My eyes caught on a trio of huge, crescent moon–shaped lounge chairs near the door. They glowed as they bobbed, suspended in air.
Near the chairs, a row of luggage carts led to a grand concierge desk. No one worked the desk, and yet a multitiered cake covered in rose petals sat on the surface beside a tower of precariously stacked champagne flutes.
My breath halted as liquid bubbled from the top glass and spilled over the sides. Soon all the empty flutes were overflowing in a magical fountain of champagne, right atop the desk.
But behind everything was the greatest sight of all: a huge glass column shot to the ceiling, enclosing some sort of garden.
Moonlight filtered through white vines that climbed to where the column met the second-floor balcony. High above, a large bird swooped to a branch flush with more birds. It was an enormous aviary shooting through the center of the hotel.
There were storefronts along boulevard Marigny that kept exotic birds in cages. Zosa would giggle as they ruffled their brightly colored feathers. The aviary’s thick glass blurred the view along the lobby level. Whatever was kept inside had to be unlike any bird in Durc.
The front door slammed. I turned and my sleeve snagged the branch of an orange tree that grew straight from the floor. Chunks of marble had crumbled away while thick roots twisted up from underneath. Branches hung with waxy leaves and gleaming oranges that appeared slick to the touch. Curious, I poked one. The orange swayed.
“Don’t touch those,” Bel said. He set Zosa down and looked from my neck to Bézier’s invitation, a horrified expression on his face.
“What is it?”
“You’re aging.”
I lifted a hand and found myself unable to grasp what I was seeing. My skin was sallow. Each of my knuckles poked through loosening flesh. I ran fingers over my collarbone, shuddering at skin hanging where it should be taut. Age spots bloomed up my wrists. No, not age spots—they turned black and stunk, rotting and oozing. When a plump maggot wriggled out, I felt bile coming up my throat.