“That maid saw Yrsa use her artéfact.” One twin spoke while the other watched me with his dead stare.
“Wait outside,” Alastair said. They left in unison. When the door shut, he pointed to a chair across the room. “Have a seat.”
Sitting was the last thing I wished to do. “So you can scoop out my eye?”
“I don’t know what you saw, but I promise that will never happen to you. Have a seat. Afterward, I’ll take you to your sister.”
This was all wrong. “Take me now.”
Something hit the back of my legs. I sat down hard on a leather chair that had just been across the room. Its wooden arms felt like fingers gripping my wrists. I couldn’t move. Chair legs scraped the floor, pushing me forward until I was opposite Alastair.
He lifted his wolf-capped inkwell, uncapped it, and filled an empty glass well, identical to the ones Zosa and I had used to sign our contracts. Purple ink poured from his inkwell in a never-ending stream just like the tea from Red’s thimble.
That wolf-capped inkwell must be an artéfact. His artéfact.
When he finished, he pulled a book from a desk drawer, its leather binding covered in purple scribbles. Handwriting. Société des Suminaires was printed in tiny gold words amid the purple ink. I’d never heard of the society.
“What’s the book for?”
His eyes flicked up. “My infinite ledger? It’s enchanted to be a file cabinet of sorts.”
He began flipping through pages like Hellas shuffling his deck of cards. But cards were only so thick. The ledger’s pages were endless, as if Alastair flipped through a hundred books stacked atop one another. Purple writing flashed across each page. After flipping for more than a minute, he stopped at some arbitrary spot in the center. Opening the ledger wide, he plunged his entire forearm inside and fished around. Then he pulled out a sheet of parchment with a single purple signature scribbled across the bottom.
My contract.
“These were my invention,” he said mournfully. “We all must do our part to keep magic safe—”
His words cut off and the skin along his jaw pulled tight. I swallowed hard when he took out a second, blank contract and laid it beside mine. They looked identical until Alastair ran a finger down the blank contract, stopping at a small line of Verdanniere near the bottom.
My eyes darted from the guest contract I’d signed to this blank one. Sure enough, the line he pointed to was missing from my contract.
Once a new staff member steps inside the hotel, they will forget everything they leave behind.
If this were a staff contract, Bel was right; it was the opposite of the contract guests signed, the contract I’d signed. Except forget everything they leave behind seemed all-encompassing.
That clause meant Zosa would have signed away more than just her memory of home. I ran through everything we’d discussed the morning of the last soirée. Not once had she mentioned Bézier’s or Maman. She hadn’t touched that sack filled with Maman’s junk. Yet she remembered me—
Because she didn’t leave me behind. We walked together through the front door.
In Durc, I’d asked Bel to swear on his mother he’d give me a job, but he couldn’t. He said he didn’t remember her. I thought it was because she had died, not because his memory of her had been taken.
Alastair filed the blank staff contract back in the ledger. He then grabbed a pen and dipped it into a well of purple ink.
My heart leaped. “What are you—”
“It seems you signed a guest contract instead of one meant for staff. But it doesn’t matter anymore.”
I didn’t understand it until Alastair began writing on my guest contract. Amending it. Six purple sentences that made me feel ill.
I had to get out. Leaping up, I ran to the door and collided with a pair of muscled chests. The twins. They’d been waiting.
“Hold her,” Alastair ordered. Their magical grip felt like steel claws clamping my shoulders. I couldn’t move. Alastair lifted my chin, forcing me to meet his pale eyes. “Poking around where you aren’t supposed to is a violation of the rules I’ve set in place to ensure magic remains safe.” A look came over his features that I couldn’t decipher. “I’ll have to demote you. I have no choice.”
I didn’t think I breathed.
He released my chin. Both his hands were normal. Ten long, perfect fingers. No mottled skin like I’d seen in that hall. I must have imagined it. He then raised my amended contract. The fresh ink glimmered. “I promise this won’t hurt. Afterward, you won’t remember a thing.”