“Desert jasmine. It’s rather ordinary.”
Ordinary wasn’t the word I would use. I could gobble that scent for dessert. “It’s exquisite. Where is it from?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m in a hurry. I really don’t have time right now for silly girls.”
“Excuse me?”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” he said with a smirk, then tried to duck past me.
I couldn’t enter the building by myself and although he was infuriating, he was the only employee I’d seen besides the ma?tre. I grabbed his arm. “Where are the interviews?”
“Don’t you understand I’m busy?”
“Then hurry it up and answer my question.”
He gave me a long look then scanned down the street. I tried to pinpoint what it was he searched for, but all I could see was a mass of people. My breath halted when he brushed a curl from the side of my neck.
“If I were you, I would go straight home. Pretend the hotel never came,” he said in a low voice. Then he dipped past me, disappearing into the crowd.
Over the next two hours, the doorman wouldn’t leave my mind, the way his vivid eyes seemed to judge me. The way he’d brushed me off. He probably warned me away because he didn’t think I belonged in a place like the Hotel Magnifique.
I picked at my green-stained fingers. The dye from the tannery stank of harbor fug, as most things did in Durc. Some said if you lived here long enough, barnacles would sprout from your rib bones. I didn’t doubt it. After a rare bath, my skin would still stink of rotting fish. But I refused to give up now. Maman always said I was too stubborn for my own good, but I couldn’t help myself. The doorman’s actions made me want the job even more.
“Could this line go any slower?”
“God, I hope not.” Zosa swiped at sweat dripping from under the lilac hat.
The line outside Maison du Thé—the old teahouse beside the hotel, where we’d learned interviews were being held—was obscenely long. Unfortunately for my aching calves, we were at the end.
When we reached the teahouse entrance, Zosa pointed at a gilded sign listing the open positions: stage performer appeared between musician and scullery maid. A man with fair skin dressed in a suit too elaborate for the heat didn’t spare us a smile. Instead, he opened the door and practically shoved us through.
Inside, marble countertops held weighted silver scales. Tall glass jars covered every shelf, filled to the brim with brightly colored tea leaves.
“Next!” shouted a woman from the back room. The interview.
“Will you go first?” Zosa’s voice shook with nerves, just like during that first audition years ago.
I straightened a ruffle on the hat. “Of course I will.”
In back, a statuesque, olive-skinned woman greeted me. Her cropped brown hair matched the gleam of her velvet pantsuit. She dressed like a man but had more panache than all the men I knew. I liked her, I realized, until she wrinkled her nose at me.
“Not much to look at, are you?” she said, then held up a large bronze compass with a gleaming green jade needle. “Now hold still.”
The compass’s needle spun in dizzying circles, but it didn’t stop once. The woman tucked the compass in her pocket.
“What was that for?”
“I ask the questions.” She snatched my chin. “Your name?”
I swallowed. “Janine Lafayette. But everyone calls me Jani.”
“What a boring name.” Her lips tugged up. “I’m Yrsa, by the way.” She released my chin. “Have you lived in this city your whole life?”
“I’m from an inland village up the coast called Aligney,” I said, a tremor in my voice.
“Did you like your little village?”
When we were babies, Maman pointed our cribs toward the center of Aligney so our feet would always know the way back, a Verdanniere superstition that stuck with me.
Even now, I could perfectly picture the tight rows of houses that turned lemon yellow in the winter sunsets. I knew exactly when the poppies would bloom, and where our next dinner would come from. I had friends there—friends who worried about me. It felt like I hadn’t taken a deep breath for the past four years, but in Aligney I could breathe with every corner of my lungs.
My only constant these days was the ache in my chest to return.
“I loved my village. I only brought my sister here after our mother died. I planned to go back when—”
“So your mother is dead.” She cut me off. “What about your father?”