So that was how the society dismantled. Except everyone had to have known that Alastair had no magic. “So your brother took over the society and people blindly followed him without suspecting anything?” I didn’t believe it.
“Not by himself.”
“He took over with Des Rêves?”
“No,” she said, a sour note in her voice. “Alastair and I took over the society together.”
“You?”
“I thought he looked more youthful than he had, but I didn’t realize what that meant. I never suspected what he was doing.” She began pacing. “After the leadership vanished, the other suminaires grew edgy. I was the most powerful suminaire left. They chose me to lead. Me! The responsibility terrified me. So when Alastair came to me with a plan to run everything as a team, how could I refuse? How could I do anything but what he asked of me?”
I could picture it. The society heads out of the way. Endless supplies of suminaires. “But didn’t you realize right away what was happening?” She could have stopped him.
“No,” she said with a twinge of bitterness. “I was too busy. Alastair took over administrative duties and catalogued all the artéfacts, while I performed any task that required magic, like dealing contracts to new suminaires.”
I froze. “You mean the society used contracts before the hotel?”
“It was how everything was kept a secret.” Céleste ran a finger over the advertisement’s purple ink. “When a suminaire misbehaved, their artéfact was taken away, their contract voided so when they stepped out of the society’s building, they’d forget everything they’d experienced inside. They’d forget the society completely.”
“That’s nearly identical wording to the guest contracts.”
“My brother is clever,” she said. “He expanded on the society’s contracts when he came up with those guest contracts. Then he drafted the staff contracts to be nearly the opposite, removing the outside world from the minds of the staff as soon as they came inside. But that wasn’t until he decided to start the hotel.”
“So the hotel was his idea?”
“Eventually. Finding the ring was his obsession. When we first took over the society, he used its resources to search. But it wasn’t enough. He needed more resources, the ability to visit places where it would be impossible to hide. He thought if he could make the building public knowledge, a dazzling spectacle to draw in crowds, he could bring in money to pay his way into countries that wanted nothing to do with magic. The hotel was the perfect solution for everything he desired. Without realizing it, I helped him turn the building into what it is today. Have you seen the infinite ledger?”
I nodded slowly.
“I penned most of the enchantments inside.”
“What?”
“Enacting the inkwell’s enchantments uses less magic than penning them. Penning them requires a lot of magic, magic my brother couldn’t spare. So he told me it was my duty to help him make the hotel as spectacular as possible. I thought his ideas for enchantments were clever. Necessary. I was blinded.”
“But the hotel is filled with enchantments. There has to be thousands. You mean to tell me you penned them all?”
She shrugged as if it were nothing. “There were some left over from the society days, but it wasn’t enough. I’d sit hunched over that ledger for hours until my fingers would cramp up. But I transcribed his ideas, one after another. I penned enchantments allowing Alastair to shift walls and lock doors with a simple spoken word. I designed more magical guest rooms than you can imagine. I even added my voice to things, all with the ink.” Céleste took a sip of tea with trembling fingers and cleared her throat. “Greetings, traveler!” she chirped. “Still got it.”
She did.
“I heard you when I first arrived. Your voice still greets the guests.”
She laughed to herself. “I didn’t realize there would be guests when I first created that greeting. It took me until Alastair opened the hotel to figure out everything I’d enchanted was for that purpose.”
“He never told you?” She was his sister.
“I found out before he got the chance. At first, I was thrilled. I knew Alastair wanted to find the ring, but I also believed him when he said he wanted to bring magic safely to the world.” She ran a hand over the newspaper on the counter. “When the hotel first grew, I helped him recruit new staff by penning an enchantment that would appear as an advertisement the moment Alastair decided on our next destination.”