“Juliana!”
Bastien barrelled in through the door, tossing his jacket on the floor.
“Jules!”
“There is precious little need to shout. I don’t live in a castle.” She appeared from the adjacent room, head tilted to the side as she tried to clasp a jade earring behind her ear. Scanning him from head to toe, she pulled a wry face. “What’s gotten into you?”
It is a very long list,Bastien thought, but Juliana’s sight staggered him into momentary speechlessness. She was wearing one of her evening dresses—extremelygarçonneand shorter than all the other ones she had flung around the apartment. It dropped from her shoulders in a straight silhouette of dark cherry, almost the colour of blood, and barely made it past her knees.
His eyes glinted.
It was perfect for what Bastien needed.
“I require your help with something.”
“Did Paris run out of girls you can kiss already?”
“Even if it did”—Bastien said, barely suppressing the feel of Celine’s lips rolling from the vicinity of his mind—“Paris is still full of men. But I doubtIsuit his tastes.”
Juliana’s laugh rang sweetly through the apartment. “Those people exist?”
“Apparently. So, will you help me?”
“I requireyourhelp first.” She dangled an earring in front of him. Then asked, “Have you been drinking? You look dazed.”
“Not exactly,” he muttered, walking up to her.
No, he didn’t feel drunk. He felt…strange. Something had been pulsing against his ribs all the way from the Latin Quarter, making him breathe faster, and consequently, making him dizzy. Bastien hadn’t determined what it was yet.
Surely not Celine.
No one had ever had the ability to make him so thoroughly lost in his head that he had driven his car around the block five times before thinking to stop and find a parking space.
No. He must be coming down with something. A fever or other.
“I’m fine,” he assured her, fixing the clasp behind her ear. “Voici. Now come, it is a time-sensitive mission.”
Juliana huffed as she was dragged across the room and ushered out the door barefoot. “Wait, my shoes!”
Bastien ducked inside quickly, picked a pair from the drawer in the corridor, and tossed them at her. “They match your dress.”
Juliana clicked her tongue at his choice, but didn’t protest further. “You still haven’t told me what this mission is all about. I love it when you act upon your eccentricities, but I’d rather be prepared if you spiral out of control.” She slipped her heels on. Paused. Scrutinised him again. “Don’t tell me this is part of your elaborate ruse concerning—it is, isn’t it?”
“Partly,” he permitted.
Bastien had to be honest: he hadn’t expected Celine to kiss him. And while it made his plan against Jacques easier, it made what he had done at Maison Baudelaire worse. He had gone tothe old house to apologise, knowing she would be there, just as she had been there every other evening he had driven to the Latin Quarter and had stayed outside, staring at the lit attic window, biting the inside of his cheek, too much of a coward to climb upstairs and face her. He had risked both of their chances at winning. The utter despair on her face when she’d had to tell Monsieur Baudelaire they wouldn’t be able to compete that round had haunted Bastien all night long.
“Look,” he sighed, looping his arm through Juliana’s and walking her down the little slope where her apartment was located. The exhilarating air of the evening seeped through his thin shirt, cooling his strange fever. “I made a mistake I need to atone for.”
“Adorable,” Juliana cooed. “My boy has grown a conscience.”
“I’ll have you know that I’m not doing this out of the pureness of my heart,” he sulked. “I simply need to set something right. It is your job as my best friend to help me.”
Juliana fixed a cigarette between her viciously red lips, and smiled. “So, who do I need to seduce?”
• • •
They had gone to Casino de Paris to watch Mistinguette perform that night.
