Page 66 of The Scarlet Ball

“Don’t go,” he said, and my stomach sank when I heard that hard ragged edge to his words. It wasn’t defiance, it was desperation. He wasn’t hurting me, but I couldn’t move either, and my breath stuttered at the drawn look on his face.

Odile, what we just had done together, it was nothing compared to what he really wanted. There was a glassiness to his gaze now. He was like a mare on the verge of running mad, and still straddling his hips, I was the only thing he wanted.

“I’m starving,” he said, his voice taking on an uncanny hollowness. “I’m starving, and I must eat, do you see? You cannot starve me.”

I knew in that moment that if I did not feed him, he would devour me. There would be no malice in it, no more than there was in a wolf bringing down a fawn or a boy eating an apple, but I would be eaten. If I were lucky, I’d be dead first.

“No, no, wait—”

Before I could say another word, he flipped us and pinned me to the bed, pressing his face into the crook of my neck. He pressed his teeth to my throat, and I realized it was not a threat for me, but a diversion for him. It was another moment before he ripped my throat out, another moment before he ripped me to pieces.

“Give me something,” he begged. “You must give me something, or—”

“His name was Alex,” I said, and he went still.

“His. His name was Alex, and we met at a birthday party in London, this ridiculous affair for some viscount. It was one of those things where they spend too much on the girls and not enough on the food. But they were not all complete fools, because they hired good musicians, and Alex was one of them.”

“What did he play?”

“The violin. He played the violin, and when he stood up from the balcony, so drunk he almost fell over, he played so beautifully that we stopped what we were doing to listen. We had to. There was no other choice.”

I laughed.

“And you know? When he finished, the world started again, and no one cared except me. No one else seemed changed, no one else had their heart stabbed through or the skin peeled back from their bones. It was just me, and as soon as I could, I went to find him so we could start.”

“Start what?”

“Talking. Laughing. Kissing. Singing. Fucking. Everything. I knew only that I needed to begin with him as soon as possible, because every moment I wasn’t with him was one less that we could have had in our lives together. We started right away, and we continued, talking, laughing, kissing, singing, fucking, all the way back to Paris. We were going to be together forever.”

“What stopped you?”

I made an anguished sound somewhere between a sob and a whimper. Sebastian sank down on top of me, his weight draped over me like a luxuriant blanket, his shivers calmer but still enough to remind me how sharp his teeth were.

“Please,” he murmured. “Please tell me.”

“Ambition stopped us,” I said finally. “The urge to run the brothel instead of working there, the need to be our own masters. We were tired of pouring money into pockets other than our own, and we knew we could never earn enough to have the lives we wanted.”

“So what did you do?”

“We decided to steal it. We thought we were being so careful and so clever. I had a client who was in love with me, this big man who ran a lot of the gangs out of Place Pigalle. He had a nice house, wife and kids, but every big man like that keeps another place—quiet, private, with his favorite things there. His was a tall, narrow house, a full four stories in the ninth arrondissement, all heavy dark wood and brass, and everywhere these speckled statues of hunting dogs that I think only former hunters love. I pretended to be in love with him too, told him I wanted to be one of those favorite things, and of course he wanted my heart for a surety.”

Sebastian was quiet, for which I was grateful.

“The madame I worked for cursed the sky blue over my leaving. She told me that I would regret it, that girls who threw their hearts after bad men came to bad ends, but I wasn’t worried at all. I came to his house, I let him use an old blunt knife to cut out my heart, and I let him lock it behind enchanted glass along with the rest of his collection: the wish dolls from Corsica, a tinder box that would let you burn twigs into silver bullion, a box full of pearls, a box full of jade, and a box full of death. My heart looked very fine there among them.”

“How did you get it out again?”

“Well, the glass was enchanted to let no one but the big man himself open it from the outside. The enchantment had nothing to say about someone breaking it open from within. From within, it was only glass, and the third night in that place, when he returned home to his wife and children, I tapped on the glass three times, and got three taps in return. Alex, who lived in my heart, hidden there from everyone except me, came out. It was splendid, glass breaking, pearls and jade spilling everywhere, so much wealth it might have been trash, and if I could live in that moment forever—”

I shook my head.

“He gave me back my heart, we gathered up our new wealth, and we would have been gone, except. Except for the dogs.”

My voice faltered, and to my surprise, Sebastian slid his hand into mine.

“They turned their heads with great snapping cracks, and then they were after us. They were lares, guardian spirits who will suffer no move against their household. We had offended them, or perhaps they were only thrilled to finally have something to chase in those long dark halls. They ran with this awful crashing sound, their enormous weight driving their paws through the floor every fourth step—I’ll never forget that sound—but it slowed them a little, and that was the only reason we made it down the stairs at all, our treasures spilling behind us to be crushed under their feet, the stairs collapsing underneath us as we ran.

“We might have made it. There was a window on the second floor, a jump we could survive, and Alex, he kicked the window out of the frame and then threw me straight out. If he had gone first, well. I’d be the dead one.”