Chapter VII
Slumber Party
“Ah, look here, Octavia—our patient seems to have made a full recovery!” Marcus laughed and rose from his chair when the Sylfaens walked out onto the veranda. His wife remained seated, but her smile articulated her own sincere relief. Jane took the chair beside her as Dr. Sylfaen clapped his arm around the shoulder of his old friend.
“Indeed she has, Marcus. We will take advantage of your hospitality for just one more night, and then we will continue onward in the morning.”
“Oh, come now! Just because Jane is conscious again does not mean that she’s ready to travel,” Marcus answered.
“By no means,” added Octavia. “You cannot risk the girl’s health.”
Jane intervened on her own behalf. “It’s okay, really. I’m feeling much better now. Besides,” she continued in a near-whisper, “I’d probably be in greater danger of risking my health by not finding Rosaline as soon as possible. I have to find the Book before the next full moon.” She felt equally resolved as Dr. Sylfaen to resume the journey, but she was regretful that she could not accept Marcus and Octavia’s offer of hospitality for a little while longer. Within the limitations of the strange curse that bound them all, she might have enjoyed speaking freely with the ancient Italians. They seemed warmer than the other Cursed that she’d encountered thus far, and, though they revealed very little information to her directly, the manner in which they spoke made the riddles simpler for her. In her short time in their presence, Jane had already solved one of the mysteries of the Book’s transfers from person to person, and she’d made a few assumptions about Rosaline, too. She felt prepared for the upcoming introduction. And, if these kind new friends were not precisely human, Jane could accept the possibility that being something else might be okay. I wouldn’t mind turning out like them.
Octavia seemed to have read her mind. “Perhaps after you have found the Book, we will have time to become better acquainted, Jane.”
“I’d like that,” she answered. Marcus nodded heartily, and Octavia disappeared into the villa through a door that led into the kitchen. A moment later, she emerged, carrying with her an enormous tray of food, meat and vegetables and pasta, all simply prepared and as wholesome as the surroundings in which they were served. The hour grew late as they dined, and the sky above them became streaked with fuchsia and gold.
Yeah, I’d like that a lot, Jane repeated to herself as she inhaled deeply. In the mean time, though, I’m glad to have met them. She had seen so much in the last few days, and met so many people…will I cross paths with any of them again? It seemed fairly certain that she would see the Italians again, and soon; they were close friends of her godfather’s, after all, and they had implied that they would visit her if she did not return to them. What about Ahmose? A fearful shudder trembled down Jane’s spine when she thought his name, considered the possibility of encountering the Egyptian in the future. I will meet him again. Whether I like it or not. Of this, Jane felt no doubt. He’d tried to have them killed in Cairo, and it seemed unlikely that he would simply retreat and leave them alone just because they had crossed the borders of his country.
Fearful as she was about the prospect of dealing with Ahmose, Jane took comfort in the number of people (well, whatever they are, she amended with a silent laugh) she had met during her travels that she could count as potential allies or, at very least, neutral parties, beginning with the guests of the dinner party—Old Moll and Lorena and the Everwords.
Evan. She hadn’t thought of him much in the midst of her mad schedule, and her breath caught tight as the image of his perfect face filled her memory now.
“Jane, are you feeling okay?” Dr. Sylfaen asked, at the same time that Octavia looked up from her plate with a bemused look of concern.
“Fine,” Jane replied, a bit too innocently, considering that no one at the table could possibly know what—or who—she’d been thinking about. Octavia arched a white eyebrow and returned her attention to her meal. Dr. Sylfaen also seemed appeased, and Jane drifted back into her thoughts.
But what was I thinking about? Her stream of consciousness had been interrupted by—oh yeah. Evan. She shook off the mental image of his beautiful angel’s face, only to have it replaced by the memory of him surfacing from his pool on the first afternoon she spied on him, his hair slicked black against his scalp and beads of water streaming off of his arms and shoulders. Well, crap. That’s not helping. Jane pressed her eyelids shut in concentration, so she could not see the puzzled expressions that her elders exchanged.
Friends. I was counting my friends…or in any case, my non-enemies. But could she count Evan among them? Her obsession by no means signified his feelings. Well, maybe he and his father did mean well when they spoke about Cris. Uncle Mederick seems to trust them well enough.
She wasn’t sure one way or the other about Manech; he had participated in the second interview solely for the sake of humoring Madame Antoinette—Jane was confident of the fact. Liam, though…Liam liked me just fine. I think we would have gotten along even if he wasn’t a Cursed and I wasn’t changing into one. She had found him quite attractive, too, if not to the same degree as Evan. And her regard for him was more friendly…brotherly, like she felt toward Gregory. And Cris, she accepted with a mental sigh before shoving the stray thought into a far corner of her mind.
And what about Madame Antoinette? Though she couldn’t pinpoint how or why, Jane felt fiercely attached to the strange woman. She was probably just as attractive to the opposite sex as Evan Everword was to her, but that didn’t rationalize Jane’s feelings about her. In fact, there were certain things about Madame Antoinette that Jane found utterly creepy—the dolls, the Mouse butler, the perfect house of pink silk and satin. Madame Antoinette made the color pink seem downright gothic. Still, Jane could not deny that she liked the woman better than anyone else she’d encountered on her journey; she was the person she most looked forward to meeting again.
And why not? She proved herself a friend when she gave me the Eye. I never would have been granted an audience with the Egyptian if not for her gift! Of course, he had sent the Wasp and the Ebony Man to attack Jane on the way to the airport, but Madame Antoinette had had nothing to do with that. She knew the Eye would force him to tell me he’d delivered the Book, but she couldn’t have known that he would try to kill her.
God, what I wouldn’t do to be able to just ask her why Ahmose attacked us. After all, if Madame Antoinette knew the Egyptian well enough to anticipate that I would need the pendant to gain entrance in Cairo, then wouldn’t she be the best person to ask?
And that was enough. No sooner than the thought entered her head, the darkness behind Jane’s closed eyelids streaked with blue, and the sterile taste of cold steel touched her tongue. Her eyes burst open and her mouth formed around a silent gasp. Alarmed, her hosts and godfather jumped from their chairs, and the view from the veranda began to flicker in and out. The image of massive bed arrayed in pale pink silk transposed itself onto the scene, overlapping one corner of the little table where they dined. Just as suddenly, Jane was in a flickering version of Madame Antoinette’s boudoir in Paris, and the little table seemed transposed on it. Jane gasped in horror as the wavering image of Octavia reached out to stop her, but she saw Dr. Sylfaen jump across the table to impede her in the last moment before the echoing snap signaled the completion of her teleportation. In less than two or three seconds, Jane had returned to Paris.
She landed with a soft thud into a mountain of pink satin pillows that had been arranged beside the enormous bed. Madame Antoinette screamed, startled by the deafening popping sound, and turned from her dressing mirror on the other side of the room.
“Jane?!”
Jane stood up and gave a nervous jerk to the hem of her t-shirt. “Uh…hi.”
“How did you—you can teleport, mon cherie?”
After gulping a nod, Jane tried to speak intelligibly, but she was still shaken by her accidental t
ravel. It’s getting too easy, she thought. I mean, I was thinking about her, but I never meant to come here to see her. Not tonight, anyway. I have to be more careful! She seemed to be telling herself that on a regular basis lately. “I—I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to barge in like this—I’m so sorry—”
Madame Antoinette leaned down to her, cupping one of Jane’s cheeks in each hand and peering into her eyes. Jane felt a warm tingle of relaxation settle over her shoulders.
“Jane, my little darling, you mustn’t apologize. I am thrilled to see you again! I didn’t expect you to come in this manner, and certainly not so soon, but I could not be more delighted. Now, does Dr. Sylfaen know that you are here?”
Crap. Uncle Mederick. “No, he knows I’ve gone, but he doesn’t know where,” Jane admitted, a bit sheepishly.
“Then you must call him first, so that he does not worry. Then, we will celebrate our surprise reunion!”
“Where has she gone, Mederick?” Octavia asked as the last echo of Jane’s departing snap faded into the darkening sky.
“I don’t know yet.” With forced calm, Dr. Sylfaen took his cell phone from his coat pocket and placed it in the very center of the table. Next, he retrieved his overturned chair from the deck of the veranda and righted it, every movement deliberate, so that he could sit down to watch the quiet phone.
Marcus was not so composed. “Well?! What do we do? Has she ever done this before?”
The younger of the two old men nodded, the hint of a humored smile present on his lips, even though they were compressed with worry. “Indeed.”
“How do you find her?!”
“She will call,” Dr. Sylfaen answered.
“She will call? Are you serious? What if she ends up somewhere that she can’t call? What then?!”
“Do not underestimate Jane Thomas Sylfaen. She will call, and not for a rescue. She has not gone anywhere that she does not want to be.”
Marcus considered his reply, his face relaxing as the truth of his friend’s words registered—he, too, was quite familiar with the mechanics of teleportation. He took the chair across the table from Dr. Sylfaen. Octavia watched the two men as they huddled over the still-silent cell phone.
Jane tugged her phone from the pocket of her jeans and speed-dialed her godfather. He’s probably worried sick.
“Jane?” he answered before she heard the first ring.
“It’s me, Uncle Mederick.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” Jane could hear the tension dissipate from Dr. Sylfaen’s measured breaths through the phone. “You know, you ask me that a lot.”
“Only because you give me as many reasons to,” he retorted, and now she was sure that the tinkling sound of hidden laughter had returned to his voice. “Where are you?”
“Paris. With Madame Antoinette.”
“I see. Did you…ah, intend to go to Paris?”
“I was thinking about something I needed to do here, but, no, I didn’t mean to. Will you tell Marcus and Octavia that I’m sorry? I guess that I seem pretty rude.”
“They will understand,” the old man assured her.
“Um, Uncle Mederick?”
“Yes, Jane?”
She crossed her fingers behind her back as she spoke—she hadn’t done that since she was a little girl, but that’s precisely what she felt like now. “Can I stay over with Madame Antoinette tonight…please?”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, she invited me to stay, and I promise to teleport back first thing in the morning, so we can leave for—” Jane felt the beginnings of the pain scratching at her abdomen, and she remembered that Madame Antoinette was listening. Oh, right. I can’t tell her about going to see Rosaline.
“You can stay, Jane, but you must come straight back here if you sense any danger. But never mind teleporting in the morning, unless you have to. There’s no sense chancing an accident if we can help it.”
She wondered whether he meant to protect her or anyone who might be standing too close to her when she teleported. Both, probably. “I understand.”
“I will book a flight to Paris first thing in the morning, and you can meet me at the airport. We will depart from there together. I’ll call tomorrow, when I know what time I will arrive. Agreed?”
“Agreed. My bag is still packed, in my room at the villa. My passport is in the side pocket—you’ll have to get it out, so that I can get on the plane.”
“I believe I can manage that.”
“Thank you, Uncle Mederick,” Jane said.
“You’re welcome,” her godfather replied indulgently. “Have fun, dear. And be careful.”
“I will,” she promised before she snapped the phone shut and looked up at Madame Antoinette. As much as she’d enjoyed the rustic wholesomeness of the Italians’ home, Jane was looking forward to her evening with Madame Antoinette. And not for the pampering and extravagance that the visit would undoubtedly entail, either, though it was fine if Dr. Sylfaen chocked it up to that. Jane was no more comfortable with him learning about her growing fixation with Madame Antoinette than she relished the idea of revealing how obsessed she was with the younger Mr. Everword. Besides, I do need to talk to her about Ahmose. I have to find out why he’s after me, and she’s my best lead. If I have to get a pedicure to do it…well, I’ll manage.
“All settled then, mon cherie?”
“All settled…except—shoot! I don’t have any clothes for tomorrow,” Jane remembered.
Madame Antoinette threw back her head and howled in laughter, somehow managing to still sound refined and delicate in the act. “Oh, Jane…that will not be a problem.” Her ringlet curls bounced just above her slender shoulders as she tilted her chin in the direction of her closet—if it could be called a mere closet. The room was larger than Jane’s bedroom in Dr. Sylfaen’s house. And it was stuffed with clothes that were undeniably Madame Antoinette, from the looks of it. Oh well, I’ll let her have her fun, Jane thought with a smile, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but wonder how well a silk skirt was going to hold up on the long flight across the Atlantic.
As Jane expected, her visit with Madame Antoinette was a whirlwind of activity, no doubt made more chaotic and enjoyable by the fancy bottle of champagne the elegant lady had ordered the Mouse Man to open for the occasion. Jane hadn’t so much as tasted alcohol before, but she found the two glasses she consumed to her liking. The two women sipped and chatted like old friends parted for far longer than a few days while Madame Antoinette played dress-up with her new living doll. Jane consented to her attentions; while it was out of character for her to take pleasure in such frivolity, Madame Antoinette’s unusual influence won out, even after it became clear that Jane would receive no answers about the Egyptian.
“The only thing that matters is that you are safe now,” Madame Antoinette insisted when Jane attempted to initiate a conversation about Ahmose for the fourth time. “I will not risk your safety, or mine, in order for us to swap theories—for truly, Jane, theories are all I have. Now then, let me see your other hand.”
Jane obeyed, and her hostess concluded manicuring the girl’s fingernails in silence. She is right, Jane reminded herself, struggling to reign in her frustration. Discussing what happened could be dangerous, and I have a flight to catch tomorrow. She decided to focus instead on enjoying every second she had left to spend with her new friend, before she faced the next introduction and all of its potential perils.
“You seem nervous, my love.”
“I am.”
“About Ahmose?” Madame Antoinette stood and began to gather a collection of bottles on the pink marble countertop, and, Jane noticed with some trepidation, a pair of scissors.
“About everything. And I miss my home, and my friends.”
“And your parents? Do you miss them, Jane?”
The question struck her dumb for several seconds, but Jane couldn’t be anything but honest with Madame Antoinette. Sh
e felt instinctively compelled to answer her truthfully. “Sometimes. Though not in the way I should, and I feel pretty guilty about that. I long for the simplicity of the life I had with them, though I don’t seem to remember it very well. I feel…nostalgic for them, I guess you could say. Everything is so different now.”
“But you loved them?”
“Very much. I can’t explain why I feel so detached from my memories of them…maybe I’m still in shock about the whole thing.”
“Perhaps,” Madame Antoinette agreed, all the while bobbing her head as Jane described what she already suspected. She changed the subject. “So, mon cherie, shall I begin with your bangs?”
Around ten o’ clock the next morning, Jane stepped warily into the lobby of the enormous airport. The throngs of travelers jostled one another in their collective hurry to make their flights, and the pandemonium threatened to knock the frightened girl right out of her expensive new three inch heels. The Mouse Man followed a few feet behind her, arms laden with two large suitcases full of what Madame Antoinette proclaimed to be the “essentials.” The elegant lady had not accompanied Jane and the butler to the airport herself, and, now that she was beyond the pull of Madame Antoinette’s charms, Jane was relieved by her absence. She had never been comfortable with attracting too much attention, and two women with identically-styled ringlets might have drawn more interest than she could handle. As it was, Jane could feel the other airport patrons’ fleeting stares as they hurried past her, no doubt wondering what small country she ruled. The dress was silk, as Jane had assumed it would be, and easily expensive enough to warrant the onlookers’ assumptions.
She scanned the crowd for her godfather, skimmed over the sea of unfamiliar faces until she found one framed by a halo of white, tangled hair and punctuated by intense green eyes. “Uncle Mederick!” she called and gestured for the Mouse Man to follow her as she walked toward where he was standing.
The old man somehow heard her over the steady din of the airport travelers, and his face broke into a wide, relieved smile at the sight of her. He rushed toward her and swept her into a tight embrace. He was out of breath, she heard over the sound of the silk dress rustling under his arms.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing now, Jane. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Well, I’m here. How much time do we have before our flight leaves?”
“Just enough to check the rest of your bags and pass through security,” his hand dove into his carry-on bag and emerged holding her favorite pair of flip-flops, “…and for you to change shoes, if you’d like.”
Jane snatched them from him and kicked the high-heeled contraptions off of her feet and onto the airport floor. The leather thong sandals probably looked terrible with the pale yellow silk shift dress, but she didn’t care in the least. “Oh my God! I love you, Uncle Mederick! How did you know?”
The old man shrugged. “Ah, live and learn, I suppose.” He watched his goddaughter as she replaced her shoes with a great sigh of relief, and he smiled. “I love you too, Jane.”
About the Author
Brea Nicole Bond is the author of seven serial novellas collectively entitled Flicker Blue. She resides in San Diego, California with her husband and two children.
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