He reached for her hand again, but she moved away before he could distract her.
Audrey opened her clutch. “I have a gift for you as well,” she said.
“Oh?” Louis said and looked surprised for once in his life.
She wasn’t sure she should do this. It would be as dangerous as slipping Cerberus from his leash. . or arming a nuclear device. But all her second-guessing couldn’t stop her now; this already been decided-not with her head, but with her newly awakened emotions.
Audrey took out a battered enveloped, so worn the paper was fuzzy and it almost fell apart at her touch.
“Eliot left this with a note explaining how you gave it to him before the final battle in the Poppy Lands. I. . I was moved.”
She gingerly removed the contents: bits of bank statements and torn dollar bills and old restaurant receipts and post-it notes and tissues-all of it had been meticulously taped back together into a proper heart shape.
Audrey set the thing on the table between them, took Louis’s hand, and set it upon the battered token.
His smile went slack with astonishment as he beheld it. “What have you done?” he whispered.
She patted his hand. “I give you your heart back, Louis, healed and whole.”
He gazed at the paper heart, tracing its rough edges, speechless for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” she said, uncomfortable with his silence. “I am so good at cutting things. . not so good, though, at patching them together. It was the best I could do.”
Louis met her eyes. “You realize, of course, you may have just sealed the both our dooms? I forgive you-and more. Much more.”
Louis picked up the token in both hands, brought it to his chest, inhaled, and savored it for a moment. . and then presented it back to Audrey.
“For you,” he told her. “It was always yours to do with as you wished: to treasure and keep safe-or to tear into a million pieces again. I have no defenses against you.”
She hesitated, actually reached out and touched it-then halted. “No,” she whispered. “I am not ready. Perhaps one day, Louis, but not now.”
Louis frowned and it made his nose and jaw seem more crooked. “Of course, my dear. What else do we have, if not all the time in the world?”
Amberflaxus batting at her hand, interested in the heart.
“No,” she told the cat. “This is not a toy.”
Louis snorted. “Watch that wretched animal,” he warned her. “Of all the creatures in all the worlds,
He retrieved his paper heart and tucked it into his tuxedo.
Audrey stroked that cat’s back to mollify it (and grateful for the distraction). “No one has noticed your pet, and your lack of. .?”
“I have been lucky,” Louis told her.
Audrey scrutinized Louis and the space about him that flickered in candlelight. The deviation from normality was subtle at night, and yet, when one knew what to look for. . it was glaringly obvious.
Louis cast no shadow.72, 73
That was Audrey’s fault. When she had first learned that Louis was Infernal, she had flown into a blind rage- stabbed at him, meaning to sever his power from his physical form, and then cut his heart out so he could love no other.
All of which she managed, but her first strike had astonishingly missed, and instead cut off his shadow.
And like all parts of the Grand Deceiver, it was wily and evasive, and had run from her, finally taking the form of a cat.
A shadow cat that had grown to enjoy its freedom.
She scratched under Amberflaxus’s chin. The cat purred. It was still a part of him, yet somehow, a creature all its own: an annoyance, his spy, a mischievous imp that was Louis incarnate.
Louis scattered a handful of euros on the table to pay for her coffee. “Come,” he said, “and leave that creature or he will tear your gown.”
“Are you taking me to the opera? I’ve heard Ferruccio Busoni’s
Louis’s face curled with disgust. “Surely you jest.”
Her lips formed a rare half smile. “I do. No, I thought we would walk and talk. It has been so long, Louis. And there is so much to consider.”
He smiled back. “Just talk?”
“Yes, for now. But it
Louis considered for a long time, his expression uncharacteristically solemn, and then finally nodded. “A start then.” He offered her his hand.
Audrey didn’t trust Louis, the Prince of All Lies; she never would, either. But they had a common interest: the welfare of their children. And, counter to all her common sense, part of her still adored Louis. Or was this merely the memory of a younger love that she still felt?
The old passion was gone; they could not go back to it. . but she was willing to moving forward with Louis, as what? Friends, enemies, allies, or lovers once more?
She wasn’t sure. But she was sure that she wanted to find out.
Audrey took Louis’s hand, and together they strolled into the darkness.
“Tell me, then,” she whispered to him, “everything.”
72. On the Nature of Shadows in Identification: Unattended shadows are thought by some cultures to be ghosts unable to end their existence in the Middle Realms. The Zulu tribe holds that a dead body cannot cast a shadow. An alternative view is that shadows are a representation of God’s presence around an object (cf. a halo). Early European beliefs claim that a man without a shadow was a witch or had sold his soul to the Devil. These legends remain hypothetical; however, it is a fact that vampires cast no shadow as do all similar limbic undead species.
73. Wendy sews on Peter Pan’s shadow after he has lost it in J. M. Barrie’s
Dallas looked from her penthouse suite across the winking lights of nighttime Manhattan.
It was dazzling. Like herself.
She had dressed to the nines for the occasion in a slip of a black thing, sequined stockings, and five-inch stiletto heels. But she had had a lifetime of this glamour-several lifetimes, in fact. . and was ready to leave it behind.
Grow up? Not a chance. She had grown up before, and it wasn’t her.
But the time to change to
She turned the card over and over in her hand. . as if she flipped it enough times she would see the secret message on it, explaining it was just a bad joke.
It had arrived by special messenger this morning-a goshawk that had perched on her balcony, screeched once at her, left the card fluttering to the floor, and then had flown off to slaughter pigeons.
The card was engraved with curlicue calligraphy that was nearly impossible to read.
Lucia sent it-to annoy her-to worry her-to make her cry.
She understood why her older sister, Audrey, was so cruel. She had strategic reasons.
Lucia was cruel, not out of necessity, but because it made her feel powerful and others around her weak. Dallas supposed that was a strategy as well.
She sighed, wondering if all sisters tortured one another so, and then read the message again:
You are summoned before the Council of Elders, the Temple of Whispers, immediately and forthwith to receive instructions. We meet at dawn. This is NOT a request.
Dallas had already heard what had happened to Eliot and Fiona. She knew Lucia wasn’t going to “instruct”
