“What are you talking about?” I glanced at Jie, but she merely shrugged—and looked incredibly uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation. “What did I do yesterday?”
“You used your necromancy.” Joseph’s voice was curt. “You used your own power to stop that corpse.”
“But I stopped the corpse, didn’t I?”
“Not properly, non.”
“Properly?” My voice came out shrill with annoyance. “What should I have done, pray tell?”
“Not relied on self-power.”
“Joseph,” Jie said, pleading, “you’re being a little rough on her, don’t you think?”
“She knows the dangers of self-power,” Joseph replied, not taking his eyes off mine. “We had discussed it only moments before the Dead alarm rang.” He leaned toward me, his voice low.
“Eleanor, your body is so accustomed to using its own magic, you are automatically reacting with spells. Your body wants to use its power, and this is very dangerous. If this is how you respond when a single corpse is present, I shudder to imagine what will happen when we finally face Marcus. You must resist your magic. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I snapped, my temper flaring to life. “Though it might help if you would teach me how to actually do that, wouldn’t it?”
“And I will—as soon as I return from this assembly.”
I bit back a groan. “Fine. Let me know when you have returned from your assembly. Now, if you will excuse me, I have breakfast to finish.” Then, with nothing more than an apologetic smile for Jie, I stomped off to the restaurant—and found Laure ordering a fresh pot of coffee.
“Where ’ave you been?” she demanded.
I ignored the question, shifting from foot to foot as I asked, “Would you care to see my room?” I wanted something—anything—to distract me from the last twenty minutes. “We can have the rest of our meal sent up. I have a lovely balcony.”
Laure hesitated. “Is this to escape that young man—”
“No.” I moaned.
Her lips pursed with disbelief.
“All right, perhaps it is. Now come with me. Please?”
With a smug grin, she complied, and soon enough, we had escaped the first floor.
Yet of course, as my luck would have it, taking breakfast on the balcony proved to be a colossal mistake. For an inhumanly long hour I was not only cursed with a perfect view of Joseph as he left the hotel, but with all the Parisians who came to see the enormous balloon.
And worse—far worse—all the Parisian ladies who came to see its pilot.
At the first tap against my bedroom door that afternoon—hours after Laure had left—I swung the door wide, already saying “Land sakes, I thought the world had forgotten about . . .” I let the words die, for it was only the dressmaker with a frazzled assistant and a wealth of fabric in tow. My shoulders dropped. Had I alienated Jie by snapping at Joseph? I had searched for her after Laure left, but according to the man at the hotel’s front desk, she was away “on business.”
The dressmaker and her assistant bustled inside, and without even asking, they dragged me to the center of the room and began to undress me down to my petticoats. Once my gown was off, they set me atop a stool and then subjected me to a tirade of pins, needles, and lace. Madame Marineaux—true to her word—wanted me to have a magnificent ball gown in an eye-catching scarlet. The Marquis had already paid for everything: the silk, the gown, and the hard work.
I couldn’t help but love it. It was neither a color nor a cut I would have selected for myself, yet the low neckline accentuated my feminine figure, and the scarlet made my skin positively glow.
“That dress suits you,” a man drawled.
Oliver.
I spun on my stool, startling the assistant, and found the spry demon dressed in his usual charcoal suit, his stolen top hat clasped in his hands and his yellow eyes shining with mischief.
“How did you get in?”
“The door wasn’t locked, and”—he bared his teeth in a grin—“I’m quite stealthy.”
“Well, you cannot be here,” I said over the annoyed clucking of the dressmaker. “I’m half dressed
—”
“Yet fully covered.”
“—and you’re a man—”
“Some might argue otherwise.”
“—in a lady’s bedroom.”
“Though obviously these women don’t care.” He motioned to the dressmaker and assistant, who were far more concerned with the effects of my unexpected twirl than with the pretty-faced young man lounging in my doorway.
“You should have knocked,” I added with a glare. “And where have you been for the last two days?”
“It’s barely been more than a day, El. Stop being dramatic.”
I growled as the dressmaker tapped my ribs. I flung up my arms so she could mercilessly stab me with more pins.
“I’ve been working, as agreed.” Oliver draped his hands behind his head. “Gathering clues, keeping an eye out for Marcus . . .”
“Marcus?” Fear—and hope—awoke inside me. “Is he here?”