The creature speaks, the cuts in his face flaring wide, glistening like the sliced bellies of eels.
“Bonjour,” he says, and his voice is thin, sharp, almost merry: a childish whimper that only adds to the wrongness of him. He makes me think of a bird spliced with child, an insect dressed in a coat of human skin.
I look at Jacques pleadingly. He stands no more than four steps away, but in this dead, electric space it feels like an ocean. We cannot reach each other. He is not on our side, I want to scream. You said so yourself; he is evil!
“Who are you?” I say again, louder. “Answer me!”
“They call me their butterfly man,” the creature says. “Would you like to see?” He sounds shy, and as he speaks he lifts one of his small hands and I see his true face. His features are narrow, delicate, the bones finely sculpted. But his skin is covered in cuts and wounds, and as I watch, the cuts flare wide, glistening like the sliced bellies of eels. His eyes are vast, black pools without pupil and without iris. His hands go to his face, and he covers one of the cuts as if trying to hide it. “They said if I helped them, they would set me free. I could wander the world and see it for myself. I could leave this place, be free.” His voice slips up, high and piercing. “They lied.”
I begin edging over the floor toward the door to the hallway. Jacques shakes his head, his face crumpled in agony.
“No, Jacques,” I whisper. “We cannot trust him. Bernadette, take your sister. Run, run, all of you, GET AWAY!”
I clutch Delphine and dash toward the door.
Jacques is yelling. Charlotte screams. The butterfly man hardly moves, only turns his hands, palms outward, and there is a flash of blinding white light, unfurling toward me. Something immensely hot strikes me and I stumble, Delphine slipping from my grasp. The air is forced from my lungs.
“Aurélie,” the butterfly man says. “Why do you run from me?”
Jacques is bounding toward me, but he approaches so slowly, as if through water or a dream. I am gasping in pain, vivid clouds of colored ink blossoming across my vision.
“Do you fear me?” the butterfly man says, and I see he is smiling at me, a false, studied smile, as horrible to behold as the splits in his skin. “The others fear me, too. Frédéric does not like me, though he is my father. Havriel is disgusted by me. Even the servants, when I strap them to my table, shriek and cover their eyes.”
“Please let us go,” I whisper. “We want nothing from you. We—”
“But you do want something from me.” The butterfly man is standing directly before me, the force of his presence like a horrid, iron weight. One hand drifts toward me. When it touches my cheek, my skin aches as if I have been pricked. I bring my fingertips up. They come away bloody. “Jacques Renaud has made a bargain. His service in return for your freedom.”
Jacques has reached me. He takes my arms, whispers in my ear: “I will find another way, I promise, Aurélie. Go to the inn, ask for Madame Desjardin, and tell her Margeaux’s son sent you, tell her you are a friend—”
The butterfly man’s dark glow intensifies. Pain opens like a white-hot rose inside my skull. “Do not speak,” he says, his voice like a spike. “Listen to me. You will be my comrades.” He smiles again, his expression unreadable. “Allies. Brothers-and sisters-in-arms. All of you.”
“No,” Jacques spits. He moves in front of me. “I will kill you if you lay a finger on them. The deal was for me. I would serve you, and the Bessancourt sisters would go free; that was your promise!”
“I lied,” the butterfly man says, and when he laughs the sound is delicate, like insect wings rasping against each other. “I learned well from my makers.”
Somewhere I hear Delphine crying, my sisters calling out. I feel the flutter of my heartbeat, wild through my bodice. And suddenly Jacques goes flying to the side, as if glancing off an invisible wall.
I stumble backward, my hand finding Bernadette’s, Charlotte’s. I gather my sisters behind me, lifting weeping Delphine again to my hip. Jacques stands and pushes in front of us. But he has begun to bleed, tiny cuts forming on his head and neck.
“I’m sorry, Aurélie,” he says, and his eyes are streaming, his fists clenched at his sides. He lowers his head like a bull, gaze fixed on the butterfly man. “This was a mistake, you must get away. I will find you—”
A wave of shuddering air flows off the butterfly man, striking Jacques. The scratches are covering him now, crimson stitches opening across his skin.