Creatures of Charm and Hunger (The Diabolist's Library #1) - Molly Tanzer
Prologue
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EDITH BLACKWOOD CAREFULLY SELECTED ONE of the cut-crystal perfume atomizers from the narrow table by her front door. Holding it in her palm for a long moment warmed the pink fluid within—just a touch; just as she needed.
I hate London, complained the demon Mercurialis in a voice only Edith could hear. Decades of familiarity with her constant, invisible companion meant she understood it in words, but its speech registered more to her mind as a series of plucks and whirs and chirps, as well as the occasional chime.
“I know,” she said aloud to the silence of her Paris flat. “I don’t like England either, but go we must. Jane Blackwood is my only niece, and I will not miss her Test. Nor could I! I agreed to give it to her and to her friend Miriam. But even more than that, I want to be there to see her progress beyond her apprenticeship. She’ll celebrate in style even if it means I must sojourn to the northern wilds of England. Otherwise, my sister will likely just let Jane stay up half an hour late as a treat. She deserves more for taking such an important step along the path to becoming a Master diabolist.” Edith’s demon agreed wholeheartedly with all of this. “And it will be good to be somewhere quiet for a few days. It’s been months since we went out without always looking over our shoulder.”
Mercurialis conceded this point too. The Occupation might be over, but the war was not; the streets of Paris were not yet safe. They hadn’t won until they’d won—and they hadn’t won. Not yet.
Edith misted herself with a few spritzes from the warmed bottle, then set it aside, picking up a long silver needle. She pricked her finger with it. As the blood beaded up, she took hold of her valise in her other hand and stepped within a slate circle set into the marble floor of her foyer. She let the welling blood drip down, and as soon as it hit the floor, pale blue electricity began to crackle all along her body, currents of lightning running up her legs, encasing her like bright vines. After a moment, they receded, save for a few extra flashes along the jet beadwork of her black dress and the black fur collar of her cape . . .
And she was somewhere else entirely: a disused kitchen in a shabby London boarding house, standing upon a slate circle similar to the one in her own apartment. The morning sunlight filtering through the dirty windows was dreary and watery, wintery and unmistakably English.
The demonic sigh in Edith’s mind sounded more like the twittering of a distant bird, but its point was clear and inarguable.
Edith was surrounded by a column of woven golden mesh that ran from floor to ceiling. Through the fine holes she could see the shape of a man sitting in a chair. She could also see the glint of the gun he had trained on her.
She had come here expecting such a welcome. Edith was a spy, and this was a spy’s gate into the UK. Protecting it was of utmost importance.
“Swift wings, swift victory,” said Edith.
“Swifter wings, swifter victory,” said the man with the gun.
Edith stepped through the door of the mesh cage, set down her valise, and rucked up the sleeve of her dress to reveal a tattoo on her forearm: a stark white equilateral triangle and, within that, a talaria—the winged sandal of Hermes. The brightness of the white ink against her black skin was itself evidence of the mark’s diabolic nature, but the group she was part of—the Young Talarians—hadn’t gotten as far as they had by cutting corners when it came to security.
The man with the gun used his teeth to pull the cork out of a phial and dribbled an oily fluid upon her tattoo. It fizzed and popped and sizzled away into silver smoke, at which point he curtly nodded once.
Edith, like most diabolists, was also a member of an international organization known as the Société des éclairées. While the Société had long ago denounced the Nazis, their sympathizers, and their ideology, due to its worldwide nature it could not be aggressively political without causing internal problems. The Young Talarians—the group to which Edith belonged—were technically independent . . . but not forbidden from using the Société’s resources.
It was impossible to say how much the Young Talarians had done for the Allies over the course of