Green Fairy (Dangerous Spirits) (9 page)

“Sol?” she said. Her voice had a raised edge of hope. “Do you?”

“I just feel good.” He sniffed at his empty goblet. “Is there any more?”

She laughed. “Not in one night. What do you mean, good?”

“Oh.” He put the goblet down on the floor. It wobbled; he had to steady it with a paw. “Just…you know, who cares if I’m on the team or not?”

“What about the car?”

Car. He’d forgotten about Carcy, how grateful he was to the ram. He took out his phone to type a quick message.
Absinthe is great but not better than you.

Meg made a noise of exasperation and craned her neck to see what he was typing. When she read the words, she slumped back into her chair. “Oh God.” She moaned and turned the desk lamp back on. “It’s making you one of
those
kind of poets.”

Carcy wrote back,
Aww. :)
, and Sol’s heart filled with love. “Maybe I always was,” he said.

“Maybe now you can tell me what’s so great about him. Other than that he’s willing to sext you whenever.”

“He’s just…” Sol closed his eyes and pictured the images the ram had sent of himself, in all kinds of poses. “He’s so handsome, and he cares about me.”

“What does he care about?”

“Me.” Sol floated happily on the wave of his thoughts. “He taught me all about being gay. He helped me when that shower thing happened. Said it was natural. Said it happened to him, too. We just click so well. I don’t know what I’ve even been worried about.”

“I didn’t know you were worried about anything. What’s Mr. Perfect done? Or not done?”

Sol waved a paw lazily. “I mean, of course he won’t mind me moving in. Why would he?”

Meg’s voice went a bit high in surprise. “You haven’t asked him yet?”

“Oh, well. He’ll let me. I can tell.” How could he not know it? Every message Carcy sent him held the unspoken promise behind it
“when we’re together.”

“Okay.” Meg hesitated, then went on. “Assuming that plan, which has absolutely no chance of failing, succeeds… then what?”

“What, then what?”

“Once you live with him, then what?”

He opened his eyes, aware he was smiling. “Then…we’re living together.”

“God.” Meg shook her head. “Okay, this experiment is officially a failure. You go home and sleep it off, and get back to practice tomorrow, because if you go out to Millenport without me you’re gonna end up sleeping under a tarp somewhere.”

“I love absinthe.” Sol grinned and got up, and then leaned over Meg’s head to kiss between her ears. “Thank you. And thank your vampire fox.”

She swatted him away. “At least read one of those books I pointed you to before bed. Maybe you’ll have interesting dreams.”

“I already am.” He gathered up his bag and danced his way to the door. “Good night!” As he opened it, he called, “Good night, Mr. Kinnick! Good night, Mrs. Kinnick!” He even looked toward the pool to see the dark shapes raise a paw to him as they returned the good-nights.

The night air did little to dispel the warmth of the absinthe. When he got home, he was careful to tell his parents how well the studying session had gone, and he thought he did a good job of sounding sober, even though anise and frankincense still lingered in his nose. His father sniffed suspiciously, but frankincense was not a drug, Sol pointed out when asked what Meg had been burning. He got the standard lecture about bringing strange smells into the house, delivered as half-heartedly as it was received, and then they let him go up to his room.

Carcy had texted him twice more, provocative texts that Sol answered as soon as his room door was shut. He lay on his bed and imagined that what he and Carcy were texting back and forth was really happening, as best he could without actually doing anything his parents would smell in the morning. The thump of his own tail on the bed made him even happier.

When he and Carcy were done, it was past eleven. Sol lay stretched out on his bed, too tense to go to sleep. So he lay on his stomach and brought up Jean’s Confession again, thinking of Carcy.

It opened where he’d left it, at the florid descriptions of the next two dancers. He skimmed over them with a mix of fascination and envy, because they were neither a ram nor male, but they were beautiful and they were expressing their sexuality there in the open, in front of an audience.

“And that is the one I brought you here to see,” Thierry told me, stretching one long finger past my muzzle. I followed its direction to the cabaret floor, where amidst the dancers circulating through the tables there glowed a spot of russet fur. In the busy swirl of lights and colored costumes, it might have been lost, but it bore the quiet grace of a simple dress at an elegant ball, remarkable for the purity of its color and the aura it carries.

The fur belonged to the tail of a fox, trailing a white point behind it. I’d seen the fox on stage, one of the dancers between the second and third acts, but Thierry had not pointed her out to me then. It was only when he reminded me of where I’d seen her that I remembered.

I watched, intent now on puzzling out what it was that Thierry thought so attractive in this vixen. Her corset and short skirt, dark red with gold edging, did indeed complement her fur much more than the same uniform did on many of the other dancers, but there was a black pantheress who wore it even more elegantly. The vixen’s feet did seem to glide, as if she were not earthbound at all, but that also was not unusual among the courtesans who made their way through the tables. The patrons did not pay her any more mind than the others; less, in many cases, and I thought I could see why. The largest clusters of attention and appreciative whistling grew around the courtesans whose corsets were the most visibly strained, and Thierry’s fox had a very pleasant, modest shape in that regard.

He made a gesture with one hand as though grasping something out of the air. I followed his eyes and saw for the first time the vigilant shape of M. Oller. I did not see his response to Thierry’s gesture before he descended to the floor. His sleek polecat form wound its way effortlessly through the crowds, between the tables, to the side of the fox. He spoke for only a moment, so quickly and discreetly that had I not been watching closely, I would not have seen the motion of his muzzle, nor the twitch of the fox’s ear. She nodded.

I watched her excuse herself from her table, and in that short period of time, M. Oller returned to his post. The chaos of alcohol and laughter and sex continued unabated even as the vixen extricated herself from it, disappearing from my vision below our boxes. I turned, but Thierry’s hand on my shoulder and his mysterious smile cautioned me to wait, so I summoned my strength and patience. You have said on many occasions, father, that those are not my most prominent virtues, and so it was quite fortunate that they were not tested for long.

The four jackals sitting with us turned in unison. Only then did I notice the sound of the door and turn, eagerly. All six of us there in the box stared at the open doorway filled with the light of the corridor outside, and the silhouette of the vixen standing in it.

Thierry turned up the oil lamp he had dimmed. In its uncertain light, I saw bright red fur over a long, slender muzzle, soft white fur on the throat and small swell of the chest, and flickers of emerald in two soft eyes. Her tall ears stood half-raised, polite and deferential, and in the light I could now see a soft black ribbon trailing down the edge of each ear. Such an unusual decoration; later I would know the reason for it, but at the time it was, like everything else about this dancer, a mystery.

Her voice was low. “You called for me, monsieur?”

She spoke well, but with a trace of an exotic accent from the east. I confess that even then I remained foolishly ignorant of Thierry’s interest in her, but I found my heart and blood quickening in her presence.

Thierry did not dawdle. “Yes, Niki,” he said. “Come here.”

She closed the door behind her with a motion so subtle I did not register it. In three easy steps she stood behind our row of seats, her tail held elegantly behind her. “Shall I dance?”

Thierry nodded his head gravely. “Go on.”

The fox put her paws together and bowed her head in return. She began a short, compact dance, lifting her legs as the dancers on stage had done, but it was not a can-can dance. Rather, she lifted but did not kick, she turned and pirouetted, her long tail flying after her, and then she did a series of
chaîné
turns, two to the side and then two back, which I would not have thought she had room for in our small box. But she was a small vixen, and though she danced with passion, she kept that passion tightly close to herself, without the wild abandon that had made the solo dancers so breathtaking.

“She’s trained in ballet,” I murmured.

Thierry merely smiled.

When Niki had finished her dance, I clapped politely. The door opened at that moment to admit another courtesan, a busty ermine. She strode in, letting the door swing shut, and spared hardly a glance for Niki before strutting over to face the jackals. I must confess, I was curious about that glance. I thought that perhaps the two did not like each other.

Niki had not even turned, though I saw her ears flick. “Will there be anything else, messieurs?”

“Yes,” Thierry said. “Come here.”

She stepped forward elegantly, sliding between the seats to stand between us, against the railing behind which the joyful, lustful cabaret still swirled. Her tail hung down beside her leg, the tip marking time to the music that we could hear from below.

“Niki is special,” Thierry said to me in a low voice, so that I had to lean closer to hear it. He extracted a paper from the pile he had paid twenty francs for, and handed it to me. “Why don’t you show how much you appreciate the dance?”

You will perhaps be interested to know, father, that what Thierry handed me was in effect a one-franc note, an odd thing, but it made sense to me immediately. One could hardly tip a coin into the garters of the dancers, after all, and for the coarser people below, a bank-issued five-franc note would be extravagant; a day’s wages for some of them.

Though I had been waiting for this moment, I needed a moment to work up my courage, so I studied the note. For all that this paper would never leave the confines of the cabaret, it was a lovely printing: a red-inked windmill on one side, the dignified mien of La Liberté on the verso, just as though it were a real note from the Banque. At first, the lovely Gallic dove seemed to be telling me ‘shame, shame, Jean!’ But when I looked up into Niki’s eyes, the voice of the dove was swallowed by the quiet in those green eyes, and the noise of the musicians and patrons below was as nothing to my ears. I held up the note, La Liberté fluttering uncertainly between us.

“That’s not showing,” Thierry said with a deep chuckle. “Niki. Show him the proper place for his appreciation.”

Niki, without any other outward sign of acknowledgment, no answering chuckle at Thierry’s deft turn of phrase nor wry smile at the awkward newcomer, lifted the edge of her skirt to reveal a garter below it, pressed tightly around her thigh, matting the fur around it. I confess that my first thought was that it was a rather large leg to be shapely—the perils of a life of dance. My second was that the garter looked uncomfortably itchy against her sleek and lush coat. We chamois have a fine hide that accommodates tight clothing and straps much more comfortably than some of our predatory friends, of course, but that does not mean that I do not envy them their thick, lovely coats from time to time. I ached, in fact, to undo the garter and run my hands over that soft fur and the hard muscles below it. But I saw, upon a closer look, another note tucked into the garter around the back of the thigh, and I realized only then what Thierry was pressing me to do.

Could I be this naughty? With trembling fingers, I tucked the bill into the garter on the outside of her thigh as gently as I could, attempting to smooth out the fur there. “Thank you, madam,” I murmured as I did.

Thierry laughed. “‘Madam,’ is it? Do you not see why I asked for Niki, even so close, my young friend?”

I frowned. As I have said, the club’s drinks were quite strong, and by that point my senses were somewhat distorted. But where I was sitting, my nose barely an arm’s length from our courtesan’s skirt, I soon became aware of what Thierry meant, a distinction that even in my slightly inebriated state, I could not ignore.

Niki’s skirt hung gracefully down her thighs, but her hips did not have quite the arch to them that the ermine, dancing for our jackal companions, did. And in the front, where a gentleman does his best not to be caught staring, there was the slightest suggestion, a merest hint of something there that on any courtesan ought not to be.

I turned to Thierry, and I suppose my eyes were wide, because he said, “Niki?”

Obligingly, Niki lifted the skirt again, higher this time, and father, you must forgive me, but I was unable to look away from the snowy fields of white fur that were thus revealed to my hungry eyes. I drank them in, following the soft inward curve of the thigh up to the black undergarments, where I saw the truth that my nose and eyes had surely been telling me all along. For the undergarments, rather than lying flat to conceal the hidden flower beneath, instead showed the outward curve of a concealed staff, a sheathed and most un-ladylike weapon couched between those lovely legs.

I gasped, and Niki looked down with only a slight arch to
his
eyebrow.

The skirt fell, the performance over. “Will that be all?” His voice was soft, but I should never have thought it female had I not been awaiting a female voice.

His green eyes held me captive. Those sharp predator’s teeth, kept sheathed in his velvet muzzle, entranced me. I hungered for the elegance of his dance, to hold it and make it mine, to understand this boy who danced among ladies and passed for one of them. My heart leapt, father, and I was reminded of my Pascal:
Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point
. What my heart felt in those moments, indeed, had naught to do with reason.

“Dance again for me.” I did not say “please,” save with my eyes.

Niki stepped toward the open space behind our seats, but I reached out with a hand. I could not bear to have him move away from me again. “Here,” I said. “Dance here.”

The fox looked at Thierry, who waved with his fingers in the air, a gesture of permission, I suppose. And Niki began to dance.

If seeing him across the seats had been intriguing, seeing him up close was enthralling. In the confined space, he swayed his hips, he cupped the air in front of my face with his paws, he bent his muzzle to come closer to mine. His tail swung around to brush my knees from one side, then the other, a darting, quicksilver serpent that had a life of its own. When he had finished, I fumbled for my purse and found it gone, along with the twenty-franc note that I had intended to spend on a new suit for the soirée at the Justines.

I seized another of Thierry’s notes and moved my fingers beneath Niki’s skirt. I found the garter and traced it around to the inside of his thigh, and I left the note there, a blue and gold flag planted on that snowy field my eyes had already claimed and my heart longed to hold.

Again, he showed no reaction to my daring. He held my eyes a moment longer and then looked up at Thierry.

“You may go,” Thierry said.

Niki bowed. “Thank you,
messieurs
. I hope my performance has been agreeable.”

“Very much so. Eh, Jean?”

I could not disengage my tongue from my mouth to answer. A nod was not sufficient to convey the depth of my longing, but it was all I could coax from my enamored body.

And then Niki did a rare and wonderful thing. He smiled, and he reached out to brush my muzzle with a paw. “You are adorable,” he said.

He swept past us, his skirts brushing the chairs. Thierry shoved my shoulder as the door closed behind him. “He touched you, little one. Not all boys who wear dresses like other boys, and not all dancers like their patrons, but Niki likes you.”

“I want him,” I told Thierry, once my tongue was again working. “I must have him. What can I do?”

“Come,” he said, and nodded at our companions in the box. The ermine was sitting in the lap of the foremost jackal, swaying her hips. “I believe our friends would appreciate some privacy.”

And so it was that Thierry introduced me to M. Oller, and I had my first conversation with the weasel who is the master of the Moulin Rouge. He is a sharp one, with beady, shifty eyes, and he knows the value of the wares he displays. Before we began negotiating for Niki’s favors, he made certain that I knew for what I bargained. He did not want any incidents, he said; he was happy to cater to those who wanted their courtesans to be weapons rather than flowers, but he had no desire to surprise anyone. I appreciated this courtesy, and assured him that I valued Niki’s concealed treasures. Though I desired them quite strongly, I feared I could not afford the price they would command, both in silver and in the shame that would ensue were I found out. Besides which, as I told you earlier, I had lost my purse in the crowd.