Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [74]
But there he went, and there they were.
What he saw at first was not her but a large, muscular back that in the flickering light of the flame above displayed on its entire surface a tattoo inspired by a Dürer Apocalypse, The Seven Trumpets are Given to the Angels. It was only as the back moved a little aside, its muscles rippling like those of some reptile, that Gabriel could perceive—and how could he be wrong—Stella’s own star sign, the Scorpio on her left shoulder. The back, he suddenly realized, was Sealtiel Wynne’s. He had recognized his bulk back there in the alley but had blocked the fact out as long as he had been able to, and this was exactly the kind of tattoo that the Gentlemen of the Night were rumoured to have. If he’d wanted a Revelation, now he had one. A shudder took hold of him, which was both hot and cold, the burn of cold water falling on colder skin. He fainted and woke up in simultaneous waves, as if passing through ascending hoops made of darkness and light, of ice and fire.
It was when he summoned the strength to turn away that he saw, or thought he saw, something else, on the next block of ice: the hospital hypnotist was here, the little wick flame prickling shadows on his pock-marked face, a curious sprouting quiff on his head as if he were himself turning to smoke. The goldilocks girl on her hands and knees before him, her empty eyes turned toward Gabriel but looking right through him, as if he weren’t there, was Sybil Springfield.
Gabriel suddenly felt a cold, flaky hand crawling under his natik. He jumped and saw a thin, eye-masked old man he had not noticed before, who had also been watching the couples. Recoiling in disgust, he slapped the hand away. The man jolted back, his bald head lit for an instant, his eyes angry. Gabriel knew this face, in spite of the eye mask, knew the thin lips and the pointy teeth. He could not believe what he saw.
How he found himself outside, standing in the middle of the Boreas Bridge, he did not know. What woke him up was the wind, freezing his own cold sweat through his unbuttoned greatcoat. He did not care to button it up. He shrugged it off instead, opened his jacket, put it down, stripped off his wool sweater, his shirt, his undershirt, to feel the cold better, as if it would cleanse him from what he had seen. He stood there for a while, waiting for his heart to stop or his mind to go blank.
Neither had happened, he realized after a while.
It was barely one o’clock. The only thing that resembled an idea in his head was how much he missed and needed Stella. No matter what she was up to with the Gentlemen of the Night, he would win her back. He would wait for her, but not here. He would wait in front of her place, for hours if need be, ask her for explanations, and he would listen to them, eager to grant forgiveness. Or maybe he would say nothing at all about what had happened tonight, and just hold her tight in his arms.
He dressed quickly, before he could catch his death.
CHAPTER XIX
The Magician’s Menace
“I wish it to be distinctly understood that I shall do my best to deceive you, and upon the extent to which I am able to do so will depend my success.”
Stanyon Ellis, Conjuring for Amateurs, 1901
Brentford stood at the large picture window of his apartment, a bandage around his hand, less admiring the sight of the frostwork on the sleeping city than sombrely meditating on past events and those about to come. He could still feel the burn of the red-hot-iron-letter-day. He had been punched by a cadet and bitten by a puppet. He had been implicated in the kidnappings of two local celebrities—Lilian’s, successfully enough, and Sybil’s, which was maybe a payback for the first. A snowstorm had swallowed a good half of the city and the Council was ruining the rest. And as two o’clock struck on the Art Nouveau mantel clock, Sybil had not reverted back from a few specks of pixie dust to a woman he could marry in two days.
A cough behind him made him jump. He turned back,