Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (some good books to read TXT) 📗

in your act. How was it done? Mirrors, accomplices in costume? I have racked my brain over it, and am still no closer to understanding.”

He shakes his head, amused by my enthusiasm. “No accomplices. Much like you, I prefer to rely exclusively on myself.”

“Until now, that is,” I correct.

“Until now.” He rises from the table and holds out a hand. “And what I will show you, no one else has ever seen.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Devilmaker and the Mark

Adam’s magician’s atelier is in the attic, the ceiling steeply canted from the pitch of the mansard roof. Unlike the rest of his tumbledown home, there is no dilapidation here; the air is kept scrupulously clear of dust, and all the wood has been stripped and buffed smooth. A large cage sits in one corner, holding ravens with their heads under their wings. My eye lands on the wall of masks hanging from hooks—a series of the diabolic visages I remember from the maréchale’s bal, along with uncanny, flattened replicas of Adam’s own face, unnerving in their eyeless stares.

“Magnifique,” I murmur, drifting closer to run them between my fingers. Each is even more stunningly detailed when viewed up close, the features painted onto silk so thin it must be nearly sheer beneath the paint. The likeness to Adam is exceptional. “What intricate work.”

“And see how they fit, one over the other,” he explains, layering them and then lifting them over his face to show me. “I paint them using a mold of my own face, to account for the distortion caused by my features beneath. My nose, my lips, even the projection of my brow—it all affects the verisimilitude.”

“So when you intend to pull this trick, you begin the performance already masked,” I say, putting the pieces together, marveling at the ingenuity. “And from the distance at which the audience stands, no one is any the wiser. Damnably clever.”

“Thank you, my lady,” he replies with a little half bow. “I like to think so. And if such trifles impress you, I suspect you will like my lanterna magica even more.”

He leads me to a worktable in the corner, beside one of the dormer windows. An odd contraption sits upon it: a mahogany box with a protruding brass cylinder affixed to its front.

“Behold,” he says grandly with an ironic flourish, though I can see genuine excitement and even a touch of self-consciousness in his eyes. It lends him a surprising and sweetly boyish air. “The magic lantern. Or as I prefer to call it, my devilmaker. It’s a Dutchman’s invention, one I came across and purchased during my … time abroad.”

I glance at him curiously at this halting mention of travel, but he does not elaborate. Smiling, he lights a candle from the table and hinges open a door in the contraption’s wooden body to reveal the contents within. Peering inside, I see a concave piece of glass set into the center, a transparent slide slotted in front of it. Adam tucks the lit candle stump behind the glass, then jerks his chin toward the black velvet screen we’d passed on our way into the room, strung up by the door.

“Take a look,” he says with a wink. “You might spot a familiar face. Or, rather, the absence of one.”

I turn around to look over my shoulder, my heart hitching up and then lodging at the base of my throat. Adam’s magic lantern casts a haunting image onto the velvet backdrop—the leering skeleton from his act at the Pomme, though its outlines are crisper and more static without the smoke. Now it is more obviously a picture, a one-dimensional projection, not a revenant summoned from beyond the grave.

“Mon Dieu,” I say under my breath, glancing between the skeleton and Adam, utterly enthralled. “It is so well rendered! Though not quite so terrifying without your artificial fog.”

“Indeed,” he agrees, tipping his head. “The smoke is crucial to presenting the illusion—and to obscuring the black screens I use as a backdrop for the projection.”

“And the dancing … How do you make it move?”

“A simple mechanism,” he explains, gesturing me close to the device. I peer inside along with him, and he shows me the clever clockwork that rotates the slide back and forth, alternating between a series of images. “You see how different depictions of the skeleton are painted onto the slide? To foster the illusion of movement, one must only set the mechanism into motion. I wind it exactly like a watch, set to begin at a certain moment in the act.”

“How clever,” I breathe, glancing at him for permission before I reach in to touch the delicate gears and threads that surround the slide. “And the slides, where do you obtain them?”

“Oh, I do not obtain them,” he replies, grinning with evident pride. “I paint them myself.”

He removes a walnut chest from one of the drawers beneath the worktable, lifting the lid to reveal glass slides stacked like playing cards. He riffles through them delicately before selecting one, plucking it out and offering it to me. I peer at its surface, a tiny landscape of withered trees hung with snakes—the fallen Eden from his Messe Noir, rendered in exquisitely miniature detail.

“They are so little and perfect,” I say softly, awestruck by the artistry. “Downright breathtaking. Why do magic at all, when you have a talent such as this?”

“If I could paint my way to power, I’ve yet to discover how,” he says, baring his teeth in an approximation of a smile, charmless in comparison to his usual beguiling grins. “Who are the painters who gain renown in Louis’s court? White men to the last, waxen as withered lilies. Do you expect their well-heeled patrons might be inclined to welcome me into their ranks?”

“But you have the Vicomte de Couserans’s patronage now,” I point out.

“Only because he believes I practice a low art like the occult, deemed appropriate for the likes of me. In the Sun King’s court, what could be considered a