"So, teach me."
"Teach you what? I can show you a few tricks, but when it comes to the hardcore fuck-you-up magic, you're born with that or you aren't."
"What about your friend, Vidocq?"
"He's an alchemist. It's not the same thing."
"I could learn that."
"You could have died tonight."
"I don't care."
"I'm not dragging you into this."
"You already did. And you'll take me along cause you need me."
I don't say anything. I get up so that I'm standing right over her. Earlier, I'd set the bone blade beside me on the floor. I pick it up and scabbard it inside my jacket.
"For eleven years, I've been worked over and abused in ways you can't imagine by things you don't want to know about. I've killed every kind of vile, black-souled, dead-eyed nightmare that ever made you piss your pj's and cry for mommy in the middle of the night. I kill monsters and, if I wanted, I could say a word and burn you to powder from the inside out. I can tear any human you ever met to wet rags with my bare hands. Give me one reason why I could possibly need you?"
She looks straight up at me, not blinking. No fear in her eyes.
"Because, you might be the Tasmanian Devil and the Angel of Death all rolled into one, but you don't even know how to get a phone."
I hate to admit it, but she has a point.
LATE AFTERNOON THE next day, I knock on Vidocq's door, which I still can't help thinking of as my door, which makes my brain spin around like a blender full of ball bearings. Fortunately, I'm good at ignoring a lot of what my brain does.
Beside me, Allegra bounces on the balls of her feet. She's wearing shiny boots with thick soles and a belly-revealing T-shirt tight enough to be have been spray-painted on. Probably because I told her that Vidocq is French. She looks cute enough, but one side of her face still sports a dark purple bruise and her cheeks and jaw are a little puffy, so she's also trying to distract people's eyes from her face to her body. It's working.
She's doing a lot better than me. I crashed at her place to keep an eye on her. All I can tell you is to never fall asleep on a beanbag chair. My back feels like someone beat me with a pillowcase full of tuna-fish cans.
Vidocq opens the door and does a comical little eyebrow raise.
"There you are. And you've brought a friend."
Allegra puts out her hand and gives Vidocq a smile that would make a dead man swoon.
"I'm Allegra," she says. "Stark's new zookeeper."
"I'm Franjois Eugene Vidocq. Lovely to meet you."
She looks over his shoulder into the crowded room. "Are all those books and potions yours?" She steps past him into the room like she'd just bought the place. Vidocq turns and gives me a conspiratorial look.
"Forget it. Just a friend," I say.
"Then you are a very foolish boy." He nods at her examining his ingredient racks. "What happened to her face?"
"Parker."
"Brave girl."
"It's why I bought her here. If Parker knows who she is, then she's already part of this. But she's a civilian. She doesn't know magic or charms or anything. Think you could teach her some of what you do?"
"You want to trust her with me? After what I've done to myself?"
"If she's on Parker's list, she could do worse than be cursed with immortality. And she needs something. I can't teach her what I do. I won't."