Read Chapter 22: The Searching Bar

The bar squatted at the bottom of a narrow staircase, its facade unmarked except for a single red lantern that buzzed with dying insects. The smell of cheap absinthe and stale cigarette smoke rolled up the steps like a tide.

Julien paused at the threshold, his polished shoes looking absurd against the sticky wooden stairs. “You’re certain this is the place?”

“The bartender at Le Terrier was certain,” Evie said, tugging her coat tighter. She’d worn her least conspicuous clothes—a plain grey dress and a battered hat that had seen better days in New York. “Lily used to drink here with the other chorus girls from the clubs that didn’t hire her.”

“And you trust this bartender?”

“I trust that he liked Lily enough to want her found, and disliked the man who took her enough to risk his own skin mentioning this place.” She descended the remaining steps and pushed through the door.

The room was smaller than the stairwell suggested, dominated by a zinc bar that ran the length of one wall. A handful of patrons dotted the tables—men in worker’s caps nursing glasses of wine, two women in faded silk sharing a cigarette, and an old man asleep with his head on his arms. Behind the bar, a woman with steel-grey hair and forearms like a butcher’s was wiping glasses with a rag that had once been white.

She looked up as they entered, her eyes sharp and measuring. “We’re not a tourist attraction, monsieur, mademoiselle.”

“We’re looking for someone,” Evie said, approaching the bar. “A woman named Lily Durand. She used to come here.”

The woman’s hands didn’t stop moving. “Never heard of her.”

“She might have used another name,” Julien said. “Perhaps a stage name. She was a singer.”

The woman set down the glass and rag, folding her arms. “Lots of singers come through here. Most of them leave. That’s the nature of the business.”

“This one left with a man,” Evie said, leaning forward. “A man in a dark coat who liked to watch from the shadows. She left a warning with a friend about him, and then she disappeared.”

Something flickered behind the woman’s eyes—recognition, or wariness, or both. She glanced at the sleeping man, then back at Evie. “You’re the American. The one who sings at Chez Nous.”

Evie stiffened. “Word travels.”

“Pigalle is a small village wrapped in a big city’s coat.” The woman gestured to a table in the corner. “Sit. I’ll bring you something that isn’t poison.”

They sat at a scarred wooden table while the woman poured two glasses of wine that tasted more of vinegar than grapes. She joined them, sitting heavily and lighting a cigarette from a pack she produced from her apron pocket.

“I knew Lily,” she said, exhaling smoke through her nose. “Not by that name. She called herself Lise Bernaud when she first came around. Pretty girl, excellent voice, no money and no papers. She needed work that didn’t ask questions.”

“Where did she work?” Julien asked.

“Here and there. Theatre Pigalle for a week before their manager got handsy. A few private parties. She had a roommate, another singer named Marguerite—they shared a room three streets over. If anyone knows where Lily went, it would be Marguerite.”

“Can you take us to her?” Evie asked.

The woman studied her cigarette. “Marguerite doesn’t talk much since Lily vanished. She got scared, that one. The kind of scared that lives in your bones, not your head.”

“We need to find Lily,” Evie said. “She left a message for me before she disappeared. I think she was trying to warn me about something—about a man who may be connected to people I owe money to.”

The woman’s expression shifted, something cold passing over her features. She stubbed out her cigarette and stood. “Finish your wine. I’ll see if Marguerite still lives at the old address.”

She disappeared through a curtain at the back of the bar. Evie and Julien sat in silence, the noise of the other patrons washing around them.

“This is taking too long,” Evie whispered. “Every day we wait, the baron’s appointment gets closer. And the Comtesse—she’s expecting me to prove myself, and instead I’m chasing ghosts through Montmartre.”

Julien reached across the table, his fingers brushing hers. “These ghosts may be the only path forward. If Lily knows who owns your debt, and that man is somehow connected to the music Lucien is trying to protect—“

“Then everything is connected, and I don’t know which thread to pull without unraveling the whole thing.” She squeezed his hand, then released it as the curtain parted.

The woman returned with a girl trailing behind her—thin, pale, with dark circles under her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, but she moved like someone twice that age.

“This is Marguerite,” the woman said, returning to her post behind the bar.

Marguerite sat down without being invited, her eyes darting between Evie and Julien. “You knew Lily?”

“We’re trying to find her,” Evie said. “We were told you were her roommate.”

“Was.” Marguerite’s voice was barely above a whisper. “She left everything behind. Her clothes, her few bits of jewelry, a photograph of her mother. Nothing. Just disappeared from our room one night after a job.”

“What kind of job?”

Marguerite’s fingers twisted in her lap. “A private performance. One of those men who come to the clubs with fat wallets and thin smiles approached her after her set at Le Petit Moulin. Said he had a patron who appreciated fine voices, who paid very well for the privilege of hearing them in an exclusive setting.”

“Exclusive how?” Julien asked.

“Invitation only. Members only. They never say the name to the girls before they take them. But one of the other singers who’d been taken and came back—she came back different, and she told me where they take them.”

Marguerite looked around the bar, as if checking that no one was listening. Then she leaned forward and whispered, “Le Cercle de Minuit. It’s a private club near the Bois de Boulogne. No single entrance, no posted hours. You only get in if you know the password and you have the right face or the right money. The girls who sing there...” She trailed off.

“What happens to them?” Evie pressed.

“The girl who came back—Jeanne—she wouldn’t say exactly. But she stopped singing altogether. Moved to Lyon to live with her aunt. She told me that once you go to Le Cercle de Minuit, you belong to them. Not as a performer. As something else. Something they keep.”

The word hung in the air, unspoken but understood.

“When was Lily taken?” Julien asked.

“Three weeks ago. Maybe a month. She was excited at first—they paid her triple the going rate for the night. She said she would finally be able to pay off her debts, maybe save enough to get proper papers. She went to the club in a car they sent for her.” Marguerite’s voice cracked. “And I never saw her again. I went to the police, but they laughed me out of the station. Said a missing chorus girl was not a matter for the Parisian police. Then I went back to the club—I waited outside for two days, until a man came out and told me to go home, that if I made trouble, they would find me and I would join Lily wherever she was.”

Evie felt the wine sour in her stomach. “This man—the one who approached Lily at Le Petit Moulin. What did he look like?”

Marguerite’s eyes grew distant. “Tall, well-dressed. Handsome in a hard way. Dark hair, slicked back. He wore a silver ring on his right hand—a serpent coiled around a note, I think. I remember thinking it was an odd thing for a man to wear in such a fine club.”

A memory slotted into place with sickening clarity. Evie had seen that ring before—on the hand of the man who had stood behind Lucien at Chez Nous, the night Lucien had first blocked her route to the stage.

She looked at Julien, and she saw in his eyes that he had seen it too.

“Do you know his name?” Julien asked, his voice tight.

Marguerite shook her head. “He never gave one. But he came to see Lily perform twice more before he took her. Each time he came with the same companion—a shorter man, older, with expensive shoes and hands that never stopped moving.”

Lucien’s hands. Nervous, gesturing, always touching his cufflinks or smoothing his jacket.

“Thank you,” Evie said, standing. She pressed a few francs into Marguerite’s palm—more than she could afford, but the girl needed it more. “If you hear anything—if you see Lily, or the man in the silver ring—send word to Chez Nous. Ask for Evie.”

Marguerite nodded, clutching the money. “Be careful, mademoiselle. The people who run Le Cercle de Minuit are not normal criminals. They are the kind of people who own the police, the newspapers, the courts. They can make a person vanish and nobody will even remember her name.”

Outside, the Paris night was cold and unforgiving. Evie stood on the cobblestones, Julien beside her, and she felt the weight of everything pressing down on her shoulders.

“Lucien knows,” she said. “He knows who took Lily. He may have even helped arrange it.”

“Or he may be in deeper than we thought,” Julien said. “Either way, we need to find out what Le Cercle de Minuit is, who runs it, and whether the man who owns your debt is connected to it.”

“And if he is?”

Julien was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Then we need to be very careful about who we trust. Because if the same man who holds your debt also took Lily, then you are not just a singer he wants to control. You may already be on his list for Le Cercle de Minuit.”

The realization hit Evie like a physical blow. The baron’s meeting. The debt he claimed to own. The careful way Lucien had inserted himself into every aspect of her career, her movements, her life.

She had thought she was walking toward a negotiation.

She might have been walking toward a trap.