Glitter by Aprilynne Pike

Author:Aprilynne Pike
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Published: 2016-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

“MON DIEU!” GIOVANNI exclaims when I reveal this week’s stack of euros to be stored in his safe. “Chouchou, I must—”

“Please don’t ask,” I beg. Truly, he’s been a paragon of patience. This is only the second time he’s tried to query me in the nine weeks since I arrived in his studio after almost a two-year absence. I smile and lay a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve already lied to one person today—please don’t make me do it again.”

Molli caught me on the way to the car this morning. I almost told the truth when I said I was going to see Giovanni. She knows about the lessons I used to have with him.

“Can I come?” she asked. “My day is free, and I’m so curious about what you do there.”

“It’s embarrassing,” I said after a long pause.

“But it’s just me,” she said quietly. And there was an answer to far more than the day’s schedule in those words.

I’ve been keeping her at arm’s length the last two months, and she knows it. How could she not know it? My heart wept as I fobbed her off and drove away. She watched my car all the way out the golden gates.

“I’m a liar!” I shouted at the Nav computer when it asked where I wanted to go. “I’m a lying liar who lies.”

“I’m sorry,” the computer replied. “I didn’t get that. Please repeat your destination.”

And here’s Giovanni, asking me to lie again. I can’t. But there’s a reason I chose him as my secret-keeper of sorts. He’s utterly trustworthy and loyal. In the end, after a long, heavy silence, he gathers me into his arms and whispers in my ear, “You know you can always ask for my help, yes?”

I pull back, smiling, though inside I want to cry. “I do. But at the moment, this is the assistance I need.”

“Then it’s the assistance you’ll receive.”

“Thank you,” I say, though words feel grossly inadequate. When he agreed to let me make use of his business safe, I thought the large, heavy rectangle would be more than enough space. I had no idea the footage a million in euros actually takes up, and as soon as next week I’ll have to flow over onto the floor. Odd, that thought: euros stacked on a closet floor because there’s no room in the safe.

With my father’s pilfered clothing tucked under my arm, I slip out Giovanni’s back door to find both Saber and Reginald waiting for me. I peer around them but see no one else.

“You made me a promise,” I say sternly to Reginald. I hold a thick envelope—this week’s payment for his Glitter—where he can see, but I don’t proffer it.

“Are you blind?” Reginald asks, and knocks Saber with his shoulder.

Only then do I realize that Saber’s dressed not in his usual black jeans and the sacklike gray garment the world calls a hoodie but in the same Baroque costume he was wearing the last time he came to me at the palace.

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