Coup de coeur, p.1
Coup de Coeur, page 1
Copyright © 2024 by Halli Starling
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact Halli Starling Books at hallistarlingbooks.com.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Illustration © Željka Dobras, Design by Zeljka Debeljak
https://www.artstation.com/dzeljka
Edited by Quinton Li
https://www.quintonli.com/
Contents
Author’s Note
Word Use Guide
Content Warnings
Representation
Folio One
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
Interlude
Folio Two
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
Interlude
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
Folio Three
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
Interlude
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
The End...
Author Thanks
Sources and For Further Reading
Also By Halli Starling
About the Author
Author’s Note
New York City at the turn of the 20th century was a fascinating place. In order to evoke some of the proper atmosphere and ensure I was portraying the city somewhat historically accurately (this is a fantasy novel, after all), I did a lot of research and took a notebook’s worth of notes to use while writing. At the back of this novel is a list of sources I consulted, should any reader be curious. Writing a fantasy romance novel based on real events, places, people, and culture is a strange miasma that allows room for plenty of authorial judgment, even if the main track on which you write stays fairly on the straight and narrow. But if you read any one thing off of my sources list, I cannot recommend more highly Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncy. Chauncey does note he focuses on the gay male world in this book, as the lesbian world was its own culture and he didn’t want to portray that history unjustly by adding it in like some kind of remainder. But Chauncey’s scholarly work is broad in its scope and yet, narrow enough to understand that time and place - as much as we can understand it 130+ years later.
One of my biggest curiosities was how gay and queer people were viewed at the time. We tend to think that history always had a poor or low consideration for anyone different, but strangely enough, New York City was considered the gay capital of America even then. As I read further, I came across certain facts that were startling to a “modern” mentality, but I wanted to incorporate in this novel. The biggest one – and perhaps the most shocking – for me was that the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th saw neutrality, if not genuine acceptance, for gay men and their culture, including drag, in many parts of the city. This is an extremely general brush I’m using here, but it was fascinating to read about the prominence of gay culture in a time of great upheaval, change, and industrialization. I wanted to include some of this in my novel, instead of relying on the idea that gay people would have been hidden and persecuted without mercy.
Readers will see references to “fairies”, “inverts”, “perverts” and more terms, both with very positive and negative connotations, for the setting of the novel. When these words are used, they are applied as historically accurately as possible. I wished to give some of that historical accuracy while writing a world that felt more even, and yet more real, than many fantasy novels of a similar vein do. The next page has a list of words and their historical uses, so that readers can be forewarned and understand the context in which these words appear. I was not, however, interested in using the colloquial speech of the time period, or dress (again, fantasy novel), since that can provide yet another barrier of entry for reading. I was thinking of that kind of historical accuracy in the vein of Baz Lurman or David Jenkins - mostly not, but with certain nods to the time and place.
As far as historical and occult/magical context goes, many of the locations and objects mentioned in this book are inspired by real counterparts. The Minotaur Bathhouse, for example, was loosely based on real bathhouses from that time and place, though of course magic allows for much more leeway as far as the construction and services. Bathhouses played a key role in gay and queer culture around this time, as they were often one of the few secure locations queer people could meet without interference from religious folk or the law. They were sometimes raided by law enforcement officers looking for people to charge with “sodomy” (not surprising, I’m sure). And the queer community would band together to protect their sacred places. It was an interesting note in several of the books and articles I read, and was one I didn’t want to miss out on including. The bathhouse is not included for the sake of titillation; they were an integral part of queer life at the time (and in some places, continue to be, though that may seem strange to certain modern sensibilities).
There are other nods to real history - the carnation brooch Calix wears is an iteration of the symbols gay men at the time used to signal to one another; the palm reader Lawton mentions was a real person and quite popular at the time; museums were all the rage, as were the city’s parks (which were also popular meeting spots for those in the queer community). There’s so much I wanted to fold in without being horribly blatant about it, and I hope these small details add to the color and vibrancy of the time.
Considering race and history: I want my books to represent a variety of experiences and backgrounds. One of the reasons I set the book in New York City, and not somewhere like London, was because the city has always been a melting pot of cultures, languages, beliefs, and people. Queer communities at the turn of the 20th century were much more welcoming to all, and even with the persecution and bigotry one could experience in the larger city, the small enclaves were typically safe. Places like Harlem, where mostly people of color lived, helped give birth to the idea of safe queer spaces for everyone and anyone. It must be noted that drag culture was brought to the forefront by those very places; something we should be eternally thankful for, given its modern breadth and depth. My cast of characters had to represent a larger group of experiences and backgrounds, and you will find under the Representation section a breakdown of this. The city suffered less racism and bigotry at the time of the novel, and Aubrey and Ethaniel do provide some insight into their lives as queer men of color, which is based in as much history as I could make it without making their stories only about their identities. It is a fragile web to weave, and I hope it meets with expectations.
A note on Cunning Folk and Aubrey: Aubrey Lavigne, one of the main characters and the love interests, comes from a line of Cunning Folk who trace their roots to France. The history of Cunning Folk is wide and varied and very much reliant on the part of the world from which they came. If you are not familiar with the term, Cunning Folk were the local healers, midwives, and apothecaries. Many times, one person in a village filled all of these roles and more. Their history can be accurately traced to the 16th century, though some scholars have found evidence of them even further back. Cunning Folk were also often advisors to village elders or leaders, bringing with them a sense of humanity and knowledge considered to be magical. And yes, many times it was believed by all that Cunning Folk used magic to help heal the sick and wounded. Their history starts to fold into the history of the persecution of witches around the 17th century (again, this is reliant on the culture and part of the world we’re talking about), and soon Cunning Folk were sometimes deemed as witches and punished without mercy. It is a fascinating, oft bloody, history, and I encourage anyone interested in this to consult the research sources at the back of the novel.
Aubrey’s family history, which we get glimpses of in the novel, is murky on purpose, for both the sake of plot and for character development. Aubrey himself struggles with this history and knowledge, as his own abilities run a different course than the rest of his relations. I hope the notes here provide an extra layer of meaning to Aubrey’s backstory.
And finally, on John Dee and Edward Kelley/Talbot: Dee and Talbot were both real people, and Dee’s work was a big influence on notable figures like Aleister Crowley (who in turn influenced people like Jack Parsons…it’s a conspiracy board full of red string, but it’s all true). While the sequel to this book, DEMIMONDE, will go into much greater detail on their work, it is worth mentioning their historical significance, and their importance to this story.
Word Use Guide
Fairies: Typically used to refer to an effeminate man, regardless of sexuality (it was largely assumed most fairies were gay, but this varied by neighborhood and population). Most fairies didn’t go out in what we would no
Inverts/perverts: Largely used by doctors, psychiatrists, and law enforcement when documenting gay and queer people
Bisexual: the connotation at the time was not someone attracted to two genders, but a person who seemed to have half a man’s soul, and half a woman’s (this was a time where other genders were not largely considered or had names for them, as we do now)
Slummers: The connotation then is not far off from today’s, though slummers in NYC in the late 1800s were sometimes seen as easy money as well. Typically these were middle class people who didn’t go to the saloons that catered to the manual laborers, but also wouldn’t be able to get into the upper class salons. They would go to Brooklyn or Harlem to gawk at the fairies and pretend to be scandalized.
Content Warnings
Content Warnings for anything not addressed in the Author’s Note
Alcohol use/consumption (not to excess)
Drug use/consumption (not to excess)
Discussions of sex and gender
Discussions of magic and the occult
Religious musings and considerations
Discussions of homophobia and bigotry
Discussions of mental health and the impact of magic upon it
On-page sexual content
Foul language
Representation
Calix (he/him) is gay and cisgender. He is white and comes from wealth, but also hails from a mother plagued by visions.
Lawton (he/him) is queer and genderfluid. He is white and comes from a noble, but destitute, family.
Ethaniel (he/they) is pansexual and cisgender. He is Spanish-American and comes from a long line of dark magic users. Ethaniel was raised by a single father and left home as a teenager to care for his ailing uncle and learn magical patterning.
Aubrey (he/they) is demisexual and genderqueer. He is Black, hailing from a line of Cunning Folk from France. He is a first-generation American and the head of a magical museum collection.
“I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.”
– The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
one
New York City, 1899
Acadia Gardens, Brooklyn
CALIX
The man standing guard outside the townhouse’s bright blue door had the crooked nose and sunken eyes of a bare-knuckle brawler who had taken one too many hits to the face. And the broken teeth revealed when he pulled back his lips to snarl, “Fuck off, twats,” only reasserted Calix’s supposition.
Those tangible bits of evidence gave him the confidence to repeat his earlier words to Lawton. “I told you he was going to deny us entry.”
Lawton waved a hand in the air. “Well, pardon me if I pooh-poohed your hunch, my dear one, but you know I’m never one to take a backseat to my own fortunes.”
Every emerald and ruby in Lawton’s rings glittered under the soft pulses of light from the gold and silver enchanted lanterns that hung overhead. The gems were as beautiful, as lustrous, and as sharp as his friend’s pointed words. Lawton was a lot of things, but the man understood what airing Calix’s little proclivity toward prognostication could do to them both, even in New York City, a place more accepting of magic in general. Calix had always counted himself fortunate that the man’s sharp tongue was rarely aimed in his direction.
This guard, however, was not to be so lucky.
As Lawton puffed out his chest and pushed his orange-red curls off his forehead, Calix let his gaze travel down the corridor north, where more lanterns tracked the boundaries of Acadia Gardens. Brooklyn wasn’t Manhattan, but it had a sense of charm and style that the magicked, moneyed, and powerful of Times Square couldn’t locate if it had been…well, this guard’s horrifically crooked nose.
“Now sir…what is your name? Ah, charming, I do love a good classic like John.” Lawton leaned into the man, not touching, but definitely edging toward familiarity. John’s eyes narrowed into thin black lines, making him now look more cartoonish than frightening. “You see, we are here to see Madame Twilight and partake in her salon. I know we’re not late, as the drapes haven’t been pulled. So if you would just turn that little handle and open the door—“
“No.” The word was more grunt than anything else, but it got John’s point across. As did the shift and bunch of his rather impressive muscles.
Calix bit down on the lung-deep desire to say I told you so. It would make Lawton grouchy and he’d probably spend half the night sulking. Calix was usually quick to assuage his friend’s sour moods, but tonight the magic of Acadia Gardens was thick, almost choking.
Friday nights were for carousing in the city, and places like Acadia Gardens were practically overflowing with magical energies in an attempt to entice both locals and tourists. “Slumming”, as the moneyed of the city put it, drew overdressed people in throngs and tonight was no different. As Calix looked around, he saw the jewels and furs, the glittering embroidery that twisted and turned due to simple, but expensive, patterning work. This world should have been one he reveled in. Money afforded him all kinds of privileges, but so often it was Lawton who helped him to take advantage of them. Madam Twilight’s salon was just one of many frivolous things Lawton loved, and Calix knew he had a very hard time saying no to his only close friend. Usually. But tonight he found himself growing impatient.
Lawton was still arguing with the doorman, and it looked as though this John would hurl them both down the street by their coats. “Listen, any amount. Just name it,” Lawton was saying, his gaze firm on the doorman but his hand straying into Calix’s pocket.
“Why are you pushing this?” Calix hissed between his teeth, feeling a hot flash of indignation rise up. He swatted Lawton’s hand away, not caring about the doorman seeing. “We’ll find somewhere else to go.”
Lawton’s pout deepened, and with it, Calix’s irritation grew again. It was like a mold spore blooming and Calix wished to be anywhere but here right now. “Because the Madam is the best, and that’s what I want.” Lawton’s fine brow furrowed, his thin lips all but disappearing into his sharp-angled face. “And it’s what you should want, too, Calix. Look around at who is out and about, all these gallivanting lovelies dressed to the nines. We are them, they are us. You should –”
“I’ve looked around. I’m not impressed.” Calix pressed a twenty-dollar bill into the doorman’s hand as he brushed by. Righting the collar of his dark green wool coat gave Calix an excuse to square his shoulders as he walked away, and the miniscule motion made him feel a tad better. Lawton would notice the movement more than mourn his absence, but for once, Calix didn’t care.
The throbbing in his temples, coupled with the heaviness of magic from all the shop lights and enchanted clothing worn by almost all he passed, made Calix long for home. There, it was quiet, still, and he could close his eyes and not worry about what he might see in the hazy horizon of lucidity. His mother had warded her estate when he’d first presented signs of prediction, as she so often put it. The wards would hold for a few more years before he’d need to renew them, but finding someone to copy his mother’s strange, esoteric energy work would be a high bar. Her powers had been barely on the edge of acceptable in civilized society, and she’d wanted Calix safe more than anything, so the mistress of Earl Batherton stuck to high society and let go of all of the Earl’s more interesting friends. Even if they could have provided her with some assistance where Calix had been involved. The downside of that had been he’d never been fully warned about his own abilities, but that wasn’t a path of thought he wished to trod down right this moment. All he knew was that home was safe, and safe was a valuable commodity in a time and place like New York at the turn of the century.
