Hotel Magnifique

Jani enters a forbidden hallway in search of her sister. Through a door, she sees Yrsa removing one of Red’s eyes and turning it to porcelain. She runs away and goes through the next door, which is Alastair’s office. He pulls out her contract and notices Bel’s mistake. He amends the contract with his enchanted purple ink to make Jani forget her home, her sister, and her own name.

The story picks up five weeks after the incident in Alastair’s office. Jani has been demoted to kitchen duty, and everyone now calls her “Mol.” For reasons that are unexplained, Jani has retained all her memories; she must pretend that she has forgotten them to avoid suspicion. While delivering food to the library, Jani tries to borrow a book despite being forbidden to. She is discovered by Hellas, the Botaniste.

Jani and Bel have been meeting in secret to trade information. Bel checks that she still remembers who she is and teaches her how to avoid detection, while Jani asks after Zosa, who she has not seen for weeks. Jani wants to try and get into the aviary to find her, but only Alastair and Hellas are allowed inside.

The hotel moves to Skaadi, a country where suminaires are persecuted. Alastair, the maître, is meeting with their ambassador to pay an entrance fee, and workers are allowed outside to greet the procession. Crowds gather as the maître offers payment to the ambassador, who tells him that the hotel will be granted entrance into Skaadi the following year. Alastair seems upset about not being allowed access earlier. A vague memory of Skaadi’s geography prompts Jani to go back to the map room.

In the map room, Jani realizes that Skaadi is full of undiscovered artéfacts. She also finds an ancient book called Société des Suminaires, in which she notices a phrase she has seen in the hotel: “May your artéfact guide you toward your soul’s desire” (162). The building that now functions as the hotel used to be a secret society of suminaires. The ancient book contains a damaged picture of a woman whose portrait is hanging in several places in the hotel. In the picture, the woman is holding the purple inkwell that is now Alastair’s artéfact.

As she leaves the map room, Jani runs into a group of guests and hides in a nearby suite. Bel, who was among the group, follows her inside. The room starts to shift and the furniture disappears until Bel and Jani are lying on the increasingly small bed. While waiting for the guests to leave the hallway, Bel tells Jani about a signet ring, one of the artéfacts Alastair has him looking for. Jani had seen a sketch of it in the map room.

Béatrice, who has become a friend to Jani, takes Jani outside the hotel to a market under the guise of needing an escort. Béatrice leaves Jani with Bel, who takes her to a café. Margot, the café owner, is Béatrice’s sister, but she and Béatrice do not remember each other. A painting hanging in the café depicts Margot with her arm around some empty space, as if she was painted holding someone. Bel explains that people who work at the hotel disappear from people’s minds, pictures, and lives altogether, as if they had never existed. As they leave, Bel and Jani are attacked by three men who try to steal an artéfact Bel has just recovered. Bel is injured, and Alastair’s bodyguards run after the attackers.

With Béatrice’s help, Jani sneaks Bel back to his room. When he loses consciousness, she decides to steal some of the healing salve that he used on her when she first entered the hotel and began aging. There is a bottle behind the bar, but she finds Hellas, the Botaniste, working there. When he refuses to give her the bottle, Jani sets the wild library bird free in the salon to distract him and the guests. She retrieves the bottle, but Alastair shows up to sort out the panic. While talking to Des Rêves, he reveals that someone named Frigga takes care of the birds.

The next morning, Jani wakes up in Bel’s room, the suminaire fully healed and conscious. She tells him about her encounter with Hellas, and Bel confesses that he and the Botaniste used to be in a relationship. It did not end well. Bel tells Jani Hellas’s resentment toward him is justified.

Jani goes in search of Frigga and learns that she is Hellas’s sister. She bargains for Frigga to let her inside the aviary in exchange for delivering letters to a man named Issig.

Issig is a suminaire whose mind broke after Alastair erased his memories one too many times. As a result, he cannot control his ice magic anymore, so he is kept locked up in a freezer, making ice for the kitchens. He does not remember Frigga and attacks Jani when she delivers him the letters. Frigga later takes Jani to the aviary, where she notices that some of the birds have a glass eye.

The birds are suminaires who were punished by Yrsa and are kept in captivity. Although horrified by their fate, Jani is delighted to find Zosa among them.

When guests enter the unlocked aviary after Jani and Frigga, Alastair shows up to reprimand Frigga. Hellas pleads for his sister’s safety, and Jani lies to Alastair to protect Frigga. After Bel intervenes, Alastair decides to punish Jani by voiding her contract and sending her back home. Jani is hurt by Bel’s refusal to let her stay at the hotel with her sister. As she is being dragged through the lobby, she breaks one of the enchanted oranges and Alastair changes his mind, ordering her to stay.