Everything That Burns

by Gita Trelease

  * * *

  As she burst into the entry, Camille surprised Adèle, who was changing the flowers in a vase. “Madame! Are you hurt?”

  “Is there someone here?”

  “Yes—”

  Too late. Camille steadied herself against the wall, trying to shake away the wisps of memory that clung to her and the magic-weariness that came with it. “When did she arrive? Is she upstairs?” The vials. “She mustn’t get into Séguin’s room—”

  Her eyebrows at her hairline, Adèle said, “Who do you mean?”

  “Odette.”

  “Oh! She has not returned.”

  Camille exhaled shakily. “Grâce à Dieu! Lock the door on her if necessary. Get Daumier to help you if you need it.”

  “Of course.” Adèle seemed to relish the thought of it. “And your other visitors?”

  She blinked. “Who are they?”

  “The Marquis de Chandon and Monsieur Delouvet. They wished to wait in a room without windows, so I showed them to the butler’s pantry. It is hardly the place for such magicians, but I did not know what else to do.”

  They were afraid. “You did well, Adèle.”

  “You know you can count on us, madame. The old master kept us here by force. But you do it with your kindness.”

  Adèle didn’t have to say it, and Camille was grateful. “Thank you.”

  “Now, madame, your dress—”

  But Camille was already striding toward the butler’s pantry. It was more like a short corridor than ran between the kitchens and the dining room than an actual room. When she reached the door, she said low, “It’s me, Camille.”

  The key clicked in the lock, and the door inched open.

  Chandon and Blaise were squeezed together in the narrow space. On the long counter that ran the length of the room, a candle guttered. It cast wavering shadows, its light barely reaching to the highest shelves and cabinets where glasses and platters were stored. At the very back of the room was the pantry’s second door, also locked, which led to the dining room. Chandon had found a bottle of wine—or perhaps he’d convinced Adèle to give him one—and he and Blaise each had a glass in hand.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” Chandon said brightly. “Your housemaid had no idea when you’d return. But, I will say, your staff are proper magician’s staff, accustomed to strange whims! She knew exactly where to bring us.” The boys pressed against the cabinets to make room for her.

  “What’s happened?” she asked urgently.

  “What’s happened to you?” Chandon sniffed. “You smell like the Seine.”

  She noticed that Blaise in his spotless cream-colored clothes had taken a good step backward. “I was spying on my houseguest. And then, because I didn’t know how to do it without being seen, I took some of the blur.”

  Blaise’s calm evaporated. “What blur?”

  “I found it here, in the house, an hour ago! Vials of blur Séguin had made. It was as if the house … led me to them. You were right, Blaise—I think it’s been trying to warn me for a long time.” She was giddy with the promise of it. “It’s upstairs, shall we go?”

  Both of them stared at her wide-eyed. Chandon threw back a gulp of wine. “How much is there?”

  “I didn’t stop to count. Perhaps five or six?”

  “And you simply tried one?”

  Sharp blue drops on her tongue. The wrenching pain of her memory. “It did have my name on it.” Gently, she added, “There’s one with your tears, too.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Chandon said. “Though, I must say, this might be the first good thing ever to come of that brute Séguin!”

  “Tell us,” Blaise asked seriously, “what was it like?”

  It still lingered, cold and watery at the edges of her mind. “I fell into the past. I was very small. A moment I hadn’t remembered. It was just as the Marquis de Saint-Clair said in his journal: the blur had contained and preserved it, almost as if it had been extracted from my mind.” And she explained how it’d felt, the power of the sorrowful memories flooding into her mind as if a lock in a dam had been opened. How she’d struggled to be both in this world and in that one.

  “Just as I do with the magic I feel when I print, I felt the blur would consume me. It really did make me disappear. Apart from seeing my mother in the memory, it was awful. I hope to never have to use it again.”

  Both magicians looked grim. “But it might be one of the only ways to protect ourselves,” Blaise said. “That is, when we can make our own.”

  Now it was Camille’s turn to stare. “What?”

  A faint, gratified smile. “I found a book,” Blaise said.

  Far away, in the foyer, a door slammed shut. Around them, the house creaked, and in the pantry cupboards, the wineglasses clinked together. Odette. She had to trust Adèle and Daumier would take care of her.

  “Tell me!” she urged. “Where is it?”

  He tapped his temple. “Somewhere safe.”

  “You’ve committed it to memory?”

  “Not yet,” Blaise said. “It’s only a small blue book written by an obscure magician, but he explains the process of a magic he calls, in a very offhand way, ‘tempus fugit.’ He even mentions something to relieve the magie-sickness that comes afterward, though he mentions nothing about the effect lingering, as you experienced.”

  “Where’s the Comte de Roland?”

  “Tours. I’ve already sent word. As soon as he arrives, we can use tempus fugit to transform our tears.”

  “We must make as much as we can,” Camille said. “It lasts such a short time, we’ll need several doses for each of us.”

  Chandon gave a fretful sigh. “I fear it will be a very dreary evening.”

  “Because we will have to make ourselves sad,” Camille said, “to collect our own tears.”

  Did a shadow pass over Blaise’s white face? “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” he said. “But in essence, yes. The tears Camille found should function as our reserve. Hers are fairly new—but what if the others have become too old? Off, like bad wine? Or what if the memories are too terrible to endure? That might have been the case with the ones Roland took. Even if our memories are difficult, at least they’re our own.”

  But even that didn’t make them easy to relive. The difference was, she thought, that what she relived might help her understand what she hadn’t before. Maman’s love and her belief in Camille’s strength.

  “I’ll bring the vials to the meeting and we can divide them among us,” Camille decided. “You’ll send a flare when you’ve determined on the time?”

  “As soon as Roland returns,” Chandon said. “Foudriard warns of borders tightening. The city is papered with pamphlets and advertisements calling for our deaths, offering rewards for any information at all about magicians. The Comité’s already been to the Hôtel Séguin and I’ve seen them outside Bellefleur, too. We must be careful. Whatever warding magic protects our houses cannot last forever.”

  “Chandon is right,” Blaise said. “There have also been strange goings-on at Les Mots Volants. Suspicious customers, wandering in and never speaking to me. It’s hard to find a warded book if you don’t know what you’re looking for. So what are they looking for? I fear we are running out of time.”

  “We shall not delay, mon ami.” Chandon set his wineglass down and embraced them both. “Damn their persecution! We will be free. All that time I spent gambling and using my magic on card tricks, I never thought much of my life. But now there’s a chance to do something good, I fear I might lose it.”

  “You did do something at Versailles,” Camille reminded him. “You protected Foudriard.”

  “Ah!” Chandon brightened. “I’d forgotten I nearly gave my life for him.”

  “True love,” Blaise said, a sad smile on his lips. “And now I think we should go our separate ways.”

  His caution unsettled her. Blaise didn’t exaggerate. “How did you come in?”

  “By the kitchen, as before.”<
br />
  “One of you can go out through the kitchen, the other down the passageway to the right, all the way to the end. There’s an odd servants’ hall that opens onto the stableyard. The groom will let you out the back gate.”

  The plan that they’d worked toward for so long was becoming real. They would make the blur, and they, as well as all the magicians of France—once the magic was written up and shared—would be able to hide themselves if they needed to. No journey would be completely free of peril, but being able to evade the Comité would make it less so.

  “À bientôt, then,” Blaise said. “Be on your guard, both of you.”

  Slowly, Chandon opened the door and peered out into the passageway. “All clear. I’ll go out by the stables.” He blew her a kiss and was gone with a clatter of heels on stone. Blaise headed toward the kitchen, floating along like a pale strand of moonlight in the gloom.

  Above her head were rows and rows of ghostly vessels. Glass from Venice, thin as mist: crystal decanters glittering with shards of diamonds and dozens of ballooning wineglasses, etched with the Séguin family seal. She wondered if she’d ever be able to drink from them all.

  Suddenly they tinkled, as if someone were walking nearby.

  She tiptoed to the other end of the pantry. Beyond the door, in the printing room, she heard the quiet hush of a leather sole on a parquet floor. The faint crinkle of skirts held close to stop them from rustling.

  “Sophie?” she called. “Are you eavesdropping? I have something to tell you!”

  And then she flung open the door.

  35

  “Surprise!” Odette smiled broadly at Camille.

  She could only stare. How had Odette slipped past Adèle?

  “Quelle coincidence!” Camille said, finally. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought I was living here,” Odette said, a tinge of hurt coloring her voice. “Or have you forgotten about me so quickly?”

  Disquiet threaded through her. Even though she’d heard Odette disparaging her at Flotsam House, now that she was here, standing in front of her? Odette was someone else entirely. Someone to be wary of.

  “Not at all!” Camille exclaimed. “I meant only to ask why you were standing here, outside the door. I could have hurt you as I came out.”

  “I was trying to find a servant to make me some tea.”

  “You can always ring for one of the housemaids.” Odette knew this; she’d not been shy in setting the servants running to fulfill her wishes. It was clearly an excuse.

  “But I didn’t see anyone, so I thought I’d look for you in the printing room. Where you often are.” Her eyes gleamed like a cat’s in the night. “Instead, I found you in the pantry.”

  A warning bell clanged in her mind. “You were listening.”

  “All I heard was mumbling voices. The doors in this house are rather thick. Sorry to have troubled you—I’ll fetch the tea myself.” Odette spun on her heel and headed toward the door.

  In two steps Camille had her by the arm. “You didn’t hear what we said?”

  Odette shrugged her off. “I’m your friend, remember? Not a spy.” Even if Odette had heard nothing, there was something about the way her face sharpened when she said the word spy that made Camille wonder if Odette had somehow seen her using the blur at Flotsam House. But how? It made no sense, unless the magic was much quicker to fade than she’d thought.

  The debilitating haziness of the blur made it difficult to remember. She struggled to recall what Odette had said about finding out who Camille was. Perhaps that was why she had crept into the printing room—to see what pamphlets Camille was printing? Something antirevolutionary to use against her? She’d wanted Claudine to come with her to the Hôtel Séguin, to pick the locks. To break in. Find the secret rooms and the evidence. But evidence of what?

  Once, when she and Sophie and Alain had had nothing, Camille had gone to a distant neighborhood to buy meat with her last turned coins. At home, she’d unwrapped the piece of mutton, and, as her stomach churned with anticipation for the meal, discovered the meat writhed with worms. It had looked good from the outside.

  “Get out,” she spat.

  Odette blinked, the picture of innocence. “To the kitchen?”

  “I said, get out of my house.” Behind Odette, the edge of the carpet began to curl, rolling itself closer and closer to where she stood. Overhead the pamphlets muttered on their lines. The temperature in the house was rising.

  Odette clenched her hand around the doorjamb. “Because I happened to come in here? I thought you cared about us girls.”

  “I do. And I’m certain the girls will take you in for a few nights, now that you’re back on your feet.” Quiet, she thought at the house. Settle. The carpet uncurled but the wind remained, yawning through the rooms. It snagged at the ends of Odette’s hair and in her cloak’s tasseled trim like a warning.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t wish to leave yet.”

  Odette had been against Camille writing the pamphlets from the beginning. She’d never fully embraced what the pamphlets had brought the girls. She’d cared nothing for the subscriptions that kept the girls in money every week. Then there had been her strange comments about the effigies she had seen at Versailles, at the march. And worst, what she’d said to the girls and her attempt to bring Claudine to the house to pick its secrets.

  But why?

  It reminded her of how Chandon had shuffled playing cards through the dazzling nights in the gaming rooms at Versailles, his hands setting the pips to spinning, the cards flashing like falling snow. It was misdirection, a distraction so no one would look at what he was really doing.

  “Daumier!” Camille called. The house sent her voice out as an echo through its hallways and rooms.

  Odette frowned as sturdy footsteps came closer. When the footman came into view, Odette crossed her arms, bracing. “I demand you leave me alone.”

  “I only take orders from the mistress of the house.”

  Just as Adèle had said, staunch and loyal. “Daumier, would you please escort Mademoiselle Leblanc while she packs her things. She has decided to leave.”

  “How dare you?” Odette spat. “Everything you did for the girls—for us—was a lie! You only pretended to care!”

  “You know that’s not true,” she said coldly. “But if it makes you feel better, by all means, believe it.”

  Odette took a step closer. The floorboard creaked menacingly beneath her feet. “You will regret making us enemies.”

  “You’ve done that all on your own. Adieu, Odette.”

  Daumier grasped her arm under the elbow. “I’ll show you the way, mademoiselle.”

  “Let go of me! I can walk myself. I have no wish to stay here any longer.”

  But Daumier held firm, as if he were taking her out onto a ballroom floor for a minuet, and led her away.

  Once they were gone, Camille rested her forehead against the glass cabinet. It was cool, and soothing, and slowed her pounding heart. It had been awful, but it was over. The minutes ticked away as she waited for Odette to leave. Far away, the front door shut, solid and reassuring. The house creaked and sighed, as if it too were relieved, tucking itself to sleep the way Fantôme the cat did.

  She should have felt safe. But as she left the butler’s pantry, she couldn’t shake the feeling that that was not the last she’d see of Odette. That on the great pile of wood a new piece of kindling had been lit and was beginning to smoke.

  36

  “Sophie?”

  After Odette had been escorted out, Camille wandered the house, searching for her sister. As each room turned out to be empty—the red salon, the kitchen, Sophie’s bedroom and sitting room—she considered the day’s events. The bright hope of the valise of tears, with its tiny vials of magic, the book Blaise had finally found, and their plan to make enough blur to use if an escape became necessary. Against all of that weighed Odette’s betrayal.

  But again and again, she came back to the fight
with Lazare. It felt as if they’d stripped away the grease paint smiles they’d worn for a performance and now, with them gone, neither of them recognized the other. Had their paths taken them so far apart that they couldn’t be brought together again? The thought of it was a stone inside her. I will not cry, she told herself. If that was who Lazare was—someone who could never accept magic—there was no future for them. No final act, no encore.

  Camille finally found Sophie kneeling by one of her mannequins, surrounded by heaps of white feathers and lengths of white organza. In the middle of one pile slept the black cat Fantôme. From pegs on the wall hung several puppet costumes—fox, bear, fawn, and others—mysterious and beautiful. The mannequin wore one of the princess’s white costumes, the plainer one she wore before wings transformed her into a bird. Around its chest was wrapped a bright tricolor sash, which Sophie was tying into a bow.

  “What’s happening with the costumes?” Camille asked.

  Sophie didn’t turn around, but continued to fuss with the knot. “I am fixing them.”

  “With revolutionary ribbons?”

  “Rosier didn’t tell you?” She sat back on her heels, studying the effect. “A patriot complained about our second performance at the Palais-Royal. He called it antirevolutionary. ‘There was a princess! Magic!’ Now we must change it so that it’s realistic. In line with revolutionary values.”

  Camille hated the weariness in her sister’s voice. “How can they care so much about a puppet show?”

  Sophie got to her feet and fluffed the ribbon. “We had an enormous audience. Rosier had advertised and has sold tickets already for the next one. But apparently puppets are dangerous.”

  “Need you go this far with the trims?”

  “I should, but I won’t!” She yanked the tricolor ribbon off and crushed it in her fist. “Revolution, revolution! I am well tired of it, Camille. I could have designed costumes for the opera. Or the Comédie-Française. But it will never happen.”

  “Surely you still could—”

  Angry spots flamed in Sophie’s cheeks. “All over Paris possibilities are shrinking. Soon we’ll only be allowed to wear the tricolor and plain hats and dresses. Soon there will be no play or opera that doesn’t praise the government or the revolution. The characters will shout out patriotic slogans instead of declarations of love or funny jests. ‘Vive la Nation! Vive la Révolution!’ As if there were nothing else in the world than this.” She threw the crumpled ribbon on the floor in disgust. “There will be no more paintings but those horribly stiff ones by Jacques-Louis David. And the worst of it? If I may be selfish?” A stifled sob strained her voice. “It’s happening just as I’ve discovered what it is I love to do. Now fantasy and beauty and fairy tales are forbidden.”