“Magic, too,” Camille said.
Sophie seemed to see her then. Her hand went to her mouth. “Dieu, what has happened? You said Lazare left but—”
Camille bit her lip. “Rien, truly.”
“Nothing?”
Her throat constricted. “I promised not to tell anyone.”
“Anyone does not include your sister. Especially when you look like you might cry.”
Camille sank to the fabric-covered floor. It took too much strength to stay standing. “He has left the balloon corps and is—against the law, and really, against all reason—flying an émigré family to England.” As Sophie listened intently, Camille told her about the Cazalès’ plight and Lazare’s plan. “And do not dare tell me it’s romantic! He might be killed.”
Sophie restrained herself. “He’s a very good aeronaut. If anyone can do it, he can. But that’s not all, is it?”
“He wished for me to go with him.”
“To emigrate?”
“I won’t leave.” She blinked, hard. “He said he was taking them because I’d inspired him with my work with the Lost Girls. His father had got him the commission for the balloon corps, and he hadn’t wanted to tell me because I had such high standards, I would despise him for it!”
Sophie gasped, incredulous.
“It was utter madness. I didn’t want him to fly over the sea, in the cold, so I thought if I told him … please don’t be angry.”
Sophie cocked her head, considering. “I can’t promise I won’t be. But I will still love you.”
Gathering her courage, she explained to Sophie about the pamphlets, and the uncontrollable magic in them. Sophie’s eyes grew wide with shock, but to her credit, she did not criticize Camille for what she had done.
“If he knew,” Camille said, “I thought he’d realize how foolish he was being and stay here. If I wasn’t a saint, he needn’t be one, either.” She dropped her head into her hands. “It did not have that effect at all.”
“Oh, Camille.” Sophie squeezed her hand tight. “You gave away your secret and he did not care.”
Bitterly, she said, “Oh, he cared, but not in the way I’d hoped. He called me a pretender. He said he loves me but wishes I were not a magician. But what if I can’t purge it from myself, or even contain it? What if it is who I am? If he loves me, how can he ask me to be someone else?” She wiped at the tears running down her cheeks. “When he was leaving, we kissed, but Sophie! He pulled away and I felt so small. I have been making the same mistakes, over and over, like the girl in the tale who spins straw into gold, but it doesn’t help her at all. I should have told him earlier! I should have told you earlier.”
Sophie sifted through the piles of fabric for a scrap that would make a suitable handkerchief and gave it to Camille. Kindly, she asked, “Why is this magic so bad?”
She couldn’t believe Sophie was asking this question: Sophie, who hated magic. “Because it’s a lie, a trick. Pretending.” She heard Lazare’s voice saying the words, incredulous hurt closing him down. “Because magic almost killed me—and Maman. Because it’s against the revolution—”
“Is it? You sound like Papa.” Sophie found a half-sewn white organza rose and began to shape the fabric into petals. “To me it seems the opposite of that.”
“What do you mean?”
“You told the girls’ truth. How is that pretending? Working the glamoire and using a fake name at Versailles is pretending.” Her needle flashed as she sewed. “Remember when you’d turn the metal scraps into coins? When they lost their magic, they’d slowly start looking like what they really were underneath the magic. This is the opposite.” She took another stitch and petals bloomed in her hand. “Other people pretended the girls were not worth helping. They pretended the girls didn’t deserve the house they built with their own hands, because they were thieves or flower sellers or wore low-cut dresses or were somehow not deserving. But your pamphlets scraped that away, like the tarnish it was!” She set the fabric rose down. “Who can say if magic made your pamphlets compelling. Maybe yes, maybe no. Or perhaps it was just you.”
“You’re defending magic?” she said, incredulous.
Sophie shrugged. “Mostly I’m defending you. I am proud of you, you know. And I have become much fonder of magical things of late.”
Slowly, inside her, Camille felt a tide changing. It was true that Papa had raised her to think magic was wrong. She had only to think back to her memory of the fight over The Silver Leaf. But as she’d done with the pamphlets, she’d confused his beliefs for her own. And she’d done it because magic was hard and big and unpredictable. “But this magic—it’s like a terrible fever.”
“Like love?”
“Don’t tease, Sophie.” But perhaps it was like that. “I’m so angry at what he said, but at the same time, I cannot lose him.”
“You won’t. Both of you feel so much. Naturally you will have strong opinions and get confused.”
Camille smoothed the scrap of white silk. “I fear it may be more than a confusion this time.”
“Wherever there is love, there is a way forward.”
“You are a hopeless romantic.”
“An absolutely correct romantic,” Sophie countered.
“When did you become so wise?” Camille asked, wonder in her voice. “Why did I not come to you first?”
“That,” Sophie said, “I have no answer for.” She got to her feet and pulled Camille up with her. Around her ankles, white feathers drifted and banked.
“Please tell me you’re not going to stop the performances,” Camille said.
“Never. Rosier hasn’t given up hope, and neither have I. We will do something.” Thoughtfully, she tucked the organza rose she’d made into the collar of the princess’s gown. “Are you feeling a little better now?”
“I am, thank you.”
“Then you must tell me what is happening with Odette!” she exclaimed. “Adèle was here moments before you arrived, brimming with gossip but very few details.”
Camille worried at the edge of her fingernail. She’d always tried to keep worrisome things from Sophie, but she realized now that there was no need: Sophie understood. In a rush, Camille told her almost everything: about the magic blur they’d been searching for, the valise of tears and how she’d used the blur to spy on Odette, who had tried to rally the girls against her, and that Blaise had found the book the magicians needed. “She even spied on us! It was very satisfying to have Daumier throw her out.”
She left out that she still had no answers to her own magic—and that because Odette had been thrown out of the house didn’t mean she was gone.
Sophie clapped her hands. “But that’s fantastic! I hated the way she snuck about the house, peering at every object as if she were thinking of buying it. This is shaping up to be a fantastic day. Minus the part about Lazare, of course.”
“You’re even pleased about these magical things?”
“It’s true, I never used to be. But this means your friends will be safe. And so will you.” Her lips twitched. “Besides, there are other exciting things afoot.”
“Such as?”
A laugh bubbled merrily out of Sophie before she could clap her hand over her mouth.
“What is it? Won’t you tell me, even to cheer me up?”
“I am sworn to secrecy.”
“Come, have you changed your mind about d’Auvernay? Or is it something to do with Les Merveilleux?”
Sophie shook her head so that her earrings danced. “Hélas, I cannot say! I’m going to have to leave you now or you will have it out of me and then I shall be in terrible trouble.”
“But when?”
“Tonight,” she promised. “Let’s go out and celebrate the discovery of the magic book, Odette being gone, and even those gruesome vials, if you wish—and then I will tell you.”
* * *
In the last few days, it had grown unusually cold. Fronds of frost etched the windowpanes, and tonight, as the sun
sank and the shadows came on, the air tasted of snow. Camille was to meet Sophie in less than an hour at a little restaurant they liked on the Île de la Cité called Aux Deux Sœurs. It wasn’t one of the revolutionary cafés electric with conversation and arguments, but instead a quiet cozy place with good food and lanterns in the shape of stars.
In her dressing room, she searched for a warmer cloak. As she was rifling through a particularly deep drawer, her fingers brushed against a bundle wrapped in thin paper.
It was a worn cloak that had once belonged to her mother.
She raised it to her nose and inhaled. Even two years after her mother’s death, it still held her perfume. Faint, like a memory. What would it say, if it could? What would Maman tell her, now? A wind traveled like fingers along Camille’s cheek. In it, she imagined her mother’s voice, close and loving, but also always urging her forward: Mon trèsor, there are mysteries ahead of you. I know you are not one to take the easy way out.
Maman would want her to find The Silver Leaf. In it there would be answers to her questions about who she might be and what she needed to do with her magic.
Tucked into the frame of her mirror was Blaise’s card. Les Mots Volants was only a few streets away from the café where she was to meet Sophie. She flipped the card over to read the words that had appeared there days after he’d given it to her. Come any time.
She would ask him. Perhaps there was even something helpful in the new book he’d found? In the rush of today, she’d forgotten to ask. Carefully, she tucked the cloak away. From her wardrobe she took a midnight-blue pelisse, trimmed in beaver fur, and shrugged it on over her blue-and-gray striped dress. Then she left the house, taking the stairs two at a time.
Outside, the sky was gray, a few bright snowflakes twirling down.
Everything was changing. She could feel it.
WHAT
IS A
MAGICIAN?
ONE WHO PRETENDS
TO BE A FRIEND TO FRANCE
WHILE HE EXULTS IN
ILL-BEGOTTEN WEALTH
&
DRINKS THE
BLOOD OF CITIZENS
PATRIOTS!
A MAGICIAN IS A MASTER OF DISGUISES
AVERT YOUR OWN
DESTRUCTION
BE VIGILANT
ALERT THE COMITÉ
DEFEND FRANCE
BY WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY
37
Between two ancient cross-timbered buildings was squeezed a narrow shop. A row of elongated windows ran along the front, their casings painted white, books stacked against them. On top of one pile slept a white cat, its rounded, furry back pressed flat against the glass. The sign on the door hung crookedly: LES MOTS VOLANTS. Before she had a chance to open the door, it swung open of its own accord.
Inside there was hardly room to turn around. Bookshelves covered the walls from the floor to the high ceiling, which was painted to resemble a summer sky. Instead of birds soaring among the clouds, there were books, their pages like wings. Books were stuffed between the arms of several tattered armchairs and teetered in rows along the seat of a sofa. The counter at which Blaise presumably sat was covered with a blizzard of papers. As she watched, one sheet loosened from the others and floated to the floor. Clocks—hidden behind books—ticked cheerfully into the silence. Hanging in the air like incense was the faint char of magic.
On a ledger sat a small white plate, a fork, a half-eaten apple pastry. She stood on her toes to see over the maze of books. “Blaise?”
For a moment, there was no sound but the ticking of the clocks—followed by a shuddering thump, as of books falling to the floor. “J’arrive!” he called.
Slowly, a shelf of books separated from the wall, creaking open like a door. As Blaise came out, dressed in white, Camille glimpsed the room he’d come from: pale walls, a cream-colored carpet on the floor, white roses in a vase. And many more shelves filled with books, their spines illegible. Bespelled.
“I worried something had happened to you,” she said. “Pinned down by a stack of books?”
“It isn’t out of the question,” he said seriously. “But what brings you here? Something that couldn’t wait until our meeting?”
“That makes it sound so dire.” Though it did feel that way. Blaise set down the books he’d been carrying. A handkerchief was wrapped around his hand, its white fabric was splotched red with blood. “You’re hurt!”
“It’s nothing. I cut myself on purpose.” He regarded her calmly. “I thought I would do a little reading.”
“But you didn’t use blood to read books at the Hôtel Séguin—”
“Some books require it.” He cleared a space on a table and set down one of the larger volumes he’d been carrying. “Would you like to see?”
The book was covered in a deep burgundy leather, almost black, and thin for its size. Already she could feel Blaise’s intention gathering over it, like clouds before a storm. The air sharpening. “You need the blood because of the warding?” she asked.
“Exactly.” He opened it and flipped forward a few pages. There was a single image of a hand. It was life-size and decorated with running lines and the kinds of small rectangles, stars, and triangles fortune tellers pointed to, picked out in gold paint. “Here, I’ll show you.” He unwound the handkerchief: a thin red line ran across his palm. He stretched his fingers and it began to bleed again. As the blood welled up, he placed his palm within the thick black outline of the hand and pressed.
The space around them tightened. The pages in the book began to flutter.
“Now we can read it,” he said, serenely. “Not much to it. Magie bibelot.” He fished a clean handkerchief from his pocket and tied it around his hand. As he paged through it, maps bloomed on the pages. A city on the water, run through with canals. Certain buildings picked out in gold. An island she recognized as the kingdom of Sicily, pricked with gold circles. A map of Paris, dotted with gold circles.
“What are the dots?”
“Safe houses. For magicians.”
He flipped forward, the pages crackling and loosening as he did so. “Voilà—here’s yours.”
The picture showed a large castle, almost like a fortress, nothing like the elegant mansion it appeared to be from the outside. Instead there were barred windows, the narrow loopholes for arrows, a massive portcullis. It felt familiar, though it wasn’t. Suddenly she understood. “The outside of the house is glamoired.”
“It changes with the times, I imagine. Magicians have always built these kinds of protective houses, for we are often misunderstood.” The pages of the book curled. “Bien sûr, there are always bad magicians. But this is because they are bad people, not necessarily because they are magicians.”
“It’s what I want to believe.”
“Still,” Blaise continued, “the fear of magicians has always outweighed the threat some of us might pose. It is simpler to think in black-and-white, instead of gray. Which is why books like this, which would be so valuable to the Comité and others like them, have to be warded with blood. But that is not why you came here, is it?”
Why was it so hard to speak about this thing? To admit that there was something about herself she didn’t understand? Something she might not want—or worse, something she might?
“You know so much about books, and magic—I thought you might know.” She took a breath and shakily exhaled. “When you came to the house, I told you about the magic that comes on me like a fever. You’re right that I’m somehow working it, by wishing—or wanting. But, Blaise, it frightens me. I need it to print anything convincing, but it’s too powerful. I can feel it in me all the time now. I fear … I’ll be swept away by it. That it might reveal me somehow to the Comité. That it will destroy me.”
Blaise waited as if he had all the time in the world.
“I know a memory can be kept in tears. Preserved, like a fly in amber. Couldn’t I keep the sorrow that fuels this fever inside a vial, too? As a way to keep it separate from me.
” Even as she said it, though, it felt wrong.
His pale eyelashes fluttered. “There’s something, but it may not be what you wish to hear.”
“Tell me, whatever it is. I’ve spent my whole life knowing too little about magic.”
“Sorrow,” he said, “once caught in tears, can be kept in a bottle. Though it may seem that the sorrowful memory is gone, my theory is that what Saint-Clair wrote in his journal isn’t exactly right.”
Disappointing, but not a surprise. She had felt it herself when she’d taken the blur. Like the dried pea in the fairy tale, hidden under a thousand mattresses, the sorrow remained. “It’s still inside.”
He nodded, and ran his thumb down the edge of the pages until he found one that was folded and pressed it smooth. “You simply don’t feel it as much.”
“But we are in danger! Comité is arresting magicians!” She twisted the broad ribbon of her cloak.
“Camille,” he said kindly, “everything I have read says magic cannot be truly separated from the magician. You cannot cut it out like a tumor or bleed it out, for magic is not in the blood. But you can decide what to do with it.”
Was that what she was trying to do—cut it out? Was that what Lazare had wanted from her? The thought filled her with a kind of horror. “But now more than ever, magic feels like doom hanging over me.”
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