“Pauvre petit!” He picked up Blaise’s cat, which scrambled onto his shoulders and lay there like an ermine collar, purring. “If only he could tell us what happened.”
“It would help,” Lazare said wryly. “But without him—now what? What does the book look like?”
“It’s blue.” On the floor alone were scattered so many volumes the search felt suddenly hopeless. Why hadn’t she at least asked Blaise where it was? But then she remembered she had. She had asked him the second time he came to the Hôtel Séguin, and in reply Blaise had tapped his temple. “I remember now—he said it was in a safe place. I took him to mean it was in his head, but I hope I was wrong.”
“It could be anywhere. Fan out,” Foudriard said. Lighting their lanterns from his, they spread out in the small shop. “But stay together. Be aware of what the rest of us are doing at all times.”
Camille went quickly to the shelves behind the counter. The magical atlas Blaise had shown her when she was there lay on the floor, its pages crumpled. She searched through all the books, piling the volumes against the wall. But neither did she find the book with the blue binding or—for she still hoped it might be there, somehow—The Silver Leaf.
The others had drifted into the far corners of the shop, sifting through heaps of books, making stacks to get through to the next pile, when Camille thought she heard a noise from the apartment. She held her breath and listened, hard. Could it be the book, calling to her? The way the house told her things?
It did not seem impossible.
Quietly she moved to the bookcase door. It was not entirely closed. Through the crack came a faint shuffling sound. Glancing at the others, she saw that they were absorbed in their searches. She’d be gone only a minute—it wasn’t worth disturbing them. Opening the door, she slipped into the little hall that joined the two rooms.
Faint light shown in a line beneath the door.
But they had not left a lantern there.
There it was again: a shuffling, dragging sound. Suddenly she realized they hadn’t locked the door. Someone had followed after.
Fear set her pulse to hammering. A Comité guard was in Blaise’s apartment. She took a step backward, felt her skirts push against the closed door behind her. What should she do? For what felt like hours, she waited, hardly breathing. Then the presence in the apartment—whatever it was—stopped moving. It was listening.
She thought about running.
They would be forced to flee through the front door and risk being caught by the watchers. Even if they managed to escape, they would be hunted with more ferocity than they were now. And worse, their only chance to have the help of the blur would be gone forever.
To have any kind of chance, they needed the book.
Determined, Camille squared her shoulders. She was not powerless against whatever crept about in Blaise’s apartment. Not yet.
Reaching into her pocket, her fingertips brushed past the wrapped package Lazare had given her to the crystal vial of tears. So small, so powerful. Prying loose the tiny cork, she held it under her nose. The scent of the trapped memories uncoiled: cold rain. Ink. Sadness and loss, the acrid smoke of burning leaves. If she thought too much about what was coming, she would not be able to do it.
Now.
48
She opened the door.
In the center of Blaise’s apartment stood Odette. In her hand was a torch, its flame so hot and high it nearly licked the ceiling. About her waist hung her pistols, her black clothes absorbing the light so that under her plumed hat her face was ghoulish white, carved by shadows. Her gray eyes, so like Camille’s own and yet not, were unreadable as stones.
“What a surprise to find you here,” she said. “My apologies for the heat.”
“If you put out your flambeau,” Camille said carefully, “it would cool things down.”
“I need some light to read by.” Odette dragged her hand along the bookcase, tumbling a row of books onto the floor.
Stall her. Where could Blaise have put it? Think! Where was the safe place he’d mentioned to her? “Looking for anything in particular?”
“A magical book. Though that doesn’t narrow it down very much, does it?”
“Why do you need it?” In the corner stood a bureau, its drawers yanked out, Blaise’s clothes on the floor. “I could help you if you told me the title.” Was it possible Odette was looking for the same book that they were?
“I don’t need your help.” Odette stepped closer. “I never have.”
The light from the flambeau was too strong, and Camille had to shield her eyes or be blinded. She found herself staring at Blaise’s bed. Plain and white. But no longer neatly made. The pillow had been pushed to one side. Perhaps she’d accidentally brushed it with her skirts, or Odette had. Now that it had shifted, the corner of a blue book lay revealed.
It is somewhere safe.
He had tapped his temple. Not committed to memory, as she’d thought, but even simpler than that: the book was safe under his head—under his pillow. But to get to it and then away to warn the others, she’d have to pass Odette twice. And she did not think she could. Not without help.
Bracing herself, she tipped the blur into her mouth.
One heavy drop. Then two, ice-cold on her tongue. Numbness crept along her cheeks, her throat, like frost under her skin. As the color bled from the walls, she said to Odette, “Adieu.”
“Where are you going?” Odette waved her torch high as she searched the room. “Come back!”
Camille pressed flat against the wall as Odette ran past.
She had to hurry. Even as she rushed toward Blaise’s bed, it faded from view, barely visible as the blur’s sorrow-dream engulfed her. She found herself in an unfamiliar room, a dusk-filled library she did not remember. Was it a place Papa had once taken her? The bookshelves weren’t white, as in Blaise’s apartment, but black and barred with metal grates. Both here, at Les Mots Volants, and there, books lay scattered. Their pages flapped like wings as a door opened.
A silhouette stood in the doorway. “These books are forbidden!”
She crouched. Tried to disappear.
The figure stalked closer. A woman, her face creased with anger. In her hand, a riding crop. “What have you done?” she raged. “You are inviting the magic back in, when we have done so much to cut it out!” She grabbed Camille’s arm, hauled her away. “We will get rid of the books, the magic lurking inside you, all of it!” A green book tumbled out of her hand—here, she knew it for The Silver Leaf, and her heart convulsed—and was lost.
Sorrow rose up insider her, an enormous, crushing wave. My books! she wept. Love and belonging and refuge torn away. Pain as her shoulder slammed into the doorway. Pain for what she knew was coming.
But this was not her memory.
She had taken Blaise’s tears.
With that moment of clarity and understanding, the veil thinned, and she could dimly see through to the bed, and the book under the pillow. Only faintly now did she hear Blaise’s sweet child’s voice pleading, Do what you want to me but spare my books, please aunt, please spare them please. The magic was receding, and she had to move fast. Carefully, willing herself not to make the tiniest sound, she crept toward the bed. She was almost there when Odette returned.
“Come out, Camille!” The room was suddenly brighter as Odette held up her blazing torch. Camille could almost feel the books shrink away from its hungry flame. “I will find you, demon!”
Not if I can help it. One more step.
There, in the blur, Blaise screamed as his aunt tore pages from the books and shoved them into an open fire. “Be glad,” she hissed, “I do not force you to eat them.” His fury was an explosion. Here, in his apartment, her knees buckled from the pain of it. It was too much, the sorrow and the crushing pain—
“I see you.”
Sagging against the bedpost, Camille watched as Odette came into terrible focus. In her hand she held a small blue book. Its cover was stamped wit
h a crescent moon in silver. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
Camille’s heart lurched as she noticed the pillow had been thrown aside, the book gone. “What’s it called?”
As if she had all the time in the world, Odette gazed down at the book’s spine. “On the Management of Sorrow.”
In her hands Odette held the key to their freedom. Fatigue dragged at Camille as the blur ebbed. She had to act now or she would not make it. Far away, a bell was ringing. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Odette’s sneer was cruel. Calculating. “Then it will not mean anything to you if I use it for kindling? To light another torch? To set the world on fire?”
Everything in Camille screamed no. What choice should she make? Get the torch and save the whole shop, but risk Odette fleeing with the book? Or take the book and risk Odette burning them all?
Both. She would take the flambeau. Then the book.
As Camille lunged toward her, Odette hurled the torch into the air. Instinctively, Camille ducked as it hissed over her head and crashed into the books piled on the floor.
With a sound like a gasp, they caught fire. Flames snarled, and rose.
Like the books she’d seen on the barges, these too burned bright, and for a brief moment they dazzled like fireworks as a world’s worth of knowledge vanished.
“No!” she cried out. “You cannot do this!”
“I already have.” Odette flung open the door. The night air was fuel to the flames. As the fire roared, a monster unleashed, Odette laughed.
Camille backed up until she sensed the short hall behind her. Then she spun around and stumbled down it. The whole shop was burning now. Shoving the bookcase door open, she crashed into the bookstore.
“Run!” she cried.
The room was black with smoke and red with Comité guards’ cloaks. The bell she’d heard had been Roland’s warning; Foudriard and Chandon were nowhere to be seen. By the smashed-in front door, half-hidden by a bookcase, stood Lazare.
Waiting for her.
“Now!” he shouted. Jamming his shoulder against a bookcase, he pushed it over, trapping the men in the back of the shop. Screams of burning books echoed in her head. She ran toward him. Smoke burned her eyes; she could hardly see where she was going. Her foot caught on an open book and she stumbled. Before Lazare could pull her to safety, one of the guards grabbed her arm.
In the doorway, Lazare drew his sword. A bright line, hard and unwavering. Soot covered his face like a mask, and the mouth beneath it was grim. “Stand away from her!”
Over Lazare’s shoulder, a shadow separated itself from the dark.
“Behind you!” she shouted.
Through the smoke she heard Lazare’s muffled groan. Heavy hands yanked her away. “Camille Durbonne, in the name of King Louis XVI, we arrest you on the charge of being a magician and a traitor to France!”
Camille kicked at them, tried to twist away. “I have done nothing wrong!”
A bigger guard dragged her forward. She clutched helplessly at the wall, then the doorjamb, and finally at door itself. But her fingers slid and would not hold.
“Stop it!” she cried, beating at his shoulder. “I have done nothing wrong! You have no right—”
“Taisez-vous, magician,” the guard said, and slammed his elbow into her head.
A thousand stars exploded. And then there was nothing more.
49
“Wake up!” cried a surly voice. “You have a visitor!”
Bleak light filtered through a shuttered window. Heavy stone echoed with footsteps, the metallic clang of a pail. The throbbing pain in her head made it hard to think. She touched her jaw, tentatively. It was tender from her chin to her ear. Someone had hit her. Hard. That she remembered. The door to the room had a barred window in it, and through it she saw two figures, hurrying down a long, dim hall.
Sophie? Rosier? Was she in a hospital?
She pushed up onto her elbows and coughed. Beneath her was a narrow lumpy mattress covered in rough blue-striped ticking. In a corner stood a small wooden table and a straight-backed chair. One of her shoes lay on the other side of the room. Her stockings, she saw, were torn, the skirts of her dress scorched. She reeked of fire, as if she’d spent the night sleeping in the cinders. Slowly the evening came back to her. Bellefleur. The plan to get the blue book. The trap that had been laid for them. The shop, and everything in it, destroyed.
Beside her was a tin cup. Her hands shaking, she filled it from a clay vessel and drank. Were the others with her? Had they all fled? Lazare—he had tried to prevent them taking her. But what had happened to him?
The door creaked open and a man in a gray uniform stuck his head in. “Vicomtesse de Séguin?”
“Where am I?”
The man snorted. “La Petite Force.”
Prison.
Numbly, she remembered when her family had lived on the rue de Bretagne, and then on the rue Charlot, the sprawling prison had never been far away. She’d never liked to pass along the streets where its entrances lay. Superstitious, Papa had called her, laughing off her fear. But it had never gone away. Now she was inside. A prisoner, charged with treason.
But how did they know to charge her with working magic? What proof could they have? “I’ve been wrongfully imprisoned!”
The guard made a scolding sound, as if everyone in the prison claimed the same thing and he was tired of it. “Save it for trial. A visitor is here to see you. I’ll show her in?”
She tried to peer past the guard. “My sister?”
“Odette Leblanc.”
It could not be. Though she could see that it made a kind of terrible sense. After all, Odette would have seen her arrested. But why come and gloat?
Odette stepped neatly around the guard and into Camille’s cell. She wore her usual black clothes, pressed and clean, not at all reeking of smoke from the fire. “Leave us, please,” she said to the guard. With a knowing smirk at Camille, the guard sauntered away, swinging his ring of keys.
“How dare you come here,” Camille hissed. “Were you the one who called the Comité to the bookshop? What has happened to my friends?”
Odette crossed her arms. “So many questions! You will have your answers soon enough.”
Her gloating smirk made Camille regret having asked her. It was as if she’d given her an unintended gift. “Tell me what you want or go.”
“What I want?” Tapping her fingers against the stone wall, she pretended to think. “I want for all you magicians to die.”
Camille stared. How had she discovered this? How long had she known?
“You think I don’t know anything about magic?” Odette’s voice was a blade. “Let me tell you—I do. And I want you to suffer as magicians have made the people of France suffer. But instead of being strung up from a tree, I want you to get your justice in public, so there can be no question about it.”
“Justice?” The word burned on her tongue. “As if anything the Comité or the king has done has been just.”
“Nothing can equal the pain your kind has inflicted on the people of France,” Odette sneered. “You are bloodsuckers, sinners, and evildoers. You take what isn’t yours and you bend it to your evil ways.”
“You’ve been reading too many anti-magician pamphlets,” Camille said levelly. “What have I ever taken of yours?”
“You don’t even know?” she mocked. “It meant nothing to you, I suppose. Everything is easy for a magician. You simply happened to meet the girls, write a pamphlet using magic—and then!” She snapped her fingers. “Voilà, you were Jeanne d’Arc of the Revolution! Going to parties, draped in the tricolor!”
Dread churned in her gut. How did Odette know?
She stabbed her finger at Camille. “That should have been me. I worked for it.”
This was a delusion. “Why couldn’t we have worked together?” Camille asked. “The girls love you—”
Her gray eyes narrowed. “Not anymore. Did you seduce them with your magic
and turn them against me?”
“Never! I only wanted to help—”
“Help? You are pathetic.” Odette grabbed Camille’s wrist and twisted it. “They’ll remember who I am, once you are gone. While I struggled to pay for my pamphlets to be printed, I saw how many pamphlets you sold. I let myself believe you were better than I. Then I discovered it had nothing to do with what you said or what you wrote.” Odette’s voice burned with righteous anger. “You succeeded because you are a magician.”
“Let go of me,” she said, but Odette only hardened her grip.
How had she seen so deep into her heart? For wasn’t this what she’d once believed herself? That it was nothing but a spell she’d cast, that whatever she created would turn back to scraps of twisted metal—less than nothing.
No, she told herself. Not anymore. That was not what magic was.
Bending Camille’s wrist backward, Odette forced her against the wall. Her face was hard, and hungry for the pain she was inflicting. “How I love having you right in the palm of my hand. Some say Justice wears a blindfold, and only cares that the scales are even. I think Justice keeps her thumb on the scale.”
Sophie had suspected this was who Odette was, but Camille had believed she could do good by being kind to her. “What changed? When you saw my house and what I had?”
“That?” Odette scoffed. “The money you got by a convenient marriage? I knew you had money from the beginning. I only had to get into your house to see if you actually were a magician,” she spat. As if magician were poison on her tongue.
Camille tried again to wrench free, but only succeeded in pulling Odette toward her. Their faces were a hand’s width apart, so close she could count the freckles on Odette’s cheeks. See the gold and brown lines in the gray irises of her eyes. Feel Odette’s breath on her own mouth.
“But why?”
“So I could write about it, of course.” Angrily, she stepped back. She yanked at her sleeves, which had ridden up, exposing the black ink on her wrist. Camille had always thought it was ink from her pen, or her press. But it was a tattoo of a tiny bird.
Everything That Burns Page 28