The air was filled with the smell of the harbor fish markets, but Pigalle itself smelled like too many people stuffed into too small a place. Human filth, waste, and desperation. It made me think about what the King had said to me on the beach. It made me think he was right.
“This isn’t a safe part of town to be in, especially after dark,” Chris muttered, eyeing the brothel on our left, shrieks of laughter coming from its open doors.
“Why do you think I didn’t come alone?” I whispered back.
“How do you know this La Voisin woman isn’t a charlatan like all the others?”
“I felt the magic, and even if I hadn’t, I saw what the potion did to Julian,” I said. “One minute, he was devastated about my mother’s pending retirement, and the next, he couldn’t have cared less. Impassioned one moment, pure cold logic the next.”
“And Sabine meant for you to drink it?”
Angry heat prickled along my skin, but I shrugged it off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right,” Chris said, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably as a group of dockworkers staggered by. “So it’s possible we could be walking toward Anushka herself?”
“I doubt it.” I laughed humorlessly, although that had been my original hope before I’d thought it through a little more. “Do you really think the woman who cursed the trolls to an eternity of captivity lives in the slums of Pigalle?”
“Good point,” he said. “So what are we doing here then?”
I bit the inside of my cheeks and said nothing, because I wasn’t precisely certain what I expected to gain from this mysterious witch. “A way to find Anushka.” A way to kill her.
“I think this is it,” Chris said, stopping in front of a short wooden building that was squeezed between two run-down boarding houses. Lines of laundry hung between windows of the taller buildings, dripping dirty water on the witch’s abode. The front of the building had no windows, only a narrow, unmarked door.
“Charming,” Chris muttered. I swallowed hard, knocked once, and opened the door.
It took a long moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior, and even longer for them to take in the chaos filling the room in front of us. The walls, what I could see of them, were jammed with shelves full of herbs, stones, and small statues. There were bottles containing creatures suspended in fluid, some animals, some I didn’t care to identify. The tables and cupboards littering the center of room were piled nearly to the ceiling with papers, books, bolts of fabric, more herbs, crystals, and unlit lamps, turning the room into a maze that I didn’t look forward to navigating. A small dog ran around a stack of books, barked at us once, and disappeared again.
“Hello?” I called out. “Madame?”
No one responded, so I picked my way through the maze of clutter, Chris following behind. “Hello?” I called out again.
“I guess there isn’t anyone home,” Chris announced. “We should go—it smells like dog piss in here.”
“Souris likes to mark his territory,” a voice said from behind us. We both jumped. Chris collided with a stack of papers that proceeded to rain down around us as we took in the woman who seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.
“Are you the one they call La Voisin?” I asked.
“That depends,” the woman said, eyeing me up and down. “What do you want?”
What did I want? I stared at the woman in front of me, taking in her brilliant red dress and greying blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun, debating what to say. There was a haughtiness about her not suited to Pigalle—something about the way she held her head that suggested she hadn’t always lived in poverty.
She tilted her head and looked at Chris, who was gathering up the papers behind me. “Pregnant?”
Chris jerked upright, banging his head against an open drawer. “No,” I said quickly. “Nothing like that.”
“What then? Spit it out, girl.”
There was an intensity about the woman that made me nervous, and I could all but feel the power in her words. This was the woman who had made the potion, I was certain of it.
“You gave my friend Sabine a potion. One intended to make a person fall out of love and into logic.” I watched her expectantly, but she turned away.
“I deal with herbs, girl, and medicines. What you’re talking of smacks of witchcraft, the practice of which sees a woman burned at the stake.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “People fall out of love every day without the help of magic. Half the time they fall back in love in a matter of days.”
“Not that quickly and not for no reason,” I snapped, feeling my temper rising for no reason other than she was thwarting me, standing between me and my goal. “She told me it was you who made it for her, so you can quit playing coy.”
The corner of her mouth turned up. “I’m many things, but coy isn’t one of them.”
“I need your help,” I said, trying another tactic. “I’ve nowhere else to go.”
She laughed. “I doubt that. Ladies with fancy clothes and clean fingernails don’t need anything from the poor folk of Pigalle. Go back to your parties and gossip.”
“Please, hear me out.” Far more force went into my words then I intended, a breeze rising and drifting around the shop, the flame of the lamp flaring bright.
Her eyes glazed, but only for a second. “Well, well, well,” she said, realizing what I had done. “Apparently there is more to you than meets the eye.”
The sound of horses outside caught everyone’s attention. Boots thudded against the frozen ground, accompanied by the jangle of steel.
“The city guard!” she hissed.
In one swift motion, Chris reached over and turned the bolt on the door, locking the men out.
And us in.
“La Voisin!” One of the men pounded on the door. “Open up.”
“What do they want?” Chris whispered.
I didn’t need to ask. There was only one reason for the city guard to be banging at a witch’s door. “Is there another way out?”
She shook her head. “They’ll be watching the back.” Closing her eyes for a heartbeat, she inhaled deeply, pressing a hand to her chest. “This way.”
On silent feet, we followed her through the clutter-filled shop into a small living space in the rear. There was another exit, but just as the witch had suspected, there was motion outside that door as well. Pushing aside a threadbare rug, her slender fingers caught hold of a notch in the wood, which she tugged on to reveal a trapdoor. “Down,” she whispered, pointing at the cellar below. “Stay silent. It’s me they’re here for.”
The trapdoor closed above us.
At first, I could do nothing more than stare at the bits of light filtering through the gaps in the floorboards, my attention all for the sharp thuds of the woman—the witch—striding toward the front door. What did they want from her? More to the point, what would they do to her? My heart was loud in my ears, and I wished there was a way to still it so that I could better hear the voices of the guards drifting through the thin floor. “Accusations… witchcraft… warning… the flames.” My stomach twisted, and even though my palms were clammy, I took hold of Chris’s hand.