As it had obviously caught up with her. Nibbling on the tip of one of my curls, I considered how to phrase my next question. “I’ve heard that you were once Lady Marie’s maid.”
Catherine’s face smoothed into the expressionless mask of someone trying to hide a reaction. “That’s no great secret.”
“Were you dismissed because she discovered you were a witch?”
She barked out a laugh. “Hardly. That was half the reason I was in her employ.”
I blinked, surprised to have my suspicions so easily confirmed. The Regent, or at the very least, Lady Marie, was apparently not as opposed to witchcraft as the laws would suggest. Which only cemented my belief that she was helping Anushka hide from the trolls. “I’m performing at her solstice party,” I said. “She’s shown an interest in me, and I was starting to become concerned that it was because she knew…” I trailed off when Catherine blanched.
“You must go now.” She leapt to her feet, knocking her chair onto its back.
“But I’ve only just arrived. You said you’d help me.”
“That was before I knew Marie was watching you.” Snatching hold of my arm, she hauled me with surprising strength to the front of the shop. “Don’t come back.”
“What is wrong?” I demanded, unwilling to leave with so many questions left unanswered. “What happened to cause her to turn on you?”
“I meddled in that which I should not,” she said, twisting the bolt and shoving me out before the door was half open. “I will not make the same mistake twice.”
The door slammed in my face, and I stood staring at it like a fool, trying to think of what I should do.
“Well, that didn’t go well.”
I whirled around in time to see Chris stepping out from the narrow space between the two buildings. “You were listening.”
He had the decency to look embarrassed. “The back door was unlocked.”
“Well, I suppose that saves me having to explain our conversation.” I followed him over to where Fleur was tethered.
“Catherine’s not going to help you, Cécile. She’s afraid.”
“I know.” I squinted up at the sky, judging the time. “But she’s got answers, so I’m going to have to think of a way to get her to talk.”
“Maybe not.” He held out his hand, revealing a mat of hair pinched between his fingers. “You’d think she’d know better than to leave a hairbrush laying around.”
“Christophe Girard, you are brilliant,” I breathed, taking the hair from him and carefully tucking it away in my pocket, mentally flipping through Anushka’s grimoire as I thought of ways to use it.
Glancing up, I saw that Chris’s face was tight and he was studiously examining his boots. “What’s wrong?”
“I took something else.”
I raised one eyebrow. “What else could you possibly have taken? I was in there for only a few minutes.”
He grimaced. “I took it before. When we were hiding in the cellar, I saw those books sitting on the table and I took one.”
My other eyebrow rose to join its mate. “You stole it?”
“I was going to put it back—that was the reason I snuck in. But then I heard her talking and I knew she wasn’t going to help, so…”
“So you kept it?” I struggled and failed to keep the eagerness from my voice. Part of me was annoyed that he hadn’t told me he’d taken it in the first place, but a larger part knew he wouldn’t have kept it from me without good reason.
“Here.” He extracted a small, well-worn book from inside his coat. “I couldn’t read much of it, but I recognized enough to know that it’s a nasty bit of work.”
Glancing surreptitiously around, I flipped through the pages. It was full of spells, blood magic. And the instructions were both graphic and specific. I swallowed hard, remembering what Catherine had said about this sort of magic: Using blood for even one spell can put any woman on a slippery slope, and—it always catches up to you in the end. I’d heard her warning, but when my eyes landed on a spell on a particularly dog-eared page, I knew I was going to disregard it.
20
Tristan
“So these are them?” Tips unfolded my plans across the scarred table, his face tightening as he noted the substantial differences between them and what my father had provided. I could see he was calculating the wasted months of work, and the effort that would be needed to pull down all the stone and begin anew. The emotional toll it would have on those who had already endured much loss.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a red smear across a series of calculations.
I leaned forward. “Jam. Raspberry, if I recall correctly.”
Tips snorted. “The plans your father gave us didn’t have any food stains.”
I shrugged. “That should have been your first clue they were fake.”
He stared at them for a long time, slowly flipping through the large pages of parchment as though he were memorizing every last detail. I let him take his time, leaning back on the rough chair and closing my eyes. I was tired. Sleep had eluded me last night, making it three nights in a row that I’d gone without rest, and I needed it. Badly. My mind felt fuzzy, and the coming days would be unforgiving of any mistakes.
Except every time I closed my eyes, I was plagued by the disasters that had happened. That could happen. My mother trying to kill me, my aunt hanging unconscious from her back. The feral expression I’d last seen on Marc’s face, and my fear that madness would take him.
And Cécile.
My imagination was a ferocious thing, and I could well imagine the worst of disasters befalling her, all with me powerless to do anything to help. I had no way of discovering how she fared or what she was doing. No humans were allowed past the River Road gates, so even if my contacts had information, I had no way to meet with them. No way to pass a message to Cécile, either.
But worse were the other thoughts. They were daydreams, I supposed, although I tortured myself with them day or night. Unrealistic fantasies of a future where Cécile and I actually had a chance. Where she was with me every night. Where she was mine in all ways and all things. Where I could be the man she deserved. How could I possibly sleep when there was a chance to remember the smell of her hair? The clear blue of her eyes when she looked up at me. The way she arched her neck when I kissed her throat. I’d suffer a thousand sleepless nights to be lost in those waking dreams.
“So what’s the plan?” Tips said, interrupting my thoughts. “Do we make it known that we’ve been duped? Another uprising? We aren’t prepared for it, but when this comes out, it might happen whether we like it or not.”
Opening my eyes, I tipped my chair forward and carefully set my arms on the table. Blood was seeping through the cloth I’d wrapped around the metal, and I could faintly hear the drip, drip of droplets landing on the wood. “I think we’ve something else to discuss first.”
He rolled up my plans and set them aside. “You’re referring to when I lied about my true name before you sent us all off to be slaughtered.”