“Don’t react, but someone is following us. Two someones.”
My stomach did flip-flops, and I only barely refrained from grabbing his arm. Who else could it be but Lord Aiden and Catherine? “What do we do?”
“Catch them. Quick, turn here.” He nudged me around a corner and into the entranceway of a building. It reeked of alcohol and urine, and even in the dim light I saw his nose wrinkle with distaste.
We waited in silence, but not for long. “I don’t see them,” a woman whispered.
“They went this way,” her companion responded. Both voices were deeply familiar to me.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Skipping around Tristan, I stepped out of the entranceway.
Sabine and Chris both jumped in surprise. “Cécile!”
“What are you two doing following me?”
“We wanted to see where he would take you.”
“More accurately, where she’s taking me.” Tristan stepped out of the shadows. “I’m afraid I’m quite at her mercy in this strange city of yours.”
Sabine clapped a hand over her mouth and Chris’s eyes bugged out. “Tristan? Is it really you?”
“None other.” His attention turned to Sabine, his curiosity apparent. “Am I correct to presume you are Mademoiselle Sabine?”
Expression wary, she nodded.
“It is a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard fine things about your character.”
Her jaw tightened. “I wish I could say the feeling was mutual. You aren’t what I expected.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“You know perfectly well you don’t disappoint,” she scoffed, her lip curling up with disgust. “I’d thought you’d be something I could pity, and that pity would allow me to forgive you for what you did to her. I was wrong.”
“Tristan.” Chris interrupted the exchange before it could devolve further. “Where are the rest of the trolls? How is it that you are free? What is the plan?”
“I’m uniquely privileged in my freedom,” Tristan said, his eyes flicking in my direction. “As to why and how that is the case, you’ll have to ask Cécile, as she has not yet graced me with an understanding of how it came to pass. Among other things.”
He said it with lighthearted indifference, as though the answer were of no consequence to him at all. But I knew differently, and now I knew why. His name. It was his greatest secret. The one thing he told no one, not even me. Yet somehow I knew it, and I’d used it. The complex twist of strange syllables capable of bending him to my will. And even as I knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west, I knew this would not sit well with him.
“Cécile?” It was Chris who asked the question.
“I…” A gust of wind blew across us, carrying with it the heavy smell of wood smoke. “Something’s burning.” With the wooden homes packed together as they were in Pigalle, even a small fire had the potential for disaster. But there was something more, a worry that sent prickles down my spine.
“There.” Chris pointed and our eyes went to the orange glow in the distance.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.” Then I started to run, pulling my skirts up in one hand as I sprinted toward the street Catherine’s shop was on. As I rounded the corner, I saw the crowd of people, buckets passing from hand to hand in a fruitless attempt to extinguish the inferno engulfing the shop. A shriek filled my ears, and it took me a moment to realize it came from my lips. Clapping a hand over my mouth, I stared for a second, then started running.
I sprinted up to the next road, then down it until I reached the building with the adjoining yard. Tearing open the front door, I ignored the shouts of those inside as I ran through the clutter of cots and out the back. In the yard, I jumped, catching hold of the top of the stone fence and hauling myself over.
“Cécile, what are you doing?” I heard Tristan yell, but I ignored him, dropping into the dirt on the far side. The fire was intense, the heat radiating from it making me flinch away, my eyes stinging and watering. It didn’t matter that Catherine had betrayed me. She was involved in this because I’d asked her to be, so if she was in there, I had to help her.
I started to walk toward the flames, the smoke making me cough and choke, then magic locked around my waist, pulling me back.
“Have you lost your mind?” Tristan shouted into my ear, dragging me toward the fence.
“Catherine might be in there.” I struggled against his grip, trying to go back to the fire. “I have to help her.”
Fingers of magic caught hold of my chin, forcing me to look at him through the haze. “If she’s in there, she’s dead. There’s nothing you can do.”
Logically, I knew what he was saying was true, but the idea of leaving Catherine in there to burn was more than I could bear. Tears trickled down my cheeks, cool against my overheated skin. “She has Anushka’s grimoire. I need it to find her. I need it to keep my mother safe.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I need it!” I screamed the words in his face, my desperation to retrieve the grimoire twisting me into a mindless frenzy.
Tristan swore, and I could hear him talking with Chris over my head, but the words were meaningless. Nothing mattered more than finding the witch. No sacrifice was too great.
Then Tristan was pushing me at Chris and walking toward the fire. “What’s he doing?”
Exactly what you asked him to. The realization that I’d just put a book ahead of Tristan’s safety slapped me in the face, and I scrabbled forward to catch his coat, but Chris jerked me backwards.
“Cécile, calm down,” he shouted into my ear. “He knows how to take care of himself.”
The flames crept higher, catching at the buildings to either side, the efforts of the bucket brigade futile against the inferno. Nothing could survive in that heat, and I could hear the splintering and cracks of timbers that told me the roof was on the verge of collapse. Logic told me that Tristan’s magic would keep him safe, but instinct made me scream warnings for him to get out.
Then, through the smoke, I saw him walking toward us, a limp form floating ahead of him.
Chris let go of me, and I started to run toward them, but an invisible rope of power caught me, lifting me up into the air and setting me in the corner of the yard. “What are you doing?” I coughed, clawing at the magic. “I can help her.”
“She’s beyond help.” Tristan set her on the grass, but I couldn’t make anything out through the haze. “You don’t need to see this.”
“Let me go!”
Tristan only shook his head, ignoring Chris, who had taken one look and was now retching against the wall. “She’s dead, Cécile. Someone slit her throat, and then the fire did its work. It isn’t something I want you to see.”
I didn’t deserve to be protected, I deserved to see what had befallen Catherine because I’d involved her in a plot far bigger than she knew. “What about the grimoire?”
“Not on her. And if it’s inside, there’s nothing left but ash.”
Our only hope was gone. Slumping into the dirt, I rested my cheek against the mossy stone of the wall and watched the shop burn. Then a motion at my arm caught my attention, a soft tongue licking at my hand.