“So you’ll make a fresh start with your pamphlets?” Sophie said approvingly as Adèle disappeared down the hall.
Camille grasped them tighter. “I will.”
“Good. And now I’m afraid I must go.”
A surge of disappointment rose in Camille. But just as quickly, she reprimanded herself. Wasn’t this what she wanted for her sister: happiness, independence, a full life? “I did think you were dressed too well for dinner at home.”
Sophie ducked her chin and smiled. The undernourished look she had for so long was vanished, like a bad dream, and had been replaced with rosy cheeks and laughter. She wore her newest silk dress topped by a short, sapphire-blue coat, its collar and deep cuffs embroidered with chrysanthemums. Her golden hair waved becomingly over one shoulder, and the pretty flush in her cheeks showed that the ordeal she’d suffered at the hands of Séguin three weeks ago was finally behind them. This, Camille thought, was something to hold on to. And if it meant living in this uneasy, watchful house full of magic, she would do it.
“Where are you going?” Camille asked.
“First, to Le Sucre.” Sophie showed her the folded cloth Adèle had brought. “A client is desperate to have this shawl for a patriotic banquet tonight. All the tricolor tassels had my fingers aching! But since it’s done, I might as well give it to her, and get paid. And then,” she added happily, “the Marquis d’Auvernay has promised me cake at a decadent café run by Russians. They will be dressed as Cossacks, he tells me—it will be terribly romantic.”
Camille couldn’t help but think of the crowded streets, the flower seller, the nobleman who’d whipped up a mob for his own benefit. “Just be careful.”
“In the streets?” Sophie lowered her voice. “Or with d’Auvernay?”
“You are terrible!” Camille laughed. Though Sophie was only fifteen, since the events of the spring, she’d come into her own. She suddenly seemed capable of handling anything. “I trust your heart is in no danger?”
“Hardly! He is rich and handsome, and that is all. And fear not, the footman Daumier will come with me to Le Sucre, and when the shawl has been paid for, d’Auvernay will fetch me in his carriage.”
Camille’s throat constricted when she thought how overjoyed Maman would have been to see Sophie looking so well. “He will not be able to keep his eyes off of you.”
“It just goes to show how getting a dastardly magician out of a young lady’s life can make things so much better.” In the mirror, she caught Camille’s eye, suddenly serious. “All of that is behind us now, n’est-ce pas?”
“Of course.” Séguin was dead, and with him, her old life. This new one was full of possibility—a couple of raving pamphlets and a list nailed to a tree did not change that.
Sophie leaned in to give her a kiss. “Oh, I nearly forgot! An invitation arrived for us a few hours ago. It’s waiting for you in the printing room.” With a wink in her voice, she added, “I bet it will raise your spirits.”
4
Nevertheless the uncomfortable feeling persisted as she passed smoke-blackened paintings and cabinets crowded with Venetian paperweights and ancient coins before she reached the dining room. From its ceiling hung an enormous chandelier, dense with cut-glass crystals. Underneath it stood a wooden printing press.
She’d sought out an old one, like her father’s. When she ran her fingers over the worn wood, or held the smooth iron lever that seemed to fit her hand perfectly, she thought of all the people who’d owned the press before. Had they printed invitations and revolutionary posters, like Papa? Etiquette manuals? Histories of far-off places? Or advertisements for the spectacles Paris adored? There was no way of knowing, but she imagined that somewhere inside its metal and wood, the press remembered.
Around the room stood cabinets covered with stacks of paper and containers of ink. Above her head, lengths of rope ran from glittering sconce to glittering sconce, making a spiderweb from which she’d hung freshly printed copies of On the Education of Girls to dry.
Failures, all of them.
Papa would have folded them into dragons or queens or boats—something to prove her work wasn’t worthless. As she began to unpin the useless sheets, she could almost feel the paper warming in her hand as she imagined the words becoming compelling. Entrancing.
How much magic would it take to make it right?
None, she told herself sharply.
Magic was not easy to get rid of. The more she’d used it, the worse it had been, and even when she’d stopped, the disquieting hunger for more had been hard to quell. Despite everything, there was something in her that yearned for magic’s dark transformations—even though it had nearly killed her and threatened the lives of everyone she loved. The way magic still tugged at her reminded her of her brother’s inability to stop gambling, and its power frightened her.
But in the weeks since Séguin’s death, one thing more than any other had healed her hurts: an ebony-haired boy who made her feel. It had been Lazare she’d turned to when her memories were too much, when she feared she might never truly recover from having used so much magic. He’d needed to convalesce from his own battle with Séguin, and together they’d ambled in the dusty gardens of the Tuileries. He brought her sweet pastries from Stohrer’s, and sat with her in the shade of the fruit trees in her own garden. Leaning against the trunk of a plum tree, his long legs stretched out in front of him and his dark head tipped back, his face was alight with enthusiasm. For hours they talked of inventions and revolution, balloons and the journey they planned to take over the Alps. In his dreamy, amber-flecked eyes, she saw herself differently: not as a desperate magician, but as the best version of herself. It had gone a long way toward mending what was broken.
She wanted to hold on to that feeling of hope and possibility, of a future free of magic’s dark taint. For she wanted nothing to do with its wild unpredictability, the uncomfortable feeling that it wasn’t she who was working the magic, but rather, that the magic was working her.
She unpinned the final sheet and tossed it on top of the others. Perhaps Papa’s pamphlets were too theoretical. After all, how would one of Papa’s pamphlets help the flower seller? It would take years for the ideas to trickle down from debates in the National Assembly and become law. The flower seller and the starving children of Paris needed a better life now.
She carried the pamphlets—including the hateful one she’d found stuck to the gate—to the back of the room and dropped them into the fire. Instantly long tongues of flame leaped up to devour the pages. Soon they would be coal black, their edges gone to ashy lace, drifting up into the chimney’s blackened mouth. She’d thought printing would be her future. She’d vowed it to herself at the tennis court in Versailles, when she committed to doing what Papa hadn’t been able to.
She had tried, but it hadn’t been good enough. Not even close. She needed to do more.
But what?
The breeze slithered through the room, whispering, but it said nothing she could understand. She was about to blow out the candles when she remembered the invitation.
It lay on the table, folded into the shape of a star. Sophie’s and her names were spelled out in extravagant purple ink and sky-high capital letters. In her hand, it felt like hope, the perfect antidote to her failed pamphlets, violence in the streets, and troubled magic.