way, fuel change, or destroy everything. Deep in her heart, she knew Lazare was right. What had she lived on when her parents were dead, she and Sophie starving, Alain beating her and trying to keep her down? Hope had been her food and drink. And though despair had shadowed her, it hadn’t overtaken her. She thought of Blaise’s mountain: two sides to everything. Hope was the sunlight, despair the shadow. Two sides of a coin, inextricable.
He added, “Without it we have nothing.”
“Lazare, truer words were never spoken,” observed Chandon. “Hope will take us a long way. But, if I may interject, mes amis—time ticks on and we do not yet have a plan.”
A plan would be something. A plan was hope taking shape. She set her shoulders back, wiped away the tears that clung to her lashes.
“There’s something else that adds urgency to our mission,” she said. “On the oak from which Blaise was hanged, there a list. It had your name on it, Chandon, and yours, Roland. Blaise’s was there too, but crossed out, and written beside it was the word mort. This is what they intend to do to all of us magicians.”
Chandon’s shoulders slumped. In his face was a sense of loss that mirrored her own. “Forget what I said about hope—they are calling for our deaths by name?”
“I would never have left for England if I’d known,” Lazare said. “I cannot see how you—we—stay here any longer. We must all leave.”
“But how?” Roland snapped. “We have no blur.”
A faint smile played over her lips. “In my house I found a small case, with a few vials of blur that Séguin had made.” Turning to Lazare, she explained as quickly as she could what the blur was and how it worked.
“Where is it?” interrupted Roland. “Are they authentic?”
“They are; there was one with my name on it, and I tried it. As for how I found it: the house showed me.” She felt foolish saying it, but neither of the magicians seemed surprised. “I’ve sent a note to my sister, asking her to send the box here.”
“The note’s already gone by messenger,” Chandon said. “He will be very discreet, and make certain he’s not followed.”
“How many vials, did you say?” Roland asked.
“Four or five, perhaps. Not enough.”
“Not for all the magicians of France,” Chandon said. “Or even for us, considering how quickly it wears off. We may have to reduce our aspirations.”
“One last thing.” As if she were following a thread that had been strung down hallway after hallway, she made her way through the labyrinth of all the things that had recently happened. She could only go forward by touch, but still, she was moving forward. “The book Blaise mentioned to me and Chandon? I believe it’s still at his shop. Perhaps that was why he was attacked at his shop before he was murdered. Someone else wants it. We must go to Les Mots Volants tonight and find it. Once we have it, we can make enough blur to get ourselves and every other magician out of France.”
“It’s impossible,” Roland sniffed.
“Why?” Lazare asked.
Foudriard tapped one of the maps he’d been studying. “The Comité has spies throughout the city, some of them with great knowledge of magic and how to find it.”
It made a terrible sense. “Blaise was expecting a visitor the night he was murdered. Comité members, do you think?” she asked.
Foudriard nodded grimly. “And after Blaise’s death, there will be additional watchers around his shop. They might be expecting us.”
“Especially if they’re also looking for the book,” Lazare said. “They may trust one of you will lead them to it, and voilà, they have both the book and a captive magician.”
Camille nodded, considering. “There is another way into the shop, one where people might not be watching. A series of alleys leads away from the door that opens into his apartment—there’s a bookcase on hinges that acts as a door between the shop and his room. He led me out that way once, when he was worried about my safety.”
“That sounds promising,” Lazare said.
Chandon sat up. “And what if I have the key to that door?”
Everyone stared. “You do?”
“Blaise gave it to me the last time I saw him. In case, he said. I’m afraid I teased him mercilessly about it, which I now regret. I have it upstairs, quite safe.”
“Bien. We go in that way, search the store—” Roland proposed.
“But surely he would have hidden the book,” Lazare said, “if, as Camille