Determined, Camille squared her shoulders. She was not powerless against whatever crept about in Blaise’s apartment. Not yet.
Reaching into her pocket, her fingertips brushed past the wrapped package Lazare had given her to the crystal vial of tears. So small, so powerful. Prying loose the tiny cork, she held it under her nose. The scent of the trapped memories uncoiled: cold rain. Ink. Sadness and loss, the acrid smoke of burning leaves. If she thought too much about what was coming, she would not be able to do it.
Now.
48
She opened the door.
In the center of Blaise’s apartment stood Odette. In her hand was a torch, its flame so hot and high it nearly licked the ceiling. About her waist hung her pistols, her black clothes absorbing the light so that under her plumed hat her face was ghoulish white, carved by shadows. Her gray eyes, so like Camille’s own and yet not, were unreadable as stones.
“What a surprise to find you here,” she said. “My apologies for the heat.”
“If you put out your flambeau,” Camille said carefully, “it would cool things down.”
“I need some light to read by.” Odette dragged her hand along the bookcase, tumbling a row of books onto the floor.
Stall her. Where could Blaise have put it? Think! Where was the safe place he’d mentioned to her? “Looking for anything in particular?”
“A magical book. Though that doesn’t narrow it down very much, does it?”
“Why do you need it?” In the corner stood a bureau, its drawers yanked out, Blaise’s clothes on the floor. “I could help you if you told me the title.” Was it possible Odette was looking for the same book that they were?
“I don’t need your help.” Odette stepped closer. “I never have.”
The light from the flambeau was too strong, and Camille had to shield her eyes or be blinded. She found herself staring at Blaise’s bed. Plain and white. But no longer neatly made. The pillow had been pushed to one side. Perhaps she’d accidentally brushed it with her skirts, or Odette had. Now that it had shifted, the corner of a blue book lay revealed.
It is somewhere safe.
He had tapped his temple. Not committed to memory, as she’d thought, but even simpler than that: the book was safe under his head—under his pillow. But to get to it and then away to warn the others, she’d have to pass Odette twice. And she did not think she could. Not without help.
Bracing herself, she tipped the blur into her mouth.
One heavy drop. Then two, ice-cold on her tongue. Numbness crept along her cheeks, her throat, like frost under her skin. As the color bled from the walls, she said to Odette, “Adieu.”
“Where are you going?” Odette waved her torch high as she searched the room. “Come back!”
Camille pressed flat against the wall as Odette ran past.
She had to hurry. Even as she rushed toward Blaise’s bed, it faded from view, barely visible as the blur’s sorrow-dream engulfed her. She found herself in an unfamiliar room, a dusk-filled library she did not remember. Was it a place Papa had once taken her? The bookshelves weren’t white, as in Blaise’s apartment, but black and barred with metal grates. Both here, at Les Mots Volants, and there, books lay scattered. Their pages flapped like wings as a door opened.
A silhouette stood in the doorway. “These books are forbidden!”
She crouched. Tried to disappear.
The figure stalked closer. A woman, her face creased with anger. In her hand, a riding crop. “What have you done?” she raged. “You are inviting the magic back in, when we have done so much to cut it out!” She grabbed Camille’s arm, hauled her away. “We will get rid of the books, the magic lurking inside you, all of it!” A green book tumbled out of her hand—here, she knew it for The Silver Leaf, and her heart convulsed—and was lost.
Sorrow rose up insider her, an enormous, crushing wave. My books! she wept. Love and belonging and refuge torn away. Pain as her shoulder slammed into the doorway. Pain for what she knew was coming.
But this was not her memory.
She had taken Blaise’s tears.
With that moment of clarity and understanding, the veil thinned, and she could dimly see through to the bed, and the book under the pillow. Only faintly now did she hear Blaise’s sweet child’s voice pleading, Do what you want to me