but spare my books, please aunt, please spare them please. The magic was receding, and she had to move fast. Carefully, willing herself not to make the tiniest sound, she crept toward the bed. She was almost there when Odette returned.
“Come out, Camille!” The room was suddenly brighter as Odette held up her blazing torch. Camille could almost feel the books shrink away from its hungry flame. “I will find you, demon!”
Not if I can help it. One more step.
There, in the blur, Blaise screamed as his aunt tore pages from the books and shoved them into an open fire. “Be glad,” she hissed, “I do not force you to eat them.” His fury was an explosion. Here, in his apartment, her knees buckled from the pain of it. It was too much, the sorrow and the crushing pain—
“I see you.”
Sagging against the bedpost, Camille watched as Odette came into terrible focus. In her hand she held a small blue book. Its cover was stamped with a crescent moon in silver. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
Camille’s heart lurched as she noticed the pillow had been thrown aside, the book gone. “What’s it called?”
As if she had all the time in the world, Odette gazed down at the book’s spine. “On the Management of Sorrow.”
In her hands Odette held the key to their freedom. Fatigue dragged at Camille as the blur ebbed. She had to act now or she would not make it. Far away, a bell was ringing. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Odette’s sneer was cruel. Calculating. “Then it will not mean anything to you if I use it for kindling? To light another torch? To set the world on fire?”
Everything in Camille screamed no. What choice should she make? Get the torch and save the whole shop, but risk Odette fleeing with the book? Or take the book and risk Odette burning them all?
Both. She would take the flambeau. Then the book.
As Camille lunged toward her, Odette hurled the torch into the air. Instinctively, Camille ducked as it hissed over her head and crashed into the books piled on the floor.
With a sound like a gasp, they caught fire. Flames snarled, and rose.
Like the books she’d seen on the barges, these too burned bright, and for a brief moment they dazzled like fireworks as a world’s worth of knowledge vanished.
“No!” she cried out. “You cannot do this!”
“I already have.” Odette flung open the door. The night air was fuel to the flames. As the fire roared, a monster unleashed, Odette laughed.
Camille backed up until she sensed the short hall behind her. Then she spun around and stumbled down it. The whole shop was burning now. Shoving the bookcase door open, she crashed into the bookstore.
“Run!” she cried.
The room was black with smoke and red with Comité guards’ cloaks. The bell she’d heard had been Roland’s warning; Foudriard and Chandon were nowhere to be seen. By the smashed-in front door, half-hidden by a bookcase, stood Lazare.
Waiting for her.
“Now!” he shouted. Jamming his shoulder against a bookcase, he pushed it over, trapping the men in the back of the shop. Screams of burning books echoed in her head. She ran toward him. Smoke burned her eyes; she could hardly see where she was going. Her foot caught on an open book and she stumbled. Before Lazare could pull her to safety, one of the guards grabbed her arm.
In the doorway, Lazare drew his sword. A bright line, hard and unwavering. Soot covered his face like a mask, and the mouth beneath it was grim. “Stand away from her!”
Over Lazare’s shoulder, a shadow separated itself from the dark.
“Behind you!” she shouted.
Through the smoke she heard Lazare’s muffled groan. Heavy hands yanked her away. “Camille Durbonne, in the name of King Louis XVI, we arrest you on the charge of being a magician and a traitor to France!”
Camille kicked at them, tried to twist away. “I have done nothing wrong!”
A bigger guard dragged her forward. She clutched helplessly at the wall, then the doorjamb, and finally at door itself. But her fingers slid and would not hold.
“Stop it!” she cried, beating at his shoulder. “I have done nothing wrong! You have no right—”
“Taisez-vous, magician,” the guard said, and slammed his elbow into her head.
A thousand stars exploded. And then there was nothing more.
49
“Wake up!” cried a surly voice. “You have a visitor!”
Bleak light filtered through a shuttered window. Heavy stone echoed with footsteps, the metallic clang of a pail. The throbbing pain