Camille. When they took her from her cell that morning, no one had shoved a red traitor’s coat over her head. Or cut her hair. Instead, she’d been taken to the executioner’s assistant.
“You’re the first magician,” he told her as she was forced to sit in a chair in front of him, “but certainly not the last. I better make it good, for I’ll be setting the standard for all that come after.” Someone had given him a small pot of blue paint, and with his finger he drew a crude tear under her eye. Next he roughly rubbed her hands with coal until they were black. She tried not to think of the last time she’d seen these signs.
Fetching a shard of mirror, he held it up to her, as her hands were bound to the chair and she could hold nothing. “What do you think?”
Lightly freckled skin, sickly white. Lank russet hair. A purple bruise yellowing on her jaw, a blue tear spilling from a terrified eye. A magician. A ghost. “You satisfied?”
She swallowed.
“You know, I’m not.” Unscrewing a jar of rouge, he jammed a finger in it. “I keep this for the ladies.” On her cheeks he traced two bright circles. Then he pressed his filthy finger to her lips. She turned her face away.
It was no use. There was nowhere to go. He caught her chin with his free hand and wrenched it toward him. Slowly, excruciatingly, he painted her lips scarlet. And when he was done he held her tight and kissed her hard and long on the mouth. Tears leaked from her shut eyes.
I am a ghost, she told herself. I am not here.
“Fais de beaux rêves,” he’d said as he stood. “Sweet dreams.”
“Magician!” the crowd screamed as the cart rattled on. “Death to the bloodsuckers!”
Beside her sat Giselle. She still wore her yellow-striped dress, now stained rust-red with Odette’s blood. Her quick smile had vanished. Instead her hazel eyes were wide as the sky, as if she were already gone.
“Giselle.” When she didn’t answer, Camille knocked her knee against hers. “Giselle!”
Giselle watched the buildings pass by.
“Listen to me, Giselle.” Camille clasped the other girl’s hands.
Vaguely she said, “What is it?”
“Come with me. I am going to escape.”
“To what place?” she wondered. “There is nothing safe anymore, you know that?”
The cart jolted over a hole in the road, knocking their shoulders together.
“I’m going far away. You deserve better than this.”
“I’ve been running my whole life. Now there is a price to pay. There always is, in the end.” Fierce tears trembled on her lashes as she looked away. “I knew what the cost would be. I made that choice.”
“Make another one!” Camille urged. “Your dreams are still waiting to be lived. If you don’t want to come with us, I already told Henriette—my house belongs to all of you. A place for Céline to grow up, and for you to do what you want.” She squeezed Giselle’s fingers, hard. “Look at me.”
Giselle did. As if, for a moment, there was something she might trust.
It was hard to believe when the world went against you. To keep making the choice to live, over and over again. To hope. “Do not throw away your chance.”
Giselle clenched her hands into fists. “Won’t they search for me at the house?”
“You never mentioned the other girls to the police, did you? Anything about Flotsam House?”
“Never.”
“In the beginning, then, be careful. Hide in the attics if you must. But the wardrobes are full of dresses, shoes, hats. Go out in disguise. Be whoever you wish to be. Perhaps they’ll catch you. Or perhaps they won’t. But it’s better than giving up now.”
Giselle paled. “We’re nearly there.”
Camille craned her neck. “Do you see a carriage?”
“Not that,” Giselle replied, awe in her voice. “The gallows.”
At the end of the narrow street, the open space of the square unfolded into sky. Trust, she told herself as her stomach clenched. Trust. They will be there. You have the little knife, she told herself, but fear clawed at her and the words wheeled away like frightened birds.
Everywhere, the crowd: seething and jostling and demanding. Hands grasping at the prisoners’ clothes. A woman with scissors in her hand snatching at Camille’s red hair, hoping to cut a souvenir. Just in time, Camille yanked it away.
“I’ll get it when they cut your body down, traîtresse!” the woman spat.
The cart lurched, and Camille struggled to see. Where was the carriage? “Please,” she begged. She only realized she’d spoken