only too well, the cost of trust was high, and that of hope even higher.
There was nothing to do but go, and as quickly as possible. Trying to hide her disappointment, she could only nod at the girls, open the door, and take refuge in the riverbank’s hazy gloom.
9
Evicted. Camille stormed along the shore, kicking at stones. The city had no right to throw them out of their home! Had the person who’d made this decision even given a thought to what would happen to the girls? Where they would live instead?
Without realizing it, Camille had reached up to trace the scar above her collarbone. She hadn’t forgotten the shock of it, the hot spill of blood when Alain—her own brother—had cut her. She still remembered the snap of her head when he’d hit her, the endless drop of her fall. She’d had no choice but to use magic to save herself and Sophie: first la magie domestique, and then the more dangerous glamoire. These girls could steal and cheat to try to stay alive. But it wouldn’t be enough.
Her jaw clenched. What was it Papa had always said? Words are their own magic. Words make thoughts visible. She thought of the press waiting in the dark—what if?—and then, like a punch, the bookseller’s disdain and dismissal.
“Mademoiselle?” said a little girl’s voice.
Camille stopped.
Holding out a hair ribbon to her was a little girl, her clothes neat but pretty, her toffee-colored hair carefully braided. “Did you drop this?”
“I did.” Camille stooped until she was eye level with the girl. “But you may keep it, Céline.”
“I didn’t think you needed it, being as you look like a princess with your dress anyway,” the girl confided. She spun it over her head so it fluttered in the wind. “I’m pretending it’s a dragon that will set the Seine on fire.”
“It must be a very powerful dragon!”
“A mademoiselle dragon,” Céline said sagely.
“Of course it is.” She couldn’t walk away, not now. “Céline, I must speak to—”
“My sisters?” She held out her hand to Camille. As they walked, Céline described how the fire would be—très belle, but no one would be hurt, because it would only be the river that was aflame and not the people nor the dragon—until they reached Flotsam House and Giselle stepped out, a narrow silhouette in the lamp light. “Camille? Is something wrong with Céline?”
She had to try one last time. “I have an idea.”
“Tiens, they don’t want more ideas. We’ve decided to fight the eviction and if necessary, be taken away by force.”
They would lose that fight. “Let me try, Giselle.”
She sighed and opened the door. “You are persistent.”
Back in the tiny cottage, the girls falling once more into mistrustful silence, Camille knew what she must do, even if in the end they rejected her. “Does anyone have a piece of paper? A pencil?”
“Why?” Margot asked.
“Just give it to her,” Giselle said, irritated.
Margot reached up under her skirts and pulled out several sheets of paper. “What?” she said as the other girls laughed. “I get cold, standing in the arcade with my iced fruits!” The sheets were posters—one shouted WHO STEALS OUR GRAIN? while the other complained THE KING DOES NOTHING. Their backs were blank. She handed them to Camille. “Because you’re Giselle’s friend.”
Henriette said, “I’ve got something to write with, if that’s what you need.” In her ink-splotched fingers, the forger reluctantly held out a quill. “But ink’s precious to me. Tell us what it’s for.”
Camille knew she couldn’t get their trust for free. Coins couldn’t be transformed from scraps of metal to heavy gold louis just by wishing. To work magic, one needed the power of sorrow.
“I wasn’t always as you see me now. A princess, like Céline called me.” Some of them smirked. Others frowned, suspicious. “Once, I was almost where you are.” It was a part of her life she wished to put in a box and never open again. But she remembered Papa’s words—to try is to be brave—and pressed on.
“My parents died of smallpox, and my little sister almost did, too. After that, my older brother couldn’t stop drinking. He started gambling, and then he couldn’t stop that, either.” One of the girls swore under her breath. “Whatever my sister and I managed to save, he’d take. I wasn’t afraid of him. Like you, I was afraid of losing our home and living on the streets. But it didn’t matter how hard I worked, the cards stayed stacked against me.”