food. She pretended not to see the worried looks that Sophie and Lazare gave each other when they thought she didn’t see. She pretended not to hear as they discussed what the new law might mean. As Camille flinched, Rosier claimed magicians were an easy target and wondered who would be next—foreigners? Jews? Under the hum of their conversation and the clink of glasses and silver, she could hear the relentless rustling of paper, like leaves before a storm.
It pulled at her like a tide.
Once the boys had gone home, Lazare kissing her on the forehead and telling her to rest, and everyone in the house had gone to bed, she stole downstairs, down the long hall to the printing room. She set her ear against the door. On the other side, the murmuring grew. The tiny hairs on her arms rose.
Magic.
For a terrifying moment, she thought she could hear words in it. Names. She thought of the burned box in which the enchanted dress had once been kept, the way it had seemed to call to her. She could pretend and pretend it did not exist, that she was somehow finished with it, but it was a lie. As long as this magic was here, as long as it wound its way into the pamphlets she printed, the officers of the Comité in their bloodred capes could arrest her for working la magie.
What would Lazare think of her if the pamphlets failed and the girls were evicted? What would he think of her if she pretended to be someone to whom magic didn’t matter? When he’d told her to pretend, had he meant something more?
Who would she then betray?
Lazare?
The girls?
Herself?
You are extraordinary, mon âme.
The choices felt impossible.
Crouching stone-still, listening to the sighing of the pamphlets and the restless creaking house around her, she felt like a mouse trapped in its hole. The weight of the Hôtel Séguin’s magic so heavy it would crush her. Whatever was happening, she had no idea how to control it. Why had Maman not taught her more about magic? Had she thought to protect Camille from magic through ignorance?
The oil paintings in the hall shimmered, the clouds in their landscapes darkening. The faces in the portraits grew watchful, alert. The walls and the floor and the ceiling seemed to draw closer, as if the house wished to hold her in the palm of its hand. Too tired to resist, she gave in to the mesh of magic drifting around her.
Faintly, a memory tapped against the window of her mind.
Late at night, cold slinking along the colder floor, tears in her mother’s voice. Firelight wavering. An angry shout.
What was it that had happened?
She closed her eyes and the memory fluttered free.
* * *
She was small, and had woken to voices.
Insistent, arguing. They were coming from the little salon in their apartment. Sliding quietly from bed so as not to disturb Sophie, she crept down the hall. The door to the salon stood open, and Camille wedged herself behind it so she might peer through the long vertical opening between the hinges.
Illuminated by a sinking fire, her parents faced each other on the carpet, stiff as soldiers. Papa’s usually gentle face was ferocious, unrecognizable. His hand was out in front of him, palm up. Waiting. Opposite, Maman’s blue eyes blazed. Clutched to her chest was a small book, clad in green leather and decorated with a silver pattern. To Camille it resembled a forest, all leaves and branches. She’d learned her letters that winter, but she couldn’t read the book’s title. It slid away from her like water.
“Give it to me, Anne-Louise,” Papa said.
“So you can throw it on the fire? Absolutely not.”
Her parents always told her: books are precious. Why did Papa want to destroy this one?
“You wish to keep a book of magic in this house? After the way your mother treated you—your mother the magician?”
“You know I renounced her.” Maman’s voice was both angry and sad. “I renounced that entire life for you. For all of us.” She looked so sorrowful then that Camille wanted to run to her, clasp her small hands around her mother’s waist and hold her tight. “You dream of raising up the downtrodden but cannot see we magicians were also persecuted. I don’t deny some magicians have done terrible things. But we are also people, and to be burned, beheaded—”
“My darling.” Papa took a step toward her. “I’m sorry—”