in church with a burning sword. “We will be persecuted again, and you cannot tell me otherwise.”
“The revolution will bring good times for all of us, Anne-Louise.”
“If we magicians hide, like we are hiding now.” She gestured at the walls of the apartment, and Camille shrunk back into shadow. “But what if those good times do not come? Or if they come, they don’t come for us?”
“Anne-Louise, I beg of you—”
She tucked the book protectively to her chest. “I am annotating it for Camille.”
Papa growled, “Do not insist on this.”
“She cannot be left ignorant about her heritage. Let her choose, later, if she wishes. Because I left my family to be with you, my education was cut short. There is too much about magic that I don’t know! Perhaps this book might even save us, if your revolution fails. Had you thought of that? Magic need not be wrong.” In a choked voice, she said, “Didier, am I wrong? Am I evil?”
Papa’s face crumpled. “Never.”
“But you won’t accept that I do magic?”
“It is against everything I believe.” Papa’s voice was flat. “Everything I work for. Doesn’t our Camille deserve more than … magic?”
“More?” Maman stared at the fire, and Camille could no longer see her face. “Perhaps I’ll never have to teach her. Perhaps this beautiful new world you believe in will come true.”
Papa wrapped his arms around her, and she dropped her golden head on his shoulder. Camille could no longer see the green book. Maman’s back shook with sobs. She did not want to hear Maman cry.
Back in her room, the bed was still warm. Her eyelids were closing when her mother knelt beside her. “Bonne nuit, mon trèsor,” she whispered, brushing her lips to Camille’s forehead. “It was just a bad dream.”
Even then, she knew it wasn’t.
* * *
Camille blinked. She was still kneeling on the cold floor outside the printing room.
Maman had wanted her to know more about magic. It was Papa who had not.
She hadn’t known what “annotated” meant then, but she knew now: Maman had made notes in the margins for Camille to read. She’d wanted her to know what was written inside. Camille’s throat constricted at the thought of that green book lost. A book like that might have instructions for how to manage her feverish magic. But it was gone.
The fire of revolution had taken it.
Wait.
There could not have been only one copy in all of France. There had to be others. She got to her feet.
All around her the rustling continued. Louder, more insistent. In it were new voices, as faint and dry as husks. They were coming from the library, the room where the house’s magic was the strongest, the place she’d steadfastly avoided.
Until now.
16
Candle in hand, Camille climbed the marble stairs toward the wing where the library waited. When she’d passed it before, the bitter burn of magic leaking from under the door had sent her hurrying past.
Now she stood in front of its carved wooden door, inhaling those same acrid fumes. In the skull-shaped keyhole sat a great brass key. She turned it and the door swung back silently into the dark. Holding her candle high, in case—in case of what?—she stepped over the threshold.
In case something is there, a small voice inside her replied.
A shutter had blown open and vague moonlight filtered into the room. Adèle had told her the entire library had been pried loose piece by piece from some ancient castle and reinstalled at the Hôtel Séguin. Blackened oak panels ran from floor to ceiling, many of them carved with words in a scrolling language she did not know. She sensed they were wards to keep the books safe. Halfway up the walls, a narrow balcony ran like a ribbon around the room to give access to the books stored there, protected by filigreed metal gates. She squinted at their titles, but the words seem to rush away from her. The silvered spine of Maman’s green book had behaved in the same way. Imagine if she were to find a copy here—
But first she would close the shutter. She wound her way past a desk, a long table covered with papers, a taxidermized deer. Reaching into the windy night air, she caught hold of the shutter, and pulled it closed.
On the wall beside the window hung a large portrait of Séguin. In it, he sat beside a table, a crystal globe in his hand. His clothes were doubly gold: pale golden silk fretted with gold