embroidery, and his stare was that of a raptor: proud and secretive, handsome and unnervingly cold. At the corner of his eye was painted a tear. His fingers were blackened, as if with soot. Strange. And in the corner of the portrait was a gilt circle with an M inside it, surrounded by five tiny stars. There was something captivating about the stars, and as she leaned in to see better, her hand brushed the portrait’s frame.
It burned.
She tried to pull away, but couldn’t. Unwillingly, her hand gripped the frame as a stream of anguished memories rushed through her. Fear, as someone—Séguin? A person he loved?—was carried away by a river. The cloying rose scent of the queen’s perfume. More slowly, other images came. A dried leaf, an empty room, a pitiless expanse of ice, and an aching despair at no longer being able to work magic.
And then, in a candlelit room, in a whirl of laughter and color, there was a girl in a blue-gray dress who seemed to shine brighter than anyone else. She was cheating at cards. He spoke to her and, as if his wishes were coming true, she held out her hand so he might read her palm. A hunger rose up in him when he touched her, the jump of magic from her hand to his like fire in his veins. How he wanted what she had. The urge to take take take was so strong he nearly sank to his knees in front of her. She is what will save me. But the agony it caused him, to resist, to wait—
Camille yanked her hand away so hard that she stumbled backward. The girl in the blue-gray dress, the girl full of magic, had been her. Séguin’s desire for her had been for her magic, that she knew. That he had needed it so badly that he’d do anything to get it, she hadn’t guessed. But that was what magic did.
Pressing her scorched hand to her lips, she went up the staircase to the little balcony that ran around the library walls. As she held up her candle, the lettering on the spines shifted like smoke. Tentatively, she reached out to touch one. For a moment, the swirling stilled. Alchemical History. Another one, bound in pale blue: Essays on the Magical Life. She tried to pull it out but it refused to budge.
For an hour, she searched the shelves, running her fingers along the spines of the bespelled books. She found several green books—each one set her heart hammering—but none were a copy of the one she was looking for. Or if it was, it was so well hidden by magic that she’d never find it on her own.
She recalled the scarlet-caped leader of the Comité, standing beside the king. The grim set of his jaw, the cold disgust of his stare. And that badge upon his cloak: a hand surrounded by flame. Its fingers blackened, like in Séguin’s portrait. She did not think it a coincidence.
Before, her ignorance had been an embarrassment, something to feel ashamed of when someone like Chandon knew so much about magic and its history. But now her ignorance was a danger. Not just to herself and the girls who were counting on her to help them, but also to Sophie and Lazare. She needed answers, and she needed them soon.
She would go downstairs and write to Chandon.
As she stepped into the hall, ready to close the door behind her, she glanced back into the library’s gloom. She could have sworn the portrait had wanted to show her something. To remind her of something.
But what?
WHAT IS MAGIC
BUT
A TOOL
TO CHEAT AND STEAL
AND
MURDER?
PATRIOTS
IN THE NAME OF FRANCE
STAND UP!
ERADICATE
THIS
PLAGUE
OF MAGICIANS
17
Two days later she had printed enough pamphlets to bring to Lasalle’s, and all the way there, she felt as if she were being watched. Though she could not see anyone following her, she still felt exposed, and pulled the collar of her cloak up around her neck. On the lips of passersby she heard the word magician, spat like a curse; on an old wall, freshly printed posters denouncing magic spread like vines. She itched to uproot them with her hands.
In the bookshop, on the large table where Lasalle displayed pamphlets and posters for sale, she noticed one that compared magicians to a plague. It was long, the entire back of the sheet covered, and unsigned. The type seemed familiar, as did the printer’s mark. “Who writes these, monsieur?”