hastily threw back a glass. “I could have lost my mind completely!”
A cold finger of misgiving ran down Camille’s spine. The magic that overtook her when she was printing was already too much for her to control. If a magician like the Comte de Roland had nearly been carried away—what would that mean for her? She felt already too susceptible. Would it mean she would never be able to use this magic?
Foudriard said, “We have learned something, but now it seems we are missing a bottle of the very substance we need.”
“Stop!” Roland sank into a chair. He had the gray, worn-thin look Camille knew all too well. “I regret it!”
“In any case, it wouldn’t have been enough for all the magicians I hope we can help,” Chandon said. “Our task remains: we must find a book that tells us how to work this tempus fugit and so, the blur. As an act of penance, you must scavenge your libraries, Roland.”
“Fine.”
“Why not come to the Hôtel Séguin? The library has hundreds of books,” she said to Blaise, who gave her a look of gratitude. “Séguin once told me the queen gave him access to ancient grimoires from a secret library at Versailles … perhaps they’re in the collection. There’s only one thing I ask.” She hesitated. It was hard to say it aloud. “I don’t wish anyone to know of it.” My sister. Or Lazare.
“It will not be a problem,” Blaise replied, but there was something melancholy about the way he said it, as if he understood what she was asking more than she did herself.
“We will come in secret,” Chandon promised. “Until we have the blur, we must not give the Comité any reason to suspect us.” He studied them all carefully. “Unexpected as Roland’s experiment was, we now know it works. And its effects, as it were. But before I make a toast to the success of our search, I would like to give you a gift—a useful one—that Monsieur Delouvet has prepared for us.”
From a table nearby, Blaise picked up a short stack of papers. They were blank, with a silvery sheen, and cut into palm-sized squares, which he divided among the magicians. “These are message papers of my own invention. I will demonstrate.” He took one of the sheets, crumpled it, and placed it in his hand. “Bringing up sorrow, and thinking of what I wish to communicate, I will ignite it, and send it into the sky.”
“We are inside,” Roland pointed out.
“Do you trust magic, monsieur?”
Cowed, Roland shut his mouth. Blaise held out his hand, the crumpled, silvery paper lying on it. Briefly, he closed his eyes. His mouth twisted mournfully, his forehead furrowed with lines. Camille’s heart ached for him. She had never liked for anyone to see her working magic, especially the glamoire’s blood magic. It had seemed too raw and revealing. But Blaise worked his magic unflinchingly in front of them all.
The paper caught fire.
It rose from his hand, hovering above their heads. As if hesitating, or thinking. And then it drifted to the fireplace and with a swoop, disappeared up the chimney.
“Right now,” Blaise observed, “it is burning above Paris. But also, I suspect, somewhere else?”
Camille’s ears tingled. “I feel it on my skin. And I feel—your wish for us is to find answers to lead us to the blur.”
“Just so. You are all bound in this magic,” he said to the group. “If one of us needs help, send up a paper. If the others do not happen to see it in the sky, they will feel it. And then you will know to come here to Bellefleur as soon as possible.”
“Well.” The Comte de Roland sniffed, impressed.
Blaise smiled enigmatically. “As the poet said, there are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.”
He was right, Camille thought.
One summer in Paris the weather had been so dry that the leaves hung lifeless on the trees. The water in the Seine had sunk so low that a rowboat crossing the river had struck a large object. Nothing but a scuttled ship, Papa guessed, nothing to see. And Camille thought nothing of it until one afternoon he burst into the apartment, panting, “Come, mes enfants! They are bringing it up!” From the banks they watched as a snarling dragon’s head broke the water’s skin. It was ancient, darkened by water and time, torrents pouring from the holes that once were its eyes. A Norse raider’s ship, Papa