through them but as to the blur … so far, nothing.”
The house was still and quiet as they climbed the stairs. Too quiet, Camille thought. But not for long, because as they stepped onto the second-floor landing, a door in the far wing of the house slammed closed.
“Interesting.” Blaise seemed utterly unperturbed, as if he did this kind of thing every day. Perhaps he did, handling the magical texts and grimoires that came through his shop. Old texts, reeking magic and stirring under his hands as he paged through them. Chandon, however, had gone quite gray.
Matter-of-fact, Blaise asked, “How many books are in the library?”
What had she glimpsed the last time she was in the dim, shuttered room? Shelves packed with books like lice on strands of hair. Paintings. A statue of a deer. Strange papers. “I don’t recall, exactly—perhaps a hundred?”
“You haven’t examined them?” Blaise asked, mild astonishment in his voice.
She glanced at Chandon. “I was frightened. And they resisted me.”
“Bespelled,” Blaise said, hurrying. “It’s close now, isn’t it? I can hear the books.”
Soon they stood in front of the library’s heavy oak doors. Medieval carvings crawled across them: snakes coiling through bare-limbed trees; men and women with gaunt torsos that ended in flipping fish tails; staring skulls on stakes, planted among poppies. Where the doors met was a large silver ring, tarnished. The air seeping through the skull-shaped keyhole smelled of smoke and sounded like rustling paper.
“Think this is it, Delouvet?” Chandon gave a low laugh. “Could there be anything in the world that reeks more of magic?”
“I would clarify it smells mostly like books of magic.” He blinked benevolently at Camille. “Shall we go in?”
She slipped the key from her sleeve and set it in the keyhole. “You’re certain you wish to do this?”
Chandon raised an eyebrow. “The most daring gambler at Versailles has a case of the nerves?”
“You would if you knew what was in there! Apart from the books that are gnashing their teeth so loudly we can hear them, there’s also a portrait”—she swallowed—“that conveys memories if you touch it.”
“It sounds like magie bibelot,” Blaise said cheerfully. “The books are growing impatient, so if you don’t mind…”
She didn’t want to be the person who was too afraid and stayed out in the hall, even though there was a part of her that wished to do just that. Camille turned the key in the lock and the door swung open.
Blaise slipped inside, and flashing Camille a devil-may-care grin, Chandon followed. Camille fished the key from the lock—she had a sudden horror of being locked in if she left it in the keyhole—and joined them. By the time she’d lit the candles, Blaise had already found the set of tiny keys for the metal grilles that covered the books and was making his way up the spiral stairs to the second-floor gallery. As he approached, the books quieted. Deftly, he unlocked the first set of grilles and, starting at the top, ran his fingers over the spines of the volumes, just as Camille had. But when he touched them, each one seemed to brighten, a candle flickering to life. Blaise’s eyes were closed, his pale lashes trembling.
Worried, she cried out, “Blai—”
“Hush! He’s reading now,” Chandon said in Camille’s ear. “We mustn’t speak to him, or interrupt if we can possibly help it. He may be seized by a fit elsewise. Let’s explore instead. Who knows what we may discover? I find my curiosity has overpowered my earlier repulsion.”
The room seemed to have grown since she was last there. Had there been a divan in it before? But the shadows in the corners were just as thick, the portrait’s golden-eyed stare just as ominous. Chandon grasped her wrist and pulled her along. Together, they peered into a large glass cabinet where pinned insects jostled with the skeletons of tiny animals she did not recognize. Chandon pronounced them dreadfully gruesome and they hastened away. There was a pair of waist-high Chinese vases that echoed faintly with voices if they put their ears to them, a silk carpet that dampened their steps completely, a large table covered with papers and books. Idly, Chandon stirred the papers, and they rose up off the table, hovering before fluttering back to the polished wood.
“Like butterflies,” Camille said, wonder in her voice. How could a magician as terrible as Séguin have fashioned something so beautiful?
“Aha! You will come to love magic yet, I’ll wager on it.”