and horrible? “How many entries there are under blood magic!”
“Too often misused, I’m afraid.”
She ran her finger down the column of B-words. There was no entry for Blur. Perhaps the working for the blur was under its other name, the veil? Hurrying, she paged past Control of magic, 37; Illness, 57; Spells for love, 392; and Spells for enemies, 401 until she reached the very end of the index: V.
Value of magic, 10
Vanishing letters, 258
Veil, 613.
“It is in The Silver Leaf!” she cried out. Next to the entry for Veil was a star. Séguin must have marked it—proof he’d been working on the veil, as they’d guessed.
But most the most important would be under T, and it was:
Tempus Fugit, 13.
Nevertheless they were hardly closer than before, because this was only the index. She gripped the book in frustration. All these books, and still no answers!
“I promise you, I will keep trying,” Blaise said.
She closed the index and handed it to him. As soon as it left her hand, she missed the warmth of it and wanted it back.
“They’re funny like that,” he said with a fond smile as he patted the books on the table. “Magic compels.” The clock in the library began to chime the hour. “I must go—I hate to leave the bookshop unattended for too long.”
“Please be careful, Blaise,” Camille said. “With the Comité looking for books, will they not come to Les Mots Volants?”
“It is warded,” he replied. “I am safe enough for now. Nothing without risk is worth doing.” He produced a calling card and gave it to her. “But, Camille—”
“Yes?”
“I know it is not easy. But please, do not be afraid of answers. They may come to you in strange ways. This ancient house,” he said, gently smiling at the grim, magic-laced library, “has secrets to tell. You must find a way to listen.”
25
But Camille wasn’t certain she wished to listen. After the magicians had said their adieux and slipped back out the kitchen door, Adèle came to tell Camille that a wagon load of furniture had arrived from Versailles.
Perplexed, she asked, “For whom?”
“It’s the old master’s things, collected from the apartment he kept there. You don’t wish to go over them?”
She wanted nothing to do with them. The unicorn tapestry that had watched while Séguin had drugged her, the glasses that had held the poisoned wine, the embroidered chair he’d shoved her against, trapped and weeping—no. She wished to see none of it again. “If you could…?”
“Of course,” Adèle said. “Mademoiselle Sophie is waiting for you in the courtyard.”
Sophie almost never went into the courtyard. Too enclosed, she said. It makes me feel trapped. “She’s returned from Le Sucre so early? Is she not well?”
Adèle considered. “She seems—distraught.”
Through the wavy glass of the doors, Camille saw her sister pacing back and forth by the espaliered pear trees, heavy with yellow fruit. In her hand, she gripped a fallen branch. Each time she hit it against the wall, a piece of it broke off and fell to the grass. Not promising.
“What are you doing outside?” Camille asked as she hurried down the path toward her. Overhead, iron-gray clouds loomed. “It’s going to rain any minute.”
“Why can’t I be out here?” She thwacked the wall. “Can’t I change my mind sometimes? Or behave differently?”
Something was definitely wrong. “Has something happened to you? Rosier?”
“Why should anything happen to Rosier? And if it did, why would it concern me?”
“I just thought you might have been together—working on Les Merveilleux.”
Sophie smacked the wall again, hard. Camille’s heart constricted. Had Rosier hurt her, somehow? At the back of the garden, near the roses, a fountain purled. As if she were trying to calm a nervous cat, Camille asked, “Would you tell me about your day? We might sit on the bench by the fountain.”
“There’s no need to sit, as it will not take long to tell it.” Sophie pressed the branch against the wall until it snapped. “I’ve received a marriage proposal.”
Bewildered, Camille asked, “Are congratulations in order?”
“I don’t know!” Sophie said, flinging herself down on the bench after all.
Camille sat beside her. As mildly as she could, she asked, “Who proposed?”
“As if I have thousands of suitors! I have only one, and it was he who asked me.”
“Rosier?” she guessed.
“He is hardly a suitor! It was the Marquis d’Auvernay.”
“Oh!” She looked more closely at Sophie. Were her eyes red? “What did you say?”
“I told him I required time to consider the proposal with which he had so honored