See it for yourself.” Odette’s eyes gleamed with persuasive cunning. “There are rooms in her house that are locked, that I cannot get into. I need evidence. Come with me, Claudine, pick the locks and I will show you—”
Prove what? And the terrifying question, its slow dark tug like an ebb tide: Who have I let into my house?
Camille backed out the door.
Hurry.
The girls were still arguing. “And even if it was true,” Giselle interrupted, “what of it? She has been good to us!”
“It’s nothing but pretend,” Odette sneered. “When you learn what she has done, come to me. I’ll still be here. I’ll still be your friend.”
And then, like a cold intake of breath, the last of the blur dissolved and the hard edges of her own world came into sharp focus once more. Fatigue crept into her lead-heavy limbs. Her skin crawled as if a thousand pins pricked her. The magie-sickness was coming, and she had to get away.
Odette pulled Camille’s cloak close around her and swept out of the cottage and up the bank. Camille watched her go. If she could return to the Hôtel Séguin before Odette, she could lock her out. The house would protect her and Sophie.
A barge clanged its bell, and the girls paused to listen.
Now.
Forcing her unsteady legs to carry her, she moved as fast as she could along the muddy shore. The ache, the disorientation, all of it was worse than what she’d felt when she’d worked the glamoire. Each heavy step took an eternity. Finally, she reached a chestnut tree by the riverbank. She clung to it, gasping as her breath rattled in her throat. Above her, the branches of the tree made a heavy shadow. She wondered if she could nestle beneath it, like the time she’d played cache-cache in the gardens of Versailles. A yew hedge like cut velvet under the distant stars. Lazare emerging from the trees to catch her. His smile, gleaming in the dark. What had she done, letting him leave her? She had broken everything.
She was so weary. Another step, and she would hide until she was well enough to get home.
But she never reached it.
34
Camille stood on a high bluff. Below was a silver-tongued sea, storm clouds above. The air crackled with thunder. Lightning split, revealing high white cliffs and a balloon, sailing across the water.
It was losing altitude.
Closer and closer it came to the water that roiled with the tentacles of sea monsters. Distantly she saw Lazare putting on a cork vest as the balloon plunged into the waves. Could he not see the creatures?
Around her hips hung a brace of pistols. She unbuckled them and tossed them out over the sea: Catch them! They sailed out—so far, so impossibly far—before plunging into the water just out of Lazare’s reach. A sickly white tentacle slithered into the gondola. Lazare didn’t see it as he reached for the sinking guns.
Why hadn’t she shot the sea creatures instead of throwing the pistols?
“What’s happening?” asked a soft voice.
Hands held her, and she struggled against them. “He’s fallen into the sea!”
“What sea?”
“Tell him to stay in Dover, or else he will be lost!”
“Hush,” said the voice. “You’re only dreaming.”
Slowly, painfully, she opened her eyes. Giselle’s worried face hovered over her. The tense conversation by the fire came back to her, and she scrambled to her elbows. Her head swam. She did not feel wholly there. “Where is Odette?”
“You were outside?” Giselle gasped. “You heard what she said?”
The blur’s fog still hung at the edge of her mind. It was hard to remember. “She believes I’m hurting the revolution. Hurting you.”
“I hate her,” Giselle said fiercely. “We don’t believe her. At least, I don’t—”
It didn’t matter, not now. “Help pull me up,” she said, and together, they stood. The river tilted uneasily behind her. “I must go home.”
“Should I walk with you? You don’t seem at all like yourself, Camille—”
“It’s nothing, mon amie. It will pass.” I hope. She was grateful for Giselle’s kindness, but she had to hurry, to prevent Odette from getting inside the house. “Thank you for believing in me.” And then she was in the street, stumbling at first but slowly finding her feet here, on the Quai des Ormes, and not there, in the cold room where her mother told her she was strong, running until the steady rhythm of her pumping legs carried her home.
* * *
As she burst into the entry, Camille surprised Adèle, who was changing the flowers in