was!” She set the fabric rose down. “Who can say if magic made your pamphlets compelling. Maybe yes, maybe no. Or perhaps it was just you.”
“You’re defending magic?” she said, incredulous.
Sophie shrugged. “Mostly I’m defending you. I am proud of you, you know. And I have become much fonder of magical things of late.”
Slowly, inside her, Camille felt a tide changing. It was true that Papa had raised her to think magic was wrong. She had only to think back to her memory of the fight over The Silver Leaf. But as she’d done with the pamphlets, she’d confused his beliefs for her own. And she’d done it because magic was hard and big and unpredictable. “But this magic—it’s like a terrible fever.”
“Like love?”
“Don’t tease, Sophie.” But perhaps it was like that. “I’m so angry at what he said, but at the same time, I cannot lose him.”
“You won’t. Both of you feel so much. Naturally you will have strong opinions and get confused.”
Camille smoothed the scrap of white silk. “I fear it may be more than a confusion this time.”
“Wherever there is love, there is a way forward.”
“You are a hopeless romantic.”
“An absolutely correct romantic,” Sophie countered.
“When did you become so wise?” Camille asked, wonder in her voice. “Why did I not come to you first?”
“That,” Sophie said, “I have no answer for.” She got to her feet and pulled Camille up with her. Around her ankles, white feathers drifted and banked.
“Please tell me you’re not going to stop the performances,” Camille said.
“Never. Rosier hasn’t given up hope, and neither have I. We will do something.” Thoughtfully, she tucked the organza rose she’d made into the collar of the princess’s gown. “Are you feeling a little better now?”
“I am, thank you.”
“Then you must tell me what is happening with Odette!” she exclaimed. “Adèle was here moments before you arrived, brimming with gossip but very few details.”
Camille worried at the edge of her fingernail. She’d always tried to keep worrisome things from Sophie, but she realized now that there was no need: Sophie understood. In a rush, Camille told her almost everything: about the magic blur they’d been searching for, the valise of tears and how she’d used the blur to spy on Odette, who had tried to rally the girls against her, and that Blaise had found the book the magicians needed. “She even spied on us! It was very satisfying to have Daumier throw her out.”
She left out that she still had no answers to her own magic—and that because Odette had been thrown out of the house didn’t mean she was gone.
Sophie clapped her hands. “But that’s fantastic! I hated the way she snuck about the house, peering at every object as if she were thinking of buying it. This is shaping up to be a fantastic day. Minus the part about Lazare, of course.”
“You’re even pleased about these magical things?”
“It’s true, I never used to be. But this means your friends will be safe. And so will you.” Her lips twitched. “Besides, there are other exciting things afoot.”
“Such as?”
A laugh bubbled merrily out of Sophie before she could clap her hand over her mouth.
“What is it? Won’t you tell me, even to cheer me up?”
“I am sworn to secrecy.”
“Come, have you changed your mind about d’Auvernay? Or is it something to do with Les Merveilleux?”
Sophie shook her head so that her earrings danced. “Hélas, I cannot say! I’m going to have to leave you now or you will have it out of me and then I shall be in terrible trouble.”
“But when?”
“Tonight,” she promised. “Let’s go out and celebrate the discovery of the magic book, Odette being gone, and even those gruesome vials, if you wish—and then I will tell you.”
* * *
In the last few days, it had grown unusually cold. Fronds of frost etched the windowpanes, and tonight, as the sun sank and the shadows came on, the air tasted of snow. Camille was to meet Sophie in less than an hour at a little restaurant they liked on the Île de la Cité called Aux Deux Sœurs. It wasn’t one of the revolutionary cafés electric with conversation and arguments, but instead a quiet cozy place with good food and lanterns in the shape of stars.
In her dressing room, she searched for a warmer cloak. As she was rifling through a particularly deep drawer, her fingers brushed against a bundle wrapped in thin paper.