of traveling, his talk about London, had already lost faith in it. Sophie, too. And her own Paris had become a shadowy, sinister place where being a magician was a death warrant. It was as if the darkness in the alleyways and broken courts of the city had risen, drawn together, and like a great hand, was closing around her throat.
Worry pinched at the edges of Sophie’s blue eyes. “What are you thinking about, Camille?”
“Blaise. And Paris.”
“You are not going to write about this.”
Anger tensed her neck, her jaw. Steady, she told herself. “Am I not?”
“We need to think of how to protect you and the other magicians, not draw more attention—”
“Does not this murder draw attention to magic?” Despite herself, her frustration grew. “What is the point of living—in believing in something—if I do nothing? If I hide in this house, afraid? I could have saved his life, Sophie!”
“Don’t be reckless,” she pleaded. “You will put yourself in danger!”
Camille’s fingers clenched the coverlet bunched in her hands. “If I wait, and keep quiet, what will happen? Who will I be?” What was it Lazare had said? I can’t live with myself if I don’t take the Cazalès. Now she felt the power of that conviction burning within herself.
Tears stood in Sophie’s eyes. “I know you loved your friend. At least wait a few days, until things calm down—”
“That will never happen unless we do something.” She flung back the bedclothes. “I can say I loved him, but what is love without action? Hollow, empty words! Talk is dirt-cheap, and it sickens me. Love must be proved.”
“But you’ll only make things worse!” Sophie insisted. “Unsafe!”
“There is nothing safe anymore,” she said grimly as she set her feet on the floor. “And I will not remain silent.”
* * *
Time was running out for magic. But with Blaise gone, how would they make the blur? There were barely enough vials in the valise to get them out of Paris, let alone all the way to England or Austria. She thought of setting a paper flare but wasn’t ready to call all the magicians together. Then she wrote a note to Chandon, only to tear it up.
Well past midnight, when every person in the house—but not the house itself—was asleep, she went down to the printing room. As she opened the double doors, a breeze, like a chill breath, caressed the side of her face.
“Blaise?”
She stilled, remembering how, after her parents had died, she thought she sensed them in any darkened room. That they were not so far away. There were many times she’d whispered their names into the gloom, and waited, not wanting to spark a light and chase them away.
One more heartbeat. Two.
Nothing but the wind.
From embers in the hearth, she lit the sconces and the many-branched candelabras. Taper by taper, the room came awake: the squared-off shape of the press, the long tables with their rustling papers, the ropes running along the ceiling like paths on a map. It was all hers. She had never thought of it like that before.
What was it Blaise had said?
You cannot bleed it out or cut it out … but you can decide what to do with it.
Not so long ago she’d believed that magic was something she could lock up in a box or a bottle and ignore. A part that could be separated from the rest. But it couldn’t. She thought of lace, or a web—pulling away one part destroys the whole.
Magic is only a curse if you think it so.
She’d feared that the magic had crawled inside of her and taken up residence in her body, like sickly poison thickening in her veins. Taking her over, making her into something she did not wish to be. How had she forgotten that there was power—rich and dangerous—in it? In herself?
The power had always been a part of her. Like her freckles, the red of her hair. Perhaps the magic that glittered through her had given life to the house, steeped as it was with enchantments. As she had slept in its rooms and printed her pamphlets and eaten food cooked in its kitchen, keeping it alive, the house had—perhaps—also given her something.
Before Blaise was murdered, she’d been afraid of being exposed. It could have almost as easily been me. But she was finished with being small. With being safe. Now she was going to strike back.
Pulling the case toward her, she picked out a few letters. They were warm in her hand.