“She has spies everywhere,” I whispered.

“Yes.” La Voisin nodded, moving around the table. I fought to remain still. I would not flee. I would not cower. “Yes, she does.” When she stood only a hair’s breadth from my shoulder, she stopped, staring down at me. “I warned Coco against her friendship with you. She knew I disliked you. She was always so careful to protect you from me, never revealing even a scrap of information about your whereabouts.” Tilting her head, she considered me with predatory focus. “When she heard of your marriage to the Chasseur, she panicked. It made her careless. Reckless. We followed her trail back to Cesarine, and lo and behold—there you were. After two years of searching, we had found you.”

I swallowed hard. “We?”

“Yes, Louise. We.”

I bolted then, but Nicholina flashed in front of the door. In a sickeningly familiar movement, she pushed me into the wall, yanking my hands above my head with inhuman strength. When I smashed my forehead into her nose, she simply leaned closer, inhaling against the skin of my neck. Her blood sizzled against my skin, and I screamed. “Reid! REID! COCO!”

“They can’t hear you.” La Voisin flipped through the pages of her grimoire. “We’ve enchanted the door.”

I watched, horrified, as Nicholina’s nose shifted back into place. “It’s the mice,” she breathed, grinning like a fiend. “The mice, the mice, the mice. They keep us young, keep us strong.”

“What the hell are you always talking about? Do you eat mice?”

“Don’t be silly.” She giggled and brushed her nose against mine. Her blood continued to boil my face. I thrashed away from her—from the pain—but she held strong. “We eat hearts.”

“Oh my god.” I retched violently, gasping for breath. “Gaby was right. You eat your dead.”

La Voisin didn’t look up from her grimoire. “Just their hearts. The heart is the core of a blood witch’s power, and it lives on after one dies. The dead have no need for magic. We do.” She pulled a bundle of herbs from her cloak next, setting each beside her grimoire and calling them by name. “Bayberry for illusion, eyebright for control, and belladonna”—she lifted the dried leaves to inspect them—“for spiritual projection.”

Spiritual projection.

What was the book in your aunt’s tent?

Her grimoire.

Do you know what’s in it?

Curses, possession, sickness, and the like. Only a fool would cross my aunt.

Oh shit.

“Fang of an adder,” Nicholina chanted, still leering at me. “Eye of an owl.”

La Voisin set to crushing the herbs, the fang, the eye into powder on the table.

“Why are you doing this?” I kneed Nicholina in the stomach, but she pressed closer, laughing. “I agreed to help you. We want the same things, we want—”

“You are easier to kill than Morgane. Though the plan was to deliver you to La Mascarade de Crânes, we are flexible. We will deliver you to Chateau le Blanc instead.”

I watched in horror as she slit her wrist open, as her blood poured into a goblet. When she added the powder, a plume of black smoke curled from the foul liquid. “So kill me, then,” I choked. “Don’t—don’t do this. Please.”

“By decree of the Goddess, Morgane can no longer hunt you. She cannot force you to do anything against your will. You must go to her willingly. You must sacrifice yourself willingly. I would simply feed you my blood to assume control, but the pure, unadulterated blood of an enemy kills.” She gestured to Nicholina’s blood on my face, to my ravaged skin. “Fortunately, I have an alternate solution. It’s all thanks to you, Louise. The rules of old magic are absolute. An impure spirit such as Nicholina’s cannot touch a pure one. This darkness in your heart . . . it calls to us.”

Nicholina tapped my nose. “Pretty mouse. We shall taste your huntsman. We shall have our kiss.”

I bared my teeth at her. “You won’t.”

She cackled as La Voisin crossed the room to lift the goblet to her lips. Drinking greedily, she relaxed her hands, and I bucked away from her, lunging for the door—

La Voisin caught my injured wrist. I arched away, screaming—screaming for Reid, for Coco, for anyone—but she caught my hair and forced my head back. My mouth open. When the black liquid touched my lips, I collapsed and saw no more.

..................................................................

Evil Seeks a Foothold

Reid

Deveraux’s face was unusually grim as he sat down across the table in Léviathan. At least it was human. The Woodwose’s face had been . . . unsettling. I shook my head, staring into my tankard of beer. It’d gone flat an hour ago. Jean Luc brought me another one. “Drink up. I have to leave soon. The king wants us in the catacombs within the hour.”

“What will you tell him?” Deveraux asked.

“The truth.” He chugged his own tankard before nodding to Beau, who’d draped an arm around Coco at the next table. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, and she turned a glass of wine in her hand without seeing it. Beau coaxed her into taking a sip. “He’s already after all of you,” Jean Luc continued. “This changes nothing.”

Deveraux frowned. “And your men? They won’t reveal your involvement?”

“Which was what, exactly?” Jean Luc’s eyes narrowed. “I took advantage of a poor situation to rescue the daughter of an aristocrat.” He plunked his glass on the table and stood, straightening his coat. “Make no mistake—we are not allies. If you aren’t gone by the time I return, I will arrest all of you, and I will lose no sleep tonight.”

Deveraux looked down to conceal his grin. “Why not now? We are here. You are here.”

Jean Luc scowled, leaning closer and lowering his voice. “Do not make me regret this, old man. After what I saw down there, I could see you burned. It is the fate that awaits every witch. You are no different.”

“After what you saw down there,” Deveraux mused, still examining his fingernails, “I assume you have many questions.” When Jean Luc opened his mouth to argue, Deveraux spoke over him. “Your men certainly will. Make no mistake. Are you prepared to answer them? Are you prepared to paint us all with the same stroke as Morgane?”

“I—”

“Louise risked her life to save an innocent young woman last night, and she paid dearly for it.”

As one, they turned to look at Célie. She sat beside me at the table, pale and trembling. She hadn’t spoken since we’d left La Mascarade de Crânes. When I’d kindly suggested she return home, she’d broken down in tears. I hadn’t mentioned it since. Still, I didn’t know what to do with her. She couldn’t stay with us. Her parents must’ve been worried sick, and even if they weren’t . . . the road ahead would be dangerous. It was no place for someone like Célie.

She blushed under Deveraux’s and Jean Luc’s gazes, folding her hands in her lap. Dirt still stained her mourning dress. And something else. Something—putrid.