“The crypts should be just past the eastern tunnel,” Beau whispered.

“Why are you whispering?” Despite her objection, Coco whispered too. “And which direction is that?”

“East.”

“Left or right, jackass?”

“Cosette,” Beau said in mock surprise, “do you not know your—?”

A sudden wind doused the torch, plunging us into absolute darkness. Panicked voices rose. Swiftly, I reached for the wall, but it wasn’t where it should’ve been. It wasn’t there. “What the hell is going on?” Beau cried, but Liana interrupted, cursing violently.

“Something just cut me. Someone—”

Nicholina’s scream splintered the tunnel.

“Nicholina.” La Voisin’s voice pitched high and sharp. My own throat felt tight. When I brushed wool in front of me—Jean Luc’s coat—his fingers seized my arm and held on. “Nicholina, where are you?”

“Everyone stay calm,” Deveraux commanded. “There is strange magic here. It plays tricks—”

The torch sprang back to life abruptly.

Blood spattered the tunnel floor. A handful of panicked faces blinked back at me in the light. Too few. Far too few.

“Where is Nicholina?” La Voisin seized Blaise’s coat and slammed him against the wall, baring her teeth. I’d never seen her exhibit such uncontrolled emotion. Such fear. “Where is she?”

Blaise shoved her away with a snap of his teeth, charging down the tunnel and shouting for Liana and Terrance. A quick glance confirmed they too had vanished—along with the majority of blood witches. I searched the remaining faces, weak with relief when Beau and Coco nodded back at me, clutching each other. With a start, I realized Jean Luc still held my arm. He released me at the same instant.

Deveraux’s face was drawn. “Thierry has disappeared as well.”

“I swear I saw—” Toulouse started, but the torch extinguished again. His voice went with it. Forcibly. When Deveraux called after him, he didn’t answer. Blaise’s snarls echoed through the narrow tunnel, amplifying, heightening our frenzy, and something—something snarled back. La Voisin shouted, but I couldn’t hear over the blood roaring in my ears, my own shouts for Beau and Coco—

Then she and Deveraux went silent too.

Forcing myself to focus, I summoned the patterns. Sifted through them on instinct, discarded them at the slightest touch. I needed fire. Not as a weapon. As light. Anger, hatred, bitter words—they’d all provide the expedient. I cast them aside without hesitation, searching for that single spark of energy. Something simple. Something . . . physical?

There.

I chafed my palms together—just once, with just enough pressure. Heat sparked. A flame flickered to life, illuminating the newfound blister on my finger. Like I’d rubbed actual kindling instead of skin. The air took care of the rest, and the fire grew in my hand.

Only Beau, Coco, Blaise, and Jean Luc remained in the tunnel with me.

The latter stared at the fire with an inscrutable expression. He hadn’t seen it yet. My magic.

“They’re gone.” Beau loosened his grip on Coco, face pale. “They’re just gone.” He glanced up and down the tunnel with wide eyes, hesitating at the blood by our feet. “What do we do?”

Jean Luc answered for me, relighting his torch with my fire. Turning to the eastern tunnel. “We continue.”

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

Paradise Lost

Lou

Torches lined the earthen passages, casting the faces of passersby in shadow. Fortunately, few wandered this part, and those who did walked purposefully toward something—La Mascarade de Crânes, if their jewel-toned masks were any indication. They took the left-hand tunnels. On a whim, I took the right. The floors sloped gradually at first—the stone below smooth and slippery from the tread of many feet—before dipping unexpectedly. I stumbled, and a man lurched from the shadows, knocking into me and clutching my shoulders. I let out an undignified squeak.

“Where’s your mask, pretty lady?” he slurred, his breath nearly burning the hair from my nose. His own mask covered the upper part of his face, jutting out in a cruel black beak. A crow. In the center of his forehead, a third eye stared down at me. It couldn’t have been coincidence.

And I swore it just blinked.

Scowling—face hot with embarrassment, shoulders tense with unease—I pushed him away. “I’m already wearing one. Can’t you tell?” I resisted the urge to flick my wrist, to lengthen my nails into razor-edged knives and score the porcelain at his cheek. Though the magic to lock Reid out physically had also locked him out emotionally—temporarily, until I lifted the pattern—I still heard his voice within my mind, if not my heart. I needn’t harm this man. I needn’t harm myself. Forcing a wicked grin instead, I whispered, “It’s the skin of my enemies. Shall I add yours?”

He yelped and scrambled away.

Exhaling hard, I continued.

The tunnels wound in a labyrinth of stone. I wandered them in silence for several more minutes, my heart pounding a wild beat in my chest. It grew louder with each step. I walked faster, the hair on my neck lifting. Someone watched me. I could feel it. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I breathed, hoping to bolster myself.

At my words, however, a strange wind rose in the tunnel, blowing out the torches and plunging me into darkness. Familiar laughter echoed from everywhere at once. Cursing, I grappled for my knife and tried to find a wall, tried to anchor myself in this insidious darkness—

When my fingertips brushed stone, the torchlight sprang back to life.

A flash of white hair disappeared around the bend.

I tore after it like a fool, unwilling to be caught alone in that darkness again, but it was gone. I kept running. When I burst into a long, shadowed room lined with coffins, I stopped short, panting and examining the nearest one in relief. “Father Lionnel Clément,” I said, reading the faded name scratched into the stone. A yellow skull sat on a ledge above it. I glanced at the next name. Father Jacque Fontaine. “Clergymen.”

I crept forward, pausing every so often to listen.

“Célie?” Though soft, my voice echoed unnaturally in the tomb. Unlike the absolute silence of the tunnels, this silence seemed to live and breathe, whispering against my neck, urging me to flee, flee, flee. I grew increasingly jumpy as the moments wore on, as the rooms grew in size. I didn’t know what to look for—didn’t know where even to start. Célie could’ve been in any one of these caskets, unconscious or worse, and I never would’ve known. Still . . . I couldn’t shake the feeling Morgane wanted me to find Célie. There was less fun in a game I had no chance of winning. Morgane wouldn’t have liked that. She wouldn’t have just chosen an arbitrary grave, either. Her games were methodical, every move striking hard and true. Her notes had led me this far, each phrase a riddle, a clue, leading me deeper into her game.

Forlorn within her pall . . . alone but not alone.

Trapped within a mirrored grave, she wears a mask of bone.

It all pointed to here, now, this place. Only her use of the word mirrored made me pause.