“Explain.” Ignoring them both, I spoke through numb lips. My voice shook as I looked up at Coco. “Please.”

She knelt beside us, face softening infinitesimally as she reached out to brush Lou’s forehead. “La Petite Larme reflects the truth. It cannot lie.”

“How?”

“I told you. Its mirror came from a drop of L’Eau Mélancolique. The waters have magical properties. Sometimes they heal, sometimes they harm.” She glanced back at the open door, craning her neck to see beyond it. The sun had fully risen now. We’d run out of time. “But they always tell the truth.”

I shook my head in a slow, disoriented movement, even as the villagers’ voices grew louder. They’d round the bend at any second. “No. I mean how is she—how is she inside of—” But I couldn’t finish the question. My throat closed up around the words. I dropped my gaze back to Lou. To the blisters on her lips. Self-loathing churned in my stomach. I hadn’t noticed. How could I not have noticed?

“There’s a spell in my aunt’s grimoire,” Coco explained quickly. Individual voices could be heard now. Individual words. She renewed her efforts to pull me to my feet. “A spell of possession. Old magic.” Possession. I closed my eyes as Coco’s voice darkened. “My aunt betrayed us.”

“But why? We promised her the Chateau—”

“Perhaps Morgane did too.”

“A little help here?” Beau panted. My eyes snapped open as Célie darted to join him.

“But it makes no sense,” I insisted, voice hardening. “Why would she ally with the witch who’s abused your coven at every turn?”

Hinges shrieked as Beau and Célie finally managed to open the trapdoor. The voices outside grew louder in response. Purposeful. Agitated. When neither Coco nor I moved, Beau waved animatedly toward the earthen tunnel. “Shall we?”

Coco hesitated only a second more before nodding. Célie hesitated longer.

“Are we sure this is safe?” She peered into the dark hole with palpable panic. Twin circles of white surrounded her irises. “The last time—”

But Coco caught her elbow as she passed, and the two vanished into the tunnel together. Beau abandoned the trapdoor—it fell open fully with a thunderous crack of wood on wood—to help Thierry navigate the room. The latter’s entire chest heaved with each breath. Each step. His body was failing. That much was clear. After passing him to Coco, Beau finally turned to me. “Time to go.”

“But Lou—”

“Will die if we stay here. The villagers are going to raze this place to the ground.” He extended a hand. “Come on, little brother. We can’t help her if we’re dead.”

He had a point. I gathered Lou in my arms and followed.

Beau slipped in behind us, clumsily maneuvering an arm through the gap between door and floor to wrench the bed back in place. He cursed, low and vicious, when the door slammed shut on his fingers. Footsteps thundered overhead not a second later. We didn’t linger, racing after the others without another word.

The tunnel let out about a mile down the cliff’s face, where a rocky path led to the beach. Black sand glittered in the early morning light, and the rocks of Fée Tombe leered down at us, macabre and unnatural. Like sentient beings. I shuddered and laid Lou’s body across the sand, careful to remain in the shadow of the cliffs. If any villager thought to glance below for their cauchemar, they wouldn’t see us here. Wouldn’t descend with their torches and pitchforks.

I whirled to face Coco, who’d extracted a vial of honey from her pack. She fed it to Thierry carefully before lifting her forearm to his lips. He swallowed once, twice, and the contusions on his face immediately began to fade. With a shuddering sigh, he collapsed back against the rocks. Lost consciousness within seconds.

But he would be fine. He would heal.

Lou would too.

“Fix her.” My word brooked no argument. “You have to fix her.”

Coco glanced at Lou before bending to rifle in her pack, her face a mask of calm. Her eyes remained tight, however. Her jaw taut. “There is no fixing her. She’s possessed, Reid. Nicholina has—”

“So cast Nicholina out!” I roared, my own mask exploding in a wave of fury. Of helplessness. When Coco jerked upright, glaring at me in silent rebuke, I clenched my head in my hands. Fisted my hair, pulled it, tore it, anything to combat the fierce ache in my chest. Shame colored my cheeks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. Just—please. Cast Nicholina out. Please.”

“It isn’t that simple.”

“Yes, it is.” Desperation laced my voice now. I dropped my hands, pivoted sharply on my heel. Paced. Back and forth. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. Faster and faster, my footsteps carved a jagged path in the sand. “In the book of Mark, Jesus cast demons into a herd of six thousand pigs—”

“This isn’t the Bible, Nicholina isn’t a demon, and I’m not the son of fucking God.” She splayed her hands, facade cracking just slightly, and gestured to the sand and waves around us. “Do you see any pigs?”

I spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m saying there’s a way to remove her. We just have to find it.”

“And what happened to the possessed after Jesus cleansed them?”

“Don’t be stupid. They were healed.”

“Were they?” Her eyes flashed, and she tore a vial of blood from her pack. “The human body isn’t meant to house more than one soul, Reid.”

I spun to face her, my own hands flying upward. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying this doesn’t end the way we want it to end,” she snapped. “I’m saying even if we miraculously manage to evict Nicholina, Lou won’t be the same. To have touched another soul so intimately—not just in a sonnet or some other bullshit symbolic way, but to have actually touched another soul, to have shared the same body—I don’t know if Lou’s will survive intact.”

“You mean—her soul could be—”

“Fragmented. Yes.” She marched forward, dropping to her knees beside Lou with more force than necessary. Black sand sprayed in Lou’s pale hair. I mirrored her movements on Lou’s other side, sweeping the sand away. “Part of it might go with Nicholina. All of it might go with Nicholina. Or”—she uncorked the vial, and the acrid stench of blood magic assaulted my senses—“Lou could already be gone. She was in a bad way. Nicholina wouldn’t have been able to possess her otherwise. Her spirit was weak. Broken. If we force Nicholina out, Lou might . . .” She took a ragged breath. “She might be an empty shell.”