Reid stepped forward, fists clenched. “Let go, madame.”

She only clutched me tighter. Faster than she could react, Reid pried away her fingers forcibly. She flinched in pain, but continued on, undeterred, as Reid pulled me down the street. “Don’t take it off!” The panic in her eyes shone clear even from afar, even as her voice began to fade. “Whatever you do, don’t let her see!”

“What,” Reid snarled, his grip on my arm tighter than strictly necessary, “the hell was that about?”

I didn’t answer him. Couldn’t. My mind still reeled from Madame Labelle’s onslaught, but a sudden burst of clarity sliced through the haze of my thoughts. Madame Labelle was a witch. She had to be. Her interest in Angelica’s Ring, her knowledge of its powers, of my mother, of me—there was no other explanation.

But the revelation brought more questions than answers. I couldn’t focus on them—couldn’t focus on anything but the raw, debilitating fear that clawed up my throat, the clammy sweat that seeped across my skin. My gaze darted around us, and an involuntary shiver swept through me. Reid was saying something, but I didn’t hear him. A dull roar had started in my ears.

My mother was in the city.

The Saint Nicolas Festival lost its charm on our return to Chasseur Tower. The evergreens stood less beautiful. The bonfire burned less bright. Even the food lost its allure, the overpowering smell of fish returning to choke me.

Reid assaulted me with questions the whole way. When he realized I had no answers to give, he fell silent. I couldn’t bring myself to apologize. It was all I could do to hide my trembling fingers, but I knew he saw them anyway.

She hasn’t found you.

She won’t find you.

I repeated the mantra over and over, but it did little to convince me.

Saint-Cécile soon rose up before us, and I breathed a sigh of relief. The sigh instantly turned to a shriek when something moved unexpectedly in the alley beside us.

Reid jerked me to him, but his face relaxed the next second. He expelled an exasperated breath. “It’s fine. Just a beggar.”

But it wasn’t just a beggar. Numbness crept through my limbs as I looked closer . . . and recognized the face that turned, the milky eyes that stared at me from the shadows.

Monsieur Bernard.

He crouched over a trash bin with bits of what looked like dead animal dangling from his mouth. His skin—once wet with his own blood—had deepened to pitch black, the lines of his body hazy somehow. Blurred. As if he’d become a living, breathing shadow.

“Oh my god,” I breathed.

Reid’s eyes widened. He pushed me behind him, drawing his Balisarda from the bandolier beneath his coat. “Stay back—”

“No!” I ducked under his arm and threw myself in front of his knife. “Leave him alone! He’s not hurting anyone!”

“Look at him, Lou—”

“He’s harmless!” I grappled with his arm. “Don’t touch him!”

“We can’t just leave him here—”

“Let me talk to him,” I pleaded. “Maybe he’ll come back to the Tower with me. I—I always visited him in the infirmary. Maybe he’ll listen to me.”

Reid looked between the two of us anxiously. After a long second, his face hardened. “Stay close. If he moves to harm you, get behind me. Do you understand?”

I would’ve rolled my eyes had I not been so terrified. “I can handle myself, Reid.”

He grabbed my hand and crushed it to his chest. “I have a blade that cuts through magic. Do you understand?”

I swallowed hard and nodded.

Bernie watched us approach with utterly empty eyes. “Bernie?” I smiled encouragingly, keenly aware of Andre’s knife in my boot. “Bernie, do you remember me?”

Nothing.

I reached out to him, and something flickered behind his vacant eyes when my fingers brushed his skin. Without warning, he lunged over the trash bin toward me. I yelped and stumbled backward, but he held my hand in a vise-like grip. A terrifying leer split his face. “I’m coming for you, darling.”

Pure, unadulterated fear snaked down my spine. Paralyzing me.

I’m coming for you, darling . . . darling . . . darling . . .

Reid pulled me backward with a snarl, twisting Bernie’s wrist with brutal force. His blackened fingers splayed, and I managed to snatch my hand away. As soon as our contact ceased, Bernie fell limp once more—like a marionette with cut strings.

Reid stabbed him anyway.

When the Balisarda pierced his chest, the shadows enveloping his skin melted away into nothingness, revealing the true Monsieur Bernard for the first time.

Bile rose in my throat as I took in his paper-thin skin, the white of his hair, the laugh lines around his mouth. Only his milky eyes remained the same. Blind. He gasped and spluttered as blood—red this time, clean and untainted—bloomed from his chest. I fell to my knees beside him, taking his hands in my own. Tears ran freely down my face. “I’m so sorry, Bernie.”

His eyes turned to me one last time. Then closed.

The covered wagons of Ye Olde Sisters gathered outside the church, but I hardly saw them. Moving as if in another’s body, I floated silently above the crowd.

Bernie was dead. Worse—he’d been enchanted by my mother.

I’m coming for you, darling.

The words echoed in my thoughts. Over and over and over again. Unmistakable.

I shivered, recalling the way Bernie had reanimated at my touch. The way he’d watched me so closely in the infirmary. I’d foolishly thought he’d wanted to end his pain when he’d tried to jump from the infirmary window. But his escape . . . Madame Labelle’s warning . . .

The timing couldn’t have been coincidence. He’d been trying to go to my mother.

Reid said nothing as we walked to our room. Bernie’s death seemed to have similarly shaken him. His golden skin had turned ashen, and his hands shook slightly as he pushed open our bedroom door. Death. It followed wherever I went, touching everyone and everything dear to me. It seemed I couldn’t outrun it. Couldn’t hide. This nightmare would never end.

When he closed the door firmly behind us, I tore off my new cloak and bloody dress, flinging Andre’s knife into the desk. Desperate to scrub away all memory of blood on my skin. The knife wouldn’t protect me, anyway. Not from her. Pulling a fresh dress over my head, I tried and failed to hide my trembling fingers. Reid’s mouth pressed into a thin line as he watched me, and I knew from the tense silence stretching between us that he’d give me no respite.