She laughed, her tone mocking and amused. “You really know nothing, do you?”

My cheeks burned. “I don’t recall saying otherwise.”

“I suppose not.” She pursed her lips. “The incantation – what you say – matters not. What matters is that your thoughts are focused on what you desire to occur. Some find it easier to focus their minds by speaking words. By making a ritual of the spell. Some don’t.”

“I see. And after you focus your thoughts, you…”

“Consign the hair, fingernail, or whatever it is you are using to the flames.”

I winced. That was going to be problematic. I’d only have one chance, and what if she wasn’t near a fire? Then I’d have lost her grimoire for nothing.

“Magic requires something to be given up,” Catherine said, as though reading my thoughts. “Only the dark arts require nothing from the practitioner, because blood magic is all about taking that which is not freely given. That’s why using blood for even one spell is a slippery slope.” Her hand slipped unconsciously into her pocket to retrieve the bottle of absinthe. “It always catches up to you in the end.”

As it had obviously caught up with her. Nibbling on the tip of one of my curls, I considered how to phrase my next question. “I’ve heard that you were once Lady Marie’s maid.”

Catherine’s face smoothed into the expressionless mask of someone trying to hide a reaction. “That’s no great secret.”

“Were you dismissed because she discovered you were a witch?”

She barked out a laugh. “Hardly. That was half the reason I was in her employ.”

I blinked, surprised to have my suspicions so easily confirmed. The Regent, or at the very least, Lady Marie, was apparently not as opposed to witchcraft as the laws would suggest. Which only cemented my belief that she was helping Anushka hide from the trolls. “I’m performing at her solstice party,” I said. “She’s shown an interest in me, and I was starting to become concerned that it was because she knew…” I trailed off when Catherine blanched.

“You must go now.” She leapt to her feet, knocking her chair onto its back.

“But I’ve only just arrived. You said you’d help me.”

“That was before I knew Marie was watching you.” Snatching hold of my arm, she hauled me with surprising strength to the front of the shop. “Don’t come back.”

“What is wrong?” I demanded, unwilling to leave with so many questions left unanswered. “What happened to cause her to turn on you?”

“I meddled in that which I should not,” she said, twisting the bolt and shoving me out before the door was half open. “I will not make the same mistake twice.”

The door slammed in my face, and I stood staring at it like a fool, trying to think of what I should do.

“Well, that didn’t go well.”

I whirled around in time to see Chris stepping out from the narrow space between the two buildings. “You were listening.”

He had the decency to look embarrassed. “The back door was unlocked.”

“Well, I suppose that saves me having to explain our conversation.” I followed him over to where Fleur was tethered.

“Catherine’s not going to help you, Cécile. She’s afraid.”

“I know.” I squinted up at the sky, judging the time. “But she’s got answers, so I’m going to have to think of a way to get her to talk.”

“Maybe not.” He held out his hand, revealing a mat of hair pinched between his fingers. “You’d think she’d know better than to leave a hairbrush laying around.”

“Christophe Girard, you are brilliant,” I breathed, taking the hair from him and carefully tucking it away in my pocket, mentally flipping through Anushka’s grimoire as I thought of ways to use it.

Glancing up, I saw that Chris’s face was tight and he was studiously examining his boots. “What’s wrong?”

“I took something else.”

I raised one eyebrow. “What else could you possibly have taken? I was in there for only a few minutes.”

He grimaced. “I took it before. When we were hiding in the cellar, I saw those books sitting on the table and I took one.”

My other eyebrow rose to join its mate. “You stole it?”

“I was going to put it back – that was the reason I snuck in. But then I heard her talking and I knew she wasn’t going to help, so…”

“So you kept it?” I struggled and failed to keep the eagerness from my voice. Part of me was annoyed that he hadn’t told me he’d taken it in the first place, but a larger part knew he wouldn’t have kept it from me without good reason.

“Here.” He extracted a small, well-worn book from inside his coat. “I couldn’t read much of it, but I recognized enough to know that it’s a nasty bit of work.”

Glancing surreptitiously around, I flipped through the pages. It was full of spells, blood magic. And the instructions were both graphic and specific. I swallowed hard, remembering what Catherine had said about this sort of magic: Using blood for even one spell can put any woman on a slippery slope, and – it always catches up to you in the end. I’d heard her warning, but when my eyes landed on a spell on a particularly dog-eared page, I knew I was going to disregard it.

Twenty

Tristan