Sebastian slammed the book down on the polished wood table in the dining room, as mad as I was but for completely different reasons. He might not know it, but it wasn’t a real blow to him that the book was blank—we’d never really needed it to save Lucien. The foxglove effects would wear off soon and Lucien would wake, a bit groggy and with a sour tummy. I’d been counting on the book, and it had let me down. All I saw over and over again was the blankness of the white paper. It didn’t feel real, couldn’t be real. I wouldn’t let it. Everything I’d done, all that I’d come here for, all my hope, smashed in the time it took me to flip to the front page.
There was no other clue to what had happened to Ama. All I had were the villagers’ whispers and superstitions and my own assumptions about the book, and all that was slipping through my fingers like wisps of smoke. Now what? How could I help my sister? All of us? What could I do?
“I don’t understand, I’ve seen Maman’s writing on these pages before!” Sebastian said.
“Perhaps you were mistaken,” I said.
I was numb. I slumped against the table, no longer wanting to hold myself up.
“Marie?” Sebastian cupped his hand around my shoulder. “We’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way.” Nothing else, no other direction to turn.
“There is, of course there is. We’ll use your poultices and teas.”
Sebastian wasn’t making sense. There was no tea in the world that could stop Ama from becoming a beast.
“It won’t work.”
“Why are you saying that? You told me before you could save him! Marie!”
Sebastian’s face snapped into focus. Lucien. Lucien. Not Ama. He didn’t know anything about Ama.
“We . . . we will. I’ll just need to think, just combine a poultice for phlegm and one for clear breathing and—” I pushed my hair out of my face.
“Marie, stop.” He took my hand in his and rubbed my palm with one of his fingers.
My tongue stuck to the roof of my dry mouth. I had to swallow twice before I could speak again.
“I’m just trying to figure out what to do.”
“I know, but you’re breathing too quickly.”
“Oh.”
This always happened to me when there was just too much in my mind. When I was little, Papa taught me to count out my breaths to slow them down. One, two, three, four, five. It was one of the few things he’d ever given me—a way to manage through the chaos and the pain.
“Master Sebastian.”
Madame Écrue came through the dining room door holding a silver tray piled with letters. I tried to spot Ama’s handwriting on the front of one of them, but I was too far away to recognize any familiar spiky letters.
“I don’t want the mail now, Madame. Did Lucien settle when you brought him to bed? Is he sleeping?”
The woman nodded her head. “He’s sleeping yes, no coughing, or bringing up, or anything right now.”
Sebastian ran a hand over his face before dropping into one of the dining chairs. “Thank God.”
“He’s not out of the woods yet,” said Madame Écrue.
“I know. I’m not getting ahead of myself; I’m just happy for this moment,” Sebastian said.
He surprised me with how he reasoned while his brother was, as far as he knew, ailing in bed. I wanted to be able to find the little slivers of good lodged with the bad like that, but I wasn’t really that kind of person.
“You should read this.” Madame Écrue reached for the top letter on the pile and passed it to Sebastian. A little whiff of lavender reached my nose. She was wearing the perfume we’d made.
“The courier told me what’s in it,” she went on. “But I didn’t want to open it for you.”
Sebastian took the letter from her with a question in his eyes. “What—”
“Just open it.”
He did. His eyes flicked across the page of script, and the color drained from his cheeks.
“No,” he whispered, and let the letter fall out of his hand onto the floor. “There’s been another killing. The beast is roaming the forest . . . it’s not safe to let people . . . children . . . go in there.”
“Another killing?” I whispered.
A chill wound through my body. I’d thought I had more time. There was always at least a month between Ama’s transformations, so there should have been a few days left. If this was her, if my sister was really killing people I didn’t mark for her, she was changing much more often. The thought of that was terrifying. How could I mark enough victims for her then? I had nothing here, no spells, no hope of a cure. How was I supposed to help her?
“Who died?” I asked him.
“The Carters’ boy,” Sebastian said.
I searched my memory—he was twelve, thirteen maybe. All the promises of life stripped away by Ama’s sharp teeth. This was my fault. I had to get home and mark her victims again, stop her from killing children. But that would only be a temporary fix. I’d need to come back and find the spell so I could cure her for good. I still needed Sebastian on my side.
“How terrible,” I said.
“Two young boys in as many months.” Sebastian ran a hand over his face again. “I’ll have to go into town and talk to Père Danil. The parents don’t have the coin for a burial.”
I nodded with a knot in my stomach.
“Marie, are you all right?” Sebastian took hold of my hand and eased me into a chair. My mouth worked but I couldn’t scrape the words out against my dry tongue.
The other letters were splayed on the silver platter and I could see none of them were for me. Ama hadn’t written back even though I’d begged her. Maybe she wasn’t answering me because she couldn’t. She might be turning when she shouldn’t be, killing people—children—who should have been out of reach.
“I’m coming with you, into town.”
“What? But Lucien needs you here; you need to nurse him!”
I gripped Sebastian’s chair and looked into his eyes so he could see the determination in mine.
“My sister is out there alone in a cottage at the edge of the woods and something is killing people. I need to make sure she’s safe. Then I’ll come back and take care of Lucien.”
He reached up and cupped my chin. I almost flinched from surprise, but it only took a moment for me to sink into the warmth of his hand. He didn’t know everything, but he knew I was worried for my sister and he cared, even though his own brother was sick in bed.
“All right, you can come with me.”
Madame Écrue tutted from where she stood near the hearth. “She should stay here and help with Lucien.”
“We’ll both be back soon,” Sebastian said, letting go of my chin.
“You’re bringing trouble on yourselves by going out there, you know. It’s safer in here,” she said.
“I’m not supposed to stay safe, Madame. I’m supposed to protect the estate.”
“Nobles,” Madame Écrue said after a moment, turning to leave. “Such ideals you all have.”
Her words may have been flippant, but her voice gave her away, and her tears.
Sebastian watched her go, then turned to face me. “What will you wear out there?”
I pulled my wool shawl tighter around my shoulders. “This is all I have.”
Sebastian stared at me a beat and shook his head. “Come with me.”