My fingers stung when I knocked them against the thick wood of the front doors. Swirls and stars dipped and curled in the doorframe—carved inelegantly with rough, splintered edges. Fear had kept me from noticing them the first time I came here. Now, I ran my fingers along the frantic planes of a star and shivered when a sliver of wood slipped under my skin.
Whoever had scratched them into the wood had done so hastily. Perhaps the markings were part of a panicked protection spell—something to keep evil out. Or maybe to keep it in. Perhaps Sebastian’s mother had realized what she’d done to Ama and what Ama might do to her. This house guarded its own secrets.
A cold tingle crept up my spine at the thought of Madame LaClaire and what she’d been able to do without anyone else knowing.
Witches and magic were supposed to be nothing more than superstition, egged on by Père Danil to keep people turning to the church for protection. When I first came here, I’d thought—hoped—Sebastian’s mother had been a witch who cursed Ama because that might mean I’d find the cure within these walls. Now I truly believed she was a witch.
One of the double doors opened with a slow creak, and the afternoon light fell on half of Madame Écrue’s face.
“You came back.”
I nodded. “I told Sebastian I would.”
The old woman stared at me with her one good eye. I always thought her somewhat blind, but it was clear from the certainty of her gaze she could see.
“You came back for Sebastian or Lucien?”
Heat flared in my cheeks, but I answered honestly. “Both.”
“You helped him make my perfume, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but it was all his idea.”
The heart of the gift was all Sebastian, and I didn’t want to take any credit for it.
“Lucien’s not getting any better, you know,” she said.
I knew she meant he wasn’t getting better at all, not just from my dose of poison, but I chose to ignore that.
“He will.”
The woman’s sudden sadness, the tears in the corner of her eyes and the crumpling of her chin, was catching. My own eyes blurred with the promise of tears. I didn’t want Lucien to live like he was either.
“It’s harder, this slow weakening. With Mademoiselle, it was quick. She was here and then she was gone, and I didn’t have time to think about it.”
“Sebastian and Lucien’s mother?”
Madame Écrue nodded and waved me into the house. The door closed, blocking out some of the cold, but I still shivered.
“She left too soon. She had so much work to do.” Madame Écrue pushed her fingers into her lips like she wanted to stuff the words back into her mouth. Tears slid down her cheeks.
“What kind of work?” I asked.
“She wouldn’t ever tell me enough to understand. Never. She told me to look after the children and keep myself safe.”
She looked up at me then, as a child looks up at their mother—wide, pleading eyes. Asking for something. Forgiveness maybe.
“You did look after them.”
Her tears fell over the rims of her eyes and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. Powder smeared from her cheeks.
“Yes, but I didn’t look after her. She was tangled up with that woman and then she was gone.”
“What woman?”
Madame LaClaire’s elusive friend. She was important to all this; she had to be.
Madame Écrue pinched her apron in her fingers. “Mademoiselle never told me her name; she said it was better that way. She just called the woman ‘mon étoile.’”
My star. The woman in the portrait was someone very special to Madame LaClaire. If only I could figure out who she was.
“Did you ever wonder where she came from, Madame LaClaire’s friend?” I asked.
“I did, but it didn’t really matter. The boys had all my attention then.”
Lucien. I needed to make sure the poison was leaving his system as I expected it to.
“Let me see if I can make Lucien feel better now,” I said.
“I hope you can,” Madame Écrue said.
A few candles’ flames bobbed lazily in the hall, their glowing light reflecting back in the little round mirrors behind them. The now-familiar smell of dust and disuse rose from the patterned carpet with each step I took. Madame Écrue led the way up the stairs with slow, measured steps. At the landing, we turned left down a narrow corridor with dark paneled walls. One small window revealed a faint yellow glow as the clouds swallowed up the weak winter sun.
“Here,” the old woman said, and twisted a brass doorknob in her gnarled fingers. The door opened with a pop of swollen wood and I stepped inside.
Heavy, blue velvet curtains hung over windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, blocking the light and muffling the air. A wardrobe, swollen in the middle with gilded trim, stood proud against one wall. Pushed up along another wall was a four-poster bed with blue velvet hangings caught up by twisting ropes of gold. Sebastian leaned over Lucien, so I couldn’t see the boy’s face, but my palms were slicked with sweat. Lucien should have been sitting up by now, a little weak, maybe, but awake. Is the poison affecting him more strongly because he’s already ill?
As I walked in, Sebastian looked over his shoulder and I finally glimpsed Lucien’s face, white as the moon against the blackest night. He shouldn’t have looked that ill. Then someone else stepped out from around the bed curtains. Emméline.
My shock at seeing her here robbed me of my voice. She wasn’t supposed to be in Sebastian’s house, in Lucien’s room. Her braid fell over her shoulder as she bent closer to Sebastian and put a hand on his arm with an easy familiarity that caused a spike of jealousy to shoot down into my fingertips.
“He won’t wake up,” Sebastian said.
“Poor boy,” Emméline said. “What in the world happened to him?”
She looked up at me, staring daggers. She couldn’t know what I’d done, but still, she challenged me with her large, dark eyes. Even though I wanted her out of here, away from Sebastian and Lucien, I couldn’t help studying her. Hair plaited in an intricate design, slim-cut dress, flushed cheeks, broad shoulders. She fascinated me and I hated it.
How did she manage to look so in control? It seemed like nothing could break the shell she’d hardened around herself. I wished I could be like that. My insecurities were laid bare to the world every time my palms dampened or my expression revealed too much. I had to really try to hide it.
Emméline squeezed Sebastian’s shoulder and he spoke.
“You said you knew how to fix him, but he’s not getting any better,” he said.
He kept his back to me, which was worse than if he’d stared me down. I wanted his rage at least, anything but this cold indifference.
Lucien would get better. I’d put just the right amount of poison into the porridge. He was never supposed to be in any real danger.
“Did you make the chamomile tea I left in the kitchen?”
Not that the tea would make any real difference. Time was all that was needed here. Once the poison left his system, Lucien would be back to normal—well, his normal.
Sebastian gripped Lucien’s limp hand. “I did it just like you said and tipped the liquid down his throat an hour ago. He stirred for a moment, then fell back into sleep.”
“He’ll wake,” I said, but my certainty started to slip away. He should have been awake already. My sister always asked me things when we were little—why does the river flow that way, can birds understand each other when they sing, why did the blood drain from Maman’s body after they took the dead baby out? I wanted to have the answers for her, so I made things up. Maybe over time I’d come to believe my own fables. Maybe I didn’t always have the answers.
Sebastian stood with a creak of the ropes holding the mattress in place. Lucien’s smooth face gave away nothing—the only hint of life was a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, shining in the wavering candlelight.
Emméline barely moved out of the way. She positioned her body so her skirt pressed against Sebastian’s legs. He reached out absently for her hand.
“You should go, Emméline. Everything’s more urgent now and my offer still stands.”
“Good, because I intend to take you up on it,” Emméline said.
They were talking about the prize for killing my sister that Sebastian had been dangling in front of her. The whole exchange curdled my stomach. Even if I thought Ama could hold her own against Emméline—and I did—having a determined hunter after her scared me.
Sebastian gave her a smile but dropped her hand.
“I hope you do. I think you’re the only one who can help us.”
Emméline bowed her head, but she couldn’t completely hide her twisted smile from me. I watched her too closely. My eyes followed her until she stepped out of Lucien’s room and closed the door behind her. She’d never even greeted me, and that hurt—even though I shouldn’t care.
Now Sebastian finally met my eyes, and anger rolled off him like heat.
“You said he would be fine, and I believed you. I thought he’d be awake when I got home. I told you, you have to make him better!”
I swallowed my sadness and fear, and they burned down my throat, but I didn’t even blink under Sebastian’s gaze. I needed to regain his trust, so I’d have to tell him another lie.
“My sister is dead.”
Surprise flickered across his face and drew his eyebrows together. “What? But it was that seamstress . . . Vivienne, not your sister.”
“When I went home, there was fur and blood and Ama was gone.” That was true enough. The beast hadn’t killed Ama, but it had taken her. The only difference was, I could still get her back.
Sebastian’s hand never left Lucien’s. He gripped it as if he’d tether his brother to this world with his touch. It’s not that simple. Their spirits can still slip through your fingers, I wanted to say, but I didn’t.
I tried not to look at Lucien and his pale face lying against that white silk pillow. I didn’t like the sharp pang of guilt or the heavy sadness.
“Help me kill the beast,” I said. “I know how to do it.”
I laid the prize before him like bait—revenge on a silver platter. Once he snatched it, I’d rope him in. Only he didn’t know I’d never let him kill my sister. But I did need to catch her and strip the beast from her skin. For that, Sebastian and his mother’s spell book were essential. There was something more to the book than blank pages. There had to be. Lucien had seen writing on them. It was waiting for me to figure it out, to call up the letters and let them form themselves into spells. I wanted him to see the beast, scare him into action.
“The beast has ravaged our village long enough. I’m supposed to be the protector, right?” Sebastian said.
The protector. The innocent hero. The innocent. I understood, then, what Sebastian was after. He wanted the whispers that he’d killed his parents to end. He wanted the villagers to look him in the eye again without shuddering.
“You want to clear your name,” I said.
A grimace bared his teeth—sharp and a little yellowed from good wine. “I don’t enjoy being thought of as a murderer.”
“And do you think you’ll prove anything by having Emméline kill the beast? The villagers will still think what they want, and you won’t even get your revenge.”
The thought of Emméline stalking the woods, determined to kill, twisted my gut and put fire in my belly. If it came down to it, I wouldn’t let her hurt my sister—but what would I do to stop her from pulling the trigger? The answer flowed through my veins with every beat of my heart. Anything. Anything.
“It has to be us, Sebastian,” I said. “We’ve lost people to the monster’s teeth. We should be the ones to kill it.”
Sebastian brought Lucien’s limp hand to his cheek, eyes fluttering closed as a sob escaped his lips. I knew his pain, intimately. I wanted to throw my arms around him and hold him as he shook. I wanted to smooth Lucien’s hot cheeks with the back of my cool hand. But I could do neither. It wouldn’t be fair. I’d done this to them. I had no right to comfort.
“I can’t do anything while Lucien’s so sick,” Sebastian whispered.
“There’s nothing more you can do for him right now. Let him rest. He’ll come out of it.”
It was the truest thing I could say about Lucien’s poison-induced illness. He’d get better; it might just take more time than I thought. I could use that time wisely—get Sebastian to help me lure my sister out of the woods and lock her in the cellar until she turned back.
“You think if I’m the one who brings the beast’s body into town, the villagers will absolve me of my parents’ death?” Sebastian said. “That won’t be enough.”
I couldn’t let anyone kill Ama. I hardened my voice and spat out more lies like stones.
“I think they’ll see the beast for themselves and know you’ve had your revenge. You can tell them it was the thing that took your parents’ lives, just like it stole Maurice and Vivienne and the Carter boy from the world.”
He stared at me, his gaze hard. “And your sister.”
I dropped my eyes and willed them to glow with tears. It wasn’t hard. Everything was too heavy, too awful, and my eyes filled before I lifted them to Sebastian again.
“Yes, and Ama. You’ll prove to them you can protect them after all.”
“You want to kill it too, don’t you?” Sebastian leaned over Lucien and gripped my arms. Spittle flew from his lips. “You want to feel hot revenge pour from its throat onto your hands?”
The image sprang unbidden into my mind—the pool of deep red marring the lacy white snow. The grunts and yelps from the beast’s throat. The sheen of terror in its eyes . . . my sister’s eyes. My gorge rose and I swallowed sour bile.
I spat the word out. “Yes.”
His eyes softened a little. “I want that too. I want to kill the monster that murdered my parents.”
Ama was out there, somewhere, being hunted by Emméline. I had to protect her, but I also needed to cure her. I couldn’t accomplish one without the other. If I didn’t stop Emméline from killing my sister, there wouldn’t be anyone left to save. If I didn’t find the cure, my sister would always be hunted. These dizzying thoughts swirled in my head and I put the back of my hand to my warm temple. One step at a time. Find Ama, keep her safe for now. Then, find the cure and keep her safe for good.
I took Sebastian’s hand, pulling it from Lucien’s chest, not caring for once that my palms were damp. Sebastian’s eyes lingered on his brother before shifting to me. When they did, I took in a sharp breath because they shocked me. Filled with hunger and need. He wanted a chance to prove himself—to show the town he wasn’t his parents’ murderer and to take his own revenge. I forced myself to speak.
“All right, Sebastian. Let’s go monster hunting.”