“Bullshit!” Honoré’s voice cut though Rafe’s story. Her ring raised its head once more. “Your name is Rafael.”

Again, that faraway look flashed over the other thief’s face. “I was surprised when you called me that at The Rite of Spring. No one else is able to.”

Céleste realized he was right—when she tried to twist the name from her own silver tongue, the a and the l kept slipping away. They seemed to do the same for Sylvie, whose cheeks were starting to match her hair from the effort.

“Why?” Honoré asked, after a moment of struggling stutters. “Is it because we grew up together?”

Rafe shook his head. “No one at the Caveau has recognized me, not even Eleanor, and you know how she never forgets a face…” His eyes glinted off her ring. “My best guess is that it has something to do with your relic. You can shield yourself from enchantments with it, no? If you did take the ring from your father right after I left for Constantinople, it means you were wearing it when I was cursed.”

“So why don’t you just claim a new name, then, like I did?” Honoré asked. “There are plenty around here. Just throw a rock, and you’ll hit a gravestone. Hell, this dark Sanct did it when he claimed my father’s old title.”

Sylvie’s pink eyebrows popped up. “Wait, your dad was called ‘Terreur’ too? That’s confusing.”

“It’s not ideal,” Rafe agreed. “The history behind that title only lends my employer more power over the Caveau and its Apaches. When it comes to magic, names are so much more than what you call someone. It’s not just letters that I’m missing… it’s… well, this new Terreur took pieces of me.”

“Your anima,” Honoré said.

“What’s an anima?” asked Sylvie.

It was another Latin word, Céleste realized. One that tied in all too well with Henri’s very first story about vampires: Says they don’t take just your blood but your soul too. “It’s his essence.”

“La Fée Verte says it’s a person’s power,” added Honoré. “Their unique magic.”

“Oh.” Sylvie considered this for another moment. “That’s why the cats say you aren’t yourself.”

It was also why Rafe had claimed he was working for himself. True words. Too true. Céleste hadn’t thought to interpret them so literally. “So Terreur devoured your soul?”

“Not all of it. I still have enough anima left to dream,” he explained. “As long as I’m forging ideas for our employer, he won’t swallow the rest. I’ve been trying to steal back pieces of myself. I even gathered enough dreams to start shaping my shadow—a small way of resisting his control.” Rafe glanced down at the fox weaving in and out of his ankles. “I find that when it looks like this, it doesn’t bend to the dark Sanct’s magic quite as quickly. Of course, he’s very strong, and I’ve encountered a few… setbacks.”

“The windmill,” Céleste clarified.

Honoré’s eyes narrowed once more. “That was yours?”

“It was what I hoped to be,” Rafe said sadly. “Spending all that time in La Fée Verte’s salon—pouring what’s left of me onto a canvas—it’s helped me see that souls aren’t stagnant. They grow.”

“Like hair,” Honoré said.

A strange analogy, perhaps, but it seemed to Céleste that Rafe appreciated it. “Exactly! Our employer doesn’t like imaginings though. They weaken him. I figured if I gathered enough of my own dreams, I could find my true self again.” He glanced back down at the fox peeking out between his boots. “I figured, after that, I could help others do the same.” His eyes alighted back on Céleste when he said this. “I got sloppy though.”

“You met me.”

The way he stared reminded her of every distracted touch, every edged whisper. How much of what they shared was actually true? She wondered this as she watched his fox. If Rafe was able to shape it again, it meant he must be gathering a new stash of dreams somewhere, a place he didn’t dare invite her to. Céleste couldn’t exactly blame him. It wasn’t as if she had much to offer on that front.

She looked back up at the sunrise hue of the dreams above them.

A horrible thought came to her then: “Is that the reason I haven’t been able to conjure any imaginings at the salon? Did… did Terreur take my soul too?”

Marmalade meowed on the central stone below.

Sylvie chimed in as well. “It’s still whole!”

“Yes,” Rafe answered, “but Terreur sped up Céleste’s disease when he was… feeding backstage at The Rite of Spring. His attack was mostly concentrated on La Belle, but everyone in the theatre was touched by his magic.”

“That’s why everyone’s shadows went stringy,” Sylvie realized aloud.

“Shadows can show all.” Rafe’s fox spun in a circle as he said this. “Our employer’s favorite magic is controlling people using their own fears—a form of compulsion. Most of his victims aren’t even aware he’s doing it, but if you happen to see your shadow twist into a string, the best thing to do is dream. It loosens Terreur’s grip when a person can see past their fears.”

“That’s what you’ve been trying to do with your fox!” the youngest Enchantress surmised.

Rafe nodded.

Céleste thought of that night in the theatre. She could still remember the shock of seeing her own blood on her glove, of feeling her shadow become a riptide beneath her. She remembered her employer’s smile too, after he’d made the stain disappear. It made her own teeth grit together—the thought that she’d been taken in so carelessly.

She wondered how much worse Rafe felt.

There was some relief in the fact he wasn’t a wanton murderer, but damn if the alternative wasn’t much brighter. No wonder Rafe had quoted Faustus that evening on the bridge. He was cursed to a half-life, forced to plunder heaven on hell’s behalf. And Céleste?

Well, misery loves company, no?

Her fellow grave-mates certainly looked despondent. Sylvie was frowning—not the question mark expression she usually wore, but a worse crease. Honoré kept standing on the slab that spelled her name.

“What about my brother’s soul?” she rasped. “What about Gabriel?”

Rafe’s voice fell. “I’ve seen him around the Caveau. He doesn’t remember me, but as far as I can tell, your brother is still your brother.”

This didn’t seem to bring the other Enchantress much comfort. “I saw him at the Caveau too. There was a shadow string wrapped around his arm when he tried to shoot me.”

A pained look crossed Rafe’s face. “Terreur is hard to fight,” he said with a heavy sigh. “He’s a heartless bastard.”

“Just like his goddamn namesake—”

The other thief shook his head. “Not this kind of heartless. Your father didn’t carve his beating heart from his chest and lock it away. Other blades won’t touch him so long as it’s hidden. That is the key to Terreur’s immortality.” He nodded at the sketchbook Honoré was still holding. “That’s what I’ve been hunting for all this time.”

“His heart?” Céleste’s pulse started thundering again.

“Or what’s left of it,” Rafe said. “I’ve had to do a lot of digging to learn more about the spell Terreur performed. There wasn’t a great deal written about it. There’s even less now.” The ash in his voice made Céleste think of the windmill’s desk. All those papyrus scrolls, the diagram of the dissected heart… it all suddenly made so much more sense. “But, as far as I understand it, once you remove that muscle with magic, it transforms into something else. An animal, a flower, a talisman.”

That would account for the curio cabinets as well: scarab beetles’ shiny wings and amber jars filled with root bulbs and crystals formed in far-off mountains. No wonder Rafe had been so upset when Céleste first discovered them. No wonder he’d let the windmill burn without a fight. What would have happened if Terreur had taken a closer look at the building’s contents?

She shuddered to think.

Over on the gravestone, Marmalade meowed.

“Really?” Sylvie perked up. “In ancient Egypt?”

“Is he talking about the embalming techniques?” Rafe ventured. “Those were the earliest examples I could find—some pharaohs were able to mummify pieces of themselves and lock them away in pyramids, while the rest of their bodies walked the earth.”

Honoré glanced down at her dragon, a hard look passing over her face. “This mystery flower-animal-mummy heart… is it something I could stab? Would Terreur die?”

Rafe nodded.

“Good,” said Honoré.

“That’s why he’s taken pains to hide it so well. That’s why I’ve been hunting for it ever since Budapest,” the other thief said. “The letters of my old name are lost for good, but I can take back the rest of my life. I figure if I kill the bastard, I’ll have an actual future. The search has been regrettably slow—”

“Probably because you’ve been filching dreams,” Honoré snapped.

“That,” he admitted. “And there’s the sheer scope of the search, not to mention its secrecy. My pocket watch has helped—I’ve even been able to use the Door to Everywhere without Terreur noticing. I figured having a second forger around would help divide his attention too.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Céleste wondered.

Rafe hesitated. His ink teardrop looked darker somehow. “You saw how easy it was for our employer to pluck the windmill from your head. I couldn’t risk you knowing about my hunt for his heart. Plus, I didn’t suppose you’d be an advocate of killing the Sanct who’s keeping you alive.”

Touché.

“So… what? You swooped in and saved me after The Rite of Spring so I could be a damn distraction?” she asked sharply. “All that talk about bleeding hearts and dreaming to survive was just horseshit?” A surge of anger, not just at Rafe, but at herself, at the way she’d fallen for him—hook, line, and sinker.

Rafe almost looked like he was falling too, as he pushed off the wall of the tomb. His shadow swirled around his ankles as he moved over to Céleste’s corner. Past all her old opera gowns and the never-finished Ophelia piece—now barely visible through all of Sylvie’s dreams stacked on the easel. The other artist didn’t stop to study it anyway. He was too focused on kneeling at the edge of her mattress.

“You’re more than a distraction to me, Céleste Artois,” he said.

“What, then? A whim?”

“The night after we met, you asked me for a fancy speech—and everything I told you on that bridge was true. When I saw your bloody gloves after the ballet, I knew I had to do my best to save you.” Rafe reached out and took Céleste’s hand. Again, she noted how well their calluses matched. “I thought you could help me too. There was the hope that you’d distract our employer, yes, but as the evenings kept unfolding and we spent more of them together… well… I started seeing myself in a whole new light. Because you see me, Céleste. You call me out of the shadows even when I’m damn near invisible.

“Picasso, you know, he can be full of himself, but he once told me that ‘the purpose of art is to wash the daily dust of life off our souls.’ Ever since Budapest, I’ve been trying to excavate mine. Painting and dreaming and digging as deep as I can for my own magic.” Céleste pictured him in the landscape room then—the battlelike movements of his brush. Rafe was fighting for something every time he painted. Every time he sculpted his shadow into a fox. The silhouette had started circling the pair on the mattress, chasing its own tail. “I’d been struggling for so many years, but then you came along and caught it all in one little sketch.”

The sigil. His sigil. The one still hanging over their bed at La Ruche. “That was just a scribble,” she managed.

“Don’t.” Rafe shook his head. “Don’t be so dismissive. You’re worth more than that. So am I.”

Tears sprang into Céleste’s eyes then, but they weren’t angry. All her rage had melted into a gold feeling—one that matched the electric current Rafe García’s shadow always traced across her skin.

“It would’ve been easy to give up after our employer destroyed the windmill,” Rafe went on. “Five years of work, gone. But my sigil was still there, and so were you, sitting on that curb, coughing up more blood. I decided to keep going. To do something worth a damn. So, no, Céleste Artois, you aren’t a whim. You are my salvation, and I pray to whatever god might be listening that I can return the favor. I promise I’ll do my best to find Terreur’s heart, and then I’ll find a way for both of us to be free of him.”

Easier said than done, but Céleste knew she needed to believe these words.

What was the point, otherwise?

“You’re getting better at monologues,” she said, squeezing his hand.

The thief smiled and ran his thumb over her knuckles. “Yes, well, you seem to be rubbing off on me.”

Honoré let out an impatient grunt. “What about your search? Do you have any leads on where the heart might be?”

Rafe’s hand fell away from Céleste’s. His smile shrank. “It’s not inside his study. I know that much. I wondered for a while if it could be that globe he keeps so close to his chair… I’ve searched through many of the blacked-out territories too. But I’ve come to believe Terreur’s heart is hidden somewhere inside this city,” the thief told them. “Why else would he be so fixated on Paris?”

“Could that be what you two are searching for in the salon?” asked Honoré.

“I doubt it,” Rafe said. “If La Fée Verte had Terreur’s heart, she’d be able to control him.”

“So could we,” Céleste said.

A heart—no matter what shape—was leverage. She tightened her fist and imagined Terreur’s life force beating against those faded calluses. Him squirming on his barstool. Him frozen with fear. Her fingers picking through those fair hairs, finding something black to bind him with, to force him to heal her, to release Rafe García’s shadow… and then?

She winced, realizing her nails had dug too deep, cutting a fresh mark into the hand La Fée Verte had mended.

Honoré crouched on the tombstone, her eyes narrowed. “Are you suggesting we blackmail Terreur?”

“It seems like the best solution to all our problems,” Céleste reasoned. “The only solution, really.”

“We still have to find the heart first,” her friend pointed out. “And if our search is anything like Rafael’s, that could take years. Paris doesn’t have that kind of time. La Fée Verte’s wards are already weak.”

“So we take a different approach,” Céleste said. Terreur didn’t strike her as the type who’d leave his most vulnerable parts sitting above the fireplace mantel like a candelabra or a clock. He was more guarded. He probably even thought he was invincible. That would be her angle. “I can try to fish some clues out of him. Stroke his ego. He’ll let something slip. Men always do.”

Rafe went rigid on the mattress beside her. “He’s not some rich fool looking to buy the Eiffel Tower—”

“Oh!” Sylvie grinned. “That con was fun.”

It had also failed. Not because of the deed Céleste had forged on government stationary nor the story Sylvie invented about how city officials wanted to sell it for scrap because it didn’t fit with Paris’s other monuments. Honoré even found some businessmen who almost bought it. They hadn’t managed to go through with the grift though—it had been impossible to make Honoré look old enough to pass as the deputy director general of the Ministère des Postes et des Télégraphes.

The Enchantress’s upper lip twitched—perhaps with a memory of that ill-fated gray moustache. “Rafael is right. We can’t just waltz into this the way we would play any other fiddle game.”

“Why not?” Céleste wondered.

“Because he’s not a man!” She’d never seen fear play out so plainly on Honoré’s face. “He’s an evil sorcerer who can strangle you with your own shadow!”

Céleste thought of all the other times they’d sat around this tomb, pinning on wigs and hemming up stories. The Eiffel Tower had been ambitious, certainly, but she had no doubt they could’ve pulled off the con with a pinch of magic. A few wrinkles, à la the Seer of the Seine. A paintbrush to turn hair silver. Such things were possible now, thanks to Sylvie’s daydreams. Thanks to the salon Honoré so valiantly fought for. Thanks to Céleste’s lies that led all three of them there in the first place.

How much more could they do if they believed—not just in themselves but in each other again?

“He might be an evil sorcerer,” she said with a smile, “but we are Enchantresses.”