Stohrer was still the oldest pâtisserie in Paris. Terreur had tried to burn it along with everything else, but his flames had simply sputtered against the baker Sanct’s wards. The magic of cake was far older, far harder to break than that of the city’s other enchanted establishments, and just as Nicolas had served sweets throughout the bloody years of the Revolution, so he would keep his macaron towers full now too.
Sylvie breathed deeply when she and Rafe walked through the door, overwhelmed by the smell of sugar, the warm hug of dough. There was a sense of safety here that she hadn’t realized she’d been missing until she stepped across the threshold.
Rafe looked relieved too, once they were inside. “There are few spots in the city that Terreur can’t reach—this is one of them. And Honoré Côte’s tomb, of course, but we didn’t have enough room there.”
“Room for what?”
“You’ll see.”
His fox slid away, trotting beneath the glass chandelier into a back room, where sacks of flour and sugar guarded an even deeper door, down into the cellars. Only, Sylvie had never seen a cellar quite like this. It was large—large in the way that made her suspect magic was involved. Light shone through walls of colored glass, illuminating bookshelves and velvet settees and steaming pots of tea to go with pastries fresh from the oven upstairs. Artists don’t thrive when they starve, after all, and Sylvie smiled when she saw a sculptor in the corner, nibbling the edges of a gold-foiled macaron as she stepped back to examine her work. The statue looked like Joan of Arc, only, this Joan had wings. Engraved on her armor was a most familiar dragon…
“Welcome to the resistance!” Rafe’s shadow gave a small bow as he stepped into the room.
“You’ve started the League of Imaginers?”
Sylvie could see other artists scattered through the subterranean landscape, working with charcoal and fiddles and typewriters. Bright red birds flew around sparkling limestone stalactites, some of which had been carved into delightful shapes: Bunches of grapes. Coiled serpents. Swords.
“‘Started’ is a generous word,” Rafe said, as he waved Sylvie past a velvet chaise where Désirée—formerly of the Cabaret d’Ailes—was sharing a cup of tea with a swan-limbed ballerina. Swan-winged too. “So is ‘league,’ but yes, Honoré helped recruit some imaginers to our cause before she marched off to that bloody war.”
“War? What war?” Sylvie realized then that most of the artists in this underground were women. That, or their hair was silvered with age instead of dreams.
“They’re calling it the war to end all wars!” said the ballerina.
“If it did, that’d mean everyone in the world was dead,” Rafe replied.
“Everyone but you.” Désirée lifted her teacup, her eyes cutting to the thief’s watch.
“And Terreur. And the Mad Monk. And all his other disciples.” Rafe sighed. “Though that heartless bastard would probably turn on them then. He’s always wanted more. After he seized Paris, he—” Rafe paused, catching the look on Sylvie’s face. “Well, I suppose I should start from the beginning. What’s the last thing you remember?”
A firebird in the furious snow.
Sylvie was still wearing her old friend’s fur coat. And beneath that? She felt a sharp edge of glass—the exposure from Duchess d’Uzès’s party remained in her pocket. At least that wasn’t broken. “I—I was going to get Anastasia so that we’d be out of the way when Honoré snuck back to stab the heart, but the grand duchess was upset about Alexei, and she lost control of her imagining. It burned too bright.”
Rafe said nothing.
“Is Russia fighting in this war too?” she asked, suddenly thinking about how Rasputin’s shadow had fallen over all those tin soldiers in Alexei’s playroom. “Have you heard anything about the royal family?”
“Everyone is fighting,” the ballerina said. “All the kings of Europe seem to have gone mad.”
“I haven’t heard any news about your princess friend,” Rafe told Sylvie gently, “but the front lines aren’t anywhere near her palace. She should be safe.”
Sylvie wasn’t so sure. “I—I had to take Anastasia’s memories of magic.” This thought still burned. “But Rasputin discovered me anyway. He turned me into a necklace. I couldn’t hear anything after that. I saw—well, I saw you. Coughing blood. And then I was with the Fisherman of the Moon.”
Rafe nodded. “I took you to him, after I met Madame Arcana—”
“Who?”
“The Seer of the Seine. That’s her true name.”
“She worked at the Carnaval des Merveilles.” Sylvie remembered. “She was the fortune teller who disappeared the night La Fée Verte first met Terreur, right?”
“That’s right.” Désirée nodded and poured two more cups of tea. “We thought she’d chosen to become his disciple, especially when she started collecting fates from people who visited her under the bridge, but she was just keeping her cards close to her chest, much like your silver-tongued friend.”
“The Seer was the one who first recommended Céleste to Terreur,” Rafe added. “It’s why he trusts her. That and the other thought Céleste managed to plant in his head… I wasn’t in on it. I couldn’t be. Terreur needed to believe she’d chosen him, and damn if she wasn’t convincing—I’m not half the liar Céleste Artois is. She didn’t even crack when Terreur used my flesh to heal hers.”
“I didn’t know about her plan either,” Sylvie said, slightly put out.
“The only person she told was Honoré,” Rafe said. “And Honoré had her own contingency in place—she and La Fée Verte discovered how to share their hearts without performing Robespierre’s spell. To use their love as an amplifier, instead of seeing it as weakness. She’d made plans to take La Fée Verte’s heart and guard it, should the worst happen.”
“And it did.”
“It did,” Rafe echoed. “Though the Seer says this was the best path forward. She saw it in her crystal ball thirty-odd years ago…”
“That’s a very long con,” Sylvie said, taking a sip of her lavender tea.
“Oui,” Rafe answered. “Though it’s taken her all those years to weave the net she used to pull La Fée Verte from the river. ‘To shift the currents,’ she told me.”
“What does that mean?” the ballerina wondered.
Rafe shrugged.
“Madame Arcana always was a cryptic creature,” Désirée added. “Though I suppose seeing so many possible futures all at once would make anyone speak in riddles.”
“Yes, well, I would’ve appreciated a bit more clarity regarding my relic,” Rafe grumbled. “She led me to believe that sacrificing Sylvie was the only way to survive this consumption. If I hadn’t gone to the Fisherman of the Moon and learned otherwise, I’d be six feet under right about now.”
“We’re more than that, I figure.” Sylvie glanced up at the sparkling ceilings, then back at Rafe’s pocket watch. “So why aren’t you, you know, dead?”
“Because time cannot touch me as long as this watch does.” He tapped the gold engraving against his skin. “It belonged to Nicolas Flamel.”
“Oh!” Sylvie remembered this name as well. “The Fisherman mentioned him when he was teaching me and Honoré about relics during our first visit to his booth. He told us old magical objects have layers.”
Rafe nodded. “He told me that this watch predicted a person’s fateful hour. After I purchased the relic, I discovered its second function: It could stop time for its wearer. But there was a third level to the pocket watch—one Monsieur Flamel himself used for many centuries. It can protect its wearer from the passage of time. Céleste’s consumption is in my lungs, but as long as I’m wearing this watch, the disease can’t progress. I’m cheating death.”
Sylvie looked at the thief more closely. There was no more blood on his chin, true, but its scruff had stayed the same length. “Well, that sure seems fairer than the way Terreur does it.” Rasputin too. A shiver ran through Sylvie as she recalled the frame that had fallen on Alexei’s unmoving chest. That saint could have been her. It would have been, if Rafe García had chosen differently. “Thanks for not killing me.”
He raised his scarred eyebrow. “Even if I had stolen your life, I would’ve been short-lived. Marmalade would have stalked me to death. Do you know he’s followed the Fisherman everywhere for the past eight months? Along with every other feral stray in Père Lachaise? It was quite the sight to see: a ragpicker and an army of cats wandering the cemetery.”
As if on cue, the tailless tom appeared, hopping onto the settee and settling back into Sylvie’s lap with a grunt. We must stay close, oh hunter mine. We must take care until the tiger changes her stripes and the prickly one returns.
“Tiger?” Sylvie wondered.
Rafe tilted his head. “What’s he saying? We’ve had trouble understanding the Whisper Network after we lost you and Libris.”
They would have lost more, if we had not warned all the magic ones. Marmalade rattled. Now we watch. Now we wait.
“He tells me the cats are waiting for Honoré to come back to Paris,” Sylvie said, scratching the tom’s back. He’d grown skinnier since last winter.
“It’s not just the cats.” Rafe waved back over the settee toward the first sculptor, and now that they were closer, Sylvie realized she knew the woman. Duchess d’Uzès, wearing a periwinkle wig under her driving helmet. She knew the statue too. That dagger-pointed smile. “Honoré has made quite the name for herself on the battlefield. Half of Paris believes she’s Saint Geneviève, summoned by their prayers to save the city.”
Sylvie snorted at this.
“It’s not all that untrue,” Rafe said. “She’s stronger now than she’s ever been.”
The Duchess d’Uzès set down her hammer and chisel and gave the daydreamer a wave. “Sylvie, my dear! Thank goodness you’re here! They told me what happened to you just after my midwinter fête—or should I say, your fête.” She slipped off her driving helmet, and Sylvie realized the lavender wig underneath wasn’t a wig at all. Some of the older woman’s strands were shining. There was the smallest twinkle around her eyes as well. “It’s a shame Rasputin took the wig and didn’t even try it on… The man could really use one. If I ever run across him, I’d like to give him a piece of my mind for turning you into a locket like that!”
Sylvie wasn’t sure if the champagne heiress meant this literally or not.
“Don’t worry,” the duchess replied, seeing the look on her face. “I won’t go seeking the Mad Monk out. I know my strengths.” She glanced back over her shoulder at the half-finished statue of Honoré. “Smashing rocks and driving fast.” Her eyes widened. “Do you know, I just thought of something… an ambulance service! We could reach hopelessly wounded soldiers and take them back to my château at Bonnelles to convalesce. Not just physically, you see, but here.” The woman tapped her head, and the idea flared brighter, so Sylvie could catch glimpses of a green-lawned estate, where more shining hairs poked through soldiers’ gauze-wrapped heads. “I should think it’s equally important that they have a place for their souls to heal after so much ruin. We could even recruit the more creative patients to our cause! This war is so massive—I don’t think a single angel can win it.”
“I’m not sure anyone can,” Rafe murmured. “It’s a good idea, Manuela, but we aren’t here to end the war.”
The duchess pinched her lips together. “Certainly! I wasn’t suggesting we conquer Europe, but we’re here to fight fear, are we not? Why should we bury our brightest ideas down here while Honoré is out risking life and limb on the battlefield? What’s the point of our power if we hide it?”
Sylvie flinched at this, so close to the last question Anastasia had asked her. She understood why the princess voiced it and Duchess d’Uzès too, but Sylvie also knew why Rafe answered the way he did.
“The point is patience,” he said. “We can’t strike Terreur until we’re certain we can deliver a fatal blow.”
“Not all of us have all the time in the world, Monsieur García. I am an aging woman, and I wish to leave this earth a better place than I found it—so far, that prospect does not look promising.” Duchess d’Uzès sighed and touched the edges of her purple hair. “How much longer, do you think?”
Rafe glanced down at the pocket watch on his chest. “However long it takes that bastard to surrender his heart.”
To Céleste, Sylvie realized. That was the twist. That must be why the oldest Enchantress had settled with Terreur at the Palais Garnier—she’d seeded this idea inside her forgery. She must be waiting, waiting in those dark and thorny halls, for something to bloom.