Page 115

“Her work lives on.”

“Did you”—I force myself to step around Michal now, clenching my limbs tight to stop their trembling—“did you kill those creatures, Babette?” My eyes fall inadvertently to the grimoire. It still whispers to me, horrible things I half recognize but don’t quite understand. “To—to honor your mistress? Are you trying to bring her back?”

Babette laughs, a bright and sparkling sound that doesn’t fit the circumstances.Definitely not good.Cloaked in black, she wears no makeup except on her crimson lips, and her scars stand out in sharp relief without powder. With her golden hair swept away from her face, her cheekbones too look more pronounced, almost gaunt. Deep shadows haunt her eyes. “I know very few witches who wish to honor ourmistress. Most hope she still burns in Hell.” Another step. I edge to the left. “And I didn’t kill anyone, darling. I’ve always had very little interest in sullying my hands with violence. I leave that to him.”

“Who?” Michal asks, his voice glacial.

Babette flicks her golden eyes to his face. “The Necromancer, of course.”

At that, the grimoire actuallymovesin my hand—quivering in excitement—and I drop it with a little squeak, kicking it away. It lands noiselessly upon the carpet and flips open toA Spell to Resurrekt the Dead. “Oh God,” I breathe as the pieces click into place. ThoughBlood of Deathleers up at me, my vision tunnels on my own name, circled and circled again.

He wants your blood, Célie.

The Necromancer.

“Quite the opposite, I think,” Babette says quietly, “if one believes in such things.” With a wince, she pulls the feather from her flesh, dripping blood from her elbow to the floor. She twirls it between two fingers in contemplation. “From a common barn owl. It makes my movements silent, undetectable, even to vampire ears.”

“Who is the Necromancer?” I ask.

“I do not know his name. I do not need to know it.”

Michal shifts in front of me again, the movement subtle.Good.It brings us nearer to the stairs. “You want to bring your sister back,” he says. “Sylvie. The one who died of blood sickness.”

For a fraction of a second, Babette’s face twists just like Pennelope’s did. “Among others.” Then, her features smoothing once more— “Blood sickness works slowly, you know. It takes its time on victims, poisoning first their body, second their mind. It steals their health, their very youth, until the air is thick in their chests and the wind feels like knives on their skin. They suffocate, and they wither. They feel the blood boiling in their veins, and they cannot stop it because there is no cure. Only death. Many take their own lives to end the torment.” Her gaze fixes upon me. “Morgane le Blanc fashioned the pain she inflicted on your sister after the pain my own endured.”

My hand clenches on Michal’s sleeve, and I quite forget my plan to escape. “What?”

“Filippa was a husk after Morgane finished with her, was she not? Just like Sylvie.”

My eyes widen, and I gape at her, stricken. Because she’s right. Though my parents insisted on a closed casket for Filippa’s funeral, no one knows more intimately than I how disfigured she’d been when they found her. Her limbs gnarled, her skin sallow and sagging. Her hair white.A husk.

“My sister didn’t deserve to die that way,” Babette continues in a strangely calm voice, almost serene. She lets the feather flutter to the floor. “Did yours?”

My throat threatens to close, and at her words, all I can see is the Filippa from my nightmares—half of her face missing, her smile wide and leering, as she plunges her skeletal fist into my chest. Her fingers close around my heart. As if I too suffer from blood sickness, I abruptly find it difficult to breathe, and when I glance down, the skin of my hand seems to shrivel.

Would you like that, sweeting? Would you like to die?

“We’re going to bring them back,” Babette says simply.

Michal can hear my pulse spike. I know he can. His own hand creeps around his back, and I stare at it with incomprehension for a second—at his smooth, alabaster palm facing outward—before realizing he’s offering it to me. I lace my fingers through his instantly, tightly. For once, my touch feels just as cold. “And you faked your own death because...?” he asks.

Babette considers him for so long I fear she won’t answer. Then— “Because Jean Luc’s theory about a blood witch killer made the Necromancer nervous.” She bends to retrieve thegrimoire from the floor and tucks it into her skirt pocket. “Because Cosette would neverbelieveblood witches capable of killing their own—not even after her aunt. Because he knows all about Les Éternels and their taste for blood, and he thinks the world should know about them too.” Lifting her silver knife when he moves, she says, “Because their king makes the obvious suspect. After Célie’s note”—she tips her chin to me in sickening gratitude—“the Chasseurs have armed themselves to the teeth with silver. They’re convincedyoukilled all those poor creatures, roi sombre, and it works out quite neatly that you’re here with Célie now—almost too neatly. You left so many witnesses.”

As before, there’s no satisfaction in her voice. No relish. Only a quiet sense of assurance, of calm, like a priest reading scripture at the pulpit. I’ve heard this sort of conviction before, and it never ends well. Beads of cold sweat mat the hair at my nape. We really need to leave now. I glance again at the door in the ceiling. “Witnesses ofwhat?”

She looks at me almost sadly. “I wish it didn’t have to be this way, Célie. I wish it could be anyone but you. You’ve always been kind, and for that, I wish it could be anyone but me—but you saw the list.” Though she doesn’t dare reach into her pocket again, not with Michal poised like a wolf prepared to strike, she dips her head toward the grimoire there. “The spell calls for the Blood of Death, and the Necromancer tried everything in search of it. Witches are deadly enough, to be sure, but my blood didn’t work within the spell. Nor did the blood of a loup garou or melusine. Even the vampire’s blood—lethal though she was—proved ineffective.” Here Michal snarls, and all plans of escape crash to the floor at my feet. He’ll never flee now. “The Necromancer almostgave up after that. He didn’t realize La Voisin had capitalized Death for a reason.Death.” She breathes the word with a macabre sort of reverence for someone planning to desecrate it. “As in the entity himself, the very creature who exists beyond all creed and religion, beyond all space and time, who steals life with a simple touch. How could the Necromancer have known? No one has ever seen Death. Those who have do not survive.” She slants her head at me curiously. “The Necromancer came upon your blood by chance, perhaps divine intervention, and we tested it on a whim. You cannot imagine his glee when it worked.”

His glee.

I force myself to breathe. Tothink. “The training yard.”

Her golden eyes gleam brighter as she nods, as she takes another step toward us. “No closer,” Michal growls, and for the first time since I met him, he sounds wholly inhuman. His arm inches back, curling protectively around my waist, and I still instinctively. “Or I’ll tear out your throat.”

“He means it, Babette,” I whisper, the truth of my words a cold touch in my chest. “Whatever it is you’re planning—don’t. Even if youdomanage to resurrect your sister, the spell will rip you apart. Look around!” I spread my arms wide, helpless, and beg her to understand. Tosee. “Have you not noticed? Already our realm has sickened with the Necromancer’s magic, and the others—even the realms of the spirits and the dead—they’re twisting too,rottinginto something just as dark and strange as he is. Is that the world into which you want to bring your sister?”

Babette only bends again in response, this time to retrieve her chipped teacup. It no longer steams. Still, she lifts it to her lips with that same overwrought composure. “Why you, Célie?” Shegrimaces after swallowing the cold tea. “Can you tell me? Why does your blood complete the spell?”

I hesitate, crestfallen, but if this Necromancer already knows my blood completes the spell, the reason doesn’t matter. “I’m a Bride of Death. He—touched me in my sister’s casket, but he let me go. I don’t know why.”