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She slid out into the daylight, nostrils flaring at the odd smell of the tanks’ exhaust that filled the streets, mixing with the acrid sting of the oil reserves the French army had set ablaze to keep the Germans from seizing it.

Wrong, all wrong. Paris was supposed to smell of baguettes and pastries, flowers and creperies.

There should have been laughter from the café across the street, the clinking of wine glasses, music from the concertinas the Gypsies played for the tourists.

The only sound was the clatter of panzer treads over the pavement a street over.

Though the book weighed heavy in her hands, she wasn’t about to cross in front of that parade in search of Amalie to give it to her.

Instead, she wound her way back to the Boulevard Arago.

None of the Métro trains were running, which meant that the half-hour trip took over an hour.

Sweat clung to every crevice by the time she turned onto her street, the June sun mocking the metal storm that had rolled in under its swastika banners.

She nearly shouted when she saw the figure locking the door of the library next to her flat. What was Monsieur Kantorowicz still doing in the city? Shrugging off her exhaustion, she ran toward him, arriving just in time to watch as he wrenched the small sign off the building.

Why did it feel like he’d yanked the very heart from her chest? “ Monsieur? I thought you long gone.”

Kantorowicz spun, eyes wide in his long face, though they relaxed again the moment he spotted her, and he huffed out a breath. “Corinne. Where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.”

She ignored the chide, turned it back on him. “Shouldn’t you be on your way to England?”

He waved a hand. “I am leaving the city now—though I do not know if I will make it to England or just hide away in some pretty little French chalet.” He tried a smile that fell flat.

Concern darkened his eyes. “You have heard, I trust? That we have been officially shut down and handed to the Germans to be destroyed?”

She swallowed, her feet stepping involuntarily toward the library.

It looked bereft without its sign. She’d grown accustomed to seeing the German words “Deutsche Freiheitsbibliothek” there on the front.

“The Library of the Burned Books.” It had become a beacon.

A hand always beckoning her. There are secrets in here, that sign had always promised.

There are ideas so powerful the Reich tried to destroy them.

“I heard.” Her gaze moved back to Kantorowicz as he dropped the keys into his pocket. She’d heard, but she’d railed against it, hadn’t really believed it was true. That it was just going to be abandoned, turned over like a gift to the Nazis.

Her heart thudded as he held out a hand. “You’d better give me your key. You don’t want to be caught with it.”

“What? No!” She still had a load of books to smuggle out before the Nazis arrived, books with carefully encoded markings in their margins.

Books she still had to somehow get into the hands of the students scattering all over France, back to their provinces.

This was the only purpose she had now, with the university abandoning ship just like the rest of Paris’s citizens.

To let them observe, to gather the information they sent back to her, to send it on to the true French government, already in England, via Oncle Georges’s contacts.

Kantorowicz shook his head adamantly. “It is too dangerous. You can be assured that the Nazis will waste no time in confiscating every book in there. You do not want to be seen as an associate of the place, or they’ll lock you up too.”

She wanted to scoff, to insist that no Nazi would look at her and think her dangerous.

No one thought her dangerous, with Maman’s honeyed curls, the petite frame she’d inherited from her father’s side, and the ridiculous lips that made everyone think she was still a teenager long after she’d left those days behind her.

It was her greatest weapon, Oncle Georges had pronounced with a grin. Well, her second greatest. Her mind ranked first, of course. But her deceptively innocent appearance was a strong second.

She hadn’t bothered arguing—she’d been using it to her advantage too long, much as Maman chided her for it when she was growing up. An angel with a forked tail, she had called her. Corinne’s lips twitched at the memory.

Juste ciel, but she missed her mother. It made her feel far younger than she was, this constant, soul-deep longing for the sole companion she’d had every day of her life, up until a few weeks ago.

Kantorowicz raised his brows and inched his palm closer to her nose. “Now. For your own good.”

She was well enough acquainted with his stubbornness to know he’d stand here until she relinquished it, or follow her up to her flat if she claimed not to have it on her.

“Fine.” She dug the precious bit of metal from her pocket and slapped it onto his palm.

He leaned over and kissed her cheeks. “Watch yourself, ma petite . Be safe.”

“You too.” Tempted as she was to beg for the key back, she pressed her lips against it.

It would look odd, would tip her hand. She would just have to content herself with finding a way in once he’d gone.

Maybe she could pick the lock. How hard could it be?

Women managed it with a bobby pin in the movies.

Then it would be a simple matter of digging out the spare key from the circulation desk’s drawer and pocketing it for future use.

She gave him a quick embrace, careful to keep the book’s title out of view. He’d recognize it.

He was distracted enough that he didn’t do more than squeeze her and then step away, toward the auto waiting at the curb. She said a quick prayer that he would make it safely and quickly to wherever he was going.

Holding her ground, she watched until he had the engine roaring to life and was pulling away, so that she could lift a hand in farewell.

Another friend, gone. Chased away by the Nazis swarming her city. The hot sun pounded down, magnified by the injustice of it all, until it lit the coals smoldering inside her. The fuel-tainted breeze fanned the flames higher, brighter.

She looked down at the book in her hands, almost expecting it to burst into flames along with her soul. But this tome had already been condemned to flames, and it had survived. It always would.

She would too. She would burn and she would fight and she would win. No locked door would stop her, no empty flat, no German army, no looming days of hunger. She strode to the door of her own building and then jogged up the stairs to her flat.

Oncle Georges was wrong. Her best weapon was neither her mind nor her looks.

Her best weapons were the books—and she was going to use them well.