Page 38

Chapter Thirty-Six

A Time for Tea

She holds a silver knife in one hand, and blood already trickles from the crook of her opposite elbow, where—I swallow hard—what looks like an owl feather protrudes from the cut, its shaft shoved directly under her skin. “Hello, Célie,” she says quietly. “I wondered whether you’d come calling.” A pause as I stare at her. “You’ve always been more intelligent than your kinsmen.”

The silence between us stretches and stretches. Somewhere behind Michal and me, a clock tick , tick , tick s until a chime rings half past seven o’clock in the morning. Thirty minutes until daybreak. Though my throat works to speak, my mouth seems to have forgotten how to form words. My mind just cannot comprehend what my eyes are seeing: Babette, whole and well once more, alive , without pallid skin or bite marks at her throat. At last, I manage to whisper, “I found you dead in the cemetery.”

“You found me enchanted in the cemetery.” She steps farther into the room, and my hand creeps to Michal’s arm. He doesn’t move, however. Doesn’t breathe. Every fiber of his preternatural being fixates on Babette. Nodding to the book in my hand, she says, “One simply mixes a sprig of nightshade with the blood of a friend, and they fall into a sleep like death for twenty-four hours. It’s a clever spell, really—quite rare and unprecedented. One of La Voisin’s best.”

A creeping numbness spreads through my limbs. That Babette stands here freely, calmly, that she admits to faking her own death as if discussing the weather, cannot be good. I swallow hard and glance surreptitiously at the door in the ceiling. We could flee back through the fireplace, of course, but courtesans lie that way—perhaps Pennelope herself. No. If we can inch around Babette somehow, we’ll have a clearer path to escape. But first—

“La Voisin is dead,” I say. “I watched her die in the Battle of Cesarine.”

“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 our mistress . 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 actually moves in 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 to A Spell to Resurrekt the Dead . “Oh God,” I breathe as the pieces click into place. Though Blood of Death leers 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 the grimoire from the floor and tucks it into her skirt pocket. “Because Cosette would never believe blood 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 convinced you killed 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 of what ?”

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 almost gave 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. To think . “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 you do manage to resurrect your sister, the spell will rip you apart. Look around!” I spread my arms wide, helpless, and beg her to understand. To see . “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, rotting into 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?” She grimaces 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.”

She repeats the words softly. “A Bride of Death. How... romantic.” Her hands tremble slightly as she extends her cup of tea toward me. “Would you like some?”

I frown at it. “Er—no, thank you.”

She doesn’t lower the cup. “I apologize for the lavender. It was a cheap trick, but I didn’t have much time to prepare. When Pennelope warned me of your arrival, I had to make a quick decision. I could’ve fled, of course, but you would’ve realized my rooms have been inhabited almost instantly. And the Necromancer—he would’ve been furious with me. He thought he would need to wait until All Hallows’ Eve to take you, Célie—surrounded by your very powerful friends—but instead, here you are with the vampire king. The circumstances... they’re just too neat. Too perfect. I can’t possibly let you go now.” Silver liquid fills her overbright eyes, and they look suspiciously like tears. Swallowing hard, she blinks them away. “When they find your body drained of blood, everyone will know he killed you.”

Michal’s arm around me tightens, and he seems torn between lunging for Babette and whisking me out the door. “Find someone else,” he says in that same dark voice. From any other creature, it might sound like a plea, but Michal has never been prey. He is the predator, even here, faced with witchcraft and silver.

Babette, however, does not cower. “There is no one else.”

“Célie cannot be the only Bride of Death in this realm. Find another to resurrect your sister, or I will hunt her when she wakes. I will inflict such pain that she’ll long for sickness once more, and Death will come to her in kindness. When you try to follow, I will turn you into a vampire, so you must live forever apart as an undead creature, never again to look upon your sister’s face. Do you understand?”

Babette’s pale skin mottles at the threat—no, the promise —and the regret in her eyes flashes to fury. “We both know vampires can die, mon roi. You may threaten my sister all you like, but it was silver he used on your sister to drain every drop of blood from her body.” Michal’s body shudders with the physical effort not to move. Her silver knife joins the teacup between us. Her hands no longer shake. “I have no doubt that you’re faster than me. Stronger than me. In all likelihood, this knife will prove useless against you.”

Michal speaks through his teeth. “Shall we find out?”

He still doesn’t release me, however.

“Which is why,” Babette continues with the ringing air of finality, “I broke my mother’s mirror and ground the shards into powder.”

It all happens very fast then.

In the same instant my eyes dart to her mantel, to the shattered mirror there, she flings the cup of tea in Michal’s face. Despite her prediction, he doesn’t move fast enough—he can’t move fast enough with one arm still locked around my waist—instead half turning to brace against me. To protect me. The cold tea douses his entire right side. The skin of his face and throat hisses on contact, bubbling with angry red blisters, but it’s so much worse than when I scratched him in the aviary. My eyes widen in horror. Babette’s blood must’ve been in that tea too, because his flesh—it seems to be burning, melting , and actual flames leap from his face now, crackling with wicked laughter. Though I seize his cloak to smother them, the flames only grow higher, and he collapses against me. One of his knees hits the floor. “Célie,” he groans. “Upstairs— run .”

“Michal!” I crumple under his weight, hooking my arms beneath his shoulders. Because I can’t just leave him here. I won’t . Though I try to heave him back to his feet, Babette stalks toward us with a determined expression. My mouth goes dry at the glint of her silver blade. “No!” I seize him with frantic, clumsy hands, trying to roll, trying to rise, but there’s nothing I can do except scream, “Babette, don’t, please !”

She plunges the knife deep into his side.

“Stop it!” Half-buried beneath Michal, half sobbing now, I lunge at her, swiping at the knife, but it disappears between his ribs again, and again, and again until his breath rattles frighteningly in his chest. “Babette, stop !”

“I don’t want to hurt you, Célie. I never wanted to hurt anyone.” Dropping the knife, she draws great, shuddering breaths—in tears again herself—and kicks him away from me. His head strikes the wooden floor with a dull thud, and the flames go out at last. “I’m so sorry. I wish it could be anyone but you.” Dragging a finger through the wound at her elbow, she kneels beside me and raises that finger to my lips. No. My mouth clamps shut in realization. A Dame Rouge’s magic resides within their blood; if I ingest hers, she’ll be able to control me, much like a vampire’s compulsion. Under her influence, I’ll leave Michal to die without a second thought, and I’ll walk straight into the Necromancer’s arms.

No. No no no—

Snarling, I seize her wrist and push her away with all my strength. My arms shake with the effort. My chest heaves. I’ve never been very strong, however, and soon I can smell the sharp tang of her blood beneath my nose. The tang of her tears. “You don’t have to do this, Babette—”

“I’m sorry, Célie.” Her voice actually breaks on my name, and I almost believe her now. She repeats the words until they blend together, echoing deliriously in my ears. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, Célie, I’m so sorry. When she pushes harder, I fall backward, landing heavy on the carpet near Michal. His beautiful black eyes stare at me without seeing. I clench my teeth and shake my head with more bitter, hopeless tears. They trickle into my hair and blur my vision until the spiral stairs overhead bleed into the ceiling, which bleeds into the door, which bursts open unexpectedly.

Babette whirls, incredulous, as two identical faces appear in the room above.

We always notice when night children come to call , Pennelope said. Two more just arrived upstairs.

Dimitri and Odessa.

Though I want to cry out in hideous relief—because they’re here, they’re here, they’re here —I dare not open my mouth. Above me, Babette’s eyes bulge in genuine fear. “No,” she breathes.

Her strength falters as Dimitri and Odessa blur forward, and I take full advantage, driving my knee into her stomach. She screams when Dimitri seizes her, nearly ripping her arm out of its socket and throwing her across the room. Still shrieking, she slams into a floral armchair, which cracks ominously beneath her. Odessa crouches beside Michal. Her hands flutter over his injuries for half a second—her eyes shocked, wide—before she scoops him up and darts back up the staircase. Fresh relief surges through me as they disappear, as I struggle to my feet and snatch the silver knife from the floor. Tears still pour freely down my cheeks.

Odessa will help him . He’s safe now.

“Are you hurt?” Dimitri asks without looking at me.

“I—I think I’m fine, but—”

“You should follow the others.” His hands curl into fists as he stares at Babette’s prone body. “It’s almost daybreak.”

I eye his back nervously, the rigid line of his neck. Babette wants to kill me, yes—she did her best to kill Michal—but—but— “She has silver in her bloodstream,” I tell him quickly. “It was in the tea.”

He says nothing.

“And the blood of a Dame Rouge is poison to their enemies. If you drink it, you’ll—”

“I said leave ,” he snarls with surprising vitriol, jerking his head toward the staircase. “ Now. ”

Though I startle slightly, stung, my feet rush to obey him, skirting past Babette and across the room. For a split second, her eyes dart after me like she wants to follow. Dimitri shadows my steps, however, waiting until I push open the door in the ceiling before murmuring, “It was very foolish to leave Michal alive. You’ve made a powerful enemy today.”

To leave Michal alive.

My head snaps back toward him. For some reason, the words lift the hair at my neck, and his face —as with Michal, I’ve never before seen Dimitri look so vicious . His lip curls over his fangs, and the firelight casts deep shadows across his earnest eyes. They look hungry now. Unfamiliar. Gone is the sweet and charming boy with dimples; in his place stands a fully-fledged vampire.

With quaking arms, I hold the door open overhead and linger despite myself, watching as Babette climbs from the broken armchair. When her gaze darts from Dimitri to the door behind him—to the door that leads to Les Abysses—fresh panic spikes through me. Someone would’ve heard her screams. At any moment, Pennelope and the other courtesans could descend upon us. I should leave. I should follow Odessa into Paradise, and I should help her with Michal however I can. And yet—

“He was already my enemy,” Babette says tremulously as Dimitri begins to circle her. My brow furrows. She fears Dimitri in a way she didn’t fear Michal. She no longer holds her silver knife or silver tea, of course, but she’s still a blood witch. The crook of her elbow still bleeds freely.

“Now he knows it too,” Dimitri says. “After he heals, he will hunt you, and he won’t stop until you’re dead.”

She lifts her chin. “He won’t find me again.”

“I can’t take that chance.” He stills in front of her. “Give me the book, Babette.”

I exhale sharply at that— he knows about the grimoire —but neither seems to notice my presence. My arms ache from the weight of the door above me. “You’ll never get it,” she whispers desperately. “ Never. ” When Dimitri steps forward in silent threat, she squares her shoulders and inhales deeply, preparing to do the only thing she can—

She screams again. A shrill, piercing scream that cuts through walls and doors like a blade through butter. At the sound of it, I slip and tumble down several stairs, and the door crashes shut overhead.

If no one heard her before, they certainly heard all that .

“Dimitri!” Throwing caution to the wind, I hurtle down the last of the stairs, skidding to a halt just shy of him. Reluctant to draw too close. I thought he wanted to drink Babette’s blood, to punish a witch for harming his family, yet now—now I don’t know. Clearly, he knows her otherwise, and worse, he knows about the grimoire too. Not only does he know about it, but he wants it, and—and—I clench her knife like a shield in front of me, unwilling to think the rest. I don’t understand any of this. It doesn’t make sense , and I should’ve left when I had the chance. Pennelope will be here any second, and together, she and Babette might be able to overpower Dimitri. They might chase me, catch me, and— no .

Dimitri is my quickest way out of here. My only way out of here. I jerk my knife emphatically toward the stairs. “We need to leave. Please.”

He says nothing for several more seconds, his eyes boring into Babette’s with violent promise. He still doesn’t attack her, however, and we still don’t flee. “Dimitri,” I say again, pleading now. When he still doesn’t move—locked in silent battle with Babette—I force myself to touch his arm. This is Dimitri , I think fiercely, despairingly. He brought you cabbage and eggs, and there must be an explanation for all this. “Please, please , Dima, let’s go.”

As if on cue, the doorknob behind us begins to turn, and Pennelope’s muffled voice echoes sharply into the room. “Babette? Are you all right?”

At last, Dimitri exhales—his teeth grinding together—and closes his eyes, clears his expression. When he opens them again, the familiar sparkle has returned, but it looks different now. It looks calculating. Perhaps it’s always looked that way. Perhaps I wanted a friend too badly to notice.

“My apologies, mademoiselle.” Winking, he offers me his hand, and I hesitate only a second before taking it. He sweeps me into his arms just as Pennelope bursts into the room. Her eyes take in the scene instantly. Snarling, she lifts her bleeding hands, but we’re already up the stairs, at the ceiling. Dimitri flashes her a charming, dimpled grin as he pushes open the door. Then he looks to Babette. “I hope you run far and run fast, chérie,” he tells her, and the sight of his dimples sends a newfound chill through me. “Because if Michal doesn’t find you, I will.”