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Chapter Thirty-Nine

Tears Like Stars

I cry on those steps for so long that my knees begin to ache, that my eyes begin to burn. When my body refuses to shed another tear—wholly spent and exhausted—I shift to sit more comfortably, peering blearily at the street around me for the first time. Though Les Abysses must lie somewhere beneath my feet, this looks like a perfectly ordinary middle-class neighborhood. Modest brick homes line either side of the cobblestones, complete with small yet tidy gardens, and the occasional cat sunbathes in a window. Down the way, a little boy in a woolen coat plays fetch with his dog, but otherwise, the villagers here have already started their day—the men to their desks, the women to their household duties. It’s all very comfortable. Very quiet.

I cannot stand it.

Once upon a time, I would’ve imagined one of these homes as my own. I would’ve dreamed about owning a dog—a yappy little terrier—and a garden, where I would’ve planted roses that climbed around an oak front door, and my sister would’ve lived right next door. I would’ve kissed my husband every day, and together, the two of us would’ve done something worthwhile with our lives—perhaps owned a bakery, a gallery, or just a boat instead. We could’ve sailed around the world having swashbuckling adventures with our dog, or perhaps with our dozens of children. We could’ve been happy.

Life isn’t a fairy tale, Célie.

Sniffling, I huddle against the crisp autumn wind. Though no one strolls past on their morning walk—and no reward signs flutter upon these doorsteps—I cannot remain here forever. Who knows how many people have peered through their curtains and spotted me? Perhaps they’ve already alerted the Chasseurs. Frankly, I wouldn’t blame them; I’m not exactly inconspicuous. Indeed, I feel garish in such bright sunlight—wan and exposed and covered in blood. Like a carcass left to rot in fresh snow.

Perhaps it’s your approval you’re so desperate to earn.

Like a broken tooth, I bite down on Michal’s words over and over again. Perhaps you are the one who sees yourself as a pretty doll. He spoke them with such conviction, such impatience, as if he couldn’t hold them in for a second longer. As if he knew me better than I know myself—because that’s what he implied, isn’t it? That I don’t understand my own emotions, my own desires? Shivering slightly, I thrust my stiff fingers into my pockets. Despite the sunshine, I feel colder than usual, uncomfortable in my skin.

I should go back inside. Whatever Michal said about me, I cannot return to my life in West End, and that I know for certain. I will never own a boat or a rose garden or an oak front door, never live beside my sister. The thought of my father’s smug expression when he realizes I’ve failed—or my mother’s tight concern—brings bile to my throat. I cannot face them. I cannot face anyone , least of all Michal, yet what choice do I have? Once again, he is somehow the lesser evil, and—and how did it become this way? How did I come to choose the company of an arrogant and imperious vampire to my own flesh and blood?

Says the woman whose sister gave that cross to Babette.

Reluctant, I slide the silver cross from my pocket to examine it once more. It glows near blinding in the sunlight, brighter and clearer than ever before, and if I angle it a certain way—my stomach contracts—it does look like the initials could’ve originally read FT . The curves of the B seem fainter than the other lines. Newer. Just like the additions in La Voisin’s grimoire. My thumb traces the scalloped edges of the cross without truly seeing them. Because how could my sister have owned this necklace? Had she actually been involved with Babette and this Necromancer, or had Babette stolen the cross from her somehow? My thumb presses harder against its edges. Impatient. Perhaps the FT who owned this necklace wasn’t Filippa Tremblay at all, but someone else. Perhaps Michal doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about, forcing him to grasp at straws like all the rest of us.

You don’t know a thing about me.

Neither do you, apparently, if you think sacrificing yourself for those humans had anything to do with them.

Miserable, I move to rise, but at that precise second, my thumb catches on a scallop sharper than the rest. Right along the edge of the horizontal arm of the cross. I glance down at it absently—then gasp. Leaning closer, I stare at the ornate mechanism hidden within the whorls, convinced I must be mistaken. Because it looks like some sort of—some sort of clasp , which would mean the cross isn’t a cross at all, but a locket. A locket. Holding my breath, I lift the cross right to my nose. Surely Michal would’ve realized if the cross opened; surely he would’ve seen it as plainly as he saw the true initials, yet... I tilt the cross in the sunlight once more. The clasp is very cleverly hidden, and if I hadn’t felt along this precise edge, I never would’ve noticed it at all.

A fluttery sensation erupts in my belly.

Such a small, hidden compartment would be the perfect place to keep a secret.

Anxious now—mouth suddenly dry—I pry open the little door with my thumb, and a minuscule scrap of parchment flutters onto my lap. My breath hitches at the sight of it. Yellowed and torn, the parchment has been folded to the size of my nail, yet clearly it must’ve been important if the owner wore it so close to their heart. With trembling fingers, I unfold the parchment and begin to read:

My darling Filippa,

It looks like Frost tonight. Meet me under our tree at midnight, and the three of us will be together forever.

Two lines. Two simple sentences. I stare at them as if sheer concentration alone will make them untrue, rereading the words twice, three times, four. The rest of the letter has been torn away, probably discarded. My heart skips painfully every time I see her name at the top, as clear and indisputable as the sky overhead— Filippa .

There can be no doubt now.

This cross belonged to her.

This note—she read it too, held it in her hands, before stowing it inside this locket for safekeeping. Had her lover given her the cross as well? Had he carved her initials into the side and intended them as a promise, like Jean Luc’s ring to me?

Meet me under our tree at midnight, and the three of us will be together forever.

I swallow hard against the lump in my throat. How long did he wait under that tree, I wonder, before realizing she would never come? Before realizing their dream had only ever been that—a dream? And who is this mysterious third person he mentioned? The three of us will be together forever. I frown at that line, the first tendrils of unease unfurling down my spine. Surely he hadn’t meant Babette. Filippa would’ve received this note while alive, so Babette would’ve been too busy caring for her sickly sister to run away with anyone. And why had he capitalized the word Frost ? Indeed, the longer I stare at the letter, the less any of it makes sense.

It looks like Frost tonight.

Frost. I wrack my brain, trying to place the word, but all I can imagine are glittering tufts of grass in the moonlight, perhaps a spire on Filippa’s imaginary ice palace. Had he mentioned the frost to alert Filippa of leaving potential tracks? I snort at the thought—of my mother and father trailing her at midnight, examining her footprints on the lawn—but truthfully, nothing about this is amusing. No, I feel rather sicker than I did before finding the note, and part of me wishes I’d left well enough alone. I refold the letter with cold fingers.

Pippa didn’t want me to know about this part of her life. She must’ve had her reasons, and I—

I didn’t know her at all.

Pressing my lips tight, hunching my shoulders against the wind, I tuck the letter back into the locket, pressing the silver door closed once more. I won’t tell Michal about the note. I won’t tell him anything about Filippa. He’ll want to—to study her, to track her last movements, and what on earth could we possibly find? My sister didn’t kill anyone, wouldn’t kill anyone, and even with this locket as a tenuous connection to Babette and the Necromancer—how could Filippa have known them, really? How could she have worked with them? Morgane killed her before the murders in Cesarine even started. No. I shake my head resolutely, vehemently, and rise to my feet. My sister wasn’t involved in this.

I almost don’t hear the small pssst from across the street.

Halting mid-step, I turn—half convinced I misheard the sound—and startle at the sight of eyes in the hedgerow. My own eyes narrow, and I glance left and right before peering closer into the branches of the holly bushes. The eyes are large, too large to be human, and deep brown, almost familiar. They look like they belong to—well, to a lutin . Amandine boasts very few farms, however, and even fewer fields—the terrain is too mountainous, the soil too infertile—which means this lutin has either traveled a long way from home or is very, very lost.

“Hello?” I call the greeting to it softly, lifting a placating hand as I did in Farmer Marc’s field so long ago. Has it really only been two weeks? It feels like lifetimes. “Excuse me? Are you... quite well?”

The lutin shuffles a little in the hedge, his overlarge eyes unblinking. Mariée?

I stiffen instinctively at the word, at the expected yet unwelcome intrusion in my mind. “I do not answer to that name.” Then—feeling I might as well do it properly— “I am Célie. Who might you be?”

You know me, Mariée, and I know you.

My frown deepens at the familiar trill. Surely it cannot be... “Tears Like Stars?”

He nods, gesturing for me to come closer, and the holly branches quiver all around him at the movement. I must speak with you, Mariée. We must speak.

“I—” Strangely reluctant to cross the street, I descend the last of the doorsteps, waiting for him to leave the shadows of the bush and approach me. When he does not, I draw to a halt at the edge of the cobblestones. “How did you find me?” I ask, unable to keep a wary note from my voice. Did he somehow catch my scent in La F?ret des Yeux and follow me to Amandine? And if so, how had Michal not noticed? I lift a delicate hand to my nose, my eyes watering anew. Even from across the street, I can tell Tears Like Stars smells rather... odder than before. The thick floral scent of his perfume is new, yet even it cannot quite disguise the fouler scent beneath. Indeed, he smells almost like—

Dropping my hand, I shake myself slightly and refuse to finish the thought. His scent cannot be what I think it is. Not here. Not now. Not on such a lovely autumn morning.

I need your help, Mariée. He gestures more emphatically now, and I cannot help but creep closer. He seems so agitated, his movements convulsive and strange, as if it takes conscious effort for him to use his limbs. A great, fat fly buzzes in the branches around him, loud and unnatural in the hush of the street. With a start, I realize the boy and his dog have gone back inside. I need your help.

“Why do you call me Bride?” Despite the cold touch of fear on my neck, I lift my chin, speaking louder, clearer in the bright morning sun. “Has something happened to you?”

Closer. Come closer.

“Not until you explain. Is something wrong?”

He thrashes his head in distress. I need your help, Mariée. Cold like frost. He needs your help to fix us.

I stop abruptly in the middle of the empty street, filled with equal parts revulsion and concern. “Who needs my help?” Unbidden, my hand slips into my pocket, and my fingers curl around the silver hilt of the knife. “Who is he ?” Then, throwing caution to the wind— “Is it the Necromancer? Is he the one who needs my help? Tell me , Tears Like Stars!”

Tears Like Stars, however, merely jerks his head and gnashes his needle-sharp teeth, gesturing and gesturing for me to close the distance between us. Two more flies soon join the first. Though they buzz around his shadowed face, he does not swat them away. He does not even blink, instead rocking back and forth between the bows, clutching his knobby elbows and reciting, Cold like frost. Wrong. We are cold like frost. Help.

The sight of him there—his mind clearly affected—is so pitiful, so heart-wrenching, that I scowl at myself for ever being disgusted. This isn’t his fault. None of this is his fault, and he desperately needs my help, not my condemnation. If the Necromancer has hurt him somehow, perhaps I can heal him again. At the very least, I can return him to his family in La F?ret des Yeux, and they can care for him properly. Right. Squaring my shoulders, I move to march straight into the holly bushes, but the door bangs open behind me at that precise second.

“Célie.” Voice quiet, Michal stands in the doorway—just outside the rectangle of sunlight upon the entry floor—with his hands clasped behind his back. “Please come back inside now.”

On either side of him, Odessa and Dimitri stand tall and silent, watching. Though I cannot see their expressions in the gloom of the entry, if the tightness of Michal’s eyes is any indication, the three have indeed been watching me. The realization curdles in my stomach. Unfortunately for them, however, they can do nothing more than watch—not with the sun so high and beautiful in the sky. I lift my chin higher, striving to sound calm and assertive. If he can be civil, I can be civil. “I have a friend in trouble, and I intend to help him.”

Dimitri moves forward, but Michal blocks him with an arm, flexing his hand upon the threshold. “That creature is no longer your friend.”

I bite down on a scathing retort—because this isn’t about Michal any longer. This isn’t even about me, not truly, and if we don’t help Tears Like Stars soon, he might inadvertently hurt himself. “He needs our help, Michal. Something is wrong with...”

The rest of the words die on my tongue, however, as I turn to find Tears Like Stars no longer hiding in the hedgerow. No. He stands directly in front of me now, and that smell —I didn’t imagine it before. My eyes instantly begin to water, and it takes every ounce of my willpower not to retreat a step. This close, he reeks undeniably of rot, of decay, but worse still—his once-swarthy skin looks unnaturally pallid in the sunlight, paper thin and sagging slightly upon his pointed face. An eerie white film covers his overlarge eyes as he stares up at me.

Now I do stumble back a step. “What—what happened to—?”

Before I can finish, he seizes my wrist with his long fingers. They feel like ice. Come with me, Mariée. You must come with me.

Choking on the smell, eyes still streaming, I try to wrench myself away, but his grip only tightens, viselike, until I nearly cry out in pain. “Let me go, Tears Like Stars.” Though I try to keep my voice measured and calm, a note of desperation breaks through, and Michal curses viciously from the door behind me. “Please. You don’t—you don’t want to hurt me. We’re friends, remember? I gave you elderberry wine, delicious elderberry wine.”

His head continues to thrash, as if he cannot hear me at all. And perhaps he can’t. Perhaps he can say only what the Necromancer has told him to say, can do only what the Necromancer has told him to do. My master needs help. He commands me to help him, and you to help me.

“Who is your master?” I crouch to peer helplessly into his wretched eyes, and a fly —it lands directly upon the sclera of his pupil. Choking down bile, I swat it away with my free hand. “What is his name? Did he”—fresh gorge rises as the same fly flits into my hair—“did he kill you, Tears Like Stars? Did your master take your life?”

A drop is not enough. We must have it all.

“All of what ? My blood? Does he need”—I swallow hard—“a-all of my blood to—to resurrect the dead? Is that what he did to you?”

He convulses again in response, and slowly but surely begins to tow me down the cobblestone street, muttering all the while, Cold as frost. Something is wrong. I am wrong.

“ Célie ,” Michal says sharply. “Your knife.”

I dig in my heels, panic clawing up my throat. The knife still lies heavy in my pocket, yes, but it won’t—I don’t think it’ll—Tears Like Stars is dead , and something indeed has gone very wrong. The realization rattles in my chest, too shocking and too terrible to ignore any longer. He is dead , yet he still holds my arm, still walks and talks among the living, still carries out his master’s orders with the strength of a creature twice his size. What did Babette say in Les Abysses?

The Necromancer came upon your blood by chance, and we tested it on a whim.

Did they test that single drop of my blood on Tears Like Stars? Is this—this creature before me the result of their experimentation? Does the real Tears Like Stars still exist within it, or has his soul already departed this world, leaving only a shell behind? Can he still feel pain? I twist my wrist harder, abrading skin, but still he doesn’t release me. “Tell me how to help you,” I say desperately. “Please, I can’t give you my blood, but—but I could hide you from him. Would you like that? I could take you back to your family.”

My master is near. We must go to him. We must meet him.

“Where is he?” I look around wildly, half expecting the Necromancer to drop out of the neighbor’s cherry tree. “ Where is your master? Tell me! ”

Wrong, wrong, something is wrong.

Somewhere behind us, Michal is shouting now—Dimitri and Odessa too—but I cannot hear them; I cannot heed their lethal commands. Because I am not a vampire, and this isn’t Tears Like Stars’s fault. I cannot hurt him, and even if I could— Gritting my teeth, I sink my nails into his hand deep enough to wound, but no blood seeps from the tiny crescent moons. No blood, and no shrieks of pain. My hysteria spikes at the realization.

Even if I could hurt Tears Like Stars, a simple knife won’t do the trick. No, I’ll need to—to—

A knife.

My thoughts catch on the silver blade in my pocket, on the blade that shone so brightly earlier it almost blinded me. Lutins appreciate the finer things in life . I painted twenty cages gold to attract Tears Like Stars and his kin at Monsieur Marc’s farm. Perhaps I don’t need to hurt him now either. Perhaps I just need to distract him.

Plunging my free hand into my pocket, I withdraw the blade and flash it in the morning sun, which blazes even brighter and higher in the sky than before. The silver gleams almost white—brilliant, dazzling—between us, and when Tears Like Stars’s eyes fall upon it, they widen infinitesimally. “Do you like it?” I wave the knife above his head when he stretches out to seize it. It throws sparkling lights upon the cobblestones. “It’s pretty, isn’t it? You may have it if you can reach it.”

At my words, he snaps his teeth and stretches up on tiptoe, but I’m much taller; he cannot even touch the handle while he still holds my wrist, which I strain to keep low at my side. “Go on,” I tell him, nodding encouragingly. He stretches a bit taller, his frail arms trembling now. “You’re almost there.”

At last, his fingers slip—just an inch—from my wrist, but it’s all the slack I need. Hurling the knife down the street, I twist away from him, turning and sprinting toward Michal and the others without looking back. His long hands do not find me again, however, as I leap into Michal’s outstretched arms, as Odessa slams the door closed behind me, as Dimitri peers through the curtains into the street.

“He’s gone,” he says incredulously. “The little scab disappeared!”

Still breathing heavily, I disentangle myself from Michal and push Dimitri out of the way, gazing through the gap in the curtains to where Tears Like Stars just stood. Only cheery sunshine and orange maple leaves remain. Even the silver knife has gone—vanished—as if I imagined the entire scene.