“She has spies everywhere,” I whispered.

“Yes.” La Voisin nodded, moving around the table. I fought to remain still. I would not flee. I would not cower. “Yes, she does.” When she stood only a hair’s breadth from my shoulder, she stopped, staring down at me. “I warned Coco against her friendship with you. She knew I disliked you. She was always so careful to protect you from me, never revealing even a scrap of information about your whereabouts.” Tilting her head, she considered me with predatory focus. “When she heard of your marriage to the Chasseur, she panicked. It made her careless. Reckless. We followed her trail back to Cesarine, and lo and behold—there you were. After two years of searching, we had found you.”

I swallowed hard. “We?”

“Yes, Louise. We.”

I bolted then, but Nicholina flashed in front of the door. In a sickeningly familiar movement, she pushed me into the wall, yanking my hands above my head with inhuman strength. When I smashed my forehead into her nose, she simply leaned closer, inhaling against the skin of my neck. Her blood sizzled against my skin, and I screamed. “Reid! REID! COCO!”

“They can’t hear you.” La Voisin flipped through the pages of her grimoire. “We’ve enchanted the door.”

I watched, horrified, as Nicholina’s nose shifted back into place. “It’s the mice,” she breathed, grinning like a fiend. “The mice, the mice, the mice. They keep us young, keep us strong.”

“What the hell are you always talking about? Do you eat mice?”

“Don’t be silly.” She giggled and brushed her nose against mine. Her blood continued to boil my face. I thrashed away from her—from the pain—but she held strong. “We eat hearts.”

“Oh my god.” I retched violently, gasping for breath. “Gaby was right. You eat your dead.”

La Voisin didn’t look up from her grimoire. “Just their hearts. The heart is the core of a blood witch’s power, and it lives on after one dies. The dead have no need for magic. We do.” She pulled a bundle of herbs from her cloak next, setting each beside her grimoire and calling them by name. “Bayberry for illusion, eyebright for control, and belladonna”—she lifted the dried leaves to inspect them—“for spiritual projection.”

Spiritual projection.

What was the book in your aunt’s tent?

Her grimoire.

Do you know what’s in it?

Curses, possession, sickness, and the like. Only a fool would cross my aunt.

Oh shit.

“Fang of an adder,” Nicholina chanted, still leering at me. “Eye of an owl.”

La Voisin set to crushing the herbs, the fang, the eye into powder on the table.

“Why are you doing this?” I kneed Nicholina in the stomach, but she pressed closer, laughing. “I agreed to help you. We want the same things, we want—”

“You are easier to kill than Morgane. Though the plan was to deliver you to La Mascarade de Crânes, we are flexible. We will deliver you to Chateau le Blanc instead.”

I watched in horror as she slit her wrist open, as her blood poured into a goblet. When she added the powder, a plume of black smoke curled from the foul liquid. “So kill me, then,” I choked. “Don’t—don’t do this. Please.”

“By decree of the Goddess, Morgane can no longer hunt you. She cannot force you to do anything against your will. You must go to her willingly. You must sacrifice yourself willingly. I would simply feed you my blood to assume control, but the pure, unadulterated blood of an enemy kills.” She gestured to Nicholina’s blood on my face, to my ravaged skin. “Fortunately, I have an alternate solution. It’s all thanks to you, Louise. The rules of old magic are absolute. An impure spirit such as Nicholina’s cannot touch a pure one. This darkness in your heart . . . it calls to us.”

Nicholina tapped my nose. “Pretty mouse. We shall taste your huntsman. We shall have our kiss.”

I bared my teeth at her. “You won’t.”

She cackled as La Voisin crossed the room to lift the goblet to her lips. Drinking greedily, she relaxed her hands, and I bucked away from her, lunging for the door—

La Voisin caught my injured wrist. I arched away, screaming—screaming for Reid, for Coco, for anyone—but she caught my hair and forced my head back. My mouth open. When the black liquid touched my lips, I collapsed and saw no more.