Ansel touched my arm. “Lou—”

“I’m listening.” Jean Luc’s eyes gleamed with amusement now. “You want a knife. What’s in it for me?”

I shrugged away from Ansel’s hand and returned his smile. “It’s simple. Giving me a knife would annoy the hell out of my husband.”

He laughed then. Tossed his head back and slapped the table, scattering his papers. “Oh, you really are a clever little witch, aren’t you?”

I stiffened, my smile slipping infinitesimally, before chuckling a second too late. Ansel didn’t seem to notice, but Jean Luc, with his sharp eyes, stopped laughing abruptly. He tilted his head to consider me, like a hound scenting a rabbit’s trail. Damn it. I forced a smile before turning to leave. “I’ve wasted enough of your time, Chasseur Toussaint. If you’ll excuse me, I need to find my elusive husband.”

“Reid isn’t here.” Jean Luc still watched me with unnerving focus. “He left earlier with the Archbishop. A lutin infestation was reported outside the city.” Mistaking my frown for concern, he added, “He’ll be back in a few hours. Lutins are hardly dangerous, but the constabulary aren’t equipped to handle the supernatural.”

I pictured the small hobgoblins I’d played with as a child. “They aren’t dangerous at all.” The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “I mean . . . what will he do to them?”

Jean Luc arched a brow. “He’ll exterminate them, of course.”

“Why?” I ignored Ansel’s insistent tugs on my arm, heat rising to my face. I knew I should stop talking. I recognized the spark in Jean Luc’s eyes for what it was—an inkling. An instinct. An idea that might soon turn into something more if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. “They’re harmless.”

“They’re nuisances to farmers, and they’re unnatural. It’s our job to eliminate them.”

“I thought it was your job to protect the innocent?”

“And lutins are innocent?”

“They’re harmless,” I repeated.

“They shouldn’t exist. They were born from reanimated clay and witchcraft.”

“Wasn’t Adam sculpted from the earth?”

He tilted his head slowly, considering me. “Yes . . . by the hand of God. Are you suggesting witches possess the same authority?”

I hesitated, finally realizing what I was saying—and where I was. Jean Luc and Ansel both stared at me, waiting for my response. “Of course not.” I forced myself to meet Jean Luc’s curious gaze, blood roaring in my ears. “That’s not what I was saying at all.”

“Good.” His smile was small and unsettling as Ansel dragged me to the door. “Then we’re in agreement.”

Ansel kept shooting me anxious glances as we walked to the infirmary, but I ignored him. When he finally opened his mouth to question me, I did what I did best—deflected.

“I think Mademoiselle Perrot will be here this morning.”

He brightened visibly. “Will she?”

I smiled and nudged his arm with my shoulder. He didn’t tense this time. “There’s a good chance.”

“And—and will she let me visit the patients with you today?”

“Less of a chance.”

He sulked the rest of the way up the stairs. I couldn’t help but chuckle.

The familiar, soothing scent of magic greeted us as we stepped into the infirmary.

Come play come play come play

But I was hardly there to play. A fact Coco substantiated when she met us at the door. “Hello, Ansel,” she said breezily, looping her arm through mine and steering me to Monsieur Bernard’s room.

“Hello, Mademoiselle Perr—”

“Goodbye, Ansel.” She shut the door in his besotted face.

I frowned at her. “He likes you, you know. You should be nicer to him.”

She threw herself into the iron chair. “That’s why I’m not encouraging him. That poor boy is far too good for me.”

“Maybe you should let him decide that.”

“Hmm . . .” She examined a particularly nasty scar on her wrist before tugging her sleeve back down. “Maybe I should.”

I rolled my eyes and went to greet Monsieur Bernard.

Though it’d been two days, the poor man still hadn’t died. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t eat. Father Orville and the healers had no idea how he stayed alive. Whatever the reason, I was glad. I’d grown rather fond of his eerie stare.

“I heard about Madame Labelle,” Coco said. True to his word, Jean Luc had spoken with the priests, and true to their word, they’d kept a much closer eye on their newest healer after her interference in the library. She hadn’t dared leave the infirmary again. “What did she want?”

I sank to the floor beside Bernie’s bed and crossed my legs. His white, orb-like eyes followed me all the way down, his finger tapping against the chains.

Clink.

Clink.

Clink.

“To give me a warning. She said my mother is coming.”

“She said that?” Coco’s gaze sharpened, and I quickly related what had happened yesterday evening. By the time I’d finished, she was pacing. “It doesn’t mean anything. We know she’s after you. Of course she’s coming. That doesn’t mean she knows you’re here—”

“You’re right. It doesn’t. But I still want to be ready.”

“Of course.” She nodded vigorously, curls bouncing. “Let’s get started, then. Enchant the door. A pattern you haven’t used before.”

I stood and walked toward the door, rubbing my hands together against the chill in the room. Coco and I had decided to enchant it against eavesdroppers during our practice sessions. It wouldn’t do for anyone to hear our whispered conversations about magic.

As I approached, I willed the familiar golden patterns to appear. They materialized at my call, hazy and ubiquitous. Against my skin. Inside my mind. I waded through them, searching for something fresh. Something different. After several fruitless minutes, I threw my hands up in frustration. “There’s nothing new.”

Coco came to stand beside me. As a Dame Rouge, she couldn’t see the patterns I saw, but she tried nonetheless. “You’re not thinking about it properly. Examine every possibility.”

I closed my eyes, forcing myself to take a deep breath. Once, envisioning and manipulating patterns had come easily—as easily as breathing. But no longer. I’d been hiding for too long. Repressing my magic for too long. Too many dangers had lurked in the city: witches, Chasseurs, and even citizens all recognized the peculiar smell of magic. Though it was impossible to discern a witch from her appearance, unattended women always aroused suspicion. How long before someone had smelled me after an enchantment? How long before someone had seen me contorting my fingers and followed me home?

I’d used magic at Tremblay’s, and look where it’d landed me.

No. It’d been safer to stop practicing magic altogether.

I explained to Coco that it was like exercising a muscle. When used routinely, the patterns came quickly, clearly, usually of their own volition. If left unattended, however, that part of my body—the part connected to my ancestors, to their ashes in the land—grew weak. And every second it took to untangle a pattern, a witch could strike.