Céleste lifted the wooden signet ring. She slipped it on and off her gloved finger then held it up. Carved wood caught the light.
“One day, Alastair came across the entry for the signet ring in the society’s catalogue. He brought it straight to me. He’d convinced himself that if the ring could bestow magic, it could also bestow the benefits of magic. He could be powerful and live forever—everything he wanted. He begged me to draw a map to it.”
That was it. That was why he wanted the ring.
He wanted to cheat death by becoming a suminaire.
“Then did you find the ring?” I asked.
“At first, I couldn’t get a feel for the ring’s catalogue entry. There wasn’t enough to work with. But that didn’t stop Alastair’s obsession. The ring gave him ideas, and he soon found another artéfact in the society’s vault. A mirror.” Her expression darkened.
“A tarnished hand mirror?”
“You’ve seen it?”
“A few times. I’ve even seen Madame des Rêves fan herself with it.”
Céleste made a face at the mention of Des Rêves. “She worked as a chamber maid for the society when Alastair and I first got there, you know. Gave herself that ridiculous title and made everyone address her as Madame. I never discovered Nicole’s real last name.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Des Rêves was the suminaire who befriended Alastair? With the copper spoon?”
Céleste nodded. “Her power was weak. It was the only artéfact she could get a feel for.”
“But if Des Rêves could only heat liquid, how does she use the talon to turn people to birds?”
“The same way my brother pretends to be a suminaire. The mirror.”
“I don’t understand.”
Céleste continued to grab things from shelves and toss them into her hatboxes, telling me the history of the mirror as she packed. I soon learned that after they’d been at the society for a few years, Alastair found an account of the tarnished hand mirror in an old journal. Apparently a Verdanniere ship captain created wind from a different artéfact to sail her ship. When her magic waned halfway across a still ocean, she used the hand mirror to get a boost from a crew member who wasn’t powerful enough to use the wind-creating artéfact himself. The hand mirror transfers magic from a suminaire to another person temporarily.
“Alastair was beginning to look older than the suminaires. He thought the hand mirror might work the same way he assumed the signet ring would. He brought it to me and I naively tried it on him. Instantly, he felt more youthful and he discovered he could use some of the weaker artéfacts. But the amount of magic I’d transferred to him was so small, he only noticed the effects for a few days. The transferred magic doesn’t last. It wears off.”
“Did you try it again?”
“Never,” she said. Her eyes caught mine. Slowly, she pinched the fingertip of one opera glove and peeled it away.
At the sight of her hand, I jumped back, stumbling into Zosa’s cage. My sister made an angry chirp, but I didn’t look down. I couldn’t tear my eyes from Céleste’s palm—what was left of it.
“Using the hand mirror isn’t like using magic yourself. The magic you transfer to someone else doesn’t replenish. This is what giving away that miniscule bit of magic did to me.”
A hole went clean through the center of her palm, the size of a dublonne, surrounded by graying flesh.
I yelped when she snatched my hand. My thumb slid into the grotesque hole. Faint wisps of smoke curled off the edges, as if she were turning incorporeal before my eyes. She let me go and replaced the satin glove.
I gripped the counter and relished in its solid feel, my solid skin.
Céleste’s face tightened. “Alastair promised me he would return the hand mirror and never use it again, but he lied. Then he told her about it.”
“Des Rêves?”
“Nicole is vicious, and my brother was a fool.”
“He still is.”
“Figured as much. Shortly after I’d tried the mirror on him, Nicole convinced her roommate to use it on herself, gifting both Nicole and Alastair with a rush of magic. The act, however, left a gaping hole in the poor roommate’s arm, leaching her of color.”
A chill slid over me. All those suminaires in the aviary, the dull feathers. The pieces were clicking together.
“Alastair later told me the roommate looked gray around the edges, her lips and eyelids the color of dust, like a corpse. She begged for Nicole to reverse it. She even tried to fight back with her artéfact, but because of that hand mirror, her magic was gone. Permanently transferred. Nicole didn’t want the girl to escape, to tell anyone what happened, so with her stolen magic, Nicole used the poor girl’s artéfact against her.”