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.
Madame Labelle had been clear. My mother was in the city. Perhaps she knew where I was, or perhaps she didn’t. Either way, I couldn’t afford weakness.
As if listening to my thoughts, the golden dust seemed to shift closer, and the witches at the parade reared in my mind’s eye. Their crazed smiles. The bodies floating helplessly above them. I repressed a shudder, and a wave of hopelessness crashed through me.
No matter how often I practiced—no matter how skilled I grew—I would never be as powerful as some. Because witches like those at the parade—witches willing to sacrifice everything for their cause—weren’t merely powerful.
They were dangerous.
Though a witch couldn’t see another’s patterns, feats such as drowning or burning a person alive required enormous offerings to maintain balance: perhaps a specific emotion, perhaps a year’s worth of memories. The color of their eyes. The ability to feel another’s touch.
Such losses could . . . change a person. Twist her into something darker and stranger than she was before. I’d seen it happen once.
But that was a long time ago.
Even if I couldn’t hope to grow more powerful than my mother, I refused to do nothing.
“If I hinder the healers’ and priests’ ability to hear us, I’m impairing them. I’m taking from them.” I brushed aside the gold clinging to my skin, straightening my shoulders. “I have to impair myself as well, somehow. One of my senses . . . hearing is the obvious trade, but I’ve already done that. I could give another sense, like touch or sight or taste.”