“Best I let you get back to work before the barkeep tosses me out,” he said to the girl, waiting for her to go back to serving drinks before adding, “You look terrible, Cécile. You should be at home in bed.”
I grimaced, knowing that home meant the Hollow, not our mother’s townhouse. He was worse than Sabine, because not only was he adamantly against my hunt for Anushka, he was against my being in Trianon at all. “Don’t start.”
He set his drink down on the bar with a clank, casting a black glare at a group of men who jostled against me as they passed. The tension radiating from him told me that he was looking for a reason to scrap. Any reason at all. He was angry all the time now. At my mother, at me, at the world.
“You’re not going to listen to a word I say anyhow,” he muttered. “Might as well go on and do what you do.”
Chris tugged on my elbow, drawing me towards a table at the back. “Fred only wants to protect you, Cécile,” he said. “He blames himself for what happened. For not being there for you.”
“I know.” His first reaction to hearing my story had been a vow to burn Trollus and all its inhabitants to the ground, and the verbal brawl between us when I’d told him my intention to do the exact opposite was probably heard three farms away. Not only did he not agree with my decision, he didn’t understand it. And that made Fred angry. But then again, it didn’t take much to set him off these days – and I knew that that had nothing to do with the trolls. Something had happened long before my disappearance. Something that had occurred when he’d first come to Trianon. Something that had to do with our mother. He hated her, and there were times I thought he believed I’d betrayed him by choosing to live and work with her in Trianon.
Sitting at the sticky table, I proceeded to drain my beer, hoping to wash away thoughts of my brother and everything else.
“Easy there,” Chris said, sipping his brew at a more measured pace. “I take it something has happened, and it isn’t Fred’s perpetual sour mood.”
“No.” I motioned for one of the girls to bring me another drink. “Nothing’s happened, and therein lies the problem.” I took several long swallows. “Just another day gone by where I’ve made no progress finding her. Another day gone by where Tristan suffers God knows what sort of tortures, while I sing on stage to crowds of admirers. I hate it.”
“It’s the only way you can afford to stay in Trianon. And besides, I thought you liked performing?”
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and nodded. “But I shouldn’t.”
“Cécile.” Chris reached across the table and tried to hold my mug down, but I jerked it out of his grasp and finished the contents. He grimaced. “You know that he doesn’t want you miserable every waking breath for his sake.”
“How would you know?” I asked, digging money out of my pocket to pay for another drink.
“We’ve tried everything,” he said, going with a different tactic. “For two months you’ve run in the circles you’d thought she’d occupy and not seen hide nor hair of her. You have lists and lists of women whose backgrounds you and Sabine have checked, which yielded nothing but gossip. I’ve lost count of how many witches, real or otherwise, that we’ve talked to. None of them would help us.”
“Most of them can’t.” During my recovery, I’d pressed my Gran into teaching me all she knew about magic. She’d taught me how to balance the elements, why certain plants had the effects they did, and how to time a spell casting at a moment of transition: sunrise and sunset, a full moon, and the solstices in order to maximize the amount of power drawn from the earth. She didn’t know a great deal – and nearly all of it was relating to healing injuries and curing sickness, but I’d gained enough knowledge to know magic when I saw it.
“My point is,” Chris continued, “that maybe you’ve done enough. Maybe it’s time for you to move on with your life.”
I set my empty mug down with a clatter, not bothering to keep the anger off my face. I expected this from Sabine, but not from Chris. For her, it was still half a fairytale, but he’d been to Trollus. He knew the stakes. “Are you actually suggesting I give up?”
“I don’t know.” He looked away. “He doesn’t even want you to break the curse. Maybe it would be better for everyone if you stopped hunting.”
“Better for humans, you mean,” I snapped, my words slurring together. “How can you be so selfish?”
Chris turned bright red. Hands gripping the edge of the table, he leaned toward me. “If you want to see selfish, go look in the mirror. I’m not the one willing to sell the whole world into slavery for the sake of a love affair!” He stormed away through the crowd of patrons and out of sight.
I stared blindly at my empty mug, ignoring the dampness of spilled beer and wine soaking into the sleeves of my dress. Was Chris right? Was I being selfish? Two months ago, I set out to Trianon to hunt down and kill Anushka so that the curse would be broken. There had been no doubt in my mind that I was doing the right thing, and that certainty had been unwavering.