Better to think of the results.
All but two of the burn marks on the map we’d proven to be deceased women. The one mark within Trianon we couldn’t find had been located in the Regent’s castle, and I knew for certain that Marie had been there last night, and I was certain Anushka had been in her company. My own blasted mother had performed for her. Chris would argue that it was still no proof. That we needed to investigate the mark outside the city. Yet even before I’d heard his argument, I was already dismissing it. It would only be another grave out in the middle of a field or a forest.
She could have left Trianon, Chris’s phantom voice echoed in my head. If she knows you’re after her, perhaps she has fled. I brushed the voice of my friend aside – my gut told me that Anushka would not flee from me.
But what about the trolls?
“Bloody stones, shut up!” I swore.
“Mademoiselle?”
Tipping my head, I peered out of the depths of my covers with one eye. The maid stood in the doorway, one eyebrow arched. “Not you,” I said. “The… the neighbors are being loud.”
“It is quite late in the morning,” she said pointedly, her gaze flicking to my untouched tray.
“I’m sorry,” I said, eyeing its contents again. My stomach did flip-flops. “I’m feeling under the weather. I don’t think I can eat a thing.”
A soft little sniff told me exactly what she thought of my malaise. “Will you be wanting lunch?”
“I’ll let you know,” I said, still eyeing the wasted food. “For now, I’ll rest.”
I waited for her to leave, then I dragged a chair under the door’s handle so she wouldn’t be able to sneak up on me again. Retrieving a pencil and a piece of stationery from my desk, I went back to my bed and got under the covers again. From under my pillow, I extracted the blood-smeared map with its hastily scrawled list of names and dates, and I carefully began to copy them out in order.
They spanned the past five centuries; the oldest tomb had been so weatherworn that we’d barely been able to make out the names and dates. Chewing on my fingernail, I carefully calculated the age of each woman at her death. No pattern. I calculated the years between their births. No pattern. I began calculating the years between their deaths. Eleven years. Nineteen years. Thirty-eight years. I flung my pencil down with annoyance, not bothering with the rest.
The dead women were connected to how Anushka was managing immortality, I was sure of it. But how? Killing them would certainly give her a glut of power, but it wouldn’t last more than a few days, and nothing I’d read suggested that such behavior would prolong life. If that were the case, other witches would have discovered it and capitalized upon it. She had to be doing something with the power, but no matter how far I stretched my mind, I couldn’t think what. A witch couldn’t heal herself, and what was immortality if not a cure for old age? It didn’t make sense. She had to be doing it another way.
I picked up the grimoire Chris had stolen and began going through the pages. Flip, flip, flip. The pages rasped against my blanket as I turned them, and then I stopped.
The grimoire was full of spells combining regular magic and blood magic to manage certain afflictions of the body, but only now was I noticing a theme among many of them. Potions to keep hair dark, creams to wipe away wrinkles, and tonics to keep skin firm. While the spells would do nothing for the subject’s longevity, a combination of them would certainly replicate the appearance of immortality – the individual using them might well drop dead of old age, while appearing to all who looked on as though they were in the bloom of youth.
I rested my chin on my wrists. Catherine had been Lady Marie’s maid. I suspected Marie was helping Anushka, so wasn’t it possible she had enlisted Catherine, and maybe others before her, to help maintain her immortality? If one could use magic to combat the exterior signs of age, couldn’t one do the same for the interior degeneration? It would be complicated, and the spells would need continual renewal, but it might be possible. The only certain thing was that she’d need the help of other witches to do it.
My heart started to beat a little faster. Maybe that had been the reason for Catherine’s fall from grace – that she’d refused to help Anushka with her foul magic any longer.
I wondered how much Catherine knew. Whether Marie and Anushka had entrusted her with their secrets, or whether they’d only used her for her skills. Catherine had said Marie dismissed her for meddling in business she shouldn’t have, which could well be Anushka’s relationship with the trolls.