I try to swallow but find that my throat aches. My mother has never called me beautiful before . . . and yet I feel beautiful. Feel safe and certain—
“Empress.”
I gasp and twirl back to the door. And there he is, wearing a handsome gray wool suit and with his cheeks bright pink from traipsing through the winter snow.
He grins, making his whole face relax and his grassy-colored eyes twinkle. Then he strolls to me.
“I appreciate you invitin’ me to Christmas supper.” He only stops his easy amble once he’s directly in front of me. I have to tip back my head to meet his eyes.
But then a frown knits onto his brow. He reaches out to clasp my chin. “Why are you cryin’, Empress?”
“I am?” I reach up, and my gloves slide over wet cheeks. “I . . . I am. It’s just . . . I’m so happy, Daniel.”
“Then you shouldn’t cry, Empress. You should laugh.”
I laughed—a shrill, desperate sound—as the vision faded away . . . as Madame Marineaux’s face swam back into my vision.
My laugh broke off, replaced by a sob. I toppled to the hard earth. “Where is it?” I screamed, clutching at her skirts. “The vision, bring it back! Please, I want it back.”
The edges of her lips twisted up. “And you can have it, Mademoiselle Fitt. You can have it if you join me.”
“Do not believe her!” Joseph rasped, still bound to the table. “It is only a fantasy.”
“Ah, but it is not only a fantasy,” Madame Marineaux whispered. “Together we can make it real.
With your power and mine, we can do anything. They”—her voice lifted, as if she wanted the Spirit-
Hunters to hear—“do not appreciate you. These Spirit-Hunters think you are dark, but they simply do not understand that this is who you are. But I understand, for you have told me all your troubles.
“You are not dark,” she went on. “You are selfless, Mademoiselle Fitt . These Spirit-Hunters have no idea how hard it was for you to get here. They do not realize all you had to do to survive. All that you gave up for them. For those you love.”
I shook my head, my eyes burning with tears.
“They do not understand that your mother hates you. That your friends have all rejected you. Or that your fortune is gone. What do they”—she flicked her wrist dismissively in Joseph’s direction
—“know of the dresses you had to sell to pay for your mother’s bills? Your ungrateful, cruel mother?
What do they know of the friends who avoid you on the street or laugh behind your back?”
A sob shuddered through my chest. Everything she said was true . What did the Spirit-Hunters know about me? About what I had lost?
“Nor,” she continued, “can they see the fine line you walk between life and death. The Hell
Hounds await you—still these guardians hunger for your blood. You must use your necromancy to stay alive, but these Spirit-Hunters cannot see that.” Her voice grew louder with each word—and my conviction, my hurt, grew too. “So tell me what the Spirit-Hunters actually know about you at all?
“I will tell you,” Madame Marineaux declared. “The Spirit-Hunters know nothing. Their lives have gotten better, while yours has spiraled into pain and hate and memories best forgotten.”
Madame Marineaux bent to me and whispered in my ear, “I feel your pain as strongly as my own, Mademoiselle. I know what it is to be denied what you deserve. To have everything you love taken from you.” She dipped her pointed chin and watched me from the tops of her eyes. “I am unbound yet unfree. How is that any different from you, who are far from home yet never able to escape it?”
“What—” My voice cracked, but I tried again. “What do you want from me?”
“Oh, it is easy.” She brushed my hair lovingly from my face. “My master—my overseer—expects me to meet him in Marseille, but you can free me before then. We can get your friend, the Chinese girl, back from him, and together we can crush him. You, Mademoiselle Fitt, could become my true master. A woman worthy of my magic and my devotion.”
“What do I have to do?”
“Don’t!” Daniel roared. “Empress, don’t!”
Madame Marineaux twirled around, and I realized with a start that Daniel and Joseph were both free now . . . that Daniel was running toward me.
But then a bolt of light flew from Madame Marineaux’s hand and blasted Daniel in the chest. He toppled backward, flipping over like a rag doll to crash into the stone altar.
And for several heartbeats I only watched. Completely indifferent . . . until a noxious wave pummeled into me—a shock wave from Madame Marineaux’s spell that was filled with complete wrong. And like a hypnotist’s snap, it jerked my mind back to reality.
“Daniel!” I pushed off the wall, trying to skitter around Madame Marineaux. But she was faster—
so much faster.
She lifted me up and slammed me against the wall. Pain cracked into my skull, and sparks raced through my vision. I reached for her, tried to scratch at her face, but she merely straightened her arms —and somehow her arms were suddenly longer than mine. Much longer, and my fingers reached nothing but air.