“If you look that way,” she went on, directing me to look left, “you can see all the flowers and hedges, yeah?”
I followed her finger until my eyes met manicured bushes and perfectly organized rows of flowers.
“Yes,” I breathed. “And what is that beyond it?”
At the far end of the garden was an enormous, hollowed-out structure. Its roof was missing and its walls charred.
“That,” Joseph said, “is the Tuileries Palace. It was destroyed in a fire several years ago.”
“And that?” I pointed right, to the other end of the gardens, where a giant, needle-like column poked up toward the sky.
“That is the Place de la Concorde,” Joseph answered. “It is an Egyptian obelisk . . .” His words faded off, so I glanced back at him—and found his eyes locked on my right hand.
I slowly drew back through the window. “You can ask about it.”
Rose patches appeared on Joseph’s cheeks. “May I see it?”
“Of course.” As I slid off my glove and extended my hand toward him, I prayed he didn’t have many questions. My reluctance to share the truth was somehow even greater this morning than it had been last night. Why muddy the clear waters? Things were going so well.
And heavens, how I had missed Joseph and Jie. Missed having friends who liked me exactly as I was . . . Besides, I told myself, you are making it easier for them too. No need to worry the Spirit-
Hunters when they had an entire city of people to protect.
“Kaptivan,” Joseph breathed. He inspected my palm like a fortune-teller at the fair. “How did you make this, Eleanor?”
I licked my lips. “I-I’m not sure how. It was bothering me . . . hurting when spirits were near, so I just, um . . . called to it. And it came.”
He squinted almost imperceptibly. “Surely it was not so simple.”
“Perhaps not, but I . . . I can’t really remember the details.”
A flicker of something passed over his face. Anger, perhaps, except that I’d never seen Joseph angry—at least not with me. “I urge you to remember the details, Eleanor. It is very important.”
“I-I’ll think about it.” I glanced off to the right and withdrew my hand. “Maybe I can remember something.”
“Hey,” Jie said, fidgeting with her hair clasp. “I’m gonna go down and order breakfast, yeah?”
Joseph nodded, and I took the opportunity to bolt to the table and waiting stool. “Jie told me you battled a corpse today.”
“Wi.” Joseph closed the window and followed me to the worktable. Sharp lines puckered his brow, and I noticed new creases around his eyes. He looked so very tired.
“This corpse was our first in quite some time,” he continued. “It was one of the Hungry, as they always seem to be. She was a baker’s wife, and the poor man . . . his son died a few weeks ago, and now he must deal with this too. Needless to say, he is devastated.”
“Jie only told me the basics about les Morts.” I pretended to focus very hard on adjusting my skirts around my stool. “What exactly is happening?”
He eased onto the stool beside me. “Before we came, there had been forty-eight walking corpses.
This was why we were called in, and within the first week of our arrival, we encountered twenty-two more. Seventy Dead in all. Then . . . nothing for the past three weeks—until this morning, that is.”
“And they’ve all been murdered?”
“Yes.” He sighed, and his shoulders sank a few inches. “We are at a loss for who might be responsible, though. Not a single corpse has appeared in the same place. From the rich to the poor, no class has been untouched—and there is no way of predicting when or where the next person will vanish. Nor when or where that person will reappear as one of the Dead—or the Hungry, rather, for they are not attached to a necromancer. Recall that a corpse not controlled by a necromancer is free and desperate only for its next meal of soul.”
My gut twisted and I fidgeted with my gloves. “Well, what if you kept track of all missing persons? Would that help you predict the next victim?”
“The police do provide us with a new list each week, but there are over two million people in
Paris. Most missing people are completely unrelated to our murders. . . .” His voice trailed off, and I realized his attention was focused back on my phantom hand. And the wrinkles in his brow were even deeper.
So before he could direct the conversation to my magic, I blurted, “Oh, Joseph, I almost forgot about Marcus!”
His eyes leaped to my face. “What about him?”
“He came to Philadelphia. That’s why I left—why I’m here. Marcus wants the pages from Le
Dragon Noir and the letters Elijah left inside.” I went on to explain how I’d seen yellow eyes, how
Mama had thought she’d seen Elijah, and how I’d been forced to flee on the next steamer bound for
France.
I however did not mention Oliver. “Then I came here,” I finished at last. “To you, for I didn’t know what else to do.”