Page 28 of The Shadow Bride

No no no—

Hysteria rising, I chase after them, addressing Jean Luc now, waving my arm beseechingly. “You coulddie, Jean Luc. Please, please, just let me heal you—”

“Like he healed you?” Voice faint, Jean Luc winces as Brigitte jerks him into the corridor. I still reach for him, determined to dosomething, but Michal’s hand descends on my shoulder just as my fingers start to burn. I snatch them away, tears welling anew at the blisters. At the smoke.

“You can’t follow them,” he says softly.

I whirl to face him, to plead that he somehow—someway—undo all of this. “Why?”

Why did this have to happen?

It isn’t Michal who answers, however. It’s Jean Luc. Tears track down his cheeks as he stares at me from the shadowed corridor, but his expression isn’t mournful. It isn’t sad. Instead his entire face screws tight with disgust. “Because the Church is holy. Evil cannot enter here.”

My eyes widen in hurt. In disbelief.

Evil.

“As you’ve refused our blood,” Michal says curtly to Jean Luc, “you should know that your healers can do nothing for those wounds. I myself do not care if you live or die, but Célie does. She is the only reason I offer this alternative—summon your friendsinstead. Blood magic can heal you if administered quickly.”

“Like we’d ever trustyou—” Brigitte starts, but Michal swings the door shut in her face. Then he turns to me.

“Célie?” he asks, his eyes wary.

We must all go to the clock room eventually.

“Take me to Requiem, Michal,” I whisper.

Part Two

Un clou chasse l’autre.

One nail drives out another.

Chapter Ten

Make It So, and It Will Be

An hour later, I sit in an odd little consignment shop overlooking the docks.

It isn’t much—a few dusty tomes on navigation, a bundle of rope, and, curiously, a basket of kittens—but Michal and Odessa know the owner, a portly, middle-aged man with a kind smile and a desk in his shopwindow. “Wait here,” Michal told me, his hand at the small of my back as he ushered me into the shop. “I need to speak with the harbormaster.”

“Does this place carry stationery?” I asked him in a hollow voice. “And envelopes?”

He hesitated in the doorway, casting me a searching look. “I believe so.”

I stare down at said envelopes now. Sitting at the desk in the window, I focus on the heft and texture of the linen, the crisp corners, the shopkeeper’s glistening seal. Crimson wax. My breath quivers slightly as I lean forward to blow on the viscous liquid until it hardens, until it resembles something other than—other than—

I give myself a vicious mental shake.

Blood.

This is getting ridiculous. I can still say the word. I can stillthinkit.

My hands, however, seem to disagree; they snake out in a wretched blur, flipping each envelope to hide the wax, and I gaze instead at the names scrawled across the fronts in black ink.Black like the kitten underfoot, I think firmly. My vision narrows on those letters, on each loop and curve of my handwriting until nothing else exists.Black like my hair, like the shopkeeper’s vest. Black like—

My gaze flicks upward, and I watch Michal through the window as he argues with the harbormaster.

Even at a distance, I can see his black eyes.

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