The Vine Witch (Vine Witch #1)(21)
“And,” Du Monde continued, “I have it on good authority there is a law firm in the city that would eagerly like to see the return of one of its brightest associates.” He paused to see if his compliment had landed. It had. “So, given the balance of one against the other, I have a proposition for you.”
Du Monde finished delivering his proposal, and the room went silent except for the sound of Madame’s glass hitting the table.
CHAPTER TEN
Elena crept up the stairs mindful of every creak underfoot. She hadn’t been in the attic since her return, but it was the farthest away she could get from the others without climbing on the roof. She opened the door, and the stagnant air swirled as if for the first time in years. Only a few bars of weak light filtered in through the vents under the eaves, giving the space an abandoned feel. The odor of wet wood met her as she pressed a hand against the exposed ribs of the angled ceiling to avoid hitting her head. A leak in the roof tiles perhaps. There was little money to spare for house repairs, but it was beyond her talents to stitch rotten wood back together. She set her star chart and astrolabe down atop a discarded chair and made a mental note to discuss it with Jean-Paul once the intruders had gone.
Sweeping a cobweb from her forehead, she cursed Bastien for once again forcing her to squat in a dark and damp place she didn’t want to be. Why would he show up at the house unannounced? She pressed her nose to the vent and peeked at the car with the nose like a mechanical goose still wheezing in the courtyard below. White steam billowed up, but there was something false about the way it wafted, as if crafted by illusion. The artifice made her think of her hasty smoke spell, and she worried it wouldn’t be enough to rid the room of her aura’s imprint. Bierhexen were like bloodhounds, able to sniff out the faintest hint of magic. Was that the reason Bastien had brought Gerda? Elena’s heart pulsed harder. Did he already suspect she’d returned to the chateau? How could he know? Unless Jean-Paul had betrayed her. Would he? The thought made her ill, and she sank onto an old trunk, where she sat with her head in her hand.
Below, the front door rattled shut. Muffled voices, smothered beneath two levels of house, echoed up between the walls, but the words disintegrated before she could make them out. And she couldn’t very well use her second sight to listen in on a witch as sensitive to magic as a bierhexe. She’d be discovered in an instant. Resigned to her confinement, she stewed a few moments in idle thought, wondering if there was at least a spell she could conjure to drop a chandelier on Bastien’s head. But even such thoughts were dangerous. The witch might easily pick up on the negative vibrations. No, she couldn’t risk the discovery. Not yet.
Left alone, Elena shivered. It might not be a pond of black muck she found herself in this time, but the frost of betrayal felt eerily familiar. The curse had embedded a permanent chill in her skin that she couldn’t shake off, even in a room as stifling as an attic. Not willing to suffer one more second because of that man, she knelt on the floor and flipped the lid open on the trunk to look for a moth-eaten shawl or old blanket she could use. Instead she found a chipped cup and saucer wrapped in paper, a stack of old wine labels tied up with string, and a pair of candlesticks with two malformed candles that had softened in storage. Seeing the wicks were still intact, she brought them out and set them on the floor. She risked a quick snap of her fingers to light them, then rubbed her hands over the heat of the flames before sorting through the items again.
The trunk was full of Grand-Mère’s personal items—objects boxed up and put in storage to make room for the chateau’s new owner. She felt a tinge of guilt when she opened a book and discovered old photos of Grand-Mère and Joseph in intimate poses of early love. Arms around necks, lips pressed to cheeks, smiles shining on one another as only true love can project. When guilt began to turn to envy, she replaced the photos between the pages and closed the book.
Pushing aside an old hatbox, she found a lace tablecloth with a wax stain that would do for a shawl. As she shook out the cloth, a colorful sheet of paper flew out. A handbill for a carnival. She wrapped the tablecloth around her shoulders, then tipped the paper to the candlelight to better see the details. Marked in bold red and gold ink, the advertisement promised exciting fire-eaters, knife-throwers, clowns and grotesques, and a woman who did somersaults on the back of a pony. And in small print at the bottom, beside the image of a mustached man in a striped turban, it highlighted the return of the “All-Seeing Fortuneteller to the Kings and Queens of the Continent.”
It was an odd memento for Grand-Mère to hold on to. The old woman had never once taken her to a carnival as a child. And she’d done her share of begging when the acrobats and ponies showed up for that one precious week during the summer, as any child would. The oddity tugged at her instinct enough that she didn’t replace the flyer in the trunk right away, reading it again for a clue as to why an elderly woman would stow it alongside her other keepsakes.
Two floors below, the voices grew more distinct. They’d moved to the main salon. Eager to know if she could hear more, Elena crept to the end of the attic where the chimney stood. The hollow interior, she discovered, made a remarkable conduit for sound. She closed her eyes and heard Jean-Paul direct his unannounced guests to sit in the leather chairs. They were directly below her in front of the fireplace. She pressed her ear full against the chimney and listened again. And then Bastien’s unmistakable bravado rose up through the brick and mortar, his voice reverberating off her tightly coiled emotions.