An Affair of Poisons(26)

“Are you sure this will work?” I ask when the pool below his chest is nearly black.

The girl nods, but her expression wilts with every passing second. “It—it should. I checked my calculations dozens of times… .”

“You mean you’ve never done this before?” I’m about to shove her aside when Desgrez’s face breaks from its frozen mold. He vomits over the side of the bench, and the girl releases the rapier. It clatters to the stone floor, the sound echoing around the chapel.

Desgrez twitches and howls with pain, but the green tinge is already fading and the pits and hollows in his chest slowly rise and reform. The blood from the knife wound clots as it mixes with the foul-smelling paste.

It worked. The girl’s antidote worked!

Relief douses me like a bucket of ice-cold water, and I laugh as I reach for Desgrez’s hand. He squeezes back, and hope takes flight in my chest, soaring up to the carved stone angels keeping watch from the rafters. If she healed Desgrez, perhaps she can heal Anne and Fran?oise. I turn, ready to toss the girl over my shoulder and make for the sewer, when Desgrez moans and coughs up another mouthful of dreck.

First things first.

He attempts to sit, but his arms quiver and his eyes roll back. “I feel like death.”

“You look like it too.” I laugh, gently easing his shoulders back down to the bench.

Desgrez waves away the slight and mumbles that he’s still better-looking than I am. We sit for several minutes in silence while he regains his breath. Slowly, his glassy eyes rove from the niches in the north aisle, across the garish yellow and crimson nave, and slam to a halt on the girl. He squints at her for a long moment, then his eyes bulge. He grips me by the collar and pulls me close. “What is she doing here?”

“You need to stay calm. She only just healed you.”

“Healed me?” Desgrez’s hands fly to inspect his face and torso. He winces at the knife wound. “It doesn’t feel like she healed me.”

“Well, she did. When you were hit on the Pont Neuf, she helped me carry you here and brought you back to life.”

“You expect me to believe that?” He glares at the girl, and the girl glares back. It’s like watching the cocks circle each other before a fight, and I position myself strategically between them.

“It’s the truth. I saw it myself.”

“Fine.” He waves a hand at her. “She saved me. But I cannot comprehend what she’s still doing here.”

I stare at my friend, my frustration rising like the smoke from the collection plate. She can help the girls, I want to say. But I know better than to mention them in front of a member of the Shadow Society—no matter how helpful she’s been. “I couldn’t turn her out,” I say stiffly. “The streets are still a riot.”

“You could have and you should have. Do you know who she is?”

“I know she’s one of them, but—”

“She isn’t just one of them. That is La Voisin’s daughter. I fought against her in the battle at the Louvre.”

I wheel around and stare at the girl. In the lengthening shadows, she looks far more sinister than she did on the bridge, with those slashing brows and dark eyes. Black as tar. Black as Hell itself. Nausea grips my belly, and I have to steady myself on a bench.

“That was my sister,” the girl says. “I didn’t fight.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re entirely innocent,” Desgrez snaps. “I know the true nature of your black heart. Be gone! Run back to your mother.”

The girl glowers at Desgrez. “Are you really so thankless?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation.

“Fine.” She skulks to the door and throws it wide. A breeze rips through the chapel, scattering the singed papers, and a chorus of screams reverberates off the archways and frescos. La Voisin’s daughter hesitates, sucking in a shaky breath and gathering the purple cloak around her. An unexpected twinge of sympathy shudders through me. A rush of gratitude.

“You don’t have to go out there,” I tell her, glaring at Desgrez. I jog to the door and close it with a decisive thud. “We can all sit civilly until the danger passes.”

Desgrez groans and clutches his head. “If she so much as looks in my direction …”

“I should have let you die,” the girl snips. She turns on her heel, marches to the front of the church, and sits down hard behind the pulpit, completely out of view.

Desgrez eyes the space. When she doesn’t reemerge, he waves me over to his bench and yanks me down so we’re face to face. “We have to kill her.”

“But she can help the girls.”

“We can’t take her anywhere near the sewer. She’s recognized us. That’s the only reason she would heal me—to win our trust so she can lead the Shadow Society to your sisters and Louis.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re the son of a tutor and I’m a servant. No one would recognize us.”

“Are you certain? Lesage certainly performed often enough to recognize all of the king’s children. And who knows how many spies they had within the palace.”

I try to tamp down my fear, but it bubbles and swells, coursing through me like frothy, crashing waves. I want to slap myself for being so daft, for not seeing their plot sooner. I’m always making the wrong choice: reading those illegal broadsides, failing to protect my sisters, putting thousands of people in danger today. And now this.