Enchantée(24)



Frowning, she placed the deck in front of Sophie. “I’ll show you,” she said, with more confidence than she felt.

Sophie sighed. “What are we playing?”

“Vingt-et-un. You deal.”

Sophie dealt Camille two cards, one facedown, one faceup: the ten of spades. Then she dealt one for herself, faceup: the eight of hearts. “Hearts is my favorite suit.”

“How am I not surprised?” Camille teased. Stealthily she bent a corner of her facedown card. The six of diamonds. Sixteen points in total. Even if Sophie took another card, the highest value it could have would be eleven, if it were an ace, which would put her at eighteen points. It was a risk for Camille, too. Unless, of course, she had la magie at her disposal. Determined, Camille took a coin from the small pile on the table and laid it in the center. “I’ll bet a livre.”

“Oh là là,” Sophie said with a smirk as she tossed another livre in the center. “How high we play today.” She dealt Camille another card, faceup: the seven of spades.

Merde—at twenty-three Camille was well over. She was disappointed but she mastered it: this was the moment. The precipice. She would turn the six of diamonds to a four of diamonds to make vingt-et-un.

Camille placed her fingertips on the card. “Your play.”

Next to her eight of hearts and ten of spades, Sophie placed a two of diamonds. “Twenty! Can you beat that?”

Bien s?r. Her fingers on the six of diamonds, Camille cast her mind back to the Palais-Royal, the way those girls had treated her as if she were prey, Alain’s slumped shape on the table, running the memories over and over in her mind until the bitter trickle of sadness welled up inside her. Holding that sorrow, she saw in her mind the four of diamonds, the symmetrical arrangement of the red pips, each little diamond in its own corner. And smiling a little to herself, she turned the card.

The six of diamonds.

“You’re over!” Sophie crowed. “I win!” And she scooped up the two livres and set them beside herself.

Camille stared at the unchanged card. If her plan was to succeed, this could never, ever happen again. She’d imagined the card as vividly as she could. Which could only mean she hadn’t brought up enough sorrow to fuel the magic. She had to try harder—hurt more—or else her plan would fail.

“Encore une fois, Sophie?”

“Prepare to lose,” Sophie said as she squared the cards, shuffled them, and dealt. She started with an ace of diamonds, a seven of hearts. Camille had two elevens, one facedown. If she could turn one eleven into a face card, she’d have a “natural”: twenty-one without taking a hit. An immediate, instant shock of a win.

In the apartment, the light was changing. At this time of day, Camille couldn’t not see the dark rectangles on the walls where Maman’s paintings had once hung nor the black soot along the fireplace and ceiling that she couldn’t scrub away, the way that everything in the apartment had been thinned down to just one thing for each of them: one chipped glass, one cup, one plate, one chamber pot, one book. Maman had insisted magic would save them, but Papa had tried to solicit help. Not from strangers, but from people, like their grandmother, who could have helped. Should have helped, Camille thought, anger and sadness unfurling in her chest as she remembered her father’s humiliation.

She needed a face card. A dark knight to carry me away, she wished, holding onto the welling sorrow as she pictured Lancelot, the knave of clubs. He resembled Lazare with the gloss of his thick black hair and the hooded falcon on his shoulder. Then she turned the card.

Lancelot’s brown eyes met hers.

“Vingt-et-un!” Camille shrieked. “I did it!”

“You need not shout,” Sophie sniffed. “Encore?”

Again and again they played, and each time Camille brought forth the winning card. She had it now. She practiced winning with three cards, and with two, claiming the natural four times in a row.

After the last one, Sophie slapped her hand down over the cards. “How are you doing it?” she demanded. “I thought you hated using magic.”

“It’s just like turning coins—nothing more.”

“You’re going to go back to the duc’s and play cards like this? Trick people? Don’t you think someone will know what you’re doing?”

The knave of clubs continued to stare up at her with his unfathomable eyes.

One magician knows another, Maman had said patiently when Camille asked once again why she—and not Sophie or Alain, who tried so hard to do it—had to work magic, when it hurt so much and was so hard. You are one of very few, mon trésor.

But how many was very few? How many magicians, if any at all, were there in Paris, and what were the chances she’d be seen through? Maman had been a magician. Her mother, Grandmère, had been, too. Was it passed through families by blood? Stung by regret, Camille wished she’d asked these questions while Maman still lived. Before, when there was still time for asking questions. Perhaps Maman would have relented and told her what she wished to know.

Camille met her sister’s gaze. “I’m going to Versailles.”

“The Palace?” Sophie scoffed. “You won’t be able to get in.”

“But at the Palais-Royal, it was easy to—”

“Versailles is not the Palais-Royal.”

Gita Trelease's Books