Page 58 of The False Vow

“I’m going to try something,” I said. “Don’t distract me.”

He just furrowed his brow. Lifting the window drapes again, I parsed the interior gloom, picking out the nearest door from the line which ran along the opposite corridor wall, then steadied my nerves and summoned my Wit.

My magic lurched behind my ribs. I hadn’t accessed an extrapolation since Manon had pushed me from the balcony, but now that I had, I found that the process came easier. I could feel the boundaries I’d put up around my gift—walls formed from years of certainty that my magic was limited, that I was limited. That I was a mere witch, not a sorcerer.

With a great breath, I aimed my focus at the door across the corridor and pulled.

The doorknob rattled. When I tried a second time, the door sprang open, as surely as if I’d been there to turn the handle myself.

Victory sparked through me. A second later, the entrance slammed shut again. The bang of its closing was loud, echoing through the corridor; I held back a smile as, soon afterward, I heard footsteps approaching from farther up the hall.

Mireille Laurent, the silkwitch who’d been eyeing me during Bastian’s bridal tea reception, hurried toward the door I’d just opened. She had something in her hand—it looked like a paperweight. After Delphine’s knife, the weapon was relatively unimpressive.

I drew a deep breath as I watched her reach for the knob. Now came the hard part.

From my post outside the window, I threw my Wit toward the entrance again. This time, rather than pulling the door toward me, I latched on to it, tugging myself in its direction like I’d unconsciously done after Manon’s attack.

There was a sudden blossoming ache in my lower abdomen. My vision blurred; when it cleared again, I was no longer outside, but rather standing in the threshold of the entrance I’d been targeting, facing down Mireille.

She flinched. Before she could process my sudden manifestation, I grabbed her, covering her mouth and kicking her swiftly in the shins. Noé was watching me from outside the house, looking half alarmed, half impressed. Meeting his eyes through the open window, I hissed to him. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

As if in a daze, he drew one out of his pocket. Hoisting himself inelegantly over the windowsill, he tossed it to me, then landed with both feet on the hallway floor.

I caught it. Yanking Mireille’s arms behind her, I jabbed the backs of her knees with my own, forcing her to the ground. Noé caught up to me as I was tying her wrists together, the paperweight she’d been carrying now clattered to the corridor rug.

“Out early again. It seems to be a pattern with you, doesn’t it, Mireille?” I murmured in her ear. Before she could reply, I tore my caul from my scalp—I was desperate and had nothing else—and stuffed it into her mouth.

She gagged against the thin metal links. Still maintaining my grip of her wrists, I went to snatch up her dropped paperweight—only to pause when I glimpsed another item lying beside it.

It was a monocle: gold and weighty, a typically masculine style. The metal glinted up at me from where it rested on the corridor floor. I assumed the object had fallen from the pocket of Mireille’s dress; still, what in the world was she doing with it?

Through her makeshift gag, the other silkwitch made a muffled sound. Meeting her eyes, I smiled, then picked the monocle up and slipped it back into the folds of her frock. “You dropped this.”

She spat out the caul. “Here!”

My pulse stuttered. From the far end of the corridor—the same direction from which Mireille had come—two additional pairs of footsteps rang out. One tread was heavier than the other; though there was no earthly logic to justify why, I recognized it immediately.

My thoughts stilled along with my body, as if the two were joined. Rounding the corner of the hall, melting from the dimness like a ghost, was Eliot. His expression was alert, his head turned to face us. Clio was just behind him. She was clutching her skirts in one hand, her stare fierce with concentration.

For a minute no one moved. In the silence, Eliot’s eyes darted to mine. As soon as our gazes locked, I felt every emotion within me push urgently forward as if they were shadowed faces in a cave, revealed beneath the sweep of a lantern.

I could not speak. My tongue was dry bone, my emotions hot wax, burning within my chest. He is here. He’d come.

And he was hunting me.

Evidently noticing my paralysis, Noé broke the quiet. “Eliot,” he said. “And Miss Lavoie. Always a pleasure.” Clearing his throat, he exchanged glances with me. “I’m afraid we must be going.”

His prompting broke me free of my trance. Nodding to him, I hoisted up Mireille and shoved her through the entryway I’d appeared in, slamming the door closed after her. Then the two of us ran.

I clutched at my ivy garland to keep it from flying off my head. Though I didn’t dare look behind me, I could hear the pounding of Eliot’s and Clio’s footfalls as they started after us, chasing us through the estate. “Which way to the terrace?” I called to Noé.

“There.” He jerked his chin, and we swerved to the right. “We aren’t far.” He glanced over at me. “Are you—”

“As you yourself told me earlier,” I spat, cutting him off, “not now.”

The footsteps behind us grew closer. Clio and Eliot were gaining on us, despite Noé’s familiarity with the house. My chest grew tight—my muscles tensing in preparation for the moment I’d feel the bite of Clio’s nails digging into me, pulling me down to the ground—

I pushed the images from my mind. We needed to change strategy.