“Beau, what the hell?” Cricket cried.
“It isn’t me.” He fought to regain control of the car. “I told you not to do magic in here. It interferes with the car’s technology.”
“We shouldn’t be fighting anyway,” Anouk said. “We’re all on the same side now, don’t you get that? We’re a family.” She turned and faced the front. Two hands snaked up to her shoulders and started kneading her tense muscles, and she whipped around again. “Viggo, I said no massages!”
She exchanged an exasperated look with Beau.
“Witch’s boys these days,” he lamented.
They rode in silence through the French countryside, and Anouk watched the world pass by. Small towns dotted the landscape, and she thought of how each one was filled with Pretties going about their daily lives, to school and offices and grocery stores, never once realizing how precious their very existence was. What a gift it was to be them.
She closed her eyes. What would she lose if she failed? No more beautiful couture jackets. No more fairy tales. No more cooking, smiling, laughing.
Only darkness.
She shivered awake with a jolt. How long had she slept? She glanced at the clock—?it was past noon. It was stormy as they returned to the city. On the horizon, the distant lights of Paris lit up the clouds.
Beau adjusted the rearview mirror. “We’ll be there soon.”
A crow flew by overhead, casting a shadow on the car.
When they had left—?had it really been only forty-eight hours ago?—?she’d felt as though she were hurtling through some twisted dream world.
And now?
Only two days had passed, and yet those days had changed everything. She wasn’t anyone’s servant. She stroked the sleeves of her jacket; her battle armor, her second skin.
Rain slapped against the windshield, blurring the city into a kaleidoscope of streetlights. The streets were empty of everything except black umbrellas that hid faces. Beau circled a roundabout.
“That’s it ahead.”
She jumped as Viggo thrust himself between the front seats, jabbing a finger toward a gray stone building lit up in the rain. The Champs-Élysées was lined with edifices, each more impressive than the last: international banks, luxury hotels, boutiques that catered only to the wealthy. But Castle Ides stood alone. Set back from the street behind a black iron fence, ten stories high, it looked more like a seventeenth-century fortress than a castle, despite its name. The windshield wipers swept back and forth steadily, giving them brief glimpses of the structure before the rain obscured it again. The building looked darker than it had in Mada Zola’s paintings.
“Scrying crows,” Hunter Black said, answering the question in her head. Hundreds—?thousands—?of crows perched on every rail and foothold of the building, blackening it with glossy feathers. She had to press her hands against her ears to filter out that incessant chattering. Didn’t the Pretties hear it? But the ones outside, hunkered under umbrellas, went about their day as usual. Anouk felt a chill. The Haute wielded power over the Pretties, but the Pretties greatly outnumbered magic handlers. If the enchantments were broken, what would happen? If the Pretties’ technology continued to grow, would it render magic obsolete? Would the entire Haute become nothing but a memory?
“Is it always like this?” Anouk yelled above the din.
“No,” Viggo answered. “It’s because of Mada Vittora’s death. The whole city is in chaos now.”
Rain pelted the car. If the crows felt the rain, they didn’t care. They let it roll off their waxed wings, squawking and whispering and climbing over one another in a tangle of sharp little beaks.
Beau stopped the car. The engine rumbled. The windshield wipers went back and forth. Anouk peered out the window at the imposing entrance with its the heavy iron doors. Two crows flew away from a sign that warned away visitors, though Anouk imagined stronger magic was also at work to keep out any curious Pretties. The sign read:
The Ides Club
Invitation Required
The clock clicked to one o’clock in the afternoon.
“Ready?” Anouk said.
Beau tugged gently on her sleeve, and she realized she was still wearing the Faustine jacket, clutching it hard enough to almost tear the fabric. She shed it reluctantly. Cricket’s hair was smoothed back, her face scrubbed of black eyeliner. She looked different; younger, softer. It rankled Anouk—?they shouldn’t ever have to be anything other than themselves.
“Ready,” Cricket said, brandishing the feather duster.
Cricket and Viggo and Hunter Black climbed out the back. She reached for the handle, but Beau stopped her.
“Wait.”