That is not an answer. “But who was the man? The one who bestowed the gift?”

“The point is,” Tatiana said, “we must take all power that is available to us, for we are so far below others. We must take it just to have a chance to survive at all.”

“The power to… make men do as I wish,” Grace said, uncertain. “And to make them love me?”

Tatiana smiled like the blade of a knife. “You will see, Grace. Love leads to pain, but if you are careful with the way you wield it… you can use it to wound, as well.”

The very next morning Grace awoke to find that her mother had packed her a trunk in the night, and that they were leaving that afternoon for Paris. She didn’t want to go, for Jesse couldn’t accompany them. It was too risky, Tatiana said, to attempt to move his body, and previous experiments had indicated he could not travel far from it. Grace was horrified that she wouldn’t have a chance to say goodbye or explain where they were going, so Tatiana allowed her to leave him a note. Grace wrote it in a shaky hand, with her mother watching, and left it on her bedside table for Jesse to find. And then she was whisked away to Paris.

In that glittering city, Grace was dressed in fine gowns and brought to mundane balls. She was swept from ballroom to ballroom, introduced to bejeweled strangers who complimented her roundly. “What a beautiful child!” they would exclaim. “How enchanting she is—like a princess from a fairy tale.”

The change in her life staggered her. In a short time, she went from speaking to no one but her mother and her spectral brother in a dark, silent house, to chatting with sons of Europe’s noble families. Grace learned that it was best to say little and appear to be transported to ecstasy by whatever it was these stuffy adults and boring boys had to say. In any event, her mother had made it clear that they were here for practice. And so Grace practiced.

When she tried her power on grown men, they thought she was a delightful curiosity, like a beautiful vase or a rare flower. They wanted to give her gifts—toys, dolls, jewelry, and even ponies. Grace found using her power on boys her own age more annoying, and yet Tatiana insisted she do so. The problem was not that the boys didn’t like her—it was that they liked her too much. They invariably hoped to kiss her or propose marriage—preposterous, when they were only children and marriage wouldn’t even be possible for years at least. They seemed desperate to do whatever they could to make her love them back. In an effort to steer them away from kisses, Grace asked for gifts, and she reliably received them.