Dedication

To Jordan, who is less a friend and more a sister

Map

Part I

Quand le chat n’est pas là, les souris dansent.

When the cat is away, the mice will play.

—French proverb

A Nest of Mice

Nicholina

Bayberry, eyebright, belladonna

Fang of an adder, eye of an owl

Sprinkle of flora, spray of fauna

For purpose fair or possession foul.

Ichor of friend and ichor of foe

A soul stained black as starless night

For in the dark dost spirits flow

One to another in seamless flight.

The spell is familiar, oh yes, familiar indeed. Our favorite. She lets us read it often. The grimoire. The page. The spell. Our fingers trace each pen stroke, each faded letter, and they tingle with promise. They promise we’ll never be alone, and we believe them. We believe her. Because we aren’t alone—we’re never alone—and mice live in nests with dozens of other mice, with scores of them. They burrow together to raise their pups, their children, and they find warm, dry nooks with plenty of food and magic. They find crannies without sickness, without death.

Our fingers curl on the parchment, gouging fresh tracks.

Death. Death, death, death, our friend and foe, as sure as breath, comes for us all.

But not me.

The dead should not remember. Beware the night they dream.

We tear at the paper now, shredding it to pieces. To angry bits. It scatters like ash in the snow. Like memory.

Mice burrow together, yes—they keep each other safe and warm—but when a pup in the litter sickens, the mice will eat it. Oh yes. They gobble it down, down, down to nourish the mother, the nest. The newest born is always sick. Always small. We shall devour the sick little mouse, and she shall nourish us.

She shall nourish us.

We shall prey on her friends, her friends—a snarl tears from my throat at the word, at the empty promise—and we shall feed them until they are fat with grief and guilt, with frustration and fear. Where we go, they will follow. Then we shall devour them too. And when we deliver the sick little mouse to her mother at Chateau le Blanc—when her body withers, when it bleeds—her soul shall stay with us forever.

She shall nourish us.

We will never be alone.

L’Enchanteresse

Reid

Mist crept over the cemetery. The headstones—ancient, crumbling, their names long lost to the elements—pierced the sky from where we stood atop the cliff’s edge. Even the sea below fell silent. In this eerie light before dawn, I finally understood the expression silent as the grave.

Coco brushed a hand across tired eyes before gesturing to the church beyond the mist. Small. Wooden. Part of the roof had caved in. No light flickered through the rectory windows. “It looks abandoned.”