I open my mouth to fight back, but before I can, the door to the cellar swings open.

We freeze. My heart is in my throat. I feel so weak, I wonder if I have it in me at all to fight.

Illuminated by the swinging bulb is a girl. She leans against the doorjamb casually. The toe of her satin heel taps against the floor.

“Qu’est-ce qu’on a ici…,” she says with a smirk. Her dark hair hangs loose around her shoulders, cut bluntly, as if she did it herself in a hurry. Her hair may be a bit of a mess, but set atop it is a coronet of sparkling diamonds.

She’s wearing a gown of midnight black, adorned with a thousand jet beads. It hangs off her thin frame like she’s wearing a costume.

Maxine responds in rapid French.

I reach for the magic flickering inside me and debate seeing if I could take hold of the girl’s body. Everything feels so shaky, I’m not sure if I could. But I’m not above trying.

“Did you like the party?” the girl asks in French-accented English, saccharine sweet and dripping with sarcasm. She sucks the inside of her cheek as she considers us.

“Not particularly,” Maxine quips. “We’d really ought to be going. Got lost. Forgot our manners. We apologize—” She makes a move to go around the girl, but she juts out her arm, blocking the doorway.

Maxine has a few inches on her, and I think if it came down to a physical fight, she’d have the upper hand, but there’s something about the girl’s self-assured condescension that makes me hesitate.

“I’m forgetting my manners. I’m Anais. Anais Mourrier.” She smiles, full lips around white teeth.

We don’t give her our names. In response to our silence, she continues. “Does Saint Bosco’s know you’re here? Or is it the Sisters of Saint Joan who sent you? God, they do love to meddle.”

“We’re staff from the agency brought in for the party,” Maxine says.

Anais laughs. “Don’t insult my intelligence.”

I’m shaky with fear and nauseated from the blow to my head as I fainted, but Maxine just smiles, undeterred. “We don’t look like scullery maids?”

Anais clucks her tongue and shakes her head no.

“Fine. We’re from Haxahaven,” Maxine says. I’m surprised she gives in so quickly, but she’s biting back a smile in that confident Maxine way. Anais is terrifying, but she may have met her match.

The girl chuckles and lowers her arm. “I knew a girl who went to Haxahaven many years ago, Ruby something. God, she was horrible. What brings the witches of New York to my great-grandfather’s basement?”

“We got lost,” I say.

“You look sick,” she replies, looking at me with disgust in her catlike eyes. “Should I call for the infirmary?”