The Witch of Painted Sorrows

Chapter 38

The afternoon had been fraught with emotion. Seeing Benjamin, confronting him, then trying to talk Julien out of dueling with my husband had exhausted me.

Of course Julien had refused me. It was a matter of honor, he said, and it wasn’t up to me or really about me.

He’d pointed to my neck. “You’re still wearing that?” His voice was sad, his expression grim.

“Julien, I went to Dr. Blanche… I tried. I do want to take it off.” I saw a glimmer of hope lighten his evergreen eyes. “I’ve decided to take the grimoire to Dujols and have him help me find a way to rid myself of her.”

“What about your painting?”

“I believe I will still be able to paint. I have to believe that. And if I can’t…” I shrugged.

He took my hand, bent low over it, and kissed it. “Stay away from the Bois in the morning, all right? I’m a very good shot-there’s no reason to worry. I’ll come to the house after it’s done. And then we’ll work everything out. You’ll be free, and I’ll be free, and we can be together.”

Exactly what La Lune wanted, I thought, but didn’t say.

At home I wrote a note to Monsieur Dujols, asking him if he would stay at the store later that evening. I was going to bring the grimoire, and I needed his help. I got a response an hour later that he would wait.

As I wrapped the book, I cut off a sheath of paper and nicked my finger. The blood wouldn’t be stanched, and I bled over the book and onto the paper. Grabbing a towel, I wrapped it tightly around my finger and held it. It still had not stopped after ten minutes. Not after twenty. Finally, after almost forty minutes, the blood abated but my finger throbbed.

And it had looked like such a small and insignificant cut.

I finished packaging the grimoire and strained to pick it up, surprised at how very heavy it was. So much more burdensome than it had been when I’d taken it from the cabinet a half hour ago. Leaving the bell tower, I struggled down the narrow steps. Halfway I tripped and went tumbling. Hitting my shoulder on a sharp riser, I felt a pain shoot through me, tears filling my eyes.

On its own, the book continued falling. Down, down the steps. As if it had a destination and was on its way there.

Standing, I discovered I’d also sprained my ankle, badly. I couldn’t put any weight on it and sat back down. I stared below me at the book. Alone in the bell tower with my foot swelling and my shoulder throbbing, I began to panic. How would I get help? Was I stuck there until I was able to get up?

This was La Lune’s doing. She’d engineered this series of calamities. She knew what I planned to do with the book, and she didn’t want me to do it.

“I have to understand who you are and what your powers are and how to protect myself from you,” I said into the empty stairwell. The gray stone wall absorbed my words and threw them back at me in a mocking echo. From you… from you.

“I can’t get Julien back if you’re still attached to me. Don’t you see that?”

I listened to the silence. I was so sure that she was going to answer me, but she didn’t. She’d caused the cut, the fall, the ankle sprain, but now she had disappeared.

I hobbled down the steps, managing by putting almost all my weight on my left foot. At the bottom of the stairs, I picked up the weighty book and somehow got back to the main part of the house, where I engaged Alice to come with me to the bookstore and help with the book.

Even though it was close by, we took a carriage because of my injury. Only a block from our house, something spooked the horse, and he reared up. When he came back down, one of the wheels broke, and the carriage almost tipped over. Thanks to the driver’s fast thinking and a very responsive horse, we avoided a much more damaging accident.

There were no other cabs on the street, and we were forced to walk, which was anything but easy on my badly hurt foot. And then it began to rain. Heavy winds accompanied a cold downpour, and fearing for the book, I found us refuge in a café. When the rain stopped, we found another carriage. Finally arriving at the bookshop, we found the door locked.

I peered inside. It was dark. No, I was not going to give up. I wouldn’t go back without getting the information I needed.

Using my fists, I beat upon the door until they were sore. Finally Monsieur Dujols appeared. Slightly out of breath and red in the face, he ushered me inside.

“I thought you were not coming. I was just going to leave.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Your note very clearly stated that you wouldn’t be coming.”

“I sent no such note.”

He turned away from me, went to the very cluttered desk, picked up a sheet of expensive cream-colored paper, and handed it to me.

It was my grandmother’s stationery, imprinted with the insignia of the house, the hand of fate, and under it the address in fine black copperplate. I read the handwriting.

Monsieur Dujols,

Please excuse my canceling at such late notice, but I will not be able to keep our appointment this evening,

Thank you,

Sandrine Verlaine

Everything was correct. It even appeared to be in my hand. But I had no recollection of writing it. What had happened? Had La Lune taken me over somehow and used me to write this? Just how powerful was she?

“Did you bring it? Is that it?” Dujols, always so serious and dour, was almost dancing as he circled the book. Reaching out, he touched it gingerly.

“May I unwrap it?”

I nodded, knowing that he would be even more careful than I. He was the expert in dealing with antique manuscripts.

As he discarded the paper, he noticed the streak of red and looked up at me.

I held up my hand. “I cut myself while I was wrapping it.”

“Very dangerous,” he said.

“I know, the knife slipped.”

“No, I mean getting blood on a grimoire. Blood is often called for in instructions on casting spells and preparing talismans and amulets to summon angels and demons and other supernatural creatures. The book itself-” He touched the leather cover. “The book itself is magical and has properties that can be activated with blood.”

I stared at the ancient volume and knew it had been wrong for me to take it out of its hiding place. For almost three hundred years it had been stored away, protected, and I had been the one to bring it out into the light. If anything happened to it, it would be my fault and my problem.

Monsieur Dujols opened the book, and I heard him give a little gasp. He had recognized the rip on the frontispiece. He knew his page would be the missing puzzle piece.

I watched as he turned and looked at the first two pages, foxed and yellowed, overpainted with the complicated and bizarre drawing of the drowning witch. He peered at the faint handwriting in the margins.

Carefully he turned to the next two pages. And then the next two. He barely seemed to breathe.

“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve only seen one or two volumes in my life that come close to being this important.”

“The handwritten notes are her spells, aren’t they?” I asked.

“Yes. Legend has it that these are the spells that La Lune learned in Prague. She probably wrote them down, here in this book, to protect them. Where better to hide spells and magical incantations than in a book that told inquisitors how to rid their states of witches and their influences?”

“Can you find the spell that I need to control her?”

“I’m sure in time I will be able to.”

“There’s no time.”

“I’m afraid there has to be time,” Dujols said.

“What do you mean?”

“Now that I have this, I need to study it. I am going to have to keep it here for a time.”

“No. That wasn’t our agreement. You said you wanted to see it. Not keep it. I agreed to show it to you in exchange for you helping me.”

“And I will. In time.”