Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (some good books to read TXT) 📗

And with a wounded glance that runs me through more neatly than her stilettos ever could, she alights from the carriage and disappears into the night. Leaving behind only a resounding silence, and the lingering scent of citron and sandalwood.

It could not have ended any other way, I tell myself, though my chest feels like a cavity, a bloody abyss stripped of something vital.

And at least, I think for some small measure of comfort, she has my fine cloak to keep her warm.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Mirror and the Devil

I am in a black mood when I reach Adam’s abode, still brooding over my encounter with Marie. The magician lives on the Rue Saint-Jacques in a half-timbered townhouse sagging tiredly against its more upstanding neighbors. But when I rap the tarnished knocker against the flimsy door, a petite and well-groomed maidservant opens it to greet me with a smile.

“Welcome, Madame La Voisin,” she says with a smooth dip of her head, gesturing me in. “Monsieur Lesage is expecting you. And the others have already arrived.”

“The others?” I echo, bemused, as I step beside her into the foyer’s dim interior. The walls are papered in somber maroon, and the gloom so dense with dust the candelabra’s watery light barely manages to dilute its murk. “But I thought it was to be just the two of us tonight?”

Her tidy face creases with such chagrin on my behalf that my foul mood uncurls and expands, gaining in vigor. Though Adam called this evening a “fete” in his invitation, I’d thought that only an arch term for an intimate rendezvous between the two of us.

Clearly I have mistaken his intentions.

“I am afraid not, madame,” she says regretfully, taking my cloak and offering me a black hooded cape in exchange. “My apologies for the confusion.”

“It’s hardly your fault,” I mutter, stifling the urge to snap at her as I sling the cape over my arm. Though tendrils of suspicion stir inside me like ivy creepers, whatever is truly afoot here has nothing to do with her. “And what am I to do with this?”

“Put it on, please,” she instructs as she leads me up the carpeted stairs to the second floor. Our footfalls release breaths of dust with each step, its motes whirling through the feeble halos cast by each flickering sconce.

Then she opens another door, nodding me in, and suddenly everything becomes much clearer to me.

The room beyond could be a run-down replica of my sorceress’s lair on the night of the Black Mass, a reflection viewed in the surface of a muck-riddled pond. Artfully sloppy runes deface the splintered hardwood floor, including a pentagram so slick and glistening it may have been painted with fresh blood. Though Adam is nowhere to be seen, a wooden full-length-mirror frame set with black baize instead of glass stands at the pentagram’s head. What use, I wonder with foreboding, could he possibly find for something like that? At least he has not aped my living altar. His is merely a table scattered with candles and occult artifacts, nothing of any particular note.

And there is no fragrant incense, no feathers and flowers here. Where I strove for polish and decadence, Adam has embraced seaminess and grit.

Perhaps he thought it might instill his stolen ritual with authenticity.

So this is what he has been devising while he stayed away, I think with a mounting fury. A Black Mass to rival my own. That he would thieve my idea from me, after the night we spent together, rives me through with rage, along with a scalding mortification. Is this why he wanted me at all? So that he might avail himself of more of my secrets, pry them loose from my lips upon my own pillow?

How stupid of me, how terribly foolish and naive, to invite him not only to my Messe Noire but also into my bed.

But then, I wonder, my thoughts doubling back upon themselves, why summon me here at all to witness this traitorous turnabout? Why call this a fete devised for me?

“Madame La Voisin!” a delighted voice purrs into my ear. I turn with a start to find my very own patroness standing among the hooded guests clustered against the room’s back wall. The marquise beams at me, porcelain-cheeked and perfect as Aphrodite against the black of her borrowed hood. She leans forward to brush a greeting kiss over my cheek. “This is all so delightfully sordid, is it not? And what a marvelous surprise to find you here. I would not have expected you to attend a rival sorcerer’s Messe Noire.”

“A rival … sorcerer …” I sputter, so beset by outrage I can barely control myself. I swallow with an effort, my hands curling into tight fists by my sides. The painful slice of my nails into my palms brings a welcome burst of clarity. “He is no sorcerer, Marquise. Only a simple magician, a tawdry illusionist. If he has presented himself as anything grander to you, then I’m afraid he has tricked you here under false pretenses.”

“Oh, hardly.” She flicks one shoulder in a heedless shrug. “I confess I came out of sheer curiosity. What can this Lesage possibly do, I wondered, that my own divineress—ostensibly the very finest of her age—could not manage better?”

I read between the lines, divining the true meaning of the cold and pragmatic twinkle in her eyes. While my standing may still be safe with her, she sees no harm in taking the measure of my competition, drawing her comparisons. Determining if Lesage might perchance suit her even better than I do.

It makes all the sense in the world, in the heartless way native to the aristocracy.

I take covert stock of the rest of the room, gauging Adam’s audience. Amid a scattering of faces I do not recognize, I spot the Vicomte de Couserans, who tips me a wink when I meet his eye, along with the marquise’s usual entourage of Madame Leferon and the maréchale.

Then,