Drawing up the hood of my cloak, I hurried out the back entrance of the theatre and down the steps.

“Took you long enough.”

I smiled at Chris as he materialized out of the shadows. He was dressed in his work clothes, boots caked thick with mud and manure. “No loitering,” I said, pointing at the much-ignored sign.

“I wasn’t loitering, I was waiting,” he retorted.

“So say all loiterers.” I jumped down the steps and fell into stride next to him. “You have anything?” While Sabine had focused on researching the histories of the women I’d sent her after, Chris had been hunting down whispers of magic with the tenacity of one of the Regent’s witch-hunters.

He nodded. Stepping into the shadows, he handed me a curved statue with a necklace of herbs twisted around its neck. “Let me guess,” I said. “Fertility charm.”

“Put it under our pillow and you are sure to give me many strong sons,” he said, his voice full of wry amusement rather than the anticipation it had held when we arrived in Trianon.

I held it for a moment, then shook my head. “Anything else?”

He handed me a bracelet of woven twigs. “She called it witch’s bane. It’s from a rowan tree. If you wear it, a witch won’t be able to cast magic your direction.”

I frowned at the strange item, and then shoved it in my pocket. What nonsense. “How much did it cost you?”

He told me a number, and I winced as I dug the coins out of my pocket. I spent more than half my wages on potions and bobbles, and so far, it had amounted to nothing more than a strange collection of knickknacks. The few legitimate witches we’d discovered had known nothing about a mysterious redheaded witch or curses, and all had refused my request for tutoring in the arts.

“You discover anything new?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No one who looks anything like her. No one with an unknown or questionable past. No one who’s been inexplicably on the social scene for five centuries.”

Chris sighed. “I’ll take you home.”

We strolled, the walkway drifting from light to dark as we passed in and out of the golden glow of the gas lamps. But when we reached the street that would take me home to my mother’s empty townhouse, I stopped. I needed a change. “Let’s go see if Fred is at the Parrot.”

Chris looked surprised, but didn’t argue as we continued down the street toward my brother’s favorite drinking establishment. Sidestepping a brawl out front, we pushed our way into the busy tavern. Almost everyone inside was a soldier of some sort – not the sort of place artists such as myself were normally found – but everyone knew I was Frédéric de Troyes’ little sister, and no one would bother me here.

“Cécile! Christophe!” Fred shouted when he caught sight of us. He released the barmaid he had his arm around long enough to order a round of beer and deposit the flagons in our hands. He resumed whatever tall tale he was telling the girl, then his eyes went back to me.

“Best I let you get back to work before the barkeep tosses me out,” he said to the girl, waiting for her to go back to serving drinks before adding, “You look terrible, Cécile. You should be at home in bed.”

I grimaced, knowing that home meant the Hollow, not our mother’s townhouse. He was worse than Sabine, because not only was he adamantly against my hunt for Anushka, he was against my being in Trianon at all. “Don’t start.”

He set his drink down on the bar with a clank, casting a black glare at a group of men who jostled against me as they passed. The tension radiating from him told me that he was looking for a reason to scrap. Any reason at all. He was angry all the time now. At my mother, at me, at the world.

“You’re not going to listen to a word I say anyhow,” he muttered. “Might as well go on and do what you do.”

Chris tugged on my elbow, drawing me towards a table at the back. “Fred only wants to protect you, Cécile,” he said. “He blames himself for what happened. For not being there for you.”

“I know.” His first reaction to hearing my story had been a vow to burn Trollus and all its inhabitants to the ground, and the verbal brawl between us when I’d told him my intention to do the exact opposite was probably heard three farms away. Not only did he not agree with my decision, he didn’t understand it. And that made Fred angry. But then again, it didn’t take much to set him off these days – and I knew that that had nothing to do with the trolls. Something had happened long before my disappearance. Something that had occurred when he’d first come to Trianon. Something that had to do with our mother. He hated her, and there were times I thought he believed I’d betrayed him by choosing to live and work with her in Trianon.

Sitting at the sticky table, I proceeded to drain my beer, hoping to wash away thoughts of my brother and everything else.

“Easy there,” Chris said, sipping his brew at a more measured pace. “I take it something has happened, and it isn’t Fred’s perpetual sour mood.”

“No.” I motioned for one of the girls to bring me another drink. “Nothing’s happened, and therein lies the problem.” I took several long swallows. “Just another day gone by where I’ve made no progress finding her. Another day gone by where Tristan suffers God knows what sort of tortures, while I sing on stage to crowds of admirers. I hate it.”

“It’s the only way you can afford to stay in Trianon. And besides, I thought you liked performing?”