The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer - 7

Regrets flashed through Mallory’s thoughts. She would never take her sister to Verene. She would never know if the fountain at the Saphir château really turned to blood on the anniversary of Le Bleu’s death. She would never tell their greedy landlady to take their rent payment and shove it up her—

She struck the ground with an impact that radiated through every bone, though it was admittedly not as painful as she expected it to be.

Whether intentional or not, Armand had indeed broken her fall.

Rolling away from him, Mallory pressed herself onto her hands and knees.

Armand’s eyes were closed. His mouth lolled. There was blood on his jacket and wisteria leaves in his hair, and he was quite possibly dead.

Cursing, Mallory leaned down and pressed an ear to his chest, already wondering if she had time to forge a document willing the Saphir estate to her and her sister before anyone else found the body. All she needed was his official seal …

She reached for his throat and found a thin chain. But as soon as her fingers clenched around the cool metal, she also felt the pulse of his heartbeat.

“Damn,” she muttered.

A thump shivered the ground beneath her. Mallory pushed herself up to her knees in time to see the voirloup—which had leaped from the upstairs window and landed on the overgrown, weed-infested lawn, effectively cutting off her path to the gate, and any hope of escape.

Mallory cast around for anything she could use as a weapon or a distraction. The beast had chased that ball—er, head before, so maybe—

She grabbed a rock. Threw it past the voirloup. It bounced into a garden bed.

The monster watched it go, before snarling at her in annoyance.

She started to scramble backward. Her hand landed on something cool and familiar. She curled her fingers around the handle of her dagger. She braced herself and lifted the knife, angling it toward the voirloup, when her attention caught on a cloaked figure beneath the yard’s ancient willow tree. The drooping branches swayed—revealing a boy one moment, disguising him the next. He came closer, emerging through the trailing leaves.

Mallory’s muddled thoughts recognized him as one of the gentlemen who had passed by on the street before her tour. The one dressed all in black. He wore tall boots and leather breeches, a fitted tunic, a long traveling cloak. With dark brown skin and ropes of black hair pushed back from his brow, he might have blended easily into the night, if it wasn’t for the occasional streak of silver-white running through those locs, especially noteworthy given that he could not have been much older than she was.

As Mallory squinted, he reached into a breast pocket and pulled out a gold pocket watch. With a click, he flipped it open and peered down at the clockface, before flashing a devious smile.

He let out a whistle. The voirloup spun toward him.

Mallory’s grip relaxed on the knife, though she expected the voirloup to spring at the figure and take both that pocket watch and the hand holding it in one hungry chomp. Instead, the boy held up the instrument, revealing a face that was not a clock at all, but more like a compass. Its needle pointed up toward the willow tree.

The voirloup hesitated. Snarled. Blood dripped into its fur, staining the remains of its shredded tunic.

“My, my,” drawled the boy, in an accent Mallory couldn’t place, “what big teeth you have.”

The voirloup lifted its snout to the sky and howled—a deep, guttural sound that made the ground tremble.

With an impassive tilt of his head, the boy stepped to the side. “Go on, Constantino.”

The second gentleman that Mallory had seen earlier appeared from beneath the willow. “Yes, Fitcher. No need to get bossy.”

He was the opposite to the first in nearly every conceivable way. Still young, still handsome, but with olive-toned skin and wavy brown hair. Rather than being dressed in a sleek and simple black tunic, he wore …

Mallory wasn’t sure what he wore. Tights of some sort. Bul bous sleeves larger than her head. And more colors than any human should ever combine into one outfit. He was also holding a longbow, nocked with an arrow, which he lifted casually. Took aim. Fired. The arrow breezed an inch from the first boy’s shoulder, but he did not flinch.

It struck the voirloup in the throat. The howl was cut off, dying in a strangled gargle.

The air shimmered. The hair on Mallory’s arms lifted, as if lightning were about to strike. And maybe it did strike, for there was a flash so blinding that Mallory threw up her arms to protect her eyes.

When she blinked the white spots of her vision away, the voirloup was gone. An object—small and glittering—dropped from the air where it had stood, landing in the overgrown grass with a quiet thud.

She must be imagining things. But—no. That ferocious monster had definitely been transformed into a small glass figurine, not unlike the good luck charms she and Anaïs sold in their shop.

Constantino swept the tiny bauble off the ground. “Are you all right, stellina?” he asked, dropping to one knee and reaching for her hand, which Mallory yanked out of his grip.

Stellina? She didn’t know the term, but it sounded like Stivalen romantical nonsense.

A wail came from the house’s upper level. “Mallory! Are you dead?” Triphine was hanging out of the open window, her blue shawl fluttering in the night’s breeze. “If you aren’t dead, then maybe you could clean up the mess you made in here? You can’t leave it like this!”

Armand groaned, beginning to stir, but no one paid him any attention.

Ignoring the ghost, Mallory scrambled onto shaky legs. “What did you do to that monster?”

“We made it no longer your problem,” said Fitcher. “This house reeks of dark magic. I guarantee these won’t be the last monsters that feel drawn to it.”

“Oh, for all the stinky cheeses,” sighed Constantino. “Must you always be so cryptic?” He winked at Mallory. “Fitcher will never admit it, but he rather enjoys this sort of thing.”

Mallory was suddenly sure that she was dreaming. There was no voirloup. She had not met the heir to the House Saphir. And these people were figments of her overactive imagination.

“Don’t fret, stellina,” said the colorful boy as he held out a slip of shimmering paper. “We are here for all your magical needs. Don’t hesitate to be in touch should you require further assistance.”

The way he said it made it sound like there were plenty of magical needs Mallory had but had never quite considered, and it was time to change that. She sneered as she took the paper from him.

At first she could see nothing on the card. But as she tilted it toward the moonlight, luminescent words scrawled across the surface like the fiery veins of an opal.

Fitcher’s Troupe

Monster Hunters Curse Breakers

Experts in Dark Magic and the Occult

To contact: Detail your predicament on the back of this card and entrust it to the four winds. Summons will be selected on the basis of payment and personal curiosity. (Our curiosity, not yours.) Utmost discretion guaranteed.

Mallory flipped the card over. The other side was blank.

She raised her eyes, a question perched on her tongue—

But the strangers were already gone.

“I knew you weren’t a fraud.”

She twisted her neck so fast it gave her a crick. Wincing, she rubbed her fingers into the muscle as she slipped the card into her pocket.

Armand gazed at her blearily. “I saw that flash of light. You cast magic.” He grimaced, eyes briefly squeezing shut, before he opened them again and gave her a wry, knowing smile. “Mallory Fontaine, you really are a witch.”