I confessed to Ms Galeazzi the experimentation performed by my siblings and myself during our childhood. I have wondered, are these dark days to blame for the distance that has separated us in adulthood? As if becoming as close as we once were meant revisiting what we went through then.

  A knocking awoke Maria from her slumber.

  She opened her eyes and found she was already staring at the door, having fallen asleep on the ground. The visitor knocked again, and at this point, Maria languorously hefted herself up and crossed the small room towards it.

  She took the handle and pulled the door open. Josephine was standing in the doorway. Her smile was soft and uncertain.

  “Good afternoon, Maria,” Josephine said. “Can I come in?”

  Maria stepped aside to allow Josephine to enter. She then closed the door behind her. When she turned back around, Josephine was already standing next to the writing desk, examining the pages of thoughts Maria had been working on. There was something about the younger witch. Perhaps it was the outfit. Maria recognised it immediately.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “I was at the cabaret when I arrived,” Josephine said. “I thought it would be a better idea than being naked on the streets and having to sneak back into my room.”

  Maria couldn’t argue with that.

  “I heard about what they found,” Josephine said. “And they shot two witches!” Maria could tell she was scared by her voice and the fidgeting with her hands.

  “Yes. See, just as I said would happen. They are cruel in this town.”

  Josephine sat down on the edge of the bed, grabbing her hands. “Did you find out about Remy?”

  Maria’s trip to Bonpoi felt like a fever dream, particularly the sea monster. If somebody were to tell her it had not happened at all, Maria thought she might believe them. “He was working with the scribe after the fire, but he doesn’t remember anything else.”

  “Well, he’s lying!” Josephine said.

  “I don’t think he was.”

  “What a waste. Now I don’t regret attacking him as much.”

  Maria sighed, watching Josephine’s fingers dance nervously. “It’s probably time we tidy things up here and return to Bellvoir. Things are getting messy.”

  “It feels as though we have gotten nowhere,” Josephine said.

  “Well, the only place there was to get—”

  “Was the bottom of it,” Josephine said. “I know.”

  “Not everything to do with the cabaret happens on stage. Most of it is pointless duties.”

  “I know.”

  With a long exhale, Maria fixed her shirt sleeves and crossed the room to her drawers to fetch her clothes. Prior to their arrival in Carcassonne, she had sent forward roughly a week’s worth. With these in her hands, she began dividing them up into piles and replacing them in her bag. She was aware of Josephine, statuesque and wringing her hands, an ambit of tension surrounding her. “What is the matter? Are you ill?” Maria asked.

  “You might not like what I am about to say,” Josephine said.

  Maria lifted her gaze, her hands pausing with a pair of pants half-folded. “If you are wishing to relinquish your position in the cabaret out of boredom—”

  “It’s not that.” She stared at her. “I am bearing a child, Maria.”

  Maria’s body went hot and her mind blank. It was an automatic response that she felt transported back to that horrible farmhouse where she had spent her childhood.

  “I promise, I didn’t mean for it to happen. I even considered getting rid of it. I still could, if that is what you wish.” She stood up and approached Maria, but Maria took a step backwards, holding out her hands.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “What? Do you think I’m diseased or something? You will not also become pregnant just by touching me, Maria. Then again, do you even know how one does become burdened by a child at all?”

  “Shut up!”

  Josephine jumped, her skin going white.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Maria sat down on the bed. “It is not for a witch to have children, Josephine. Are your ears deaf to hearing such things?”

  “But what if they could?” Josephine said loudly, gesticulating into the space between them. “What if Antoinette could have a little brother or sister? Wouldn’t she love that?”

  “You think it’s so easy, Josephine?” Maria said.

  “It is hard. I know. But I don’t think we should be so fearful of this. You are Maria Lucien, for goodness sake! When we were growing up in the girls’ house—in the cabaret—we thought nothing could scare Maria Lucien.”

  But Josephine was wrong.

  Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the farmstead. A young girl clutching the bloody, lifeless foetus. She could feel it now, wet and cold. The blood dripping through the floorboards under the house. Poor, poor Antoinette, abandoned by Rosalie. She saw herself and her brothers, ruined by their father. How she had failed Antoinette.

  Her breath suddenly caught in her throat and she felt a sharp pain in her abdomen, grabbing it instinctively with both hands.

  “Maria?” Josephine asked.

  Maria dropped her hands, her lips beginning to quiver. She swallowed hard to fight back the tears that threatened to come. “Bella didn’t know the full story.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was pregnant once.” Her saying this out loud felt like an immense weight leaving her body. It was such a momentous feeling that she didn’t recognise her own voice saying it. “I didn’t even tell my brothers about it. I didn’t tell anybody. I was scared. You’re wrong, Josephine, I’m scared of so much.”

  Josephine grabbed her hand. “Maria...”

  Maria shook her head and pulled her hand out of Josephine’s. “Don’t take pity on me, Josephine.”

  “I’m not. Will you tell me what happened?”

  “It didn’t work. That’s all.” She wiped at the tear that had started running down her face, meeting her cheek bone. She opened her mouth to speak again but it was not words that came out, just a great heave of tears. And once they started, she could not stop them. She collapsed and Josephine took her in her arms, as gigantic sobs wracked her whole body. “I’m so sorry, Josephine.”

  “It’s okay,” Josephine said.

  It was a few minutes before Maria had composed herself, and they sat silently on the bed next to each other. Maria was cleaning her face, taking deep breaths, like somebody who is about to go on stage. “My brothers and I did terrible things when we were younger,” she said. “Edgar journalled about them. Books on books. He wrote about everything.”

  “So it’s not just that you fear more witches appearing in far-off places.”

  “No,” Maria whispered.

  “What kind of terrible things?” Josephine asked.

  #

  That night, Maria lay awake, unable to fall asleep. A storm raged inside her head, of Josephine and Antoinette, of her last conversation with Alfred, of Bella, of the witches who had been murdered, of Remy, and Jacques Ardouin, of it all.

  Perhaps it is for the better that things come back around, Alfred had told her the previous day. Maybe it’s what we deserve after everything we did.

  She sat up in the bed, her breaths shallow and uneasy. A splash of light from outside slipped through a crack in her curtain, illuminating her wall.

  I fear that whatever haunts this family, it has come at last.

  Alfred’s words. She rarely saw him so despondent, so resigned to a fate he had no control over. She had to begin to make things right, for Alfred was wrong; she did love the witches of the Black Dime Cabaret. It was why she was here, to protect them from their own curiosity, prevent a hearing, prevent them from ending up like the two who had died earlier.

  You are Maria Lucien, for goodness sake! Josephine had said.

  Gathering her cloak and wand, Maria snuck out of her room, taking to the cold, empty streets with a cowl over her head. She did not ride the carriage, and instead walked the entire way to the jails. Within her cloak, she carried several vials that she had made earlier that evening. Her wand, sheathed, rapped against her side as she walked.

  She arrived at the Carcassonne jail and opened the locked doors with a spell through thin lips, a whisper in the dark. The lock turned in its place, and with a satisfying click, she was let inside. Remaining quiet and in the shadows, she slipped into the building.

  The jail was almost completely silent, and only a few guards patrolled the corridors. She retraced her steps of their first visit, stealthily, until reaching the warden’s office. Maria collected her wand and flung open the door. Before he’d had a chance to look up, Maria had taken out her wand and was pointing it at him.

  “Where is Edgar Lucien?” Maria hissed. The warden, with wide eyes, jumped off his seat and started stumbling backwards. She pushed the door shut and advanced upon him, her wand raised in the air between them. “Don’t you try anything stupid now!”

  The warden retreated into the back of his office until there was no space left for him to go, and slowly raised his arms. “How— how did you get in?”

  “Don’t mind that,” she replied. “What happened to the thing they caught in the wagon? When two witches were killed! It was raining when it happened!”

  The warden swallowed, searching around as if for a weapon. Maria surged forward, threatening with her long, twisted wood wand.

  “Tell me!” Maria snapped.

  “I…”

  She grabbed him by the shirt and jabbed the wand into his kidney, making him flinch. The man was not experienced, smaller in frame than she would expect from a prison warden, and terribly incompetent. Only the most muffled of cries came from his mouth.

  “You better start talking.”

  “It was moved to the dungeons…”

  “I’m assuming it is locked?”

  The warden motioned with his head towards a large set of keys hanging from a loop on the wall. Maria manoeuvred with the warden over to the keys and snatched them in her free hand, letting the metal hoop fall down around her wrist.

  “Let’s go, now.” She jabbed him in the side and he began tumbling forward to the door.

  They navigated through the jail, Maria keeping her firm grip on him, and with nothing but the faintest lantern lights guiding their way. The man breathed loudly, occasionally whimpering how this was all unfair. Eventually, they went down some stairs and through a smelly section of dungeons. They arrived at a bolted door with a large, heavy lock.

  “Please, don’t do this—” the warden began.

  Maria tossed him out of the way, and at the same moment struck out with her wand. Hot, seductive power surged through her wrist, and from the end of her wand was a sudden crackle of energy. The warden was hit squarely in the back, and no sooner than he could let out the start of a scream, he was on the ground, completely stunned.

  Maria watched him with uncertainty. His eyes were agape, his lips slightly parted. His skin would have been cold to the touch, stone-like, but not lifeless.

  She returned her wand to her sheathe inside her cloak, grabbed the keys, and began riffling through for the correct one. After a little trial and error, she found one that slotted neatly into the lock, and pushed open the door.