Petty Magic: Being the Memoirs and Confessions of Miss Evelyn Harbinger, Temptress and Troublemaker by Camille Deangelis

Author:Camille Deangelis [DeAngelis, Camille]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychological, Older Women, Magic, Witches, Fantasy Fiction, World War; 1939-1945, Fiction, Romance, Fantasy, Loss (Psychology), World War; 1939-1945 - Veterans, Historical, War & Military, General, Veterans, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780307454232
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2010-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

THERE WAS a blur of safe houses, so many that I couldn’t possibly remember them all. Some who sheltered us were more willing than others. A few times we spent the night with the maquisards, the guerrillas of the French Resistance, and I much preferred it to the farmers’ grudging hospitality. The mood in their camp was much the same as it was in the Ossuaire Municipal: the better your jokes, the more your comrades respected you and appreciated your company.

When they played cards Jonah sometimes bet his pocket watch—which had belonged to his father—and he never lost. Once the game was over, he might challenge one of the losers to pick a card out of the deck, and he always knew which one it was. Like any self-respecting magician (save Neverino, who told me everything), Jonah only ever responded with a wink when I asked him how he’d done it.

Our freedom fighters were headquartered in a “haunted” château ten miles from Lyons. It looked thoroughly uninhabitable from the road, which I suppose was why the Germans hadn’t requisitioned it. The elderly couple living in the gate lodge would have given them up in a heartbeat had they known, but fortunately they were so superstitious that any sounds or lights in the middle of the night were taken for paranormal activity. The maquisards had come up with an ingenious method of redirecting the smoke from their kitchen fire through an old sewage pipe that stretched to the woods behind the house, so that they were able to have hot food at night.

Our friend Simone had fallen hopelessly in love with one of the young Frenchmen, and as a consequence the men knew more about us than I would have liked. It was Maxime and his twin brother, Pierre, who had jury-rigged the chimney pipe. They had also built a series of oubliettes in the woods, wide and deep enough that escape was nigh hopeless. It was a wonder neither of them ever fell for their own trick.

They handed us tin mugs of grog they’d distilled themselves. I took a polite sip, gagged, and spat it back into the cup. “That will put the hair on your moles!” Maxime cried merrily.

I eyed him with distaste, and when I met Simone’s eye she gave me a small sheepish smile.

“Do you know the reason you were called away from Paris?” he asked. “The reason all those officers were found dead in the brothels?”

I looked at him.

“They say a girl, a young Breton girl, called them back.”

“Called who back? Back from where?”

He leaned in and said, in a stage whisper: “The girls.”

“For heaven’s sake, what girls?”

Simone reached over and pinched Maxime’s lips together. “I will tell you.”

What happened was this. A ship was dispatched carrying Parisian girls for the entertainment of German soldiers stationed on the isle of Jersey. There was a storm, and at the island’s southwesterly point, La Corbière—a treacherously rocky headland where black birds gather—the ship capsized, and all on board were drowned.

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