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“You don’t say much, do you?” Cassie observed, and she was surprised to find she was angry with this woman, despite her fear. “But I know you can speak. It’s just for show, isn’t it? Just to make people think you’re scary?”

The woman’s mouth twitched at the corners, not quite a smile but perhaps a recognition of Cassie’s analysis.

“Everything about you is affected. Even that mist when you come in the room. Like you’re Dracula or something.”

The woman adjusted her stance, moving her weight from her left foot to her right.

“You are everything that’s wrong with this world,” Cassie continued. “You have all this magic at your fingertips and what do you use it for? To cause pain and suffering. That is all you can think of to do, when there are so many amazing and wonderful things you could do instead.”

Cassie could almost feel Drummond willing her to shut up, to get on with the plan, but she couldn’t stop herself. She was venting years of frustration and despair.

“I pity you,” Cassie said. “I feel sorry for you.”

The woman’s expression seemed to relax then, all emotion gone, just a blank mask.

“How lonely it must be, to hate everything,” Cassie said, shaking her head slowly.

The woman’s expression hardened, her mouth tightening into a line and her jaw muscles clenching.

“What are you going to do?” Cassie asked. “Are you going to crush me or skin me or burn me with your light?”

The woman lowered her head, a predator preparing to pounce.

“Go ahead,” Cassie said, as her heart raced with adrenaline and fear. “Take your best shot.”

The Plan, Part Three—Drummond and Cassie in the Shadows

The hardest part of the plan, the part that Drummond had feared the most (other than the final part), was following the woman to find out what they needed. In the hours before, by himself in the hotel, he’d paced his room restlessly, debating whether what they were doing was right or not. He’d felt the moment barreling toward him, but his indecision kept him trapped there, facing something he wasn’t sure he wanted to do.

It was Cassie who came for him, knocking on the door to his room a few minutes before they had agreed to meet in the hotel bar. When he opened the door, she was standing there by herself, beautiful and disheveled in the big old coat she always wore, her hair pulled back from her face.

“Are you ready?”

“No,” he admitted.

She nodded and her eyes slipped off to the side. “Me neither.”

They stood in awkward silence for a few moments and then Drummond spoke. “Best get started, then, before we both lose our nerve.”

He found he wanted to be braver than he was. In a silly, schoolboy sort of way he wanted to impress Cassie, this woman who had beenthrough so much because he hadn’t been able to protect her when Hugo Barbary had attacked, or when the woman had come for them in the ballroom months before.

“Yep,” she agreed.

They walked together through the hotel to the bar, where Izzy and Lund and Azaki were hanging out, chatting and fidgeting with nervous energy.

“You doing it, then?” Izzy asked, standing up to greet them. Cassie nodded once. Drummond watched as the two women met each other’s gaze.

“Be safe,” Izzy said to Cassie, pulling her into a hug. “I know you’re older now, but you gotta listen to me, otherwise I’m going to kick your butt.”

Cassie grinned over Izzy’s shoulder, and then the women separated, and Izzy looked at Drummond.

“I’ll kick your butt too if anything happens to her.”

“I know,” Drummond said, trying to smile.

“Okay,” Cassie said, nodding, trying to hide her apprehension. “Let’s do this.”

They walked to the first room along the corridor from the bar, and Cassie used the Book of Doors to open the door, revealing what appeared to be another corridor in the hotel.