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Rebecca fell to the ground, the sudden release leaving her limp, like a marionette with her strings cut. She scrambled backward, gravel scattering around her, as Lydia stood placid and motionless.

“What the fuck was that?”

Lydia looked around. Off in the distance, a car was approaching.

“We should get off the road,” she said.

···

Rebecca guided the car onto a little-used dirt path, then turned off the engine and stared straight ahead. Lydia sat beside her, murmuring strange words under her breath, running her fingertips across her injured palms. Rebecca looked down and saw the wounds close under her touch.

She had always loathed scary stories. Ghosts, witches, even fairy tales meant for children.

Anything that gave off even a whiff of the supernatural had always filled her with a visceral dread.

Rebecca preferred her world to be orderly.

She glanced down at Lydia’s now unblemished hands, then quickly looked away.

Lydia was quiet, waiting for her to speak.

“What did you do to me?” Rebecca rasped.

“It’s a simple defensive spell. A temporary paralytic. I’ve had it done to me in class, I know it’s not pleasant. I’m sorry I had to do that.”

Rebecca swallowed. “You disappeared.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“It’s called a glamour. Normally it’s used for changing one’s appearance, but a very skilled Glamourer can use it to disappear entirely.”

“And you’re a very skilled Glamourer?”

Lydia shook her head. She smiled, but there was something broken behind it. “No. My friend Kitty. She was the best Glamourer I ever knew. She taught me that trick, but I’m not very good. I can only hold it for a few seconds.”

“That’s why the milice let us go? They opened the boot, and you…what, you became invisible?” Rebecca looked at Lydia. There was dirt on her blouse and on her face, and her hair was coming undone. “You’re trying to tell me you’re what…a sorcière? A witch?”

Lydia grimaced. “I’d rather not have told you at all.”

Rebecca was sure she was going mad. She felt idiotic, but she could not deny what she’d seen. What she’d felt. She shuddered, remembering the total loss of control.

“What’s in Dordogne?”

“You won’t believe me.”

She removed her hands from the wheel. “You’re not going anywhere in my car until you tell me.”

Lydia made her wait. Then she sighed. “A book of spells. The Nazis want it. I need to find it first. If I can get to the last place it was kept, I’ll be able to use the magic left behind to track it down.”

“And the book was being kept at this chateau? Chateau de Laurier?”

“Yes.”

Rebecca was quiet for a moment. “Why do the Nazis want it?”

“It’s hard to say. What it does exactly is a bit of a mystery. What I do know is that the book contains ancient magic, wartime magic…and that wherever it goes, death and ruin inevitably follow. If the Nazis find it, they’ll be in possession of a well of unimaginable arcane power—”

“You’re telling me they don’t intend to lock this book away behind glass somewhere. You’re telling me they’re planning to use it.”

Lydia nodded. “They would need a coven to wield it. Magic that powerful would burn through a lone witch like kindling. I’ve met one of their witches already, I’m afraid, and I believe there must be more…

.” She swallowed. Rebecca thought she looked pale.

“I believe they have something planned for the winter solstice. That’s in six weeks. ”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“Your friend,” Rebecca said slowly. “The one who taught you to disappear. You talked about her in the past tense. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Something complicated happened behind Lydia’s eyes. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry. Who did it?”

“I don’t know her name. She broke into the academy, slipped past our warding, and murdered the grand mistress, and Kitty.

She carried a knife with a rune on the handle.

Othala. It means ‘homeland.’?” A pause. “I’m going to kill her.

” She sounded like she had just realized it herself, and it surprised her.

“Good.” This, at least, Rebecca could understand.

Lydia looked at her. “Are you all right? I imagine this must all be quite a shock.”

Rebecca wasn’t sure what all right even meant anymore.

All she knew was that more than anything, she wanted this Englishwoman out of her car.

She wanted to drive off, leave her standing on the side of the road with the weeds and the cows.

But she remembered what David had said: the order to get Lydia into France had come from Churchill himself.

For whatever reason, Churchill believed the English witch was essential to defeating the Nazis.

And that was all that mattered.

“We should get you to Dordogne.”

They drove in silence, hilly farmland rolling by their windows. After several long, quiet moments, Rebecca heard Lydia murmur something softly to herself.

“What was that?”

Lydia looked at her. “You said you’d been at this for three years ?” Her eyes were probing. Trying to guess her age, Rebecca was fairly certain. “How on earth did you get involved in all this?”

She almost didn’t answer. She’d learned to be suspicious of strangers, of people who asked questions, of everyone, really. But the drive was long, and Lydia’s secrets were somehow even stranger and more dangerous than her own.

“The first year it was little things,” she said. “Vandalizing posters. Slashing tires. Stealing road signs so the Nazis wouldn’t know where they were going, things like that.”

Lydia laughed. “You stole road signs?”

Rebecca shrugged. “It’s surprisingly effective.

After that I joined a group that was doing more…

active resistance.” She glanced at Lydia and saw that she understood.

“I moved from place to place, went where I could do the most good. I wanted to punish them. To make the bastards regret ever coming here in the first place.”

“And now you’re a regular Joan of Arc—outwitting the milice, smuggling guns and Englishwomen from the coast. That’s quite the step up from sign theft and petty vandalism.

” There was a silent question in her tone: What happened to you?

What did they take from you, that would make you willing to risk so much?

Rebecca glanced at the glasses case in her purse. The answer felt heavy on her tongue. She hesitated, then swallowed the words like a dry pill.

“What will you do, once you find your book?” she asked, cutting Lydia off before she could ask anything more.

Lydia looked strangely uncertain. “Take it to the academy, I suppose.”

“Will you try to use it yourself?”

Lydia looked as if she had never considered the possibility. “Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“It’s dark magic. Evil. We don’t do that sort of thing.” Lydia didn’t look entirely convinced by her own argument.

“It would save lives.”

“It would end lives, that’s what it does.”

Rebecca was quiet for a long time. “They would do it to us.”

“We’re not like them.”

“Maybe we should be.”

Lydia turned, surprised. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do, actually.”

Lydia stared. “I don’t think you know what you’re suggesting.”

Rebecca was suddenly furious with this stupid, naive Englishwoman, lecturing her on morality with such confidence. “You know what I think? I think you’ve only heard about war on the BBC. You’ve never seen it up close. You have no idea what it’s really like here.”

“That’s not true—”

“No? Have you had to watch little children starve to death? Have you watched innocent men and women shot like dogs in the street? Have you seen your entire family carted away like animals? These aren’t men we’re fighting, they’re monsters.

They don’t care for our humanity, so why should you care for theirs? ”

“We can’t become like them.”

“How many will die if you don’t? You could stop this war, but you won’t, because you have nothing at stake, and because you’re a coward.

You’ll go back to London, and you’ll read your newspaper, and shake your head, and when you get tired, you’ll put it away, and you’ll think about something else.

And we will still be dying.” Rebecca’s throat burned, but she would not cry.

“We’re dying, too, you know,” Lydia said, but all the conviction had run out of her voice.

Rebecca looked away. “Not like this.”

···

It was late afternoon by the time they reached Chateau de Laurier. The sun had begun to slip in the sky, and the air had taken on a new chill. Rebecca was tired and hungry, and eager to be rid of the uncanny Englishwoman once and for all.

“I appreciate your help,” Lydia said as the car came to a halt. Chateau de Laurier loomed before them. Time had peeled away the castle’s beauty, and water and moss stained the stones. The building cast a sad pall over the landscape, a dark smudge on the hillside.

Lydia stepped out of the car and pulled her bag from the boot, peering up as she stood in the shadow of the crumbling chateau.

“I hope you find what you are looking for.” Rebecca hadn’t known she was going to say it, but the words came out anyway. “Think about what I said.”

Lydia nodded. “Be safe.”

Rebecca drove away and did not look back, leaving Lydia standing alone on the windswept hill.