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The stone steps under Lydia’s feet were perfectly smooth and dipped in the center where four hundred years of footsteps had worn them away. Henry led the way until they reached the topmost floor of the chateau.

“Where is he now?” Lydia asked. “The curator you came here with?”

“René had personal business to attend to. He should be back in a day or two.”

They came to a long, dark room, cold and bare of any furniture save for a handful of scarred tables and chests of drawers.

Along the walls, wooden crates of all shapes and sizes leaned against one another.

Some were marked with colored circles—red, yellow, green—while others lay hidden under sheets.

Henry carried a small oil lamp, which he lifted high, making eerie shapes along the walls.

“Are these all…” Lydia trailed off.

“The greatest treasures of the art world. Some of them, at least.” Lydia stood for a moment in silence. Henry cleared his throat. “You’re an art historian?”

“Yes.” She could feel something pulling her into the next room. A low, energetic pulse. That must be where they kept the book , she thought with a sudden, exhilarated rush.

“Here, let me show you something.” Henry took a crowbar from the floor and used it to crack open a flat crate, letting handfuls of packing straw fall to the floor as he did.

Inside was a painting of a seated woman, attended by another woman, who knelt at her feet.

The subject was nude and round bellied, with skin the color of milk.

She reminded Lydia of the fertility goddesses she had seen depicted on the walls of the academy.

“She’s beautiful.” Lydia stepped closer to see more clearly in the flickering lamplight.

“ Bathsheba at Her Bath . Botticelli.”

She could feel his eyes on her, assessing. She tried her best to sound authoritative. “Yes, I know.” In the next room, the magical hum continued, demanding her attention. “Is there more in here?”

“Mm-hmm. Follow me.”

The next room was much like the last, but smaller and darker.

There were more crates, along with some scattered figures draped in sheets, giving Lydia the unnerving sensation that they weren’t quite alone.

She could feel the diluted power of the Grimorium Bellum— smudgy handprints left behind by old, powerful magic.

But there was something else, as well. Some newer, fresher magic, laid like a blanket over the old, mixing the signals.

The mingling of the two created a dissonant hum that felt like a migraine, and Lydia grimaced, trying to make sense of it.

“Where did you say you went to school?” Henry was standing in the doorway, watching her.

“What?” Lydia couldn’t concentrate. The messy, dueling magic seemed to vibrate together, creating a static charge in the air. “What is that smell? Incense?”

“Cedar.”

A slow, mounting dread bubbled up inside her. “You burned cedar? Why?”

“Miss Polk.” His voice had changed.

“What?” She forced herself to block out the tangled hum of magic all around them and looked at Henry.

“You don’t work for the British Museum.” He leveled his gaze at her. “And you don’t know a thing about art.”

Lydia blinked. “How dare you. Of course I—”

“That was a Rembrandt back there. Not a Botticelli. A first-year art student would know the difference, but not you. Why is that?” He was blocking her exit.

“I…I don’t…”

“Did you come here for the book?”

Lydia looked around. She smelled the cedar smoke, saw the salt piled in the corners of the room and along the windowsill.

She felt something like panic, rising hot and dangerous in her throat. “What did you do?”

“I sent it away. I hid it.”

“I know that. I know you sent it away, but what did you do after that? What did you do to this room?”

Henry tilted his head. “Something my mother taught me back in New Orleans, something she would do when a place had a bad feeling around it. I’m a little out of practice these days, but…”

Lydia felt as if she might scream. She opened her mouth, but only a frantic whisper escaped. “You cleansed the room . ”

Now she understood. The magic of the book was too powerful to be wiped away completely, but whatever cleansing ritual Henry had done had been enough to dilute its presence. All that was left was a jumbled signal, like a radio caught between two stations. Lydia would never be able to trace it now.

“Where is the book?” she demanded.

“Whatever you want with it, it’s too late. You’ll never find it.”

Lydia was seething. “Do you understand what you’ve done? They’ll find it now.”

“Who?”

“The Nazis, you idiot!” She was shouting, but she didn’t care. “You don’t have any idea what it really is, do you? You had it in your hands, and you threw it away!”

“I know enough.” Henry’s voice rose to match hers. “I know that a month ago someone tried to steal it. Someone who looked like René, but wasn’t . I know how I felt when I held it, like it was whispering to me inside my head.”

“Well, congratulations. By tomorrow the Third Reich will have all they need to bring about the end of the world, and you will have helped them do it.”

He stood in the doorway, still blocking her path with his body.

Anger and caution battled inside her, but in the end, anger won out.

One moment Lydia was inside her body; the next she had projected outside herself and was standing like a specter just behind Henry’s left shoulder, making no effort at all to cloak her projection, her strange doppelg?nger clearly visible in the dim lamplight.

“Move,” she said quietly, “or I will make you.”

She waited for him to turn and register her face before returning to her body, and for the first time she thought she saw something that might have been fear in his eyes.

He knows what I am now , she thought. Good.

He hesitated for just a moment, then stepped to the side.

Lydia walked past him, down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the night.

She was breathless with rage and unable to stomach the sight of the damned, meddling curator for one second longer.

She was already outside when she realized she’d left her coat and bag behind.

To hell with it , she thought. Soon it won’t matter.

She heard Henry behind her, calling her name. She kept walking across the frozen hillside toward the hazy outline of the village below.

“Miss Polk!”

She turned. Henry stood on the hill, dim firelight pouring from the open door onto the grass. The wind howled, whipping her hair and pulling at her clothes. They faced each other.

“How do I know you’re not one of them?” He shouted to be heard over the wind.

Lydia stared at him. “You don’t. But I’m not.”

He looked as if he’d known that was what she was going to say. She watched as he rubbed one hand over his jaw, muttering to himself.

She stepped closer to hear him over the howling wind. “Excuse me?”

Henry looked at her, and now he didn’t look afraid at all. Angry and frustrated, perhaps. But not afraid.

“I said, I can’t let you leave.”