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“She was inside my head!” Rebecca’s voice cracked.

“She told me to get in the car, and I did it. She told me to behave. You expect me to believe that had nothing to do with you?” The violation seemed to hit her all at once—the loss of her autonomy for those few horrible moments.

She had been helpless, and that enraged her.

“Rebecca, I promise, whatever happened to you, I had nothing to do with it.”

Rebecca felt blood gathering in her mouth. She spat it out on the floor. “Go to hell.”

Lydia watched silently for a moment, her image wavering in the dim light. She seemed somehow less solid than she ought to be. Eventually, Rebecca’s curiosity got the better of her.

“Why do you look like that?”

Lydia sighed. “What you’re seeing is my projection. I’m not really here. My body is at Chateau de Laurier. Rebecca, where are you ?”

Rebecca stared at the floor in front of her and did not answer.

“Goddamn it, Rebecca, I’m trying to help you!”

“I don’t know where I am. I was unconscious when they brought me here.”

“They who? Who took you?”

“A man and a woman. He’s Gestapo. The woman, she’s…

” Rebecca felt a shudder run through her.

She could still see the woman’s smiling face, with something cruel lurking just behind the eyes.

“When she spoke to me, I couldn’t disobey.

Anything she told me to do, I had to do it.

And she had a knife. Bone handle, with a rune. ”

Rebecca watched as the color drained from Lydia’s face.

“I’m going to get you out of there.”

“That would be good. What are you doing here, anyway, sorcière ?” She felt her rage beginning to ebb, replaced by a feeble whiff of hope.

“I need to get to Auvergne. I was going to talk to you about your car, although I can see now that will have to wait.”

The sound of footsteps made them both fall silent.

Lydia spoke quickly. “They can’t see or hear me. You’re the only one who knows I’m here. Do you understand?”

Rebecca blinked at her. “I don’t understand any of this.”

The door opened. The woman with the chestnut curls entered the room and gave a sympathetic pout as she regarded Rebecca’s battered face. Then she closed the door firmly behind her. Rebecca heard the lock click into place with a horrible finality and felt her heart skitter against her rib cage.

The chestnut-haired woman removed her jacket and draped it carefully over the back of her chair. It was crimson red, the color of fresh blood. She clucked over Rebecca like a mother hen as she took her seat.

“Oh dear, he really let you have it, didn’t he?” She spoke French with only a wisp of an accent, subtle enough that a casual listener might not notice it at all. “So unnecessary. And pointless. You strike me as a woman who can withstand a beating.”

Rebecca did not reply.

The woman leaned in conspiratorially. “The secret, of course, is that they’re not interested in extracting information at all. Only in causing pain.” She rolled her eyes. “Men.”

“But not you,” Rebecca said. “You want to be my friend, yes?”

“Your friend? Goodness, no. I want what I came for. I want the names and locations of every member of your organization. And you’re going to give them to me.”

“I don’t know—”

“The next lie you tell, you will bite off your own tongue.” The woman smiled sweetly.

Rebecca fell silent, terror spiking in her, knowing with her whole body that she would do exactly as she’d been commanded.

The woman’s smile widened. “ Names. Names of your fellow Resistance members, and your SOE counterparts. Locations of any safe houses and supply caches. And…” She slowly ran her thumb across the knife on her hip. “I want you to tell me about the Englishwoman you transported to Dordogne.”

Rebecca’s eyes flicked to Lydia, then back to the chestnut-haired woman.

“Don’t look so shocked.” The woman laughed.

“Did she tell you what she really is? She’s not your friend , either, you know, even if you believe you’re on the same side.

She put you in danger the moment she met you.

It was wrong of her to put you in such a position.

” The woman leaned forward. “Tell me now. What did she say to you on that long drive to Dordogne?”

The lie was so small. Nothing. She told me nothing. But even as Rebecca’s mind formed the words, she felt her jaw tighten and her teeth clench around her tongue, ready to bite down. She whimpered. After a moment the tension released.

“She’s a Force,” Lydia whispered. “I’ve never met one before.” If the chestnut-haired woman sensed Lydia in the room with them, she gave no indication of it.

“Here’s what we are going to do,” the woman said. “I’m going to cut your bonds. And you are going to sit right there, and not give me any trouble . Isn’t that right?” She waited for a response.

“Yes.” Rebecca’s voice came out as a hoarse whisper.

The woman took the knife from her belt and cut the ropes from Rebecca’s wrists. “Here.” She turned the dagger so the handle faced Rebecca. “Go on. Take it. But no funny business.”

Rebecca didn’t want to take it, not for anything in the world, but found herself reaching for the dagger, nonetheless.

A single tear fell onto her bloodied blouse.

She wanted her mother. She wanted to go back in time, back to when she was a child.

Did you have a nightmare, little dove? Yes, a nightmare.

Her mother always wore the same perfume, Vol de Nuit, and whenever Rebecca had a bad dream, her mother would spray a little bit onto her pillow, to keep the monsters away.

She looked down at the knife in her hand, breathing fast, but smelled only sweat, and bleach, and fear. Wake up, wake up, wake up.

“Now, here’s my secret,” the woman said in her singsong voice. “I can make you do aaaaanything I want. Anything at all. But your mind is another matter. I can’t do anything about the thoughts in your head, which means I can’t force you to say anything you don’t want to say. Understand?”

Rebecca nodded. She could feel her pulse in her throat.

“So, we’re going to play a game. I want you to tell me everything you know. All about the Englishwoman. The names of all your coconspirators. The locations of your safe houses. Details of any planned attacks against the Reich. Everything.”

The dagger shook in Rebecca’s hand, the tendons pressing through the skin. You will not break , she told herself. No matter what she does to you.

“You can of course choose to remain silent. But for every second you’re not telling me what I want to know, you’re going to cut yourself with that dagger .”

Rebecca looked up at Lydia, eyes wide.

“Ready?” the woman said.

“Wait, wait, wait—” Rebecca screamed.

“Begin.”

Without hesitation, Rebecca took the dagger and dragged it across the skin of her forearm. She shrieked in pain but continued to carve in slow, deft strokes.

“Not too deep. We don’t want the game to end too soon.”

The pain was not the point, she realized with growing panic as she sliced away at her own flesh.

It was the terror, the knowledge that she would cut herself to ribbons if she did not speak.

She would chop off her own fingers, peel off her own face, and nothing would be able to stop her, nothing except a word from the chestnut-haired woman.

“Rebecca!” Lydia came closer, kneeling at her side. “Rebecca, listen to me, listen very carefully.”

Rebecca carried on slicing her own skin. The chestnut-haired woman watched on, smiling.

Lydia spoke slowly and clearly to be heard over the screams. “I want you to draw an X with the knife.”

Rebecca continued to cut into her own flesh, weeping, but did as Lydia instructed. Tears sluiced their way down her face, leaving streaks in the blood and the dust.

“Now draw another X, right above the first, so the top of the first X touches the bottom of the second.”

Rebecca did as she was told. The woman with the chestnut hair leaned forward.

“What are you doodling there?”

“Now draw a vertical line, right down the middle,” Lydia commanded.

The woman squinted. “Why, that looks like—”

She never finished the sentence. Rebecca drove the blade through the woman’s throat, straight up to the hilt, and watched as her lovely face opened up in a gasp of surprise and outrage. A hideous gurgle escaped her lips, before her eyes rolled back and she fell to the floor with a thud.

Rebecca sat, silent and shaking, as Lydia stood over the dead witch. Slowly, Rebecca staggered to the far end of the room, leaned into the corner, and retched.

Lydia went to the door and listened. “We need to get you out of here. Someone will be coming soon.”

Rebecca felt very far away from herself. She understood what was happening, but she was dazed and numb.

“Rebecca, it’s time to go.”

She looked up. “Go where? I’ll be shot the moment I walk out that door.”

“Well, you can’t stay here.”

Rebecca sat back down in the chair. She imagined the look on the Gestapo’s face when he returned and saw what she had done. It brought her some small amount of satisfaction. Lydia watched her, thinking. “Wait here.”

“Where else would I go?” But Lydia had already slipped through the closed metal door. She returned a moment later.

“Outside this door is a long hallway. It’s not guarded. There’s another door at the other end.”

“And beyond that door?”

Lydia’s image trembled. “I don’t know. My projection is tied to you. I can only go so far before I’m pulled back.”

Rebecca nodded, still staring at the body of the dead woman on the floor.

“Rebecca,” Lydia said firmly. “I know you’ve been through something horrible. I know you’re scared. But you don’t want to die in this place.”

She was right, of course. The numbness ebbed away. Rebecca could feel herself inside her skin—bruised, bleeding, and frightened, but alive.

She stood. “If I survive, we can talk about you using my car.”

“Fair enough.” An uneasy look appeared on Lydia’s face, like she had just been caught by a wave of dizziness.