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Sixteen

That night, Rebecca couldn’t sleep. Her arm itched where Lydia had healed her wounds, and her head throbbed. Her muscles were heavy and sore from digging.

She hated the drafty old chateau. The blankets smelled of mildew, and every tiny sound sent her heart racing.

She felt a hollow panic in her chest, growing deeper as the night ticked forward.

In two years, she’d only ever told one person that she was a Jew.

She’d shed the name Rebecca Gaiser like an old coat the day her mother and sister were taken, transforming herself into someone new—Rebecca Gagne, the fearless maquisarde.

The lie had been her armor, and now that she’d abandoned it, she was consumed by bone-deep fear.

She wished she had kept her mouth shut and let them bury the old man in silence.

She almost had, but then she’d thought about her father, gone now for more than two years.

He’d been a scholar, too, like René. She could still see the crinkles beside his eyes, his little round spectacles pushed down on his nose as he devoured some book, sitting in the frayed old armchair in his study.

Come here, Rebecca, let me read you this passage.

Come look at this drawing. Read this bit in English.

Now this one in German. My clever girl, here’s a piece of chocolate for you, don’t tell your mother.

Josef! Her mother’s voice would call from the next room. You’ll spoil her dinner.

My love! I would never. And then he would wink at Rebecca and slip her the chocolate anyway, before sending her off to play.

It was her father who’d taught her the Mourner’s Kaddish.

She’d heard the men reciting it as they sat shiva after her grandfather died when she was thirteen.

Girls didn’t recite the Kaddish, but she’d wanted to know it anyway, and her father, who loved learning, had never denied his children the answer to any question they could imagine, no matter how big or small.

He sat with Rebecca every evening, patiently talking her through every syllable until she could recite the entire prayer by heart.

She remembered finding his glasses, crushed on the floor of their flat after the police had come and gone.

She’d fretted for months about how he would see without them, before finally realizing that he was probably long dead.

Still, she’d kept them with her always, as if someday he might come back and ask for them.

And now the Gestapo had them, tossed aside in some little room in that stinking police station, next to her pistol and her fake papers.

She would never see them again. Silent, bitter tears spilled from her eyes, rolling down her face and collecting on the pillow beneath her head. She sniffed and wiped them away.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Rebecca felt her heart turn over in her chest before realizing it was only Lydia, quietly making her way to the kitchen in the dark.

Perhaps she couldn’t sleep either. She considered joining her but thought better of it.

She listened for a long time, waiting for Lydia to return, but she never did, and finally, sleep crept in, slithering unnoticed on its belly through the dark of her room, and carried her away.

···

She woke to the sound of crying.

“ Noémie? ” she murmured. Then she realized that wasn’t right. Noémie was gone. She sat up.

Dull gray light filled the room where she slept. Slowly, she dressed and made her way downstairs, cursing to herself. Her whole body ached, and her hands were raw from digging.

The crying grew louder.

She saw Henry first, crouching on the kitchen floor.

She could hear Lydia’s muffled sobs but couldn’t make out the words.

Only Henry, speaking softly and gently. Then he shifted, and Rebecca saw her—Lydia, head hung low, her dark, tangled hair veiling her face.

Her hands were filthy, blackened with something that might have been soot.

A carpet of embers glowed in the stone hearth.

Rebecca stepped into the kitchen. “What’s happened?”

Henry shook his head, helpless. “I found her like this when I got up. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”

Lydia looked up then, and Rebecca saw something in her eyes that made her draw back—she looked half-crazed, like she’d seen something terrible.

There was something different about her face, as well.

It wasn’t just that Lydia clearly hadn’t slept.

Her nose was more pronounced, her lips thinner, and there was a sharpness to her image that hadn’t been there before.

Rebecca wondered for a moment if she had cast some spell on herself to look as she did now, but if so, for what purpose?

Then she realized the truth. The face she’d always thought of as Lydia’s had never been real at all.

This was her true face. Whatever illusion Lydia had been casting, she had lost either the ability or the inclination to conjure it.

“Rebecca.” Lydia’s voice sounded different, wrong, somehow. “I tried. I tried to destroy it, but I can’t. I’m not strong enough.” A sob ripped through her chest like broken glass. The book lay between them on the floor. The cover was smudged with soot but appeared otherwise intact.

Rebecca watched as Henry helped Lydia into a chair. She looked down at the book and felt a strange sense of calm wash over her.

She knelt and rebuilt the fire. She waited until there was a roaring blaze, then lifted the book from the floor.

Lydia looked up. “What are you doing?”

Rebecca considered the thing in her hand. She’d seen the power the book held over Lydia, like it was speaking in a voice only she could hear. Even Henry seemed unsettled whenever he was in the same room with it. Rebecca turned the book over in her hands and waited to feel something, anything.

“I’ll do it,” she said.

Lydia shook her head miserably. “You don’t understand. It won’t let you.”

For so long, Rebecca had felt helpless. Helpless as her father and mother and sister were taken from their home and dragged away, never to be heard from again.

Helpless, cutting away at her own flesh in that stinking prison cell.

Helpless when she’d discovered the bodies of her friends—Roland, slumped against the bathroom sink.

Colette and Alain, their limbs tangled together like they had been embracing.

All of them, slaughtered by the Gestapo.

But this . This was something she could do. Something that mattered.

“You forget,” she said. “There’s no witch blood in me. To you, it’s a thing of power. But to me? It’s just a book.”

She tossed the grimoire into the fire.

“Wait!” Lydia cried, but it was too late.

Rebecca was thrown violently to her knees, as if someone had come up from behind and tossed her to the ground with great force.

She felt herself snatch the book back from the fire with no hesitation, no regard for the flames that licked at her skin.

It was as if something else were driving her body, something unfeeling and inanimate.

Blackness crept into her vision as mortal terror washed over her.

Her body felt cold and rigid, like the constricting of her muscles would crush her bones to dust.

“She’s not breathing!” Rebecca was vaguely aware of Henry dragging her away from the fire, the book still clutched to her chest, hands frozen in claws.

She felt as if her lungs would burst, like she was thousands of meters underwater, with the incredible weight of the entire ocean stacked on top of her like bricks.

And all the while, the book clung to her breast like a monstrous child.

“Rebecca. Hey . Look at me.” Henry’s voice was calm, but Rebecca could see the fear in his eyes. “Breathe,” he commanded. “Breathe.”

No air came, and her terror deepened as the seconds ticked by.

She wanted to thrash, to fight for air, but she couldn’t, and that was worse than anything.

She felt like she was swimming toward the surface of the water, but it was impossibly far away.

Henry took her by the shoulders and shook her, hard.

There was a shrouded figure standing in the corner, leering.

Rebecca blinked at the ceiling. The figure moved closer, hovering over Henry as he held her.

It didn’t move like a person, but more like a collection of creatures, all running over and around each other, pulsing and swarming.

It was grotesque, horrifying, and Rebecca felt the urge to scream, but only a thin hiss of air escaped.

“Good,” Henry said. “Now come on back. Come on. Breathe. ”

Air exploded into her lungs, icy and painful. The book released its grasp, and she tossed it into the corner, where it hit the wall and landed with a thud. She turned onto her side and gasped, never certain the next breath would come until it did.

She looked up. There was no shadow creature, only dust and cobwebs. Across the room, Lydia crouched on the stone floor, curled into a ball. They looked at each other, two people who had stared into the same terrible void.

“How many times?” Rebecca’s voice sounded hoarse. “How many times did you throw that book into the fire?”

Lydia’s face was smeared with soot and tears. “Six.”

The feeling was back, as if it had never left. Helplessness . Thick as tar, suffocating her.

They sat in silence for a long time, while the fire burned back down to embers and the air grew cold. Lydia kept her face turned toward the book, as if listening to some secret it was murmuring, just for her. Finally, she got to her feet, swaying slightly.

“Lydia?” Henry stood.

She didn’t look at him. “It’s all right. I know what I have to do.”

Rebecca watched her, waiting.

“The book can’t be destroyed, and it can’t stay here. The academy is the only place where it will be safe.”

“Safe?” Rebecca stared at her in disbelief. “Those Nazi witches broke into your academy once already. Who’s to say they can’t do it again?”