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Twenty-One

Rebecca was pretending to sleep.

Downstairs in the kitchen, a heated conversation was going on.

It was about her. She sat up and placed both feet on the floor.

Around her, the dreaming sounds of the sleeping maquisards carried on uninterrupted.

Rebecca stood, cautiously testing each floorboard as she made her way to the top of the stairs.

“Why is she still here?” Roger’s voice floated toward her from the kitchen. “You know as well as I do she’s been turned.”

“Did I say that?” Claire asked, in that even tone that had always meant danger. “Did I say I know she’s been turned?”

A pause, heavy with tension.

Roger continued. “You were the one who always said, if someone gets caught, that’s it. It’s too risky to let them come back.”

“I told her she had until Lucas and Pierre returned. I wanted to give her time to tell me the truth about what happened.”

“Well, they’re back, so, I’d say her time is up.”

Behind her, someone turned over on their mattress, making the springs scream in protest. Rebecca went very still, waiting to see if they would come and catch her out, but no one did.

“I’ll deal with it in the morning.”

“Deal with it now ,” Roger demanded.

Even from where she sat, Rebecca knew he’d made a fatal error. Claire was never one to take orders.

“You want to go up there and drag her out of bed right now, do you? Take her out back and shoot her in the head?”

“I’d do it. Absolutely.”

“Because she talked about your cousin?” Rebecca heard the derisive sneer in Claire’s voice.

“Because that’s what we do to traitors,” Roger hissed.

“I said I’d deal with it tomorrow.”

“And if she feeds you more bullshit?”

Another pause. Then Claire’s voice, low and calm. “I’ll kill her myself. You can watch.”

Even though Rebecca had known what Claire would say, she wasn’t prepared for the pain of hearing it.

Oh, mon c?ur, mon c?ur , she thought. I’m so sorry. I never should have come.

She padded back into the bedroom and took her shoes from under the bed, slipping them on in the dark.

A man’s wool coat lay within reach, draped across the back of a chair; she put that on too.

Whoever it belonged to might have needed it, but she would need it more.

Claire had the keys to her car—Rebecca had seen them on the chain she wore around her neck, the one she never took off.

There was a truck, but the bird-faced girl had taken it out earlier that day and hadn’t returned.

That meant Rebecca had only one option—she would be leaving on foot.

She was just about to duck into bed and wait for the house to go silent so she could slip out unseen under cover of darkness, when she heard shouting from downstairs.

“Someone’s coming!”

She heard a chair scraping across the floor, then Claire’s voice. “Where?”

Someone stirred in their bed. “What’s going on?” they murmured.

Rebecca, sitting upright on the edge of the bed, fully dressed in someone else’s coat, said nothing.

Soon, the whole room was awake and gathering at the windows, the air gone electric as the stranger approached the house. Rebecca quickly unbuttoned the coat, leaving it on the chair where she’d found it, and went to the window.

It took her eyes a moment to make out the figure in the darkness.

It was a man, taller than average, and carrying something on a strap over his shoulder, but everything else was obscured by shadows.

She heard cursing all around her as men scrambled to gather their weapons, but Rebecca stayed at the window, watching.

When the stranger stepped into a patch of moonlight and looked up, she could just make out the contours of his face.

“Henry.”

She took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the footsteps and shouts behind her. Henry’s eyes widened as she sprinted toward him, out the peeling blue door and through the broken gate. She laughed in disbelief as his lips formed her name.

“Hands up!” someone yelled. Henry obeyed.

“He’s with me!” Rebecca barreled into him at full speed. She stumbled, then turned to see half a dozen men with guns drawn, pointed directly at them.

“Don’t shoot, damn it, he’s with me!”

Claire appeared in the doorway of the house.

“ Claire! ” Rebecca shouted. Claire watched in silence, leaning against the door frame, her face obscured in the dark. There was a long, terrible moment when Rebecca was sure she would order her men to shoot them both. Finally, Claire spoke.

“Relax. Rebecca says he’s with her.” She looked at Rebecca, each word falling heavy as a stone. The men lowered their weapons. Rebecca turned and hugged Henry tightly. They barely knew each other, but Henry never hesitated or pulled away.

“How did you find this place?” She could feel Henry’s heart beating fast against her chest.

“It’s complicated.”

Rebecca pulled away. There was a strange look in his eyes. She’d seen that look before, in the faces of people who had seen too many terrible things. More than once she’d seen it in the mirror.

“Is the book safe?”

Henry nodded, and his hand went to the pack on his shoulder.

Rebecca felt a mixture of relief and revulsion forming a knot in her stomach as she instinctively recoiled from the thing, cradled like an infant inside the pack.

She was sure she saw a shadowy figure out of the corner of her eye, writhing and pulsing like a mass of larvae, but a moment later it was gone.

Rebecca placed her lips next to Henry’s ear. “We can’t stay here.”

“I know,” he murmured back.

Claire appeared next to them a second later. She looked Henry up and down. “What’s your name?”

Henry’s hand tightened on the pack. “Henry Boudreaux.”

Rebecca saw Claire’s eyes flick to the bag, then back to Henry’s face. “Nice to meet you, Henry Boudreaux. This is Roger. He’ll find you someplace to sleep tonight.”

Roger hovered just behind Claire’s right shoulder, wearing a smirk that curdled Rebecca’s stomach. She watched, helplessly, as Henry was led away. She did her best to appear calm as he turned and looked at her one last time and then disappeared from view.

“I think it’s time we had that talk,” Claire said softly. She walked away without waiting for a reply.

Rebecca followed her into the empty kitchen, past the long table to the pantry, where Claire stood waiting.

A few cloudy jars of vegetables and sacks of turnips and potatoes were shoved to one side of the room.

The other side was lined with tools, ammunition, spools of wire and cables in every size, and cans of petrol. A single naked bulb hung overhead.

“How did he find us?” Claire asked as the door swung closed behind them.

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t tell him to meet you here?”

“No.”

Claire’s face was an impenetrable barrier, all hints of their former closeness now evaporated.

“Should we be expecting any more of your friends?”

“No.” Rebecca held Claire’s gaze and waited, knowing what would come next. Her time was up.

“How did you really escape the Gestapo?” Claire asked quietly.

“I already told you.”

“Rebecca.” Claire paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was almost tender. “You know what they’ll do to you. What I’ll have to do. Please. Tell me something. Anything.”

Rebecca looked into Claire’s eyes and felt a tidal wave of sadness. She wanted to trust her, more than anything.

“You won’t believe me.”

“If you tell me the truth,” Claire said, “I’ll believe you.”

Rebecca was silent for a long time.

And then, she told her everything: About David Harlowe and the SOE.

About the Englishwoman who could disappear, change her face, paralyze you with a word.

She told her about the beautiful, sadistic woman with the voice that could strip you of your free will, how she’d made Rebecca carve into her own flesh, until Lydia had intervened.

She showed Claire the symbol she had carved into herself, now nothing more than a raised, pink scar, told her how Lydia had healed her wounds, leaving only this.

And she told her about the Grimorium Bellum —what it could do, what it had done to her when she’d tried to destroy it, and what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands.

She almost told Claire that Henry had the book with him now, but didn’t, and she hated herself for that.

Something about the omission felt like a confirmation—that Claire was right not to trust her.

When she finished, she watched Claire’s face, waiting.

“Claire. Please say something.”

Claire looked up, her expression unreadable. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say you believe me.”

Claire looked away. “I really missed you, you know. When you left. I really thought you would come back. And then you didn’t—”

“You asked me to leave.”

“I know I did.”

The silence filled the tiny room, the space between them seeming to grow wider until it was an uncrossable canyon.

“Claire. Please look at me.”

She did.

“Do you believe me?”

Claire took a breath. “Yes. I believe you.”

And in that moment, Rebecca knew with complete certainty that Claire did not believe her. Not at all.

“Good.” Rebecca was careful to keep her voice even. “Thank you.”

“You should go back to bed,” Claire said.

“You’re right.” Rebecca turned toward the door. Then, as casually as she could manage, she said, “What about my friend?”

Claire didn’t look at her. “We’ll take care of him.”

There it was again, the buzzing amphetamine clarity that had been her survival for so long. She didn’t feel afraid—not yet. Only a single-minded focus. Get Henry. Get out.

“Right. Well then, I should get some sleep.”

Claire nodded.