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Twenty-Six

Lydia walked out of the room without a word. Evelyn followed a moment later.

“She’s lying.” The room seemed to spin around her.

“She can’t lie.”

“Maybe she can. Maybe we should give her another dose.”

“Love—”

“Don’t do that. Please, don’t do that.” Lydia gripped Evelyn’s shoulders for support. She felt her knees go weak.

“Do what?”

“That thing you do, that thing where you’re so calm, and reasonable, and right. ” She couldn’t breathe. “Please.”

Evelyn said nothing. Lydia sank to the ground, all her strength gone. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

Evelyn knelt next to her. “Neither do I.”

They stayed that way in silence as Lydia waited for the room to go still again. She felt like a piece of dust that could blow away at any second. Sybil . It was as if she’d sustained a mortal injury. Like she was bleeding to death and nothing in the world could save her.

Finally, when she was sure she would not in fact die of heartbreak, she spoke.

“What are we going to do with the girl?”

Evelyn looked toward the kitchen, thinking. “If we cut her loose, she’ll run right back to her coven.”

Lydia looked at Evelyn. “You’re not suggesting…”

“Heavens, no. This may be a war, but I’m no soldier. I won’t murder her.” There was a moment of silence. “I understand if you have to.”

Lydia glanced toward the kitchen. This is a war , a voice whispered inside her mind. People die in war.

She had never killed before. She’d never needed to, although she suspected she knew girls who had. She imagined she could, if need be. If her life were on the line, or the outcome of the war itself.

She looked at the girl in her mother’s kitchen, spots on her chin and nails bitten to the quick, wearing her grown-up clothes like they belonged to someone else.

“I am a soldier, in a manner of speaking,” Lydia said. “But that girl is a child. An evil, foulmouthed child, but a child nonetheless. I don’t want to kill her either.”

“Well then.” Evelyn stood. “Neither of us is going to kill her. So what now?”

···

When they returned to the kitchen, Gerda was wearing a brave face, but the pink of her cheeks had faded, and her pulse ticked visibly under the freckled skin of her throat.

She held her chin high. “What’s it to be? Are you going to kill me now?”

Lydia eased herself into a chair. “We really ought to. But no.”

“So, what then?” Gerda’s eyes darted from Lydia to Evelyn and back again.

Neither woman answered. Instead, Evelyn busied herself at the stove. She put on the kettle and pulled the coffee grinder down from the shelf.

“Do you know, I never did care for coffee. Nasty, smelly, bitter stuff. I’m more of a tea girl myself.

” Evelyn reached for the brown paper package of coffee beans.

She opened it and gave it a sniff. “ Bindweed . Foxglove, too, if I’m not mistaken.

I’d have noticed it right away, if it weren’t for that smell.

Clever.” She dumped the contents of the bag into the grinder, letting the beans clatter across the counter and onto the floor.

Gerda flinched. From where she sat, Lydia could see the tiny flecks of green among the black.

Bless you, Sybil. That was what Lydia had said when she received that brown paper package. Bless you. The grief and humiliation caught in her throat. She turned her face away so her mother wouldn’t see it.

Evelyn worked quickly, turning away at the crank of the grinder, occasionally pausing to empty the grounds into an enormous gherkin jar.

Gerda watched, her eyes growing wider as the minutes ticked by.

By the time the kettle began to whistle, the jar was half-filled with coarsely ground coffee.

Evelyn hummed to herself as she poured the boiling water into the jar.

She wrapped the jar in a rag and handed it to Gerda.

“ Drink that. All of it.”

Gerda scowled but did as she was commanded. By the time she’d finished, she was close to retching, her teeth blackened with grit.

“Don’t you dare vomit,” Evelyn cautioned.

Gerda set down the jar, sweating and belching. Lydia waited for her to catch her breath, then took a small piece of paper from her pocket. On one side was an address: 64 Baker Street. On the other side was a note. She handed it to Gerda.

“Read that.”

Gerda read. “Attention: David Harlowe. This woman is a German spy. Extremely dangerous. Treat with caution. Regards, L. Polk.” She looked up at Lydia with a look of pure disdain.

“ Go to that address ,” Evelyn said. “When you arrive, you are to present that note. ”

Gerda scoffed. “I’ll escape.”

“I’m certain you will, a distinguished Traveler such as yourself. But not until my influence over you wears off, which will take several hours, not to mention that binding potion you just ingested, which will take considerably longer.”

“You’re going to die, hedge witch. ” Gerda folded the piece of paper and placed it inside her coat pocket before standing to leave.

“Wait,” Evelyn said. Gerda stopped. “To make you suitably forthcoming when you arrive.” She blew another puff of pink powder into Gerda’s face, bringing on a fresh bout of coughs and shrieks of outrage.

“Now run .”

Lydia waited until the girl was out of sight, her shoes drumming on the stairs as she ran from the building and onto the street. Then she took a breath, and covered her face with her hands, and wept.

···

Later, when the sun had disappeared and Lydia’s tears had finally run dry, Evelyn came into Lydia’s room carrying a small brown bottle in one hand and a teacup in the other.

“What’s this?” Lydia sat up in bed, wiping at her puffy face.

Evelyn placed the bottle on the bedside table.

“This one is snakeroot, with angelica and black pepper, as well as a few other things you won’t like, and I won’t name.

It will make you sick as hell, but by morning the poison will have left you.

” She set the teacup down next to the bottle.

“This one is for healing broken hearts.”

Lydia felt as if she would shatter into a thousand pieces. Her head and her heart ached from crying.

“I feel so stupid.”

“Oh, my brave girl.” Evelyn wrapped her arms around her. “You’ve been many things in your time on this earth, but stupid was never one of them. You think you’re the first Polk woman to misplace her trust?”

Lydia buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. “I was so sure it was Vivian, I never even considered…” Lydia stopped, breathless. “You knew about her. I thought you were just jealous, like with Isadora, but you sensed it, didn’t you?”

Evelyn stroked her hair. “If I had known the truth, I would have beaten her silly before I let her anywhere near you. But I knew I didn’t trust her.”

“I trusted her,” Lydia whispered.

Evelyn rubbed her daughter’s back with one hand and, with the other, retrieved the teacup from the bedside table.

“Here. Tea first.”

Lydia sipped her tea. It tasted of roses and cinnamon, and a dozen other familiar things she couldn’t quite name. It was lovely.

Her grandmother’s shield stone still hung around her neck. Lydia held it, turning it over in her hands.

“When I’m well again,” she said softly, “I’ll be going back to France first thing.” She felt the panic rushing in her veins, as surely as if she’d been injected with it. “I have to go back, because if I don’t…if I don’t…”

Evelyn brushed Lydia’s hair from her forehead. “What, my darling?”

Lydia was so tired. Tired of keeping secrets, of lying by omission.

So she did something she’d never imagined she would: She told Evelyn everything.

Everything that had happened since the night Kitty and Isadora were murdered, and every horrible thing that would come to pass should she fail to find the Grimorium Bellum before the Nazis did.

She told her about the things she had felt, holding that book—all the dark, secret things it had whispered to her.

Things she would carry with her until the day she died.

She understood the book now. She knew what it wanted, how it worked.

She told Evelyn how it could be harnessed, all the ways to negotiate with it, to make it do your bidding.

And then she told her about her plan.