Page 50

Twenty-Eight

H enry. Henry’s face, his dark skin reflecting the sunset in shades of copper and pink.

His jaw was darkened with stubble, and he was thinner than the last time she’d seen him.

He came into focus, and Lydia saw his eyes lock onto hers as his mouth fell open.

She wanted to ask if he was all right, if he was safe, but she was having trouble finding her voice.

In the end, it was Rebecca who spoke first.

“Putain de merde. Lydia.”

They were in a hayloft, dying light streaming in as the sun dipped low to touch the horizon. Rebecca was standing, dressed in trousers and a man’s olive-green coat. Henry sat with his back against the wall, a canvas pack clutched to his chest. Lydia thought they both looked hungry and cold.

Henry didn’t look happy to see her. On the contrary, he looked horrified, grief-stricken. Lydia couldn’t understand why he was looking at her that way. She wanted to ask, but then Rebecca knelt by his side and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s all right, Henry. I see her too. She’s not dead. She’s all right.”

It was like watching a spell lift. Henry’s gaze cleared, and a broken smile found his lips, although the haunted quality in his eyes remained.

“Are you safe?” he asked.

She hesitated before answering, unsure what to make of the anguish she’d seen flash across Henry’s face. “I’m fine. I’m coming to you. Do you have the book?”

“We have it,” Rebecca said.

They told her they were hiding on a dairy farm a day’s walk south from the chateau. They’d been sleeping in the hayloft, staying out of sight. They were cold and scared, but safe.

“I’m coming,” Lydia said. Rebecca grinned in response, while Henry hung his head in relief.

She closed her eyes. One moment she could smell snow, and hay, and animals. The next she smelled tea, and beeswax, and then she was home.

“I found them.” She repeated the location to Fiona, then turned to her mother. “Mum—”

“I’ll be right behind you. Go.”

Fiona took Lydia firmly by the hand. The rest happened in an instant. Lydia felt dizzy and smelled something electric, like the air after a thunderstorm. The room dropped away, and she felt the nauseating sensation of being flung through space.

She gasped, and the air that filled her lungs was icy.

“Come on. Up you get,” she heard Fiona say.

She was on her hands and knees in a field.

Frost covered the ground, and spiky bits of plant matter stuck up through the frozen earth, stabbing into her flesh.

The sky was overcast, the sun falling below the horizon, drowning in a final splashy show of pink and gold.

Off in the distance stood an old gray barn.

Lydia staggered to her feet, the cold air bracing in her lungs. She forced herself to walk, wobbling like a new calf over the uneven ground. She’d never been much for traveling. Before she’d gone a few yards, she saw a narrow figure emerge from the barn, ropes of dark hair whipping in the wind.

Rebecca.

“We thought you were dead.” She wore a crooked smile, and Lydia thought that Rebecca looked almost pleased to see her.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Hiding had made Rebecca even harder around the edges, sharp as flint from too much fear and not enough food. But there was something else, too—something in the way she kept glancing back toward the barn.

“It’s Henry, isn’t it?” Lydia asked.

Rebecca nodded.

“What’s happened? When I saw him, he looked so…different.”

Rebecca seemed unsure how to answer. “I should probably let him explain.”

When they stepped inside the barn, Henry was there waiting. He looked abnormally still to Lydia, standing with his hands in his pockets, face vigilant. They stood like that for a moment, taking each other in. Neither looked the way they had when they’d last seen each other.

Lydia was the first to move. She approached slowly, taking in every detail of him, the rigid posture and watchful eyes.

He appeared less substantial than he had before, like something more than his size had been taken from him.

She reached out and touched his face, letting her thumb caress the hard line of his jaw.

His gaze dropped from hers, his chin trembling as he leaned his cheek into her hand.

Then something seemed to break loose inside him.

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her so tightly she could scarcely breathe, and Lydia held him back, breathless and shaking.

“Are you all right?” he whispered in her ear.

She pressed her cheek against his neck. “Better now. You?”

“Better now.”

He let go, but she noticed the way he held on to just the tips of her fingers before releasing her, how her skin seemed to tingle where they’d touched. She wanted to stay that way, just for a moment, but—

“There’s no time,” she said, and Henry nodded. “You have it?”

He produced the book from the pack slung over his shoulder.

It felt heavier than Lydia remembered, warmer.

It seemed to respond to her touch, the tremor of dark magic rising off the pages like swarming flies.

Lydia thought she felt a rush of something—heat, excitement, glee —rise from the book as it passed from Henry’s hand to hers.

She called to Fiona. “How much longer?”

“Just a few minutes more.”

“Right. I’m going to begin. As soon as you’re able, go back for Evelyn. Don’t wait for me.”

Rebecca stepped into the barn. “Begin what?”

Lydia held the book against her chest and imagined it embracing her back, wrapping itself around her like dark tentacles. “I’m going to bind the book to myself.”

Rebecca took another step forward. “Say that again?”

“It’s a spell witches normally use to protect our own personal grimoires. We bind the book to ourselves, and no other witch can touch it. Not ever. The binding is meant to protect a witch’s own book of spellwork, but in theory, it can be used on any book at all.”

“You can’t bind yourself to that thing,” Rebecca protested. “The last time you used it, it nearly killed you.”

“Rebecca’s right,” Henry said.

“I am not asking your permission.” Lydia said it more forcefully than she’d meant to.

Henry and Rebecca stared at her. Fiona looked at the floor.

Lydia took a breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was low and steady.

“I’m going to destroy it. Now. Tonight. But I can’t do it alone, and it will take some time.

I need to make sure that if the Witches of the Third Reich find us before I can finish the spell, they cannot use the book. ”

“And if they kill you?” Rebecca asked.

“If I die, the book will turn to ash.”

Silence filled the barn. The rosy sunset was gone, replaced by a dull gray haze. It was Fiona who broke the silence.

“There’s no time for this.” She looked at Lydia. “Do what you need to do.”

Lydia nodded gratefully. She turned to Henry. “Henry, listen to me—”

“I know what you’re going to say.”

“No, you don’t.”

Henry smiled sadly, and the sight of it made Lydia’s heart feel like it was straining at the seams. “Yes, I do. I’ve been inside your head, remember?” He took her hand in his. “I’m not leaving.”

She looked into Henry’s eyes, and Rebecca’s, and in that moment, she wished more than anything that she could be like Evelyn, sending them away with a single word. She wished she could force them to save themselves.

“Go. Do your spell.” He let go of her hand.

Swallowing her fear, she walked to the far back corner of the barn, far away from the others.

She knelt on the ground and placed the book in front of her.

Cold radiated through the earth into her bones, and bits of hay and dirt stuck to her stockings.

She closed her eyes and reached for the book with her mind.

Sure enough, she felt it reaching back, feral and starving.

She began the work of binding the book to herself, taking each tendril of dark magic, peeling it back, and weaving it into a piece of herself.

It was delicate work, done not with words or potions but with pure energy.

She was folding it into her and, in turn, placing essential pieces of herself inside the book, so that slowly they became one.

The energy of the Grimorium Bellum was thick and suffocating. It filled Lydia’s throat with a taste like vomit. She tried to breathe deeply as she welcomed it to become a part of her, and the book did so greedily, with no hesitation, only hunger.

She had been working only a few minutes when she sensed something else with her, there in the shadows. A familiar presence, but not a friendly one. Even as she negotiated with the power of the book, braiding it into herself with steely determination, she couldn’t help but smile.

“Is that you, Ursula?” She became aware of something pulling itself together in the darkness, congealing until it became whole. And then, crouching before her, she saw the blond hair and cruel mouth, the eyes shining in the darkness. The projection alone was enough to fill her with loathing.

“So,” Ursula whispered, “not dead after all?”

“Not yet.” Lydia closed her eyes, drawing more of the book into herself, pouring more of herself into the book.

“What are you doing there, I wonder?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Fiona look her way, her attention drawn by the sound of Lydia’s voice.

Ursula stood, circling Lydia as she spoke, her ghostly image wavering as she moved through the barn. “Where are you, Lydia Polk?” she sang. Lydia ignored her.

“Do we have company, then?” Fiona called. “Is it her?”

“I’m afraid so.” Her blood felt sluggish in her veins.

Fiona raised her chin and addressed the air. “I’m looking forward to finally making your acquaintance!” She shouted gaily. “Though I promise, you won’t find the meeting nearly so enjoyable.”