Page 64

Thirty-Eight

Rebecca’s legs seemed to move without conscious thought, dragging her exhausted body up the mountain.

Something heavy settled into the silence between herself and Henry as they walked, something deeper than exhaustion.

She was sure it had to do with Henry’s ghost, but he didn’t offer any explanation, and she didn’t ask.

When they reached the top, Henry stopped, listening to something only he could hear.

“More ghosts?” Rebecca was surprised to find she wasn’t frightened anymore. Only tired.

Henry shook his head. “Something’s happened. Come on.”

The castle stood silent and empty. Rebecca braced herself, expecting to be assaulted by a phalanx of witches the moment they set foot inside, but all that greeted them was the echo of their own footsteps.

Henry seemed to be guided by some invisible thing, and she followed closely, staying alert as they navigated the cavernous halls.

They stopped before an enormous ebony door, intricately carved and polished to a high gleam. The carving depicted a golden tree, branches splayed to the heavens, roots reaching deep into the earth, and all around the edges, an endless series of runes, carved into the shape of a great black serpent.

“Here.” Henry looked like he was in pain. “The book is in here.”

Which meant that Lydia would be here, as well. She was the only one who could touch the book, after all. The only one who could use it.

“Are we going to just walk in ?” Rebecca hissed. “There could be a whole coven of witches in there.”

They listened through the door for another moment and heard only silence.

“Awfully quiet for a whole coven of witches,” Henry whispered.

Rebecca stayed very still, pressing her ear against the crack in the doors.

You’re always running , a voice inside her head murmured. She straightened her spine and looked Henry in the eye, hoping she looked braver than she felt. “Let’s go get her.”

The air was still as they stepped inside the opulent chamber—tall windows overlooking the setting sun, gold stars sprayed across the ceiling, and so cold they could see their breath, though a blazing fire burned in the fireplace.

Rebecca saw what she thought must be snow.

It floated through the air, landing on her hair and clothes, and collecting on the floor in dunes.

In the center of the room, something dark and hunched shifted from side to side.

At first glance it looked like two lovers caught in an embrace.

Two women, nearly identical to one another in every detail, except that one was made of flesh, while the other seemed to be composed of nothing but ink and smoke—long black hair eddying like seaweed caught in a current, sharp features obscured beneath layers of shadows.

Rebecca stepped closer, and the embrace became something sinister, like a vampire feeding on its prey.

And then Rebecca blinked, and the shadow disappeared, as if it had never been there at all. Lydia was standing alone in the center of the room.

“Lydia?” Henry called softly. She seemed not to hear. He took a step closer, but Rebecca stopped him, holding on firmly to his arm.

“ Lydia ,” Rebecca said, louder now. This time, Lydia looked up.

She was dressed in a black evening gown, face damp with sweat, an ugly wound in her side, and a bright red spray of blood arcing across her collarbone.

Her arms and hands were slippery with it.

In one hand she held a bone-handled knife. In the other she held the book.

“You’re alive.” Lydia smiled a broken smile.

There was something wrong with her voice, Rebecca thought, although Henry didn’t seem to hear it.

He went to Lydia, crossing the room in long strides, but stopped short before reaching her.

Rebecca followed, peering around to get a look at what had halted him in his tracks. Then she saw.

The blond witch Ursula lay sprawled at Lydia’s feet. Her throat had been slashed, and blood covered her neck and chest, flecks of it already beginning to dry on her white cheek. Her eyes were open, staring blindly at the starry ceiling.

“Oh, God. Oh, Lydia.” Henry took a step toward her, but Lydia stepped back.

“The blood,” she said in her strange new voice. Rebecca could hear it now, the thing making her skin crawl. It wasn’t one voice that came from Lydia’s mouth. There were two.

Henry glanced at Rebecca, then back at Lydia. “What about the blood?”

“There was so much of it.” Lydia stroked the book as she spoke, leaving rusty streaks with her fingertips. “The blood soaked into the book, and now it’s…it’s…” She trailed off, and her fingers went still.

“Lydia?” Rebecca said.

Lydia locked eyes with her, and Rebecca was sure she saw something in the dark void of those eyes—something black and alive, squirming behind her pupils.

“ Excited ,” Lydia said.

Run , the voice in Rebecca’s head commanded. Run, run, run, save yourself, for God’s sake, stupid girl, run! But she stayed planted where she was. She watched as Henry reached out a hand to Lydia. She saw him tremble.

“Lydia,” he said softly. “Lydia, look at me.” She did, and Rebecca saw him flinch. “You can put it down.”

Something curled across Lydia’s face, a snarl of contempt. It slithered across her features, disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.

“You don’t understand.”

Henry took another step closer, but Rebecca was frozen in place, as if her feet had been nailed to the floor. She felt like prey, and the thing inside Lydia, speaking with its two voices, was the predator.

“Understand what?” Henry’s voice was steady, his hand outstretched.

Lydia’s face split into a beatific smile. “I’m going to end the war.”

Henry faltered. His hand retreated.

“I didn’t understand before. I do now. I can end the war today. No more death. No more needless, bloody death. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Rebecca looked around with fresh eyes. Gray-white dust covered everything.

No, not dust. Ash. It floated in the air and spread across the floor like a carpet.

Heaps of it lay in a great circle, with Lydia at the center.

Rebecca looked more closely at one of the piles of ash and saw what she was certain must have been a face.

“What happened here?” Rebecca asked.

Lydia’s gaze slid toward hers. “They had to be stopped.”

Rebecca tasted ash on her tongue and fought the urge to gag.

“They did. They needed to be stopped. And you stopped them. And now it’s time to do what you came to do. It’s time to destroy the book.”

Lydia frowned, and Rebecca had to force herself not to recoil.

“I thought you of all people would understand,” Lydia said, her two voices growing in number, now three, now four. “You were the one who spoke so passionately about the starving children of France. About Jewish families rounded up and carted away. Your family. I can make all that stop.”

“How?” asked Henry.

But Rebecca knew. “She’s going to use the book.”

Henry looked from Rebecca to Lydia, disbelieving. “On who? The Nazis?”

“ All of them ,” Lydia whispered.

“All of who? Lydia—”

But then he stopped, and Rebecca saw that he finally understood. The book didn’t want the Nazis.

It wanted everyone.

Lydia swayed where she stood as the silence filled the room.

Henry reached for her. “Lydia—”

“ I can end the war! ” Lydia screamed, her voices now a legion.

“Not like this.” Rebecca kept her voice low, reasonable. “Not like this.”

It was pointless, Rebecca knew. It wasn’t Lydia she was fighting now. It was the book. And the book demanded to fulfill its purpose.

A rictus grin spread across Lydia’s face, painful to look at. Her damp skin glowed in the firelight. Rebecca watched a shudder run through Henry as he realized that the thing he was looking at wasn’t Lydia, not anymore. She was just a shell for the evil thing coiled inside.

Rebecca was stronger than Lydia. On any other day, she could have wrestled her to the ground in seconds, taken what she wanted and been off and running, but this wasn’t any normal day.

Rebecca was weak and hungry, and every cell in Lydia’s body pulsed with black magic.

Rebecca knew, she could feel it; Lydia could kill Rebecca with a word.

Lydia stood motionless in the circle of ash, muscles and tendons taut, teeth bared, but Rebecca looked only at Henry.

She stared at him until he felt her eyes and turned.

She looked into his eyes for a long moment, then very slowly, she turned and looked into the fire.

When she turned back, she saw that Henry understood.

He nodded once, a gesture so small she nearly missed it.

Rebecca looked at Lydia. “What will it be like?”

Lydia cocked her head. The grimace eased, just a little.

“When you’ve completed the ritual and the world is cleansed. What will it be like?” She took a step forward. Lydia did not retreat.

“Quiet.” Lydia’s smile was transcendent. “Peaceful.”

Henry stepped closer, too, his gaze steady.

“An end to the war.” Rebecca took another step. “I didn’t understand before. Now I think I do.”

Tears welled in Lydia’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “I knew you would.”

“An end to all war, yes?” Rebecca stepped over Ursula’s body. Standing this close, she could see the blacks of Lydia’s eyes, how the pupils seemed to pulse like a beating heart.

“Yes!” Lydia whispered, elated. “Yes, exactly.”

Rebecca watched as Henry placed himself just behind Lydia, so close they nearly touched.

“Yes. Yes, I understand now.”

Henry looked into her eyes and nodded.

Rebecca grabbed the book with both hands and yanked as hard as she could, just as Henry wrapped both arms around Lydia from behind, holding her tight. Lydia’s mouth fell open in a silent howl as the book was wrenched free. The knife clattered to the ground.

“Cover her mouth!”

Henry did, stifling the spell that was forming on her tongue.

Rebecca ran as hard as she could, bracing for the pain she knew would come.

It struck her like a locomotive, a crushing, suffocating agony that drove spikes through her brain and collapsed her lungs.

This pain felt personal—sentient, and vindictive.

She could feel the book clamoring for Lydia, the spell that bound them together commanding Rebecca to let go, but still she ran.

She could see the flames through the veil of pain and sprinted as Lydia screamed wordlessly into Henry’s hand.

She reached the roaring fire and fell to her knees.

She was weaker than she’d been the first time she tried to burn the book.

The weeks had not been kind to her. But the urgency was so much greater now, and she felt herself being driven forward by something more than her own power.

She closed her eyes and imagined Noémie kneeling before her, reaching out to her.

She imagined her father, heard him say, My clever girl .

She saw her mother, could almost hear her whisper, Ma petite colombe . My little dove.

The pain was all-consuming now, a mountain of it sitting on her shoulders. The book seemed to know what she was planning, and doubled, then tripled its attack, pinning her to the floor. She pulled herself upright with great effort and, with both hands, thrust the book into the fire.

All at once, the book became a funnel of fury and power, with only one goal—saving itself.

Rebecca looked back and watched through the fog of pain as the darkness leached itself from Lydia, who shuddered and slumped to the floor, then turned its predator’s gaze on her .

Rebecca tried with all her might to drop the book into the flames, but her hands weren’t her own anymore.

They gripped the book with a strength that wasn’t hers, her nails driving themselves into the leather so hard they split.

She could feel a shadow on her back, clawing at her neck, taking possession of her limbs.

The flames licked at her sleeves, held just above the fire.

There was no air left in her lungs to scream.

She thought she heard Henry’s voice, but she couldn’t make out the words.

She thought she heard Lydia say, “I’m all right. Help her. Go. ”

There was a sound in her ears like airplane engines, but louder, so loud it was as if she were being erased.

She felt someone dragging her away from the fire, the book still clutched in her hands.

She saw Henry, and behind him, a deep-blue dome, filled with stars.

The air flowed back into her lungs. A sob ripped from her chest, and then she was falling, floating in a sea of blackness, as all around her the stars winked out and went dark.