she even do? She heard Kellington agree and felt James’s slender, scarred fingers on her arm. “Cordelia, you don’t need to—” he began.
“I can do it,” she said.
He met her gaze directly, and she saw that there was no doubt in his expression. He was looking at her with exactly the faith he showed when he looked at Matthew, at Lucie, or at Thomas. With a total belief that she could do anything, if it was required of her to do it.
It was as if she could suddenly get enough air into her lungs: Cordelia inhaled, nodded at James, and turned to Kellington.
“I am ready,” she said.
With a bow, the werewolf led her toward the stage.
PART TWO
— —
You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since—on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to be displaced by your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hours of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil.
—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
15 THE WHISPERING ROOM
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song.
I kiss you and the world begins to fade.
—William Butler Yeats, Land of Heart’s Desire
From her window, Lucie could see the steady stream of carriages arriving through the arched entrance to the Institute. She drew back with a frown. Where were Thomas and Christopher? She didn’t blame either of them for having had difficulty concentrating the day before. Barbara’s death was on all their minds. But it had meant the three of them had failed to make a proper plan for meeting up tonight.
Well, she thought, if she had to spy on the Enclave meeting alone, then that was what she’d do. She had just gone to fetch her stele from atop the dresser when she heard something rattle against the glass of her window. Assuming Thomas and Christopher were trying to get her attention with pebbles—their usual method—she darted over and threw the window open.
Something that looked like a burning butterfly sailed past her head, and Lucie gave a shriek. She ran toward it as it alighted on her desk and burst into red-orange flames. It was small, no bigger than her hand, and she hastened to put it out with a handy pen wiper.
“Sorry, Luce!” It was Christopher, clambering in through her window. He dropped to the floor and was followed a moment later by Thomas, who had a hole burned into the collar of his shirt and looked cross about it. “It was an experiment—method of sending messages using fire runes—”
Lucie looked skeptically at the charred spot on her desk where the message had sparked its last. It had landed on several manuscript pages of The Beautiful Cordelia, and they were now quite ruined. “Well, don’t experiment on me!” she said. “You’ve destroyed a very important scene in which Cordelia is romanced by a pirate king.”
“Piracy is unethical,” said Thomas.
“Not in this case,” said Lucie. “You see, the pirate king is secretly the son of an earl—”
Christopher and Thomas exchanged glances. “We really ought to go,” said Christopher, retrieving Lucie’s stele and handing it to her. “The Enclave meeting is about to start.”
They crept out of Lucie’s room and hurried to one of the empty storerooms on the second floor, above the library. It was Lucie’s father who had taught her how to draw this particular rune, so she did the honors as they all knelt in a loose circle on the floor: the rune was a large one, covering a good amount of space. When Lucie was done, she finished it off with a flourish and sat back.
The floor between their kneeling legs shimmered and went transparent. Lucie, Thomas, and Christopher were now looking down at the library below them as if through the lens of a telescope. They could see everyone gathered in the room very clearly,