careful with your mind. She’d immediately regretted her honesty when Archie made her promise that she’d do no such thing while she was pregnant, that she would take no risks until their baby was safe in their arms.
The next direction on Mariko’s paper was:
Clear your thoughts, begin from neutral mind.
Catherine did. She emptied her mind of everything but an awareness of sitting on the living room floor, the metal helmet in her hands.
Focus upon the subject at hand.
For a long time she’d thought she understood what was happening to Seekers. They had run wild, because the Middle Dread was lax and cared very little about his duties as a Dread. There was a saying that within a house an athame ended up with whom it belonged. But because the Middle was not handing out proper justice, Seekers had begun to attack other houses, to steal athames to which they were clearly not entitled.
Now, however, Catherine was not sure things were this simple. The letter she’d found, tucked away in this very focal, had sent her thoughts off in a new direction. What if Seekers were not simply disappearing because of other Seekers’ greed and because of a lack of Dread justice?
She’d always hoped she would find Emile, but it had been a quest in the back of her mind, not her prime focus. Now she felt that discovering what had happened to him might lead her to the heart of things. Perhaps he was dead, as her attacker in Hong Kong had implied. But if so, she wanted to know how it had happened, and why, and where.
She read the next instruction again: Focus upon the subject at hand.
Emile Pernet, house of the boar, she thought.
Place the helm upon your head.
She lifted up the focal and held it just above her hair, letting it hover there, inches from her scalp. She’d gotten this far dozens of times before, but she’d never actually put the helmet on. I promised Archie I wouldn’t do anything risky, she thought. But the baby is out of danger, and it’s not as though I’m injured, and shouldn’t I take this time to teach myself, so I’m ready after the baby comes?
She felt the pull of the focal, as though it were willing her to slip it all the way onto her head. She inched it closer, and her eyes swept over the last line of Mariko’s instructions:
Follow these rules faithfully, lest the focal become a havoc helm.
What did that mean?
“I know you don’t put much importance on your own life,” Archie had told her after she tried to get up and go for a walk during that first week of confinement to bed. “But I need you to put our child and yourself first now.”
“But—” Catherine had started.
“But nothing,” Archie had told her firmly. He’d given her a wicked look and said, “I’m your husband and you have to obey me.”
“You’re not my husband!” she’d said indignantly from the bed as he pulled the covers up to her chin.
“I’m better than a husband,” he’d answered, kissing her forehead. “I’m the boy who got you pregnant and hasn’t bothered to marry you yet.”
She’d laughed at that, and so had Archie, but then he’d turned serious, taking her face in both his hands and leaning his head against hers. His voice had been husky as he said, “You will take care of yourself, and protect our baby. Promise me, Catherine.”
Tears had sprung into Catherine’s eyes at his tenderness. She wasn’t used to having someone look out for her. Even her parents, for all their concern about her safety, her behavior—they thought of her as a valuable tool for their own ends, not as someone they wished to keep from harm for her own sake. She’d nodded against Archie’s head.
“I promise,” she’d told him.
Still, sitting now on the living room floor, she lowered her hands until the sides of the focal were brushing her temples. She felt a thrill of electricity where her skin touched the metal edges. Can it really hurt to try? she wondered.
Before she knew what she’d done, she’d pulled the helmet onto her head.
—
Catherine lay on the couch, curled around her journal, her small night-light illuminating the well-worn pages covered in rich and varied ink, including her own. The focal hummed on her head, expanding her mind so that it felt as though her awareness filled their whole flat and spilled out into nighttime London beyond. She was studying the entries under the illustration