surprising the library is feeling poorly.” Linda clucked in sympathy. “Poor thing. All these people poking at its entrails all day.”
“There’s nothing for it, honey,” Sarah said. “On to Plan C.”
“Maybe I should try to revise the spell first.” Anything was better than Plan C. It violated the last remaining shreds of the library oath I’d taken when a student, and it posed a very real danger to the building, the books, and the nearby colleges.
But it was more than that. I was hesitating now for some of the same reasons I had hesitated when facing Benjamin in this very place. If I used my full powers here, in the Bodleian, the last remaining links to my life as a scholar would dissolve.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Sarah said. “Corra will be fine.”
“She’s a firedrake, Sarah,” I retorted. “She can’t fly without causing sparks. Look at this place.”
“A tinderbox,” Linda agreed. “Still, I cannot see another way.”
“There has to be one,” I said, poking my index finger into my third eye in hopes of waking it up.
“Come on, Diana. Stop thinking about your precious library card. It’s time to kick some magical ass.”
“I need some air first.” I turned and headed downstairs. Fresh air would steady my nerves and help me think. I pounded down the wooden treads that had been laid over the stone and pushed through the glass doors and into the Old Schools Quadrangle, gulping in the cold, dust-free December air.
“Hello, Auntie.”
Gallowglass emerged from the shadows.
His mere presence told me that something terrible had happened.
His next quiet words confirmed it. “Benjamin has Matthew.”
“He can’t. I just talked to him.” The silver chain within me swayed.
“That was five hours ago,” Fernando said, checking his watch. “When you spoke, did Matthew say where he was?”
“Only that he was leaving Germany,” I whispered numbly. Stan and Dickie approached, frowns on their faces.
“Gallowglass,” Stan said with a nod.
“Stan,” Gallowglass replied.
“Problem?” Stan asked.
“Matthew’s gone off the grid,” Gallowglass explained. “Benjamin’s got him.”
“Ah.” Stan looked worried. “Benjamin always was a bastard. I don’t imagine he’s improved over the years.”
I thought of my Matthew in the hands of that monster.
I remembered what Benjamin had said about his hope that I would bear a girl.
I saw my daughter’s tiny, fragile finger touch the tip of Matthew’s nose.
“There is no way forward that doesn’t have him in it,” I said.
Anger burned through my veins, followed by a crashing wave of power—fire, air, earth, and water—that swept everything else before it. I felt a strange absence, a hollowness that told me I had lost something essential to my self.
For a moment I wondered if it were Matthew. But I could still feel the chain that bound us. What was essential was still there.
Then I realized it was not something essential I’d lost but something habitual, a burden carried so long that I had become inured to its heaviness.
Now it was gone—just as the goddess had foretold.
I whirled around, blindly seeking the library entrance in the darkness. “Where are you going, Auntie?” Gallowglass said, holding the door closed so that I couldn’t pass.
“Did you not hear me? We must go after Matthew. There’s no time to lose.”
The thick panels of glass turned to powder, and the brass hinges and handles clanged against the stone threshold. I stepped over the debris and half ran, half flew up the stairs to Duke Humfrey’s.
“Auntie!” Gallowglass shouted.
“Diana Bishop! Have you lost your mind?” Months of reduced cigarette consumption meant that Sarah was making good progress pursuing me.
“No!” I shouted back. “And if I use my magic, I won’t lose Matthew either.”
“Lose Matthew?” Sarah slid on the slick floor on her way into Duke Humfrey’s, where Fernando, Gallowglass, and I were waiting. “Who suggested such a thing?”
“The goddess. She told me I would have to give something up if I wanted Ashmole 782,” I explained. “But it wasn’t Matthew.”
The feeling of absence had been replaced by a blooming sensation of released power that banished any remaining worries.
“Corra, fly!” I spread my arms wide, and my firedrake screeched into the room, zooming around the galleries and down the long aisle that connected the Arts End and the Selden End.
“What was it, then?” Linda asked. She’d taken the stairs at a more sedate pace and arrived in time to watch Corra’s tail pat Thomas Bodley’s helmet.
“Fear.”
My mother had warned me of its power, but I had misunderstood, as children often do. I’d thought it was the fear of others that I needed to guard