call the fierce-sounding canines or the waiting Knights of Lazarus, I hurried along into the compound’s main building. It was no warmer inside than out. An emaciated rat scurried down the hall, which was lined with identical doors.
“Knox knows we’re here,” I said. There was no need for quiet or a disguising spell now.
“So does Benjamin,” Ysabeau said grimly.
As planned, we parted ways. Ysabeau went in search of Matthew. Baldwin, Janet, and I were after Benjamin and Knox. With luck we would find them all in the same place and converge upon them, supported by the Knights of Lazarus once they breached the lower levels of the compound and made their way upstairs.
A soft cry drew us to one of the closed doors. Baldwin flung it open.
It was the room we’d seen on the video feed: the grimy tiles, drain in the floor, windows overlooking the snow, numbers written with a grease pencil on the walls, even the chair with a tweed coat lying over the back.
Matthew was sitting in another chair, his eyes black and his mouth open in a soundless scream. His ribs had been spread open with a metal device, exposing his slow-beating heart, the regular sound of which had brought me such comfort whenever he drew me close.
“Fuck.” Baldwin rushed toward him. “It’s not Matthew,” I said.
Ysabeau’s shriek in the distance told me she had stumbled onto a similar scene.
“It’s not Matthew,” I repeated, louder this time. I went to the next door and twisted the knob.
There was Matthew, sitting in the same chair. His hands—his beautiful, strong hands that touched me with such love and tenderness—had been severed at the wrists and were sitting in a surgical basin in his lap.
No matter which door we opened, we found Matthew in some horrific tableau of pain and torment.
And every illusory scene had been staged especially for me.
After my hopes had been raised and dashed a dozen times, I blew all the doors in the house off their hinges with a single word. I didn’t bother looking inside any of the open rooms. Apparitions could be quite convincing, and Knox’s were very good indeed. But they were not flesh and blood. They were not my Matthew, and I was not deceived by them even though those I had seen would remain with me forever.
“Matthew will be with Benjamin. Find him.” I walked away without waiting for Baldwin or Janet to agree. “Where are you, Mr. Knox?”
“Dr. Bishop.” Knox was waiting for me when I rounded the corner. “Come. Have a drink with me.
You won’t be leaving this place, and it may be your last chance to enjoy the comforts of a warm room— until you conceive Benjamin’s child, that is.”
Behind me I slammed down an impenetrable wall of fire and water so that no one could follow.
Then I threw up another behind Knox, boxing us into a small section of the corridor.
“Nicely done. Your spell-casting talents have emerged, I see,” said Knox.
“You will find me . . . altered,” I said, using Gallowglass’s phrase. The magic was waiting inside me, begging to fly. But I kept it under control, and the power obeyed me. I felt it there, still and watchful.
“Where have you been?” Knox asked. “Lots of places. London. Prague. France.” I felt the tingle of magic in my fingertips. “You’ve been to France, too.”
“I went looking for your husband and his son. I found a letter, you see. In Prague.” Knox’s eyes gleamed. “Imagine my surprise, stumbling upon Emily Mather—never a terribly impressive witch— binding your mother’s spirit inside a stone circle.”
Knox was trying to distract me.
“It reminded me of the stone circle I cast in Nigeria to bind your parents. Perhaps that was Emily’s intention.”
Words crawled beneath my skin, answering the silent questions his words engendered.
“I should never have let Satu do the honors where you were concerned, my dear. I’ve always suspected that you were different,” Knox said. “Had I opened you up last October, as I did your mother and father all those years ago, you could have been spared so much heartache.”
But there had been more in the past fourteen months than heartache. There had been unexpected joy, too. I clung to that now, anchoring myself to it as firmly as if Janet were working her magic.
“You’re very quiet, Dr. Bishop. Have you nothing to say?”
“Not really. I prefer actions to words these days. They save time.”
At last I released the magic spooled tightly within me. The net I’d made to