tearing at her in a maelstrom of anguish and fury.
She didn’t have time to wonder whether she’d made a mistake. The edges of the room darkened; the grimoire’s pages whipped as if the study’s windows had been thrown open during a howling gale. She clenched her teeth and pushed against the grimoire’s will, stretching out her hand, trembling with the effort. Sweat beaded her brow. Even the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to slow, like the air had turned to treacle. At last her fingertips brushed leather, and a confused, sickening rush of emotions thrummed through her body. Longing. Rage. Betrayal. She had never felt anything like it before. She swallowed thickly, wishing she had iron gloves to dampen the grimoire’s psychic emanations.
“I’m not your enemy,” she forced out. “I’m here as a prisoner of Chancellor Ashcroft. I intend to stop him, if I can.”
At once the man’s voice fell silent, and the pressure in the air disappeared. Elisabeth fell forward, catching herself on the desk, her muscles quivering from the strain. The grimoire now lay quiescent. Her desperate guess had proved correct—its malice and fury had been meant for Ashcroft, not for her.
“What does he want from you?” she murmured. Carefully, she lifted it from the desk.
Its cover was bound in strange scaled leather, crimson in color, which reminded her unsettlingly of the imps in the conservatory. A five-pointed pentagram was emblazoned on the front. Age had faded the title, but the words remained legible: The Codex Daemonicus.
Her heart skipped a beat. She had read this grimoire’s title before, and not long ago. Where had she seen it? In Nathaniel’s coach, traveling through the Blackwald . . .
I’ll have what I need before Harrows, Ashcroft had said. Whatever he needed, it sounded as though he would find it in this book. She wracked her memory, trying to recall why the Lexicon had mentioned this volume. It had been in the chapter about demons. All she could remember was that it supposedly contained the ravings of a mad sorcerer, who claimed to have hidden some kind of secret inside—
Footsteps clipped down the hall. Breathless, Elisabeth snatched Ashcroft’s cloak and yanked it back over the grimoire. Hoping that its psychic screams had been audible only to her, she scrambled across the room and threw herself back on the floor, arranging her limbs as closely to their original position as she could manage.
She wasn’t a moment too soon. A shadow fell over her just seconds later, and then an acidic smell seared her nostrils, zinging through every nerve in her body. She shot upright, strangling back a shout, only for Lorelei to catch her in an unyielding grip, a suggestion of claws pricking through the lace of her gloves. The demon held a crystal vial full of what appeared to be salt.
“There, there,” she soothed, her tone cloyingly sweet. “You’re all right. It was just smelling salts, darling. You had a little spell, but it’s over now.”
“Give her to me,” Ashcroft said. “This farce has gone on long enough. It’s time.”
Lorelei let go of her and stepped back. Before Elisabeth could react, Ashcroft seized her and spun her around. His expression was terrible to behold. It was as though he had spent all of his kindly charm putting up with Lord Kicklighter, and he had none left to maintain the act.
His patience with her had reached an end. Now, she was about to meet the monster beneath the man.
“Listen to me, girl,” he said, and shook her until her teeth rattled, “you will tell me what you know.” And then he splayed his palm over her forehead, and Elisabeth’s thoughts exploded outward like a newborn star.
The study vanished; everything went pitch black except for her and Ashcroft and sharp-edged silver fragments that hung glinting in the darkness around them. Familiar images flowed over the surfaces of the fragments in silent flashes of color and movement. They were her own memories, floating in a void like the shards of a shattered mirror. Each one showed a different scene. The Director’s red hair shining in the torchlight. Warden Finch raising his switch. Katrien’s laughing face.
Though Elisabeth still dimly felt the Chancellor’s brutal grip on her arm, in this place, he stood apart from her. He turned, taking in the fragmented memories, and then raised his hand. The shards began to spin around them in a glittering cyclone, blurring together to show him not just isolated fragments out of order, but whole