The inside of Linden’s study, dimly lit by moonlight, was just as he’d left it. Mahogany bookcases housed heavy tomes. The tidy space left fewer places to explore than the ransacked contents of Éibhear’s office, but Briar’s time was limited. He started with the desk drawers. In the first he found nothing but pens, parchment. He opened the next, and his stomach lurched.
A dozen siphons rolled around inside. Similar runes to the ones Briar had drawn were scrawled in the drawer, disguising their foul auras. Briar shut it.
The big cabinet at the bottom housed books with cracked spines and weathered pages. The titles all related to curses and the wild magic of places like Coill Darragh.
None of it was the thing he searched for. The thing he was now certain Linden possessed.
He found other alarming things. Sheaves of paper, notes cataloguing the effects the forest had on his talisman, and on a “Subject K.” Subject K appeared in many of the notes, sometimes carrying out instructions at Linden’s behest, sometimes as a test subject, until a note dated in January which marked him as deceased.
Beneath that, in Linden’s curling script, it read:Engagement or marriage conveys safety, but disruption of relationship possibly responsible for forest’s attack.
Subject K. Kenneth. It had to be.
On the wall, a photo of Linden and his beaming parents caught Briar’s eye. In it, Linden looked no older than sixteen. Shining banners above his head readFairchild Miracle Tour—it could have been taken at Port Haven, for all that the image sparked Briar’s memory.
And on Linden’s shoulder, faint after spells and probably a good deal of makeup, was a ragged scar that looked like it could have been made by a thorny vine.
He bore it no longer, but it had been there.
“He killed Gretchen, Vatii.” A lump rose in Briar’s throat. “God, he killed her, and he wasfifteen.”
Vatii’s feathers shivered. She was likely thinking the same thing, following the dark line of dominos to its inevitable conclusion.
Shoving aside despair, Briar thumbed through book spines on shelf after shelf. Something cold stirred inside him, like the shade of an aura. Not powerful, more of an echo, but he followed it until his fingers stopped on beaten leather. Blood pounding in his ears, he pulled the book out.
Éibhear’s journal cracked apart in his hands, the spine broken from being opened time and again to a single page.
Red Carnella Curse Cure, it read. Below that, a recipe.
His hands trembled. There was blood on the pages, Éibhear’s untidy scrawl partially obscured, but the recipe was complete, with careful instructions that seemed impossibly simple.
“Why would Linden hide this?” Vatii asked. “Why wouldn’t he just use it?”
In answer, Briar pointed to a single word in the ingredient list. He could have sobbed, but there was more he needed to do. He couldn’t stayhere, he couldn’t marry Linden, but if he tried to leave now, he wouldn’t get far. He needed a plan, or he would end up like Gretchen.
Gretchen…
Briar ran a finger over the bloodstains on the journal. They could belong to Linden, but the faint echoes of aura attached felt… different.
He dug charcoal from his tithe belt.
Vatii made a warbling noise. “Be careful.”
Briar lifted a rug off the floor and drew. He could cover it after. He worked as quickly as he could until the summoning circle was complete. He set the journal in the center, its bloody pages open. Pressing his palms into the floor, he concentrated his magic into the circle, drawing on the spirit attached to that blood. He shut his eyes and pleaded in a desperate whisper that it was a tether strong enough to draw a ghost back, that a full exorcism had not been possible when so much evidence of her foul end remained.
Light flickered. Not from the lamps, but from the center of the circle. A lavender flick of smoke. A haze that condensed into the shape of a girl.
Gretchen’s ghost opened her eyes.
CHAPTER 28
Backstage at the Pentawynn Gala Runway was a mill of models, makeup artists, choreographers, and designers. It reminded Briar of Gretchen’s exorcism in his flat, a typhoon of frenetic movement and swirling fabric. He waited in the wings, wringing his hands.
Their line would walk the long, lit strip beyond, and it should have been a moment for celebration, but every inch of Briar trembled with sick nerves.
His plan had come together in the wan hours of dawn light while Linden slept.
Vatii’s talons gave his shoulders a squeeze. “You can do this,” she whispered.
