Pain flashed as the hooks caught the netting, pulling it tight. Diamonds on my wrists and ankles popped off onto the dinner plates of the ladies and men closest. The men lashed me tighter with a red silk ribbon whose ends flickered with my struggle like fire.
I did not call for Renaud. They shoved a red apple into my mouth, and I choked on my tongue and the apple’s hard flesh.
A bell rang, clear and true, and everyone lifted their glasses toward me. I closed my eyes and gripped the keys again to be sure I did not lose them. Instead of looking for the threads, I thought only of myself. I felt the edges of my body in the scarlet netting, hanging by the silk ribbons. I heard Perchta telling me to mind my borders, that my magic was leaking out of me, and this time I found the threads at their source.Inside me.
The Emperor gave his speech. The bell rang again. I opened my eyes just in time to see the large knife glinting in the light, hovering over the flesh of my naked and trembling loin. He lowered the blade. I did not close my eyes or scream. I only focused on what was in me, what was me. I held my breath. I thought of a wall between me and the spell. I thought of stone. I closed the spell off from me.
Everything froze. The Emperor and his knife. The strangers with their masks, faces in grotesque displays of laughter. I did not need tounhook myself, I only needed to tug at the ribbons and my bonds dissolved like snow in the sun. The table fell away in a flurry of golden dust. With one strong wind, the entire hall was swept away.
I still had the keys in my hands.
I stood in my tunic in a room that was such a ruin, it had no roof. I frowned and tilted my chin upward. There was no missing roof that I’d ever seen on any part of the château. Above me night was falling and the deep green sea of the forest whispered below me. I must have been in a room higher up, where the roofline was not visible. Laying down on the stones, I held the key ring tightly on my stomach and took a deep breath, gaze trained on the boundless sky where the roof should be. The stars were just beginning to wink into the sky.
I thought of Rochelle in the mirror, telling me to run. Why? I did not want an answer to the question, but I wanted to know what she feared for me. What I was missing.
I could try again. I had more power, more experience, I could try the spell again and ask her what I should do.
I did not have much time before dark, so I took myself quickly through the house, into Renaud’s study. Picking out the twisted, black key, I opened the cupboards and surveyed his magical items with the eye of an experienced witch.
I was, of course, only marginally more experienced than I had been the first time I tried. And I knew nothing more about summoning, except to avoid the library demon. But there was one thing different—I had more confidence in my skills. I believed, not just in myself, but in the magic itself. I expected it to work again. And I understood more about the ingredients of building a spell. I pulled out a few jars and then put them back. I needed things that Rochelle would recognize and be drawn to. I stared at the cupboards, filled with so many wondrous and delicate objects, and my mind went blank.
It had been so many years, I could not remember exactly what she had loved.
A lonely, strange sadness filled my chest—not only could I notremember, I was the only one who would have been able to. Her memory was fading from the world entirely, and it felt like that too was a failing on my part. I closed my eyes, trying to recall her in vivid detail, But I found my mind was resistant to truly finding her.
Grief was a strange land. Losing her was still a raw and savage cut in my heart. But over time I had gotten used to the wound as one would a hole in the roof that could not be repaired. I did not wake up and stare at the hole every day as I had the first few years. To remember her, I had to look through the hole in my roof, through the wound, and face that terrible open sky as if it had just happened again. It was so painful; I did not think I could truly stand it. But I found my memories. I found her in the garden, rolling up mint leaves and chewing on the edges as we weeded in the slanting evening sunshine. I found her listening as I read out loud the Mother Superior’s manuscripts. She’d never liked to read, but the Psalms whispered in candlelight brought her peace.
In the end, I chose mint picked from my little garden, fresh ink and parchment, and a bowl with a spoon in which I dropped some sulfur. I cast these items into the sealed circle and began the same summoning I had performed before, in my room. There was no mirror in this room, and I hoped this choice meant she would make it all the way to me. I had no way of understanding, there with my arms raised and reciting the enchantments, that remembering alone was the most powerful part of the spell.
She did not appear before me. Nor in any surface. Instead, as I held the spell in tension and fed it my magic, ink suddenly appeared across the parchment I had used for the spell. Ink that bloomed into words.
I was so startled by this unexpected turn that I simply stood there with my arms upraised like a dunce. The spell shape held, and the words kept appearing. I silently translated.Quod requires.
What do you require?
“Are you okay? Are you safe?” I asked into the air.
I am more.
“Where are you?”
In the realm of ten thousand suns.
“You told me to run.” I swallowed, the room feeling close and strange, as if it listened to me and was not entirely friendly. “Why?”
You are in danger, mortal witch. This is beyond your power. He is coming for your saint.
I gasped and pulled back, as if simply dropping my arms would send this creature back. I’d been tricked. Mortal witch? She never would have addressed me so. This was not Rochelle. Why had I thought it was? “Who are you?” I demanded.
The writing came quickly, confidently.
The demon prince Mahazael.
How had I gone looking for my sister, with a pure heart, clear intention, and the items that had been beloved of her and drawn … a demon? In a sudden flash, I remembered the scroll Death had taken away from me—the red-robed creatures with the strange bishops’ hats … antlers.
This was the demon who took my sister.
I kicked the items out of the circle. Frantically scrubbed the chalk off the floor. I had to end the spell. Now. Before this demon slipped from his world to mine.
