Page 148

“What are you doing?” Dominique asked.

“Making certain I understand what I’m about to do.”

I turned through the pages, taking care not to drag my bleeding hand across the writing. When I found the passage I wanted, I held it open with my thumb and read it twice. Then I folded down the corner and turned to Dominique’s summoning spell.

The little brass vial slipped from beneath my neckline as I leaned over the book. I caught it against my chest and held it there for a moment, feeling the warmth of the metal beneath my fingers. Mama’s ashes were still inside it, where I had carried them through every mile of this miserable journey. I tucked the vial back beneath my clothes, then looked up at the thing that had worn her face.

Dominique was watching my hands, which had begun to shake. “You seem much less certain than you sounded a moment ago.”

“Miss Ravenwood!” Adrien said. “I think I know how to open the door!”

He pointed to a place on the chart with the chalk, and a white smudge marked his cheek where he had rubbed his face.

“Then you know what to do,” I said.

His eyes moved from me to Dominique. “Do you need the chart?”

I swallowed. I wanted to tell him yes, and promise that we would be on the other side of the door in a moment and that his father would take care of everything, but I had already asked him to believe too much.

I couldn’t leave this circle without taking Dominque with me.

She’d never stop haunting me until she got what she wanted.

“I need you to open the door,” I told him. “Then I need you to go straight to your father. You mustn’t come back to this circle.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

Tears worked their way into the corners of my eyes. “I really want to. I want to stay with you,” I told him. “But I have to take care of something first.”

I watched him gather the chart and move toward the door with Della close beside him. I heard his father trying to break the door down to reach him, and I understood how little comfort there was in knowing the bargain before me was a terrible one.

Dominique crouched down beside me, putting her face right in front of mine. “Do we have an agreement, Cora?”

I thought of Adrien. And Della. And Yves. This was the only way. The only way none of them got hurt, and I stood a chance at stopping her.

With a heavy heart, I nodded. “We do.”

I held Dominique’s black gaze for another moment before lowering my eyes to the joining spell. I set my intention, then called to the obsidian stone rotating above the broken box, which drifted into my outstretched hand.

I began to read, speaking slowly enough to hear each word over the noise in the corridor. As I did, the stone grew colder against my palm, but the pressure beneath my breastbone grew warmer and warmer with every word I spoke.

I reached for the seam that joined us, feeling the strain along it as Dominique inched closer.

Yves called my name again. I kept reading. Even as teardrops landed on the page and blurred the ink.

By the time I reached the last line, I could barely feel the stone in my hand. The pressure had spread up my arm and across my chest, squeezing until each breath stuck to my ribs. I held on to the seam, finished the summons, and held out my hand for the demon.

She wrapped her long, ghostly fingers around my wrist. Slowly, her hand began to dissolve into my skin, followed by her arm.

The pain of our joining forced me onto my hands. The relic slipped from my fingers and skittered across the floor, but I scarcely heard it over the sound of my own breathing. I tried to draw air into my lungs but couldn’t get enough. There was too much inside my chest, spreading through me with each frantic beat of my heart.

I lifted my head and saw Adrien take a step toward me, even though his reversal was almost complete.

“Finish it, Adrien,” I managed. “Please.”

I wanted to see him with his father with my own eyes, while my eyes were still my own.

Adrien hesitated before finishing the final correction. He dropped the chalk and reached for the handle. And this time, it turned.