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“I owe it to the Bookseller,” she told him, but even as she said it, her feelings betrayed her. She didn’t want to give it up. She had only just recovered the Book of Doors after ten years. She wasn’t going to give it away so easily, not unless it was absolutely necessary.
In the center of the room the woman’s eyes moved from face to face, and then seemed to settle on Drummond, where he stood near Cassie and Izzy.
“Who’s that?” Izzy asked. Cassie just shook her head, not taking her eyes off the woman.
“How about I turn your blood to stone?” Okoro sneered at the woman, removing his Book of Matter and holding it by his side, his body turned away from the woman to shield the book. “And you drop dead right here? Or I turn the air in your lungs to liquid and you drown?”
Cassie watched as the woman’s eyes slid back around to settle on Okoro. The look she gave was of a mother to a misbehaving child. The woman shook her head at him once, and then, in an instant, the mistreturned, curling rapidly back into the room to fill the space, drawing curtains down between each person.
“Move!” Drummond hissed, a disembodied voice close to Cassie’s ear. Cassie was holding Izzy’s hand, a firm grip that kept them connected through the mist, and she felt Izzy tugging her away toward the far end of the room.
“That won’t work on me!” Okoro shouted from somewhere behind them, his voice cutting through the panicked chatter of the other people in the room. Almost as soon as the mist had appeared Cassie saw a pulse of indistinct light through the gray air, and the mist became water, a swimming pool that crashed down to the floor and sloshed against the sides of the room.
Ahead of them, Cassie saw that Lottie was already retreating from the platform, the mirror behind her opening to reveal a passageway. Izzy looked back at Cassie as they scampered, pointing at the escape route, and Cassie nodded her agreement. She checked behind her and Drummond was following a few feet away, his face and body soaked with the water that had just fallen around them. Farther back drenched people were retreating out of the ballroom, throwing nervous glances over their shoulders at the woman and Okoro slowly circling each other in the center of the dance floor.
Izzy pulled Cassie in the opposite direction. “Cassie, come on!” she pleaded, heading toward the Bookseller’s secret passageway.
In the middle of the room, Okoro screamed, “Time to die, witch,” and Cassie couldn’t help herself, she had to turn to look, she had to see if the mancouldkill the woman.
The woman closed her eyes, and immediately there was a burst of light, shimmering on the puddles and drips of water on the wall and mirrors, and everyone who was left in the room flinched away. Cassie staggered backward, pulling her hand free from Izzy’s to throw it in front of her eyes.
“The Book of Light!” Drummond shouted, and Cassie remembered the Egyptian woman from Drummond’s memory. The woman was using Drummond’s friend’s book.
The light was blinding, even with her head turned away and herhands in front of her eyes. Cassie tumbled sideways against the wall, reaching out with a hand and feeling the damp plaster, the cool of the mirror.
“Izzy!” she called, as she stumbled onward, using the wall as a guide.
An inhuman scream sounded, a high-pitched squeal like air being released from a tire under too much pressure. The light seemed to grow more intense for a moment, and then it was gone, a memory only in Cassie’s eyes.
She blinked and looked around, chasing distortion from her vision. In the center of the room there was a puddle of blood and bone in a fancy suit. The woman stood just beyond it, gazing down at the mess that had been Okoro. She raised her eyes slowly to Cassie, the gaze of a cat that had just left a dead animal on the doorstop:Look what I have done.
Cassie’s stomach did a somersault and she turned away and spattered vomit onto sodden carpet at her feet. When she looked to the back of the room she saw Izzy reaching the Bookseller’s secret exit just as the mirror slammed shut.
“No!” Izzy yelled, banging the mirror with a balled-up fist. As Cassie gathered herself, the big man who had been standing in front of the platform—Lund, Izzy had called him—reached Izzy. He stood next to her protectively, his eyes scanning the room in search of danger.
He loves her, Cassie thought, the idea coming from nowhere but feeling certain, and that cheered Cassie in some small way.
“No!” Izzy yelled again, banging the mirror. Cassie watched the big man take her hand and pull her away, along the back of the room to the other side of the dance floor. And then Cassie felt herself yanked around and Drummond was in her face.
“Give me the book!” he demanded, more panicked than angry. “We can’t stop her!”
Cassie flicked her eyes over Drummond’s shoulder to the center of the room. The woman was bent at the waist and reaching a hand into the red mess that had once been Okoro. Cassie heard a wet squelching sound and her stomach somersaulted again.
“Oh god,” she muttered. It was like a nightmare. Even after confronting Hugo Barbary in the apartment, she wasn’t ready for this.
The red mess on the floor still pulsed weakly, as if some desperate remains of life existed there still. When the woman withdrew her hand, it was holding a book: the Book of Matter. A smile of satisfaction spread across the woman’s beautiful features.
There was a sudden crack, like dry wood snapping, and the few people still in the room yelled in surprise at the sound of the gunshot.
Behind the woman, the Spanish man Drummond had thrown across the room earlier was pointing the gun that Hugo Barbary had dropped at her back.
“Give me all of the books!” the man demanded. He fired a second shot up into the ceiling above him, and the woman turned her head to look at him over her shoulder.
“Give me the book!” Drummond demanded of Cassie again, gripping her arm.
Cassie shook her head. She couldn’t. She looked toward the door that they had come through on the opposite side of the room. And then she looked along the wall and saw Lund leading Izzy in that direction as well. If Cassie could get there, they all could flee.
“Let’s go!” she said to Drummond, pulling away from him roughly, and pointing at the door. “Now!”
