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The ballroom still smelled of damp, despite it having been months since the auction, and a few weeks more since Cassie had tumbled back through into reality from the place she had been, the place where she had created the books. And it was a mess still, with shattered mirrors and glass all over the floor, bloodstains on the walls. The chandelier overhead was a fragment of its former self, the light it threw much reduced and struggling to reach the corners of the room. They had lit candles and placed them around the edges of the room, just to provide a bit more illumination, and the candlelight danced and flickered. The ballroom was a place of shadows now, of hidden corners and menace, no longer the glittering domain of dance and laughter.
Cassie sat cross-legged on the platform at the end of the room, in front of the mirror that led to the Bookseller’s panic room and escape route, reminiscing about the years she had spent with Mr. Webber as she waited. It had seemed like an ordeal, at the start, a punishment maybe, but now she remembered those days fondly. She would always carry them with her as a time when she had felt safe and protected, when she had been able to enjoy the simple things. She wondered then if experiences were always better in retrospect, in reminiscence. Was it possible to truly enjoy something in the moment?
She thought of Izzy and all that she had put her through. Cassie felt so guilty about all of that. A few hours earlier, in the dead time as they waited for the woman to arrive, Cassie had sat with Izzy in the hotel bar, surrounded by empty glasses and bottles, the detritus of their last few days in the hotel.
“I don’t want you here,” Cassie had said, not meeting Izzy’s gaze. “I can’t put you at risk.”
“I know you’re older than me now, but you’re not the boss of me,” Izzy had said. “I’ll go where I want. And I want to be here.”
“It’s not your fight. I put all of this on you. You were the one telling me to stop.”
Izzy had shrugged. “You’re right. But I’m still not going anywhere. I’m not your friend just because you always do what I say. And I’m not stopping being your friend because of all that’s happened.”
“Will you do it to help me, then?” Cassie had asked, and Izzy had narrowed her eyes suspiciously as Cassie reached into her pocket and passed her a book. “I need to make sure she doesn’t get hold of this. This is the Book of Safety. If she has this, nothing can stop her. Will you take it somewhere else and keep it safe? That way, if something happens to us, at least I’ll know she’ll never get it.”
Izzy had taken the book and had run her hand over the cover. “Why don’t you give me the other books too?” she had asked. “If you want to keep them safe from her, give me all of the books.”
“We need them,” Cassie had said.
“Not all of them. Not to defeat her.”
Cassie had said nothing.
“Or are you just giving me this to keep me safe?” Izzy had asked.
Cassie had accepted that Izzy wouldn’t leave her. “Will you just keep the book on you?” she had asked. “Please? For me? I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. Please?”
Izzy had nodded, finally. “But nothing’s going to happen to you either, okay? We’ll get through this.”
Sitting in the ballroom, waiting for the woman, Cassie hoped Izzy was right.
A noise pulled her wandering thoughts into focus, and she lifted hereyes to look straight ahead to the far end of the ballroom. The sound she had heard had been a door opening and closing, she was sure. The sound of someone arriving.
Cassie sucked in a breath nervously, her heart beating rapidly. “Someone’s here,” she said to the room. They were all there with her—Drummond and Izzy, Lund and Azaki—all of them hidden, made invisible by another of Azaki’s illusions. Cassie took some comfort in the knowledge that she was not alone. She hoped it might help, if it came to it.
She dropped her head onto her hand, her elbow on her knee, her face purposefully expressionless while her stomach performed gymnastics.
She waited and nothing happened for a few moments. The building felt suddenly very quiet, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.
Then the mist came, tendrils curling and poking into the ballroom like serpents. They gyrated into a wall of mist, separating the ballroom from its entrance, and then parted like curtains, just like the last time the woman had arrived, and she stepped through the gap and onto the dance floor. Once again, she was wearing her layered black skirt and white bustier top. The skirt pooled around her feet and made it look as if she were standing in a puddle of shadows. In one hand she was carrying a small purse by the straps, so it dangled down at the side of her leg, and she was holding the Book of Mists in her other hand.
The woman ran her eyes around the room and then settled them on Cassie.
“You need to get a new trick,” Cassie said, gesturing toward the wall of mist churning behind the woman.
The woman stared back, no expression on her face.
“Wondering where everyone is?” Cassie asked.
She jumped up from the platform and took a few steps forward to face the woman across the dance floor.
“There’s nobody else here,” Cassie said. “Just me and you. Nobody was going to come to another auction here, not after the last time.”
The woman’s chin lifted slightly, her eyes narrowing.
“I set up the auction to get you here,” Cassie said.
The woman had the watchful, wary expression of a cat that had just seen a dog it didn’t know.
