Awakening, Birth of Magic Vol 1

Introduction

2015-01-17T19:09:00.000-08:00

This is a reboot of Sisterhood, Tales of the Coven. This version takes place in the 1930s and there's no Scarlet Knight or any of that. Like in the old version, Sylvia Joubert is a witch and part of a secret coven that protects the world from evil magic. Her job is killing monsters like demons, bogeymen, and vampires. She lives with her sister Agnes in the fictional metropolis of Rampart City.

Anyway, one day Sylvia is tasked to investigate a "disturbance" of magic that her sister has detected nearby. This turns out to be caused by Ethan Fraser, a brilliant engineer who is creating a way that "mortals" like him can use magic like the witches. Unbeknownst to him (but beknownst to us) some nasty people known as The Heretics are making plans with the Nazis to use the wand to rule the world.

That is unless Sylvia can stop them...

REBOOT

2011-07-30T12:15:00.000-07:00

You know, I was thinking that if we really want to redo this, what we should do is eliminate Sylvia from the mix. Instead, focus on Cecelia and Coop. We can keep in the '30s if we want. The idea would be that Cecelia is a half-witch in some secret society. Her mysterious leader dispatches her to America to make nice with an enigmatic young scientist working on a "magic wand" or something. As she gets in with Coop and hangs around with him, she starts to fall in love with him. when it comes time to steal the wand, she can't do it. Instead, she and Coop go on the road to escape the Nazis and her old organization. Or something.

Epilogue

2011-05-07T18:57:00.003-07:00

Epilogue

When I woke up, I thought for sure I was still dreaming. I was in my bedroom in Rampart City as if nothing had happened at all. A damp cloth pressed against my forehead and then I heard Agnes say, “You’re awake. I thought you might sleep for a few more days.”

“How long has it been?” I asked, my voice hoarse and cracking so much I thought I must be an old woman again. Then Agnes dribbled some water into my mouth. My voice sounded better as I thanked her.

She sat on the edge of the bed, letting me look at her. She was back to herself, thin and beautiful, though perhaps a bit plumper than before in the midsection. Her lower lip trembled and then she finally lost all self-control. She crushed me in a hug, her wet cheek pressing against mine. “I thought you were gone. I thought I was too late for the potion to work,” she said through her sobs.

“It’s all right. I’m fine now, aren’t I?”

“Yes. You’re all better.”

“Thanks to you.” The only explanation was that Agnes with one of her feelings had brewed a Restoration potion to give to me when I appeared. That had saved my life. Though thinking of everything that had happened, I wasn’t so sure I was glad about that.

Thinking of Cecelia, I tried to get out of bed. Agnes pushed me back down; I was too weak still to put up a fight about it. “You still need to rest.”

“Ethan, is he safe?”

“He’s fine. He’s asleep in the guestroom.”

“No one’s come here?”

“No, dear. Not even Glenda has paid us a visit yet.”

I sighed at this. If Cecelia kept her word, the Headmistress would think Ethan and I were dead. She might find out differently, but that would take time. For now we should be safe. “I’m sorry, Agnes. About everything.”

“Don’t worry about it, dear. I’m perfectly fine now. Healthy as a horse.”

“It’s my fault—”

“I said not to worry about it. It wasn’t so bad, all things considered.” She sighed and then patted her midsection. “I felt normal for the first time, perhaps ever. Does that sound crazy?”

I thought of when I’d stayed with Frau Braun, how content I’d been with being a chubby milkmaid. “Not at all.”

We hugged, albeit lightly, and then Agnes stood up. Before she could leave, I asked, “What has Ethan told you?”

“Not much. Only that his fiancée let you go. That she still loves him.”

I sighed again. Ethan hadn’t mentioned that I was Cecelia’s mother. My secret was still safe from Agnes. That didn’t make me feel much better at the moment.

“Get some rest, dear. I’ll check on you later.”

It was another day before I was strong enough to get up and around. The hard part was convincing Agnes that I didn’t need her mothering me. She escorted me down the stairs as if I had become a toddler and was still learning to walk. I didn’t say anything to her about that, but I drew the line at her trying to cut my food for me. “I’m not an invalid,” I snapped.

“Of course not, dear.”

I could see the hurt on her face as clearly as if I’d slapped her. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re just getting back to your old self,” she said with a smile.

“I haven’t been very good to you, have I?”

“You’ve been the best sister a girl could hope for,” she said and hugged me again while I went slack with shame. “Now eat your breakfast, young lady.”

“Yes, Mother.”

I was still sleeping when Ethan came downstairs. He looked unchanged except for a bit of stubble on his face. He smiled when he saw me. “Sleeping Beauty awakens.”

“Thanks to you and Agnes.” I shook my head as he sat down. “I did a pretty lousy job of rescuing you. Turns out I was the one who needed rescuing.”

“We’ll call it even,” he said. I didn’t feel even, though. I felt stupid and useless. Cecelia had beaten me. It was Ethan who had reached her, not me, not her own mother. She still hated me, perhaps now more than before. Only her love for Ethan had kept us from both winding up floating in the Rhine.

After breakfast we went into the parlor and got down to business. Agnes opened a desk drawer to take out a blue vial. “I took the liberty of brewing this for Ethan.”

“What is it?” he asked, but I already knew what it was. Maybe it was another of Agnes’s feelings, or maybe she was just wise enough to know what Ethan needed.

“It’s a potion to change your appearance. Like the ones Cecelia used those years you were together,” I said.

“I don’t need a potion,” he said. “You can hide me here. Or somewhere else—”

I sat down beside him on the sofa and patted his knee. “I’m sorry, Ethan. I can’t protect you. This Headmistress knows too much about me. Wherever I take you, she’ll probably already know about it. As soon as she figures out you’re alive, she’s going to have her people looking for you. This is the only way to keep them from finding you.”

“No. There has to be another way.”

“There’s not. You have to take this and leave. When you do, you can’t ever contact me again. Not until this is over. You can’t see me, call me, or even write to me. I can’t know anything about where you are, who you are, or what you look like.” I paused, moving my hand up to his shoulder before I delivered the hardest blow. “The same for your family. You can’t tell anyone, not even your parents. You have to disappear completely.”

“I can’t let my parents think I’m missing—or dead. That could kill them.”

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll send them a few postcards. Tell them you’re just taking some time away after Cecelia left you. Then they won’t think the worst.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. He stared at the vial. “There has to be another way, doesn’t there?”

“I’m afraid not, dear,” Agnes said.

“Not until the Headmistress and Nazis are beaten.”

“How long will that be?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. It could be years.”

“Years?”

“I’m sorry, Ethan. I wish I had some good news for you.”

I couldn’t blame him for crying then. It wasn’t easy to give up the only life you’ve ever known. I’d found it hard enough to leave Cecelia behind. I thought I had been doing the right thing, but now it had blown up in my face. Like Pandora I’d opened a box of evil and now my comeuppance was due. Except it wasn’t just me bearing the brunt of it; Ethan and Agnes had been caught up in it too. It seemed I destroyed everyone I loved.

“It’ll be all right, Ethan,” I said, patting his back. “We’ll find a way to fix this. You saw what happened with Cecelia. She can come back and you can live a normal life.”

“Maybe,” he said with a sniffle. “But I’m going to be alone now, aren’t I?”

“For now, I’m afraid so. You’re going to have to run and keep running. You can’t stop anywhere longer than a couple of months. You can’t leave a trace of your presence.”

“Like a ghost. That’s what I am now, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I guess I always did want to travel,” he said with a hollow laugh. He held up the vial. “I just drink this?”

“That’s right, dear,” Agnes said. She picked up a wooden ruler to hand to him. “You ought to lie down and put this in your mouth. The change can be painful.”

Ethan did as he was told, lying flat on the floor and then opening the vial. After downing the potion in one long pull, he stuck the ruler in his mouth. He bit down on it just before a muffled scream escaped his lips.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch the transition. I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands while I listened to Ethan scream. Those screams were just another indictment of my failures. I’d failed as a mother, as a sister, and as a witch. Because of that, Ethan had to suffer.

I opened my eyes when the screaming stopped. Looking down, I saw a completely different man. Maybe it had been something subconscious on Agnes’s part in brewing the potion that he looked like Alejandro. He had the same olive-toned skin and black hair. That hair was thicker, a full beard lining his cheeks instead of a mustache like Alejandro had worn.

When he stood up, he was shorter than Alejandro and a bit chubbier as well. I had to look down at him in order to meet his now-brown eyes. “How’d we do?” he asked, his voice deeper.

“Here you go, dear,” Agnes said, handing a mirror to him. Her face was pale, as she was probably also thinking how much he looked like her husband. “You look very handsome.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied his unfamiliar face. “It’s not bad,” he said. He struggled to make unfamiliar facial muscles smile. “It could be worse, right?”

I thought of what had happened to Agnes back in Florence. Yes, it could be a lot worse. “That’s true,” I mumbled.

Agnes roused herself from her chair and opened the drawer again. She took out a cigar box from the desk. When she opened the lid, I saw two-dozen of the vials lined up neatly. “Each of these should last you about two months.” I did the math in my head. Four years. Just like Cecelia. “Each one will be unique. There’s no way to predict exactly what it will do, especially not on a mortal.”

“You mean I could wind up a circus freak?”

“Only if I made a mistake, dear.”

“Agnes has a lot of experience, though. Centuries of it.”

“Oh,” Ethan said, but he didn’t try smiling again. “You said I have to keep running, right? I guess this will help.”

“I guess so.”

Ethan left that night. I gave some money to him, enough to get him started. We would have to hope the Headmistress or the War Department didn’t have anyone still watching the house. Otherwise this whole ruse might be for nothing.

As he stood at the door, I brushed my hand along his unfamiliar beard. “You’ll be all right,” I said. “You’re a smart guy.”

“What about Cecelia?”

“I’ll find her. I’ll find a way to make this right.”

“I know you will.” He gave me a hug, during which he whispered into my ear, “I still believe in you.”

“Still?”

“We’re still alive aren’t we?”

“Barely.”

He squeezed me again. “Next time I see you, maybe it’ll be at the wedding.” He whispered into my ear, “Then you can be my mother-in-law.”

I was still thinking about that as Ethan slipped away into the night, out of my life, possibly forever.

Now that I was recovered and Ethan was gone, Agnes and I had one last piece of business to attend to. We vanished to the estate, appearing just inside the gates. We walked silently up to the front doors, where I used the knocker in a brass lion’s mouth to knock on the door.

A minute later, Mrs. Devereaux opened the door. Her frown quickly turned to a smile as she saw us. “Madame Chiostro. Madame Joubert. You’re home. And look at you! You’re both looking so young. You must have discovered the Fountain of Youth somewhere.”

“Not quite, dear,” Agnes said. I followed her inside the house. As we walked to the living room, Mrs. Devereaux briefed us on the latest goings-on at the estate. From what I could gather, everything was about the same.

There was a key difference, though. “Just yesterday this young woman showed up here. She said she was your granddaughter, Madame Chiostro. I told her that’s preposterous. You don’t have any grandchildren, do you ma’am?”

“No,” Agnes said. “But this girl is my very good friend. I hope you didn’t turn her out?”

The answer was sitting on the sofa. Brigitte got to her feet and ran across the door. I thought she was going to bowl Agnes over from the violence of her embrace. “Oh, Grandmama, I’ve missed you so much,” she said into Agnes’s shoulder as she sobbed with joy.

“I’ve missed you too, dear,” Agnes said, patting Brigitte’s head.

Mrs. Devereaux politely excused herself to check on some laundry. I decided she had the right idea to leave Agnes and Brigitte to their reunion. I waited until Mrs. Devereaux had gone and then vanished myself into the forest. I sat there, in the spot where Henri and I had kissed and where I had later betrayed Agnes.

I lay down on the cool grass of the clearing, trying not to cry. Somewhere Ethan was being forced to live like a tramp thanks to me. Elsewhere, Cecelia was turning over his plans for the magic wand to the Headmistress. She would probably in turn give those plans to the Nazis. I ran through my laundry list of failures again.

I must have fallen asleep there. The next thing I knew, something was rattling the brush. I thought maybe it was a deer or some other animal. Then I stiffened, thinking it might be Cecelia or some other agent of the Headmistress. I wished I’d brought my jacket with me, but I’d left it in Rampart City, on my bed. There wouldn’t be time to fetch it now—

“Hello, dear,” Agnes said. She ducked beneath a branch as she stepped into the clearing. “I thought you might be here.”

“How do you know about this place?”

“Clare told me you and Henri used to come here. I thought you might like some company.” She sat on the damp grass beside me, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing Brigitte back. I only wish you could have brought the other two. At least Lise. Zoe was always such a headstrong little thing; I don’t suppose there’s any use trying to talk to her.”

“I’m not sure Lise is much better. Not anymore. They’re so angry. So bitter. They hate us. All of the coven.” I told Agnes what Brigitte had said about the Headmistress’s plan to start a new coven and destroy us.

“Then we’ll have to find this Headmistress and stop her. Maybe when we do, the rest of them will come to their senses.”

I smiled a little. That was Agnes, always so positive, even in the face of oblivion. I wished I could be like that, but I could only think of impending doom. “I don’t think so. They’ve been trained for over a century to hate us. You can’t just snap out of that.”

“Cecelia did, didn’t she?”

“Not entirely. If Ethan hadn’t been there, she would have killed me. She hates me so much, I can’t stand it.” Though I tried, I couldn’t help collapsing against Agnes and crying as I replayed the scene from the bunker in my mind.

Agnes stroked my hair, whispering, “We’ll find a way to help her. Then she can marry Ethan and you can all be friends.”

“You don’t understand. She’s not just my friend,” I said. I took a deep breath that was punctuated with a sob. “There’s more to it. Cecelia is my daughter.”

Agnes stopped stroking my hair. I looked up at her, seeing that her face had gone deathly pale. “You’re sure?” she asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Oh my. When did this happen?”

“A hundred twenty years ago. You thought I was living in Edinburgh, but I wasn’t. I was in Paris. With my baby.”

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was afraid. Afraid of what you might think of me.”

She held me at arm’s length and mustered her best big sister voice as she said, “Sylvia, you’re my sister. I’ll always love you. No matter what happens.”

“I’m sorry, Agnes. I’m so sorry.”

“It’ll be all right, dear. We’ll find her and we’ll get her back, just like Brigitte. Everything will work out. You’ll see.” I sat there and let her comfort me, still afraid to tell her the rest of it.

But there would be time for that later, once we had finished with all of this: the Headmistress, the Nazis, and the magic wand.

Agnes helped me to stand. “Come on, dear. Mrs. Devereaux has fixed some tea for us.”

“Tea sounds lovely,” I said and followed my sister back to the house.

[END]

Chapter 25

2011-05-07T18:57:00.001-07:00

Chapter 25

The Fuhrer was not among the officers in the bunker. He wasn’t in the Chancellery when the alarms went off. Too bad or I could have ended the Nazi regime right then. Instead I went room by room, punching out a few odd generals, admirals, and other big wigs as I went. There wasn’t any sign of Cecelia or Ethan as I made my way through the honeycombing chambers of the bunker, but I knew I’d find her eventually. Not as if she could go anywhere.

It didn’t really come as a surprise to find the last door I came to locked. This was it. Cecelia would be on the other side. I could only imagine what condition Ethan would be in at this point. If she’d gotten what she wanted from him, she might have already slit his throat and cut him into pieces. Or he might still be alive but bloodied and bruised as Cecelia tried to extract the information from him.

There was only one way to find out for sure. I used a Static Charge spell against the door. The heavy door shook, but it didn’t open. I repeated the spell three times, until it finally caved in. As it did, I threw myself to the side of the door. I was just in time to avoid getting a knife in the throat.

“You made it after all,” Cecelia called out. “The Headmistress should have known those three couldn’t hold you.”

“It’s over, Cecelia. Let Ethan go.”

“It’ll be over when I slit your throat and use your blood to repaint this room,” she said. I wished I had a spell to see through the concrete walls so that I might see what she was doing. Instead, I had to get down on my knees and then roll across to the other side of the doorway.

This brief glimpse of the room showed that Cecelia had taken up residence in Hitler’s bedroom. There was a king-sized bed and an ornate writing desk. Ethan sat at the desk, working. I couldn’t tell what condition he was in, but thinking back to the train in Boston, Cecelia might have used the same potion on him. Or she might have used old-fashioned coercion, either with her knives or with her body. Despite everything that had happened, I knew Ethan would still be vulnerable to Cecelia’s charms.

As for Cecelia, I caught only a glimpse of her head behind a dresser. She probably had a few more of those black crystal knives of hers and maybe some other weapons as well. She would wait for me to come storming in and then she would kill me.

“I don’t want to fight you, Cecelia.”

“Then surrender.”

“I can’t. You know that.”

“I can’t surrender either. I guess we’re at an impasse.” Her voice clearly indicated she knew she was on the better end of the standoff.

I did have another card to play, though. “Cecelia, what do you remember about your mother?”

“Are you Freud now? You want to psychoanalyze me?”

“I want to know how you became like this. I want to help.”

“My parents didn’t do anything to me,” she said. “They died when I was little. Smallpox. I nearly died myself.”

“But the Headmistress saved you.”

“No. I just got better. I’ve always been tough.” She waited a moment and then said, “Are we done reminiscing now?”

“Not yet. Brigitte, Zoe, and Lise, they’re Agnes’s granddaughters. You know that, don’t you?”

“So what?”

She wasn’t going to make this easy; I didn’t expect anything less from my daughter. “Listen, the Headmistress chose you for the same reason as them. You have a witch’s blood in your veins. That’s how you can make potions.”

“Are you saying my mother was a witch?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath. Now was the time to finally say it. “The woman you knew as your mother wasn’t really. She and her husband adopted you when you were a baby. They promised never to tell anyone, especially you. There was a lawyer in Paris named Souray who set it all up. Your mother—your real mother—agreed to turn you over to them. She wanted you to have a good life—a normal life.”

“How do you know about that? Did your precious sister give me away? I was one too many for her?”

“No.” I took another deep breath that was hard because my throat was seizing up. “Cecelia, you’ve seen how alike we look. Don’t you wonder why that is?”

“Coincidence. There are a lot of redheads in the world.”

“Goddmanit, Cecelia, stop being so pigheaded. I’m your mother. I gave you away to your adopted family.”

There was silence from inside the bedroom, except for Ethan’s pen. He must be in another of those trances if he kept working through all of this. I braced myself for what Cecelia might do. I thought she might scream at me, or maybe come charging out of the room.

The last thing I expected was a grenade to come rolling out of the bedroom, stopping right in front of me. I barely had time to hurl it down the hallway, where it ricocheted off the walls and then exploded. I threw myself to the floor as the concrete roof overhead shook. I felt pieces of the concrete from down the hall pelt me, but the roof over me held up.

When I sat up, Cecelia stood over me, a knife in either hand. Her face burned red with heat, but the look in her eyes was far more damning. “Hello, Mother,” she whispered.

I rolled to the right before she threw the knife in her left hand. But she’d already figured on that and had the other knife flying towards me. It got me in the shoulder, going clean through me, into the concrete wall. My scream echoed off the walls. “I’m sorry, Cecelia. You have to understand—”

“No, you need to understand what I endured thanks to you.” She fetched the other two knives she’d thrown at me and then brandished those so I knew she’d stick me in the other shoulder—or somewhere more vital—if I tried anything. “That’s right, your little plan didn’t work out. Not like you wanted it to. Or maybe it did. Maybe you wanted to put me through Hell; your little mistake.”

“No, Cecelia. I didn’t want to hurt you. I loved you.”

“Loved me so much you sent me away.”

“I wanted you to have a real life. I didn’t want you to end up like me.”

“I didn’t, did I, Mother?”

“No, you became worse than I could ever be. You’re a monster.”

“I’m not the monster here. You’re the one who gave me away. You’re the one who let him take me in. You could have saved me, but you didn’t. You let him do those things to me. Those awful things.”

“Cecelia—”

“Shut up! I’m going to tell you everything he did to me. That way before you die, you can know what kind of a heartless beast you really are.”

I could only sit there and listen while she described what her adopted uncle had done to her. Him and his wife had taken Cecelia in after her original family died. Her uncle owned a farm about a hundred miles north of Paris. They were a well-respected couple in the community, seemingly ideal parents for a little girl.

The first sexual abuse came when Cecelia was seven. It was after her birthday party, when her uncle took her upstairs for bed. He reached beneath her nightgown to touch her between the legs. She was too young to understand, but she knew it was something bad when he made her promise not to tell her aunt about it.

From there the abuse escalated. He fucked her the first time when she was eleven, not long after her first period. He’d been touching her for years, but when Cecelia’s aunt went out of town to visit a sick relative, he plied Cecelia with wine and then carried her upstairs, to his bedroom. Young and drunk, she didn’t really understand what was happening to her.

It continued for another three years, her uncle fucking her whenever he got the chance. Cecelia never told anyone, too afraid and too ashamed about it. If her aunt knew anything, she never mentioned it.

The end of it was predictable enough. Just as with my affair with Alejandro, it was inevitable that with all that sex Cecelia would get pregnant. She didn’t know for a few months, thinking that she just had a sour stomach that caused her throw up in the mornings. But after five months she was beginning to show.

Her uncle was clever about the whole thing. When she told him, he beat her savagely until she made a phony confession in front of her aunt, pinning the whole thing on a servant boy. He beat the servant within an inch of his life until he too confessed. He was sent away with a healthy bribe for his troubles while Cecelia was locked up in her bedroom like a prisoner.

I couldn’t help but be proud of my daughter’s escape. She worked for months to secret away sheets that she could fashion into a makeshift rope. When her aunt and uncle went off to Christmas Mass, she put her plan into action. Despite being eight months pregnant, she climbed down the sheet ladder. Not knowing anything about how to hitch up a carriage and unable in her condition to ride on the back of a horse, she set out on foot.

But it was cold that night. There were already several inches of snow on the ground and more coming down, a blizzard that cut short the Christmas Mass. Cecelia knew she wasn’t going to get another chance, so she kept going, into the forest. She hoped to find somewhere to shelter for the night, a cave or cluster of rocks where she could get out of the snow.

She didn’t find anything except more snow and more cold. She had only an ill-fitting jacket and shoes that couldn’t keep out the water. Her feet went numb first, followed by the rest of her extremities. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she dropped into the snow, thinking she was going to die.

“Then she found me.”

“The Headmistress.”

“That’s right. She found me and she took me to a hospital.”

“What about the baby?”

“Your grandchild? What do you think happened? I went into labor while I was still unconscious. When I woke up, she told me that he had died.”

“She couldn’t save him?”

“He was too little and weak for a potion, she said.”

I nodded, though I’d have to check with Agnes about that. “Then she began training you to be an assassin, just like the others.”

“Not like the others. I was the first. The others came later.”

I nodded, no longer caring about the pain in my shoulder from the knife. More horrors unleashed thanks to me. If I hadn’t been so selfish to betray my sister, if I hadn’t been so frightened that I gave her away, then none of this would have happened. “I’m so sorry, Cecelia,” I said, hanging my head. “You can go ahead and kill me. I understand. I deserve it for what I’ve done to you. But first, do something for me.”

“A blindfold and cigarette? There’s no smoking in the bunker.”

“No. Let Ethan go. This isn’t his fault. It’s my fault. His only crime has been loving you. Let him go.”

“I can’t do that, Mother. Not until he’s finished.”

“Don’t do it for me, or even for him. Do it for yourself. I know you still love him.”

“I don’t love anyone. Not anymore. I’m a monster, like you said. A soulless, heartless monster. Just like you.”

“No you aren’t.” I reached out for her, but she backed away from my touch. “You’re just a hurt little girl who doesn’t know who she is. You’ve done these things for the Headmistress because you think she cares about you. But she doesn’t. You’re just a pawn to her. She’s using you to get what she wants.”

I had hoped I could reach something inside of her, but instead I got a knife in the other shoulder. She smiled as I screamed. “How dare you,” she growled. “You think you can come here and tell me what to do? You think you can turn me against the Headmistress? She’s the only one who’s ever given a damn about me. She gave me everything: a home, a life. I was a hurt little girl when she found me, but she made me into a woman, a strong woman who doesn’t need you or anyone else.”

She probably would have killed me then, but Ethan saved my life. He came toddling to the doorway, his eyes unfocused as he moved. He was more of a zombie at the moment than Andre back in New Orleans. “I’m finished,” he said.

Cecelia turned from me to put a hand on his shoulder. “Good. Now I can dispose of both of you.”

Ethan didn’t put up a fuss as she tied his wrists to a chair in the bedroom. I couldn’t put up much of a fuss either, not with a knife stick out of each shoulder. Fresh waves of pain almost made me black out as she tied me up to another chair. She sat us next to each other and then planted herself in front of us, a Luger in her hand. “Which one wants it first?”

“Kill me, but leave Ethan alone,” I said.

I saw Ethan blinking next to me as he had after I vanished him somewhere. The potion Cecelia had given him was wearing off now that he’d done what she wanted. “Cecelia?” he whispered.

She bent down to touch his hair with her free hand. “That’s right, honey. It’s me. You’ve done very good work. But now I have to go away.”

“Where?”

“That’s not important. You’ll be dead long before I get there.”

“Cecelia, don’t,” I said. I would have said more, but she smacked me in the jaw with the Luger. I could only spit out a wad of blood and maybe a few pieces of teeth.

“Shut up! I’m tired of listening to you. You’re nothing more than a whore. Who was my father? A stable boy? Some sweaty dockworker?”

“No. Agnes’s husband,” I said through my busted mouth. “I thought he loved me. Maybe he did, but not as much as he loved his life with Agnes.”

“So you’re a whore and a fool.”

“Yes,” I said, looking down at the floor. “I am.”

Ethan turned to me, raising an eyebrow. “What’s going on here?”

“There’s something you should know Ethan. Cecelia is my daughter. She’s over a hundred twenty years old. The Headmistress has been keeping her alive and young with magic. In return she works as an assassin for her.”

“What?” He turned to Cecelia. “Is that true?”

“Yes, sweetheart. It’s true. Sylvia is my mother. She fucked her sister’s husband and made me. But she was too scared to tell anyone, so she gave me away to a sleazy lawyer for another family to adopt.”

“You gave her away?”

“Yes.” I turned to face Ethan, whose look of disappointment hurt worse than both of my shoulders. “It wasn’t like that. I thought she would be better off with a mortal family. You remember what I told you in Italy?”

“Yes.” He looked back at Cecelia. “But she was wrong. She would have been a good mother. Much better than this Headmistress person.”

“What do you know about it?” Cecelia shot back. “What do you know about anything? You thought I was a sweet, innocent girl who wanted to marry you. You’re nothing but a sap.”

“Maybe I am a sap, but I still love you, Cecelia. Let’s go away and forget about all of this. We’ll find somewhere quiet and start over.”

“I don’t love you! Either of you!”

I was already shifting my weight, tipping the chair to my right. I toppled it just as Cecelia fired the Luger at Ethan. I knocked him over onto the floor; the bullet got me in the stomach, right about in the womb where Cecelia had come from. I landed on top of him, my mind a haze of pain.

“Very noble, but also very stupid. I’m still going to kill you borth.”

“You have what you want!” Ethan shouted. “Just go! Sylvia’s already going to die and the Nazis will kill me.”

“I don’t leave a job unfinished.”

“I’m not a job. Neither is Sylvia. She’s your mother and I’m your fiancé.”

“Neither of you is anything to me. Not anymore.”

“Fine, but do me one favor before you kill us.”

“You want me to let her go? She looks about dead anyway.”

“No. I want you to kiss me. Kiss me like you used to do.”

“Why?”

“I want to know before I die if you ever did love me.”

“How sentimental.” She glared down at us, but finally nodded. “Fine. If that will shut you up.”

She tucked the Luger into pocket and then roughly grabbed my chair. She threw me to the left, so that I wound up hitting my head against the floor. I could feel myself getting weaker, my life draining away. I didn’t mind at that moment. I was finally getting what I deserved for all the wrongs I’d done. It was just too bad Ethan would be another casualty, along with Cecelia, another life she would destroy thanks to me.

She tipped his chair up so that she could kiss him properly on the lips. It wasn’t a simple peck but a full-length kiss, one that lasted until they both looked as if they needed air. Cecelia was actually gasping as she stepped back from him.

I could see the change in her. Her face had turned pale, her lower lip trembled, and she wobbled a bit on her feet. “Oh Ethan,” she whispered. She dropped to her knees on the floor and began to sob. “I’m so sorry, Ethan.”

“It’s all right, honey. We can make things right again. I know we can.”

I let out a sigh of relief as Cecelia untied him and they embraced just the way they had back in Rampart City. They kissed again, this time even longer, until I was sure they were going to turn blue. My world was starting to turn black around the edges when they parted.

“Let’s get out of here,” Ethan said. “Sylvia can help us find somewhere safe.”

“No. I can’t go with you, Ethan.”

“What? Why not?”

“The Headmistress saved my life. I can’t abandon her.”

“But—”

“Go with Sylvia. She’ll hide you. I’ll tell the Headmistress I killed you.”

“What about a body?”

“I’ll take care of it.” She stroked Ethan’s hair. “I know what I’m doing, sweetheart.”

“What about us, Cecelia?”

“We still have plenty of time. When this is all over we can be together.”

“But—”

“I can take care of myself,” she said, a bit of the old Cecelia creeping into her voice. She stepped over to my chair, turning it upright and then slicing the ropes holding me. I could only see her face in the dark tunnel that remained of my vision. She smiled at me and for a moment I saw a daughter’s love in her eyes. The moment was short-lived, though. “Mother, I’m trusting you with Ethan’s life. Get him to safety. Find somewhere for him to hide. Understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Good.” She leaned in close to whisper into my ear, “The next time I see you, I’m going to kill you, Mother.”

All I could bring myself to say was, “I know.”

“The two of you get out of here before Sylvia dies on us.”

Ethan didn’t have time for more than a brief kiss on Cecelia’s lips. Then he wrapped his arms around me. I was half-dead, but I still had the will left to vanish us safely to the archives. I stayed awake just long enough to see Clare floating over me and to hear Agnes’s voice calling my name.

Then I passed out.

Chapter 24

2011-05-07T18:56:00.001-07:00

Chapter 24

I had been to Berlin a couple of times before the wars. That made it easy to vanish us in near the waterfront, in an alley where we weren’t likely to surprise anyone. As Ethan had, Brigitte blinked a few times to clear her vision. “The Headmistress said you could do that, but I didn’t really believe it.”

“Beats taking a train,” I said. I gave her another minute to adjust to her new surroundings before I asked, “Where are they going to hole up?”

“I’m not exactly sure. Somewhere in the Chancellery.”

“The Chancellery? As in Hitler’s house?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Goddamnit.” I hadn’t been to the Chancellery, but I’d seen it before. It was a fairly ordinary mansion as far as housing for heads of state went, but Hitler was bound to have turned the place into a fortress. Especially now with Cecelia brining Ethan there. “Can you get me inside?”

“Me?”

“You’re the Headmistress’s assistant, right? You should be able to get us past the guards.”

“I might be able to get in, but I don’t think they’d let you in.”

“You mean the jacket would give me away? I can leave it behind.”

“Not just the jacket.” Her hand waved from my boots up to my head. “You’re too much like her.”

“You one have one redhead in your little club?”

“I don’t mean just your hair. It’s everything. Your attitude. The way you talk. They’ll think you’re trying to infiltrate the place as her.”

Brigitte’s logic made a certain amount of sense. Cecelia and I looked very much alike and from what I’d seen, we had much the same attitude as well. That was probably why we’d gotten along so well at Cuthbert, and why we cared about the same man. “You’re probably right. We’ll need a disguise for me then.”

“Can’t you use your magic to make yourself look like someone else?”

“I could, but it’s really unstable. And your friends might have some more charms around to stop me from using magic. Better to do it the traditional way.”

I took off my jacket, leaving it on top of an old milk crate in the alley until I needed it again. Without it, I was passable enough as an ordinary woman that none of the soldiers milling around the corners should notice. At least so long as I didn’t bring attention to myself.

We found a drugstore and went inside. Though the labels were all in German, I could read them well enough to find a bottle of peroxide. “What’s that for?” Brigitte asked.

“A disguise. Come on.”

I didn’t have any German money with me, nor did Brigitte, so I had to slip the bottle of peroxide into a pocket of my leggings. Brigitte tensed up at this, not the reaction of someone used to high-pressure situations. “It’ll be fine,” I said. “Just walk nice and easy. When we get near the counter, start giggling.”

“Why?”

“So it seems like we’re having an ordinary conversation. Just two normal people in a drugstore. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” I got the ball rolling when we were in sight of the counter. “That is so very true,” I said loud enough for anyone to overhear. “She has always been so absentminded.”

Though she wasn’t used to this kind of work, Brigitte picked it up easily enough. She giggled loudly, sounding only a little nervous. “I remember when she put down the sugar bowl in the kitchen for her cat and tried to serve us a bowl of milk.”

We passed through the doors without any trouble, Brigitte’s body the pocket containing the peroxide. From there we needed somewhere to use it. I kept us moving until I saw a café that didn’t look too busy. “Let’s go,” I said.

In the bathroom, I instructed Brigitte on how to do the quickest dye job in history. It would be a lot easier back in Rampart City, but I didn’t want to risk being spotted right now. “Be careful with it,” I told her. “Don’t get any in my eyes.”

She didn’t dribble any in my eyes or on the rest of my body. My hair had turned platinum blond, to the point of nearly being white without any of my red roots showing. When this was over, she might have a future as a hairdresser.

I kept my hair covered with a kerchief as we left the café. The owner looked as if he wanted to question why we had taken so long, but I silenced him with a hard stare. He went back to washing his glasses. That made me think of Andre and I wondered if any Nazis had paid him a visit yet. I hoped not.

“I suppose we ought to do something about my clothes too,” I said. “Find something a little more feminine.”

“That would be a good idea.”

As luck would have it, there was a department store right across the street from the Chancellery. Stealing a dress was much easier than stealing a bottle of peroxide. The hard part came in finding something appropriate. I let Brigitte handle this, since she knew far more about Nazi security. She chose a plain black gown, the kind of dress appropriate for a funeral. Maybe she was trying to send me a message. I took a second dress in with me, keeping them close together, so that they blended with one another.

I took the dress into the dressing room. It fit a bit loosely; I wished Agnes were here to do some quick alterations, but she was still back in the archives. She might still be a fat teenager or she might be back to herself. Or maybe the Headmistress had tracked her down and taken her away from me again.

I forced those thoughts aside as I put my clothes back on over the dress. The second dress I held out in front of me as I left the changing room. I put that dress back on the rack and then walked away. Unless an employee had been paying real close attention, it would seem as if I’d decided against buying the dress after trying it on. Just in case anyone was watching us, Brigitte and I walked around the rest of the store, as if we were actually shopping.

In an alley I took off my normal clothes and the kerchief from my hair. “What do you think?” I asked.

“You look a lot like Lise,” Brigitte said. “Except the eyes.”

“Let’s hope they aren’t paying that close of attention.” I took Brigitte’s arm and then motioned to the Chancellery. “Let’s go.”

The German Chancellery was essentially a big square surrounding a garden. The main entrance was on the side of the building facing the department store, so that we had to just go across the street. Black-clad guards stopped us before we could get up to the gate. I nudged Brigitte in the ribs, signaling her that now was the time for her to shine.

“What business do you have here?” the guard asked.

“We are here on business from the Headmistress.”

The guard stiffened at this; he clearly had heard of the Headmistress before. “Wait here,” he said, leaving us with another guard, who kept his machine gun pointed at us and didn’t seem like the type who would be shy about using it on us.

I could hear the guard exchanging words with someone at the guard, probably trying to figure out if anyone from the Headmistress was coming today. When he returned a few minutes later, the guard brought an officer with him, a major from his epaulets. The major’s eyes narrowed first at Brigitte and then even more at me. “Who are you?”

“Brigitte Chiostro. This is my cousin Lise.”

“We were not expecting anyone else from her today.”

When Brigitte spoke, she used the language of magic. I recognized the words as the first four in a Plague of Locusts spell. I thought she might be trying to use magic again or signaling me to do so, but then she stopped and the major nodded. “Very well,” he said. “You may enter.”

With that, we entered Hitler’s inner sanctum.

The place was like a museum, except for a lot fewer tourists and far more soldiers roaming the hallways. I saw a few other women scurrying around, all of them with the look of servants or secretaries. None who looked as if they worked for the Headmistress. And none who looked like Cecelia.

“Where do you suppose she is?” I whispered to Brigitte.

“I don’t know. They never talked about this in front of me. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. We’ll find them.” We stopped at a stairwell going up. Ethan had worked on the third floor at Cuthbert, but that wouldn’t be Cecelia’s style—or the Headmisstress’s. They would take him somewhere underground, a basement where no one could see him. I didn’t see any stairs going down, though. Those would probably be hidden away.

We kept walking around the sedate corridors without any luck. Not that I expected to find a sign saying, “Hitler’s secret lab.” I had hoped we might find a stairwell to at least get us down to the basement.

After wandering around for a half hour, we took a break. Outside the window was the garden, where at the moment a crew of workers in dirty coveralls were planting new trees and flowers. “A little late, aren’t they?” I said.

“There wasn’t much choice about that. They finished building Hitler’s air raid shelter there not long ago.”

I stared at the garden, at the fresh plants being put into the ground. “His air raid shelter is beneath the garden?”

“Yes.” She looked at me, not understanding. “What’s the matter?”

“That’s where Cecelia is.”

“How do you know?”

“I know her. What better place to keep him than in a bunker? No way for him to escape and it’s out of sight from everyone.”

“That makes sense. How do we get down there?”

Brigitte hit on the next problem. They were sure to have tight security protecting the entrance to the bunker. The Fuhrer wouldn’t let just anyone go down to his lair. I could maybe use a spell to break the place open, but then we’d have half the Third Reich coming down on us in minutes.

“You said it’s an air raid shelter?”

“Yes. To protect him from bombers.”

I nodded at this. “I think it’s time to give the system a little test then.”

I went over the plan, such as it was, with Brigitte. We set out along the hallways again, until we found a low-ranking Nazi officer. I grabbed his arm, just about throwing him against the wall. “You, minion, we have important news from the Headmistress. Take us to your supervisor.”

“Excuse me?”

I nodded to Brigitte. She pushed her chest out, trying to project an air of authority. “You heard her, worm. We have important information from the Headmistress. She’s asked us to bring it to the commander of the Luftwaffe personally.”

“I can’t do that,” the young officer stammered.

“You know who the Headmistress is, don’t you?” Brigitte growled. “If you do not do as we say, we will slice into pieces and feed you to the Fuhrer’s dogs.”

The officer gulped at this. “This way,” he said.

He led us upstairs, to a set of offices for the Luftwaffe’s central command. It looked so ordinary inside that for a moment I thought the officer might be lying to us. Then he ushered us into a more ornate office, where a general sat behind a desk. “What is the meaning of this intrusion?” the general snapped.

The younger officer saluted and then said, “These women are from the Headmistress. They say they have important news for your ears only, sir.”

The general turned his glare on us. “Who are you?”

“I’m the Headmistress’s personal assistant. She didn’t want to trust anyone else with this information.”

“What information?”

“The French are sending bombers for a surprise attack.”

“The French? Our intelligence has told us nothing of this.”

“The Headmistress’s sources say the bombers will be here soon.”

“I will have to confirm this—”

Before he could reach for the telephone, I used a Static Charge to hurl him against the wall. Then I spun around to chop the stunned younger officer in the throat. While he was doubled over, I took the Luger from his holster. This I aimed at the general as he recovered. “The only call you’re going to make is to sound an air raid alert. Understand?”

“But—”

“If you don’t, I’m going to start putting bullets in all of your lower extremities.” I shifted my aim to between the general’s legs. “Starting there.”

For just about any man that was more than enough of a threat. The general was no exception to this. He picked up the phone and began barking into it. “I don’t care! Sound the alarm! Get all senior staff down to the shelter!” After the general put the phone down, he lamented, “I’ll be hanged for this when they find out.”

I shrugged. “At least you’ll still be a man when they do it,” I said. I motioned to him with the gun. “Let’s go. You’re going to show us how to get into this air raid shelter.”

I had been in enough castles in my time that I expected there to be a secret passage opened by triggering a hidden lever. There wasn’t anything that elaborate, though. The general led us down to the first floor. Military officers mingled with support staff as they all ran to find cover while the alarms whooped. The general went through an office, where someone had unlocked a door. Behind it was a concrete room with a stairway leading down.

I held on to the general with one arm while I turned to face Brigitte. “It’s time for you to go, Brigitte.”

“What? But we haven’t found her yet.”

“She’s down here. I know it.”

“Aunt Sylvia, please—”

“It’s too dangerous for you down there.”

“I can handle it.”

I smiled at her. She had proven herself so far, but I couldn’t let her do it. “I’m sorry, Brigitte. I can’t risk your life. I couldn’t do that to Agnes.” I patted her shoulder with my free hand. “Go and see your grandmother. She’ll be glad to see you.”

“How will I find her?”

“Just go back home and wait.” She stared at me for a moment, but I think she finally understood what I meant.

“I will, Aunt Sylvia.” She gave me a hug that was awkward with me holding on to the general. “I love you.”

“I love you too, kid. Thanks for everything.”

“Good luck with your daughter.”

“Thanks.” I knew I was going to need all the luck I could get.

I watched Brigitte hurry away from the office. I would have to hope she’d be smart enough to get out of Germany on her own. So long as the Headmistress didn’t know Brigitte had betrayed her, she could make it into France and from there our old estate. I hoped too Mrs. Devereaux wouldn’t be too tough on the girl.

Once she was gone, I shoved the general towards the entrance. “Let’s go hotshot.”

We descended the staircase, into an antechamber made of concrete. The air smelled relatively fresh, not the normal dank odor you get from water, human sweat, and mold mingling together. As Brigitte said, they must have finished this recently. “What do you plan to do with me?” the general asked.

“Nothing. You’re just going to take a little nap.” I could have used a spell to put him under, but I felt better hitting him in the head with the butt of the Luger. He went down instantly, his entire body going slack. I dragged him into an adjoining room that for the moment was completely empty.

Then it was time to find my daughter.

Chapter 23

2011-05-07T18:55:00.001-07:00

Chapter 23

I got to my feet, wiping at my eyes. I had done enough crying and enough running all these years. It was time to find Cecelia—and Ethan. If I could tap into that part of her that had loved him for the last four years, I might be able to convince her to free him and come with me.

I wasn’t sure what we’d do after that. The three of us would disappear somewhere, hide out from the Headmistress, the Nazis, and the coven. We’d start all over again, a clean slate. I would try to make amends for what I’d done to her and she would do the same for Ethan.

The biggest problem would first be in finding them. The trail by now had gone completely cold. Cecelia would probably take him to a Nazi installation, but I had no way of knowing where that might be. I couldn’t just start vanishing myself around Germany, hoping to get lucky.

Or could I? There was only one Nazi base I’d visited in person: Neuschwanstein Castle. They had probably closed the place down after my last visit, but they might have left some clues behind. Or I could go visit my old pal Greta Bitterhauf at the inn nearby. She or someone else there might have some information I could use. It was a long shot, but at the moment I didn’t have anything else.

I vanished myself into the castle’s kitchen. As expected, there was no one there. The fires were cold, as were the stoves. From the dust on the counters, no one had been here in a few days, probably not since I’d infiltrated the place.

I reached into my jacket for the crossbow. The kitchen was empty, but there could always be guards still around to protect the valuables. It wouldn’t do to get careless and wind up with a bullet in my heart.

I crept along the halls, stopping at every doorway to listen for signs of any inhabitants. From what I could tell, there was probably nothing bigger than a rat still living here. I kept the crossbow ready anyway; I wasn’t about to let my guard down yet.

Finding the room where Agnes’s granddaughters had eaten with the Nazis, I slipped inside. The tables and chairs were still there, but there wasn’t any food. Not so much as an empty wrapper or can to indicate that anyone had been here for a while.

It was probably a dead end. It was stupid of me to think they would have left anything useful behind. These people—especially the Headmistress—weren’t stupid. The only surprise was they hadn’t burned the place to the ground to completely wipe their tracks.

I wound up in the throne room. It still bore the scorch marks on the walls and floors from my Fireball spell. The machines were all gone, though. There was nothing left that might be able to help me. I’d have to go down to the village and see if anyone there knew where the Nazis might have gone.

I turned around just in time for a shovel to hit me square in the face. I might be a witch, but I was as vulnerable to blunt objects as anyone else. I collapsed on my back, my head swimming. The list thing I saw were Agnes’s granddaughters standing over me, Lise brandishing the shovel. “Should I hit her again?” she asked.

Zoe, the oldest of the three, shook her head. “She’s had enough.”

Right on cue, I passed out.

When I woke up, for a moment my foggy mind thought the blond girl beside me was Agnes. I was about to tell her what a nightmare I’d been having when I saw the red walls trimmed with gold—not anything like any bedroom I was familiar with. That kicked my brain back into drive.

Taking stock of my situation, I realized I was lying on a bed. A very nice bed, with thick covers and a mattress probably three feet off the floor. I was wearing only my tunic and leggings; they had taken my jacket. My weapons were gone as well.

“Don’t try using magic,” the blond girl said. I recognized her voice from Florence. Brigitte, the one who had seemed so concerned about Agnes.

I was about to ask her how she planned to stop me from using magic when I looked to my right and saw my wrist tied to the bedpost with a length of rope—and a charm made from my hair. If I could move my hand, I’d probably find out someone had given me an impromptu haircut. “Nicely done,” I growled.

“I’m sorry, Great-Aunt Sylvia.”

“So you know who I am. And you’re Agnes’s granddaughter Brigitte, right?”

“Yes.”

“Where are those other two twerps? The ones who sapped me with the shovel?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you anything.”

“Why? It’s not like I’m going anywhere, am I?”

“You might. The Headmistress says we’re not to trust you.”

“Where is she? I might want to file a complaint about this.”

“I don’t know. None of us know where she is unless she wants us to know.”

“Who is she?”

Brigitte shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Who does know? Zoe or Lise?”

“No.”

“My daughter?”

“Who?”

“Cecelia. Is that her real name?”

She shrugged again. “As far as I know. I didn’t know she was your daughter.”

“I doubt she knows it either.”

“Oh.”

I tried to settle comfortably on the bed, but there really isn’t a comfortable position when your hands are tied up. “So what’s your story? Last I heard, Agnes buried you after a carriage accident.”

“I shouldn’t say. You’re a witch.”

“Come on, we’re family, aren’t we?”

“The Headmistress says we aren’t to believe in those old notions of family anymore. She says we’re all new people now. Reborn.”

“Reborn? They give you what they gave Agnes?”

“No!” Brigitte’s face turned red as if she were about to cry. “Is Grandmama all right?”

“She’s fine. We were able to brew a cure. In a few days she’ll be herself again.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it? I thought you didn’t care about family. Not even your grandmama.”

“I don’t,” she said, but she looked away. I hadn’t spent a lot of time with Agnes’s granddaughters, but I’d spent enough to know Brigitte was the nicest of the three. The other two might have gotten their looks from Agnes’s side of the family, but they didn’t have the same temperament, especially that spoiled brat Zoe. If she were in the room I wouldn’t have a chance of talking my way out of this, but Brigitte would be more amenable.

“Your grandmother was devastated after you died. Why didn’t you try and contact her? Even if you couldn’t see her, you could have at least sent a letter to say you were still alive. She deserved that, didn’t she? After all the cookies she baked for you and all the boo-boos she kissed.”

“I couldn’t tell her. The Headmistress—”

“Your grandmother was the one who convinced your father to let you go to medical school. She bribed every official from Marseilles to Normandy to make it happen. That’s how much she loved you. And here you’ve been alive for a hundred years and you didn’t even send her a postcard.” I turned my head away and let out a dramatic sigh of disappointment.

When I heard her sobbing, I knew I’d hit the mark. More than anything, Brigitte had wanted to be a doctor since the time she could walk. That wasn’t allowed in France back then and even now it was barely tolerated. If not for Agnes’s support—and money—Brigitte never would have been accepted.

“I’m sorry,” Brigitte said. “But you don’t understand. The Headmistress saved my life. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”

I turned to face her again and raised an eyebrow. “What did she do?”

“Well, it’s hard for me to remember. I do remember the carriage flipping over. I was lying on the ground. Then she was there, kneeling beside me. At first I thought she was an angel, but she didn’t look like the paintings at church.”

“What did she look like?”

“An old woman with spectacles. No wings or halo or white robe. She knelt down next to me and she took out a little vial. She said something to me, but I couldn’t understand what. I fell asleep, sure that this woman was going to poison me.

“When I woke up I was in a house, in bed. She sat beside my bed and that’s when she told me who she was. She said that if I worked for her, she would keep giving me potions so that I could stay young and beautiful forever.”

“And what sort of work did she have you do?”

“Me? Not a lot. I help her take care of the others and do research.” Brigitte looked down at the floor, her face turning dark. “Zoe and Lise have killed people. And other things, terrible things.”

“What about Cecelia? What’s she done?”

“I shouldn’t tell you.”

“The Headmistress tell you not to?”

“No. You wouldn’t like it.”

“Try me.”

Brigitte looked into my eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks as she said, “Cecelia is the Headmistress’s top agent. She’s sort of a legend among the rest of us. Zoe is terribly jealous of her. Do you remember the duke who died in Serbia?”

“The one who started the Great War?”

“Yes. She killed him. She blamed it on someone else of course. And that man in America, the one with the hat—”

“Lincoln? She assassinated Lincoln?”

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes and tried not to sob the way Brigitte had. I had thought my daughter might be a bad egg, guilty of a youthful transgressions, but she wasn’t. She was a monster. A soulless, cold-blooded murderer who had unleashed hell on at least two continents, if not more. Millions dead from the last war and unspeakable damage inflicted on America after Lincoln’s assassination. I could only ask, “Why?”

“The Headmistress told her to.”

It was becoming clear that my plan was terribly flawed. I couldn’t bring Cecelia back; she was already lost. To get Ethan back I was going to have to choose between him and her. One of my friends was going to die.

First I had to get out of here and find them. “Where is she going? Where’s she taking Ethan?”

“That boy with you?”

“Yes. Where is she taking him?”

“Berlin.”

Once Brigitte burned the charm she’d made from my hair, I felt the familiar tingle of magic begin in my feet. I lay on the bed for a few minutes even after Brigitte cut the ropes holding me down to gather my strength. “Where are Zoe and Lise?”

“Still in the throne room.”

“Do they have a radio?”

“Yes. Just a small one to contact the guards in the village.”

I nodded. “We’ll have to make sure they can’t use it then.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll have to knock them out and tie them up. Otherwise they can radio their Nazi friends. All of Berlin will know we’re coming.”

“Oh. But I couldn’t do that. Not to them.”

“Leave it to me.” I patted my hair, trying to feel how much of it was missing. They’d chopped to about chin level, which meant they had enough for a couple more charms. “They got more charms?”

“Yes. We each have one.”

“The Headmistress teach you about those?”

“Yes.”

“How much else did she tell you about magic?”

“A lot. She gave us a book of Grandmama’s potions so that we could make our own. She told us about spells, but we can’t use them. Not yet.”

“Yet?”

Brigitte looked down at the floor again and blushed. She was probably deciding whether to go ahead and tell me this or not. In the end she must have decided that she’d already told me enough to hang her, so there wouldn’t be any harm spilling a few more beans. “She says when she finds the birthplace of magic then we’ll all be full witches like you. We’ll form our own coven, a better one.”

“What do they want with Ethan then?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me that. I’m not sure she’s even told Cecelia.”

I shivered at this, hating to think my daughter was right-hand woman to someone as vile as this Headmistress. How could Cecelia believe these lies? How could she murder people for them? How could she betray her friends?

No, Cecelia wasn’t my friend. She wasn’t Ethan’s either. Anyone who had done the things Cecelia had wouldn’t blink at stabbing her friends in the back. Her heart was as black as any demon’s I’d ever killed.

The tingle that had begun in my legs had worked its way up the rest of my body. My magic had returned, not that it would matter. Zoe and Lise had charms and even if they didn’t, the Headmistress had some way of keeping her people safe from magic, as long as they weren’t under the influence of it already, as Cecelia had been on the train to Boston.

I would have to do it the old-fashioned way.

I left Brigitte in the bedroom. She wasn’t a fighter, especially not against her cousins. They had always been as close as sisters and I could tell that hadn’t changed in the last hundred years.

She wasn’t very happy about it. Her voice sounded like Agnes’s as she said, “I’m sorry. I’m so useless.”

“No you’re not. You’ve been a great help already.”

“Zoe says I’m just a secretary.”

I put a hand on Brigitte’s shoulder. “Not everyone is cut out for fighting. Like your grandmother.”

She smiled a little at this. “Grandmama never could kill anything, not even spiders.”

“She’s a sweet woman. Like you.”

“I haven’t been so sweet. Everything they’ve done, I’ve helped them.” I barely had time to brace myself as she threw herself against me. “If Grandmama knew what I’d done, she’d hate me forever.”

“No, she could never hate you. You’re her babies. You always will be.” I let Brigitte cry it out for a few minutes, which gave me more time to gather my strength. When I decided to finally get moving, I sat her down on the bed. “Do you have my jacket?”

“Zoe has it. She wants to keep it as a trophy.”

That would make things more difficult, but not impossible. While Zoe and Lise were good fighters, they didn’t have my experience, or Hisae’s training. I had bested them the first time in the castle, when I had still looked like a middle-aged woman. Now that I was young again, I’d be that much better. “Don’t worry about it. You just stay here and wait for me to come back.”

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll find Cecelia and end this.”

With that I snuck out of the bedroom and made my way to the kitchen again. The Nazis had taken all of the knives, cleavers, and other implements. I would have to go with something a little more primitive. Returning to the dining room, I used a Static Charge spell to hurl one of the chairs into a wall. The old chairs were tough, but not enough for one leg to snap off. Hefting it, I determined the leg would do for a makeshift club. Not much of a weapon considering Zoe and Lise would both have guns.

Armed with my club, I set out for the throne room. I hoped Brigitte wouldn’t have a change of heart and try to warn her cousins about me. I didn’t want to have to put her down too; I would need her help to find Cecelia.

They sat in the throne room on the dais where they had tried to raise demons earlier. Lise looked even more like her grandmother as she knitted what looked like a scarf. As Brigitte had said, Zoe was wearing my jacket, despite that it was about four sizes too big for her smaller frame.

She snatched the knitting from Lise’s hands, hurling it to the floor. She got to her feet and growled, “I don’t know why we don’t just kill that fucking witch.”

“The Headmistress said not to. She said she has plans Great-Aunt Sylvia.”

Zoe took my Colt out of the holster and leveled it at her cousin. “She is not our aunt. She’s not anything to us. She’s a witch. You’d better remember that.”

“Sorry,” Lise said, looking down at the floor. She hadn’t been as sensitive as Brigitte, but she wasn’t as emotional as Zoe either, something she got from her grandfather’s side of the family. “Will you lower the pistol now?”

“Maybe.”

I chose that moment to step out of hiding. I raised my club and charged at the dais. I didn’t plan to get anywhere near them, not with so much open space between the door and the dais. What I planned for was for Zoe to wheel around and aim the Colt at me. She smiled in a way that reminded me of Cecelia as she aimed for my heart and then pulled the trigger.

Just like back in Ethan’s lab, the gun turned red-hot in her hand. Zoe howled in pain and threw the weapon away from her, to the floor. “You fucking witch!” she screamed. “I’m going to kill you!”

Zoe had always been hot-tempered, prone to violent outbursts. According to Agnes, Zoe had flipped over the dining room table on her ninth birthday when she didn’t get the gift she wanted. Everyone’s cake and drinks had wound up on the floor and the candles had set fire to the curtains. Her father gave her a proper whipping, but she never apologized for it. “Next year get me what I want,” she had hissed with the last stroke and her father had thrown up his hands in defeat.

So it didn’t come as a surprise that she would fling herself at me for hand-to-hand fighting instead of pulling another weapon. She was trained well enough to duck when I tried to hit her with the club. I hopped back just in time to avoid getting hit in the chest by the heel of her hand. I spun my left leg around to trip her, but that was only partially successful. She stumbled backwards before regaining her position.

“You aren’t going to beat me this time. I don’t care how young you look,” she said.

She was quick, but her lunge was too predictable. I sidestepped it and then brought the chair leg down on her head. Not hard enough to break her skull open, just enough to give her a nasty headache. She tottered for a moment, turning to glare at me. “Not again,” she whispered before she collapsed to the floor.

Before I could turn back to the dais, I heard the metallic click of a gun. Turning, I saw it was an ordinary Luger, not my Colt. Lise’s face showed no reaction as she aimed at my chest. “Drop the club and then raise your hands,” she said.

“You going to shoot me?”

“Yes,” she said and I believed her. I dropped the club and raised my hands.

“So who have you murdered for the Headmistress?”

Lise shrugged. “A couple presidents. A pope or two. I don’t keep track. Not like Zoe. Or your daughter.”

“You know about Cecelia?”

She shrugged again. “I didn’t until I saw you. It’s pretty obvious. You’re so much alike. I’m not just talking about your hair. You’re a couple of hotheads. You let yourselves get taken in by emotion too easily. Like with that boy.”

“Ethan. What about him?”

“She’s going to throw her life away for him. Maybe not right away, but in time she’ll crack. You’ve seen it, haven’t you? Love. What a waste.”

I stared at her, trying to read that calm mask of hers. “I’m not the only one with an illegitimate child, am I? I seem to remember your grandmother saying you and the chauffeur got pretty cozy. Whatever happened to the baby?”

The mask slipped a little, her cheeks turning red. The Luger shook a little in her hand. “I lost it. She died.”

“The Headmistress didn’t save it?”

“She was too late. But she saved me.” The gun steadied in her hand. The same trick wasn’t going to work on Lise; she was too rational for that. I would have to find some other way to get to her before she put a bullet in my belly.

I didn’t need to think of any pulp magazine heroics this time. From the corner of my eye I saw a flicker of movement in the doorway. Brigitte had ignored my advice and followed me; just in the nick of time. I wasn’t sure what she was planning, but whatever it was, she’d need a little more time for it to happen.

“So let me guess: when Cecelia slips you’re going to bump her off and become the Headmistress’s new favorite, right? Then you’ll finally be the big shot of the family instead of Zoe. Must really chafe your ass to have to do what she says all the time. She’s so emotional.”

“It’s not going to work,” she said. “You can either go back to your room like a good girl or I’ll put a bullet in each of your knees and drag you there.”

“Sounds like someone’s getting angry.”

A second before she would have shot me in the kneecap, another shot rang out. This one went over both of our heads, into the wall. Brigitte stood halfway across the room with a gun trembling in her hands. As she’d indicated, she wasn’t much of an assassin.

She did give me the opening I needed. When Lise spun around on her cousin, I lunged forward to bat the Luger from her hand. I seized that wrist, yanking it behind her back until she cried out with pain. She tried to trip me, but her kick was too weak to topple me. Instead, she ate the floor as I shoved her down.

With my other hand I scooped up the fallen Luger. “Time for a little of your own medicine,” I said and then sapped her with the butt of the pistol.

I waited until I was certain she was unconscious before standing up. Brigitte stood in the same place as she had been, the gun falling from her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said.

I smiled at her. “It’s all right. You did good, kid.”

We tied up Brigitte’s cousins, leaving them in the bedroom where I had been. If the Headmistress was coming, she could untie them. Or maybe some of their Nazi friends if they stopped by. In the meantime, Brigitte and I had to rescue Ethan from my daughter.

Chapter 22

2011-05-05T11:00:00.001-07:00

Chapter 22

Agnes asked, “What’s wrong, dear?”

“It’s nothing. I was just remembering something.” Despite that she wasn’t a child anymore, I patted her on the head. “Get some rest. I’ll be back soon.”

I hurried out of there, into another cavern before I vanished myself without so much as saying goodbye to Clare. I didn’t want to talk to anyone at the moment. I didn’t want to see anyone either. I wanted to be completely alone.

I vanished myself back to our estate in France. Not into the house where Mrs. Devereaux might find me, but to that place in the forest where Henri and I had first kissed and where Alejandro and I had first made love. Maybe the Headmistress knew about this too, but at the moment I didn’t really care.

I lay down on the grass and sobbed. I didn’t want to believe it. Cecelia couldn’t be my daughter. My daughter couldn’t be alive. Not after so many years. She couldn’t be working for someone like the Headmistress. I had been so careful to give her to a home that would treat her well. I had wanted to give her a good life, better than what I could offer her.

I found an apartment in Paris, using one of my many assumed names so that Agnes wouldn’t be able to find me. It was an awful risk to take since she did sometimes bring the children into the city for shopping, visiting friends, and the like. Alejandro rarely came with her; out of patriotism to his native Italy, he believed Paris to be a “second-rate city with delusions of grandeur.” If Agnes or her children saw me here, there wouldn’t be any way to explain it away; Agnes wasn’t that naïve. Maybe I could tell her a lie about the father’s identity, or maybe she would finally put the pieces together.

I considered this before renting the place, but decided the city was big enough that I could go unnoticed. Out of some kind of misplaced patriotism I wanted my daughter born here, for her to be French like her mother and aunt, though I hadn’t thought of myself as “French” in centuries. How long I could keep her here without Agnes finding out I didn’t know. Eventually I would have to come clean about why I hadn’t visited her in months.

I also figured that near the end of the pregnancy I would be big enough that I wouldn’t want to leave the safety of the apartment. For that I brought along my servant from Cairo, Jaida, and her two children. I had found Jaida begging on the street, her husband dead, leaving her with no way to provide for her children. I took the three of them in and let Jaida handle the mundane chores and cleaning up after my bouts of morning sickness.

I offered her the choice of coming with me to Paris or taking a lump sum of money to stay in Cairo; she agreed to come along. I spent days showing her and her children around the city and teaching Jaida basic French so that she could run errands for me. The biggest adjustment for them was the difference in temperature; the children wore several layers of clothes to keep themselves warm even though it was summertime.

Jaida’s children often watched me from a distance with intense curiosity, like I was an exhibit at the zoo. They were too respectful, though, to get near me or to exchange more than pleasantries. Or maybe they were just scared of me and my ever-expanding stomach.

We had been in Paris for about a month, when the question of what to do with my daughter was answered. A letter came in the mail from Agnes. It took a circuitous route from the estate near Marseilles to Edinburgh, where it was forwarded by one of my employees to Cairo. Then it boomeranged to Paris thanks to a friend of Jaida.

When I opened the letter, I saw Agnes had written it a month ago, at the same time Alejandro and I were meeting in Florence. My heart fluttered for a moment, but Agnes hadn’t figured it out, at least not yet. Instead, she wrote:

Dear Sylvia,

I hope this letter finds you well. Alejandro is off to find a boarding school for Mathieu and Marcus. I feel terrible that soon they will be gone. When next I see them, they will no longer be my adorable little boys; they will be handsome young men. I don’t want them to go, but Alejandro insists they need a proper education so they can make something of themselves.

The boys would love to see you again before they leave. They love their Aunt Sylvia so very much. Luc misses you almost as much as I do. He drew a picture especially for you. As you can see, he’s becoming quite the little artist. We may have a little da Vinci on our hands!

Glenda stopped by about a week ago and assured me that you are doing well, but I wish you would write more often. I know you have never been comfortable with the quill and parchment, but it does me good to hear from my sister.

Please take care of yourself and stop by when you are able.

Love,

Agnes

I had to stop in the middle of the letter to wipe at my eyes. I wished I could write Agnes back to tell her why I hadn’t come to visit her and why I wouldn’t in the near future. But I couldn’t. My continued absence would hurt her far less than if I told her the truth.

As the letter had promised, there was a folded-up sheet of paper included as well. I unfolded this and saw the drawing Luc had made. It was quite good for a six-year-old, the lines steady and clear, although the figures were a bit exaggerated.

The drawing was of me, in my gray coat with my crossbow in one hand and my hair writhing like a nest of snakes. Behind me were two smaller figures of equal size. Their faces were vague but boyish; I assumed they were Luc’s older brothers. We were in the forest, where I grappled with a bear the same size as me. Luc had captioned it, “My Aunt Sylvia.”

I remembered the last time I had been back to the estate at Christmastime. I took Mathieu and Marcus out in the forest to teach them how to track game. I didn’t plan for them to actually kill anything, just to learn some of the basics. Agnes wasn’t thrilled about the idea of letting her precious children go out into the forest, but Alejandro convinced her that it would be good for them to learn something of the outdoors.

Like any boy his age, Luc wanted to do what his older brothers were doing. “Why can’t I go?” he whined as I stood at the door to go.

I knelt down so that I could look him in the eye and then touched his hair. “You’re too young to go. In a couple of years—”

“I’m not a baby,” he protested.

“Are too,” Marcus said.

“Boys, be nice or you aren’t going anywhere,” Agnes chided.

“Yes, Mama,” Marcus said.

“I promise I’ll be good and I won’t be scared,” Luc said. His face reddened and I could see he was on the verge of tears.

There wasn’t an easy way to tell him the real reason I didn’t want him to go: he was too much like his mother. He had inherited her blond hair and delicate features, but more than that, he had inherited her sweetness too. I didn’t want to take that away from him by taking him into the forest, where he would be confronted with the horrors of real life. I didn’t want him to end up like me.

“I know you won’t,” I said. “But your mama and I think it’s best to wait a little while.”

Agnes put an arm around Luc’s shoulders. “That’s right, dear. But you and I can play inside the house. Would you like that?”

Luc clearly didn’t, but he was also too nice to disappoint his mother. “Yes,” he said.

“That’s my good boy,” Agnes said.

I tousled Luc’s hair and smiled at him. “We’ll bring you back something. I promise.”

I stared at the drawing, my fingers too numb to even wipe at my eyes. The drawing was probably Luc’s way of apologizing for the incident. Knowing him, he probably thought that was the reason I hadn’t been around in so long, that he’d driven me away.

Though I knew he didn’t mean to, the drawing hurt me far worse than any demon or bogeyman ever had. This was how he saw me: a wild woman who went out into the forest and wrestled with bears. That’s when I made up my mind.

I didn’t want my daughter to think of me like that. More importantly, I didn’t want her to be like me. At the same time, over three centuries had taught me I wasn’t going to change; I’d never be the kind of mother like Agnes who stayed home, sewing and baking cookies. I’d never be the proper lady Mama had wanted me to be and that my daughter would need me to be. I didn’t want her growing up with the other children laughing at her and making her an outcast because of her strange mother who dressed and acted more like a man than a woman.

There was only one thing I could do to avoid this: I had to give her up.

While Alejandro thought Paris to be second-rate, it was also the kind of city where you could get just about everything if you knew where to look. That included black market adoptions. Through some contacts of mine, I found out about a lawyer named Souray who would arrange discreet adoptions for wealthy families.

Souray’s office wasn’t much to look at, about half the size of my apartment’s living room. He had a few legal books on a shelf behind him that I doubted he’d touched since before the Revolution. The wooden chair I sat on creaked dangerously from my weight.

The lawyer’s suit was probably older than his legal books; I’d seen a lot of garments like it when I used to make powdered wigs for the gentry. It hung off him like clothes on a scarecrow, his body just about as lean. Either his practice wasn’t exactly booming or else he was extremely frugal with his money. He didn’t seem like the kind of man I should entrust with my daughter’s life.

But I didn’t have many other options, except to leave her on the steps of an orphanage or a church. Then who knew what would become of her? If Souray could do what he was known for, then she would have a good life, one better than I could provide—a normal life.

“Hello, mademoiselle,” he said, his voice sounding like someone sharpening a knife. “Before we begin, do you require any refreshment?”

Looking around, I didn’t see where Souray had anything to offer in that regard; he didn’t even have a secretary to fetch anything. “I’m fine,” I said.

He motioned to my stomach. “I understand you’re looking to arrange an adoption for your child?”

“That’s right.”

“If I may pry—”

“You may not,” I snapped, knowing he wanted to know how I came to this sorry state. I reached into my handbag for a sack of gold coins. “This should be all you need to know.”

“I see,” he said, his eyes going wide as he stared at the money. “And what specifically would you like me to do, mademoiselle—”

“My name isn’t important. What is important is that you find a home for my daughter when the time comes. A good home with a reputable family. Where she can be happy.” I reached into the handbag again, this time for a handkerchief to wipe at my eyes. “You have to promise that under no circumstances will you or the adoptive family tell her anything. She’s not to know she’s adopted. Is that clear?”

“Of course, mademoiselle. Whatever you wish.”

“And you’re not to tell me anything about her. I don’t even want to know what name they give her. Once I hand her over we’re through, you got that?”

“Yes,” he said. He looked down at the money again. “I will take care of everything.”

“Good,” I said. I motioned to the bag. “There’s another one of those for you after you carry through with your end of the deal.”

“I understand.” When the lawyer smiled it was like looking into the face of the Grim Reaper. “I have an excellent home in mind for her. A wealthy family, very good name. They recently lost a little girl—”

“I don’t want to know any more.”

“Of course. I was merely assuring you that your daughter will be in excellent hands.”

I nodded and then reached into my jacket for the crossbow. With a shake it unfolded. As Souray’s eyes widened again—this time from fear—I loaded a bolt. “You even think of double-crossing me and I’m going to put this bolt through your neck. Understood?”

“Very well, mademoiselle.”

“Good.” It was difficult getting to my feet with the crossbow in one hand, but I didn’t dare ask for his help or put the weapon down until I’d made my point. Once outside of the lawyer’s office I put the crossbow back in its sling and then set out for the apartment.

I felt the baby kick and put a hand on my belly. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her.

My water broke at the same time I heard someone knocking on the door. I had thrown off my blankets to try and get out of the bed when Jaida came running in, accompanied by an old woman. “Madame Joubert, there’s a woman here—” Jaida stopped as she no doubt saw the mess on the bed. Having two children of her own, she knew what it meant.

The old woman gently brushed Jaida aside and then put a hand on my shoulder to push me back down. “It’s all right, dear,” Sabrina said. “You still have a while until it comes.”

“Madame?”

“It’s all right, Jaida. She’s a friend of mine. A midwife. God knows I need one of those right about now,” I said and tried unsuccessfully to smile.

“Be a dear and get some fresh sheets,” Sabrina said. “And a blanket for the baby when it comes out.”

I waited until Jaida had gone off to get the sheets and blanket before I asked, “Did Glenda send you?”

“We didn’t want to entrust your life to some mortal butcher,” Sabrina said with an exaggerated shiver. She brushed hair away from my face and then smiled at me. “Lie back down and we’ll take care of everything. Before long you’ll have a wonderful little baby, just like your sister.”

I nodded to her, not wanting to mention that I didn’t intend to keep my baby for long. Sabrina had delivered all three of Agnes’s sons, each one a longer and more painful labor than the previous one. I thought of the night Luc was born, which had led me to this point. “Did you say anything to Agnes?”

“Of course not, dear. She doesn’t know a thing.”

“Good. Whatever you do, don’t tell her about the baby.”

“You can’t hide it from her forever.”

“I’ll tell her when I’m ready.”

Sabrina shook her head sadly, but she said, “If that’s what you want.”

“Thank you.”

Giving birth was the most painful experience I’d ever endured. Each wave of pain was more excruciating than the last, to the point where I was sure I’d split in two long before the baby ever came. Dying while giving birth to my illegitimate daughter was probably the fate I deserved for betraying Agnes.

As with an Inner Child spell, Sabrina gave me a wooden spoon to bite down on. By the thirty-sixth hour, I’d bitten almost clean through the handle of the spoon. Sabrina sat at the foot of the bed, looking so calm that I wished I could hit her with a Static Charge spell, but I was far too tired for that. Jaida sat at the side of the bed, mumbling prayers in Arabic for my safety and the baby’s. At times she would go to fetch water, returning to apply a damp cloth to my head and dribble a little water in my mouth.

As time wore on, I wished Agnes were there to hold my hand and tell me that everything would be all right. All I had to do was ask Sabrina to go fetch her and in minutes she could be here. But that would mean having to tell her about the pregnancy and the baby’s father. She wouldn’t want to hold my hand then; she’d want to wring my neck.

I closed my eyes and imagined a different scene. I was in my childhood bedroom, crude wooden dolls on the shelves around me. I was much younger in this scene, just sixteen or seventeen years old. Mama sat at the foot of my bed, watching for the baby. Agnes and Sophie were on either side of me, Agnes assuring me that everything would be all right while Sophie lectured me on the biological processes of my body—her way of trying to comfort me.

I could feel another presence too, although he wasn’t in the room. Henri waited for me downstairs with Clare and the rest of his brothers and sisters. He would be let into the room once I’d given birth to our first child—the first of many. I couldn’t wait to see the look on his face when he saw our daughter and held her in his arms—

I screamed again as another wave of pain ran through me. I opened my eyes and the fantasy vanished. I was still in this undecorated apartment in Paris, with only two relative strangers in the room. Henri was long dead, as were Mama and Sophie, and Agnes I couldn’t speak to without fear of revealing my terrible secret. I was alone in this, and in a few months I’d be even more alone when I gave my daughter away to a sleazy lawyer so that she might have the normal upbringing I couldn’t provide for her.

“Here it comes!” Sabrina called out. I closed my eyes, feeling Sabrina’s hands between my legs as she helped to guide from between my legs. “One more push, dear.”

I put every ounce of strength I had into that push. This was for my daughter’s life, a life she would live without me. I thought of the little girl in Florence, seeing her face clearly in my mind as I made that last push.

I still had my eyes closed when I heard her first cries. “It’s a girl. A beautiful baby girl,” Sabrina said.

I kept my eyes closed as I turned to where Jaida was sitting. “In the nightstand there’s a piece of cloth. I need you to tie it around my eyes.”

“Madame? I don’t understand.”

“I want you to blindfold me. Please.”

“Sylvia, what are you doing?” Sabrina asked.

“I can’t look at her. Not ever,” I said. “Jaida, please, do as I say.”

I could hear the sadness in her voice as she said, “Yes, Madame Joubert.”

I waited until I felt the cloth around my eyes before I opened them. I could see only a pink haze with vague shadows. “Now you can give her to me.”

My daughter went silent once she was put into my arms. In that moment I desperately wanted to take off the blindfold and look upon her, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. If I did I’d want to keep her with me and then she would never have a real life. So I kept the blindfold on, contenting myself with feeling the warmth of her body against mine. The moment didn’t last as long as I would have liked, before Sabrina took her from me. “You need to get some rest, dear,” she said. “Both of you.”

My daughter didn’t cry when she was taken away from me. Perhaps she already knew.

I lived with my daughter for six months without once ever seeing her. Jaida did most of the mundane tasks like changing dirty diapers and giving her baths. Most of the time I spent with my daughter was during feedings, where I kept the blindfold on while she suckled from my breasts.

I did coo to her if she fussed, which she rarely did, and let myself stroke the down on her head. I made Jaida swear that she wouldn’t tell me if that down was red or black or if the baby’s skin was pale like mine or olive-toned like Alejandro’s. I didn’t even give her a name, always referring to her as “the baby” or “the child.” Like with a stray animal, giving the baby a name would make her a part of the family and then I couldn’t give her away.

After three months I visited Souray again. He had consulted the family he mentioned during our first meeting. They were excited to adopt a little girl and from what Souray said, they would be able to give her anything she wanted. I thanked Souray by brandishing the crossbow again, reminding him the consequences of if he tried to betray me.

The baby was a nearly perfect houseguest throughout her stay with me. She didn’t cry during the night, not even when her diaper was wet or full. Jaida said that she sometimes checked on the baby in the middle of the night to make sure the child was still alive. “She is such a well-behaved child,” Jaida told me. “I can’t believe you would give her up.”

“She’s just being stubborn—like me,” I said. I desperately wanted to run into the nursery without the blindfold to look upon her, but I resisted. “I’m doing what’s best for you.”

Jaida was too good of a servant to protest this too strenuously. She was also a good and loyal friend through those months. She loved the baby like her own child; she loved my daughter better than I did. But Jaida didn’t understand who and what I was and what I needed to protect my daughter from. A life with me wouldn’t be any kind of proper life for her.

I wore the blindfold one last time the night of the meeting. I let the baby nurse a last time while I stroked her hair and explained what would happen now. “You’re going to a very special place. A wonderful place. You’ll have a real mama and papa there, who will take care of you and give you whatever you want. You’ll have a cat and a dog and maybe even your own horse. You’ll be happy and safe and you’ll never have to worry about monsters in your closet or under your bed. I promise.”

I let myself hug her, which she must have taken as a sign that something bad was happening. She began screaming as I handed her to Jaida. “Make sure you dress her up nice and warm,” I said, though I was sure Jaida knew this already.

“I will, Madame Joubert.”

We went over the plan after she finished dressing the child. Souray and the new parents would be waiting in front of Notre Dame Cathedral in a carriage with the windows covered. Jaida would make the delivery so that I wouldn’t risk seeing the new parents. As for me, I would follow them to make sure Souray kept up his part of the deal. “Just remember that you’re carrying my daughter’s life in your hands,” I said, though again she knew this already.

“I will protect her as if she were my own.”

“Thank you. When you get back, there will be a bag of gold for you, enough for you and your children to go back to Cairo and live if you want.”

“I want to stay with you, Madame Joubert—”

“That’s not possible. I’m leaving tonight. Somewhere far away.”

“But—”

“I have to go.” I put a hand on Jaida’s shoulder. “You’ve been a good friend. There’s no way I can ever repay you for everything you’ve done for me and my daughter.”

We hugged and said our final goodbyes. Then Jaida took the baby and left. I dressed quickly in my old monster hunting clothes with my jacket. I checked the crossbow to make sure it was strung properly in case I needed to use it. If Souray tried anything, he was going to be in for a nasty surprise.

Jaida and the baby were easy enough to follow; I just had to listen for my daughter’s cries. I stayed up on the rooftops as much as possible, levitating myself across the gaps. Through my nightcrystal lenses I could see Jaida hurrying along with the baby pressed to her chest. She had taken care to wrap the baby up tight enough that I still couldn’t see the little girl’s face. I could only hear her anguished screams.

I’d been past Notre Dame, though never inside the building. It was easy enough to find a perch among the Gothic architecture; I squatted amongst a couple of gargoyles and looked down by the front steps. The carriage was waiting there, with Souray on the outside. I couldn’t see inside to make sure there was a husband and wife in there, but I was certain I could know the truth from Jaida’s reaction.

She came loping along a few minutes later. My daughter had stopped crying, perhaps finally realizing how futile it was. Or she might have simply tired herself out. In either case, she was silent as Jaida approached Souray. My whole body tensed as I waited, one hand on the crossbow, ready to put a bolt through his scrawny throat.

As expected, Jaida didn’t give the baby to him. She lifted one of the curtains over the carriage windows and leaned inside. I couldn’t hear anything from my vantage point, but she was probably talking to the parents, making sure they were on the level. When she must have been satisfied, she pulled back. I saw that her hands were empty now, hanging limp at her sides. She took a few steps back from the carriage. Souray exchanged a few words with her and then climbed into the carriage.

I watched the carriage roll away with my daughter inside, taking her from my life. A part of me wanted to follow them, to get her back, but I clung to one of the gargoyles, keeping myself rooted there. She would be safe now. She would be able to grow up happy in a normal environment. She would have a father and a mother who would love her.

When I looked down again, I saw Jaida looking up. I doubted she could see me, but she must have known I was there. She gave a little wave to say goodbye and then began trudging back towards the apartment.

I waited until she was gone to vanish myself from there to the docks. From there it would be a long trip to America, about as far from my daughter as I could get. But it wasn’t far enough. She had found me anyway. A hundred twenty years later and she had found me. She just didn’t know it—not yet. But soon she would and I would try to find a way to make up for lost time.

Chapter 21

2011-05-02T06:31:00.001-07:00

Chapter 21

A part of me should have been happy about Agnes having to endure what I’d endured thanks to her. Too young for magic, she would have to grow up again, this time as my baby sister. I should have enjoyed the poetic justice of this, but I didn’t. I was too busy blaming myself for getting her and Ethan into this mess.

I had foolishly thought I would find a way out when we got here, that some opportunity would present itself like magic. I should have known Cecelia and her Headmistress wouldn’t give me that opportunity. They had been too careful, too professional, covering every detail to give me no choice but to turn Ethan over to them.

After Cecelia and the Nazis had left with Ethan, I folded up Agnes’s now much too large dress so that I could find her tiny body in it. I had never seen Agnes this young before, nearly as young as I was in our family portrait. Even as a toddler she was beautiful, with the kind of plump red cheeks you wanted to pinch until she cried out and a mop of golden curls that would make Shirley Temple jealous. Maybe I could teach Agnes to tap dance and she could become a movie star too.

I scooped her up in my arms, the hem of her dress dangling to my knees. She stirred a little, her eyes opening slightly. “Sywvia?” she whispered.

“I’m here, Agnes.”

“I don’t feew good.”

“I know, sweetheart. We’re going to find some medicine to make you all better.”

“Aw wight.” With that she fell asleep again in my arms, jamming one of her chubby thumbs into her mouth.

“Goddamnit,” I muttered. I couldn’t leave her like this. I had to find a way to help her; there was only one place to go.

In Ireland there are a number of ancient burial mounds. No one really knew who built them or how they managed to do it before the wheel was invented. Glenda might have some idea, but she didn’t try to enlighten any of the archaeologists.

The coven had made some alterations to one burial mound, though. Beneath the round stone chamber where the ancient people had carried out rituals for their dead, the coven had placed all of its lore and important documents. Damp, dingy caves had never seemed like a good place for storing scrolls made of parchment, but it was one place where no one would think to look.

At least I hoped the Headmistress wouldn’t have a reception waiting for Agnes and I as I vanished us into the cavern. I shifted Agnes’s weight to one arm so that I could reach into my pocket for my nightcrystal lenses. From what I could see, there was just the usual rocks, bats, and puddles. No Nazis and no assassins in black robes.

“Clare!” I shouted, loud enough for Agnes to stir again. “Clare, where are you?”

The nightcrystal glasses not only allowed me to see in the dark; they allowed me to see spirits as well. I saw the bluish head of a young woman peek through the wall. She smiled faintly, at least until she must have seen what I was carrying.

“Is that Agnes?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Did she have an Inner Child potion go bad?”

“Not exactly.” Agnes whimpered and sucked harder on her thumb. I stroked her hair until she settled down. “Is there somewhere I can put her so we can talk?”

“Use my old quarters. The bed is still there.”

Clare Devereaux hadn’t needed her quarters in about three hundred fifty years, not since she died from old age. Instead of going on to the afterlife as presumably all mortals—and witches—did, her spirit remained behind as a ghost. Sophie had theorized that it was Clare’s extensive contact with magic that allowed this to happen, though I thought Clare was just too dedicated to her job as the coven’s archivist.

The quarters weren’t much to look at, especially not after so much time. It was just a cave about the size of the quarters Ethan and I had shared on the Gardenia, with a shelf carved into the rock and a goose feather mattress placed on top of it. The bed was more than big enough for Agnes in her current state, though I worried she might roll off the bed and break her tender little head open.

Her eyes fluttered open again, this time focusing a little more. “Sywvia?”

“I’m still here, sweetheart,” I said, unable to resist the endearments.

“I’m cowd.”

I rearranged the fold’s of the dress to help insulate her and then topped it off with Clare’s old blanket, which somehow had survived all these years. “How’s that?” I asked, barely resisting the urge to kiss her forehead.

“Better. Tank you.”

She rolled over onto her side and before long resumed sucking on her thumb. I patted her curly hair and then stepped away from the bed. It wasn’t a surprise to find Clare hovering over my shoulder. “She’s so cute like that,” Clare said.

“I know.” I motioned towards the door. “Let’s talk about it somewhere else.”

Clare still had an office in another cave, complete with a wooden desk and three chairs. She hovered over her old chair while I took one across from her. “What happened to her? What happened to you for that matter?”

“Hasn’t Glenda or one of the others been here to talk about it?”

“No. I’m usually the last to know anything.”

I started at the beginning, with my killing a bogeyman in Ethan’s room and him growing up to try and build a magic wand. She listened patiently as I told her about Agnes feeling something strange going on at Cuthbert College and then both of us taking Inner Child so we could look younger. “That wasn’t how this happened, though.”

I explained about everything that had happened on the campus and my fight with the Nazis in Ethan’s lab. Then about the train to Boston and revealing Cecelia’s true identity as a spy working for someone calling herself the Headmistress. “You know anything about a Headmistress?” I asked.

“No. I can search the records for a reference if you want.”

“Not right now.” I resumed my story, about how I’d told Agnes to stay with Hisae in Nepal until I could find out what was happening. “But they got to her. They had a charm for her and Hisae. They took Agnes and they were going to kill Hisae if I hadn’t got there in time.” I had to double back to mention the trip on the tramp steamer, nearly being killed by a U-Boat, and then winding up in Casablanca, where Cecelia had convinced Ethan I was the real threat. “I got him off the plane and took him to Nepal, where we found out Hisae was gone. They left a note saying they’d trade him for Agnes in Florence.”

I concluded by telling Clare about the exchange in Florence. “They used something on her, like what happened to Mama. She was probably ninety when we got there and pushing a hundred before I traded them Ethan for the antidote. Except the antidote didn’t make her twenty-something again. It made her a baby instead.”

“That’s awful,” Clare said. “It’s hard to believe anyone would try to hurt Agnes. She’s always been so sweet.”

“I know. They only did it to get to me.” I shook my head. “It’s my fault. That’s why I’m here. I need your help to find a way to change her back. There has to be a spell or potion or something that can make her older—but not too old.”

“I’m not aware of anything, but I can check for you.”

“Thanks.”

Clare drifted away into the wall. Before she left, she turned back to peek through the wall at me. “It’s not your fault, Sylvia. You did everything you could.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

But I didn’t believe that for a second. I had nothing to do but wallow in self-recrimination while Clare went down to search the rows of old scrolls for a spell or potion that might work. I could have followed her down there, but Clare didn’t like witches going down there. In the presence of magic the spells became like wild animals trying to break out of their cages; they desperately wanted someone to use them. That had led to quite a few accidents down in the vault, which was why Glenda had a mortal working down there and now a ghost.

There was no way to tell time in the cave, but after I figured about ten minutes had passed I went back to check on Agnes. She had rolled over again, so that she was facing me this time. She kept working on her thumb, whimpering every so often. I didn’t want to think of how awful it would be for her to have to grow up all over again, remembering how difficult it had been for me both times.

It had been difficult for Agnes the first time too. I still remembered the day I was braiding her hair on the sofa and then found myself floating in the air as she began the change. Mama had kept Agnes quarantined in her room for months, until she could learn to control her magic. Then came the tests; studying had never been Agnes’s forte. She had barely passed the tests right here in the archives to become a novice. From there came the hardest part in many ways: taking on the responsibility of a witch.

She was going to have to go through all of that again, thanks to me. I should have kept her somewhere safer. I should have looked after her myself to make sure no one could hurt her. She was my sister; that’s what we were supposed to do for each other.

Her face turned red and she pulled her thumb out of her mouth to begin bawling. I raced over to the bed and put a hand on her shoulder. “Agnes, what’s wrong?” I asked.

“I went pee-pee,” she whispered.

I could smell it as I pulled back the covers and saw the dark splotch on her dress. I patted her head and said, “It’s all right, Agnes. We’ll clean it up.”

“I’m sowwy.”

“It’s fine. Here we go,” I said as I lifted her out of the bed. Clare didn’t have any diapers or anything to fit a toddler, but she did have some old clothes she wouldn’t need anymore. With some water from one of the puddles, I cleaned her up as best I could. There hadn’t been a stranger experience in my life than that.

I had just finished getting Agnes into a nightgown about fifteen sizes too big for her when Clare reappeared. I put a finger to my lips to indicate she shouldn’t say anything in front of Agnes. “There you go, sweetheart. All better now, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Tank you.”

I carried Agnes back to the bed and checked to make sure the blanket wasn’t wet before I put it back over her. I brushed curls from Agnes’s forehead and this time kissed her there. “Go back to sleep, dear. When you wake up, we’ll have some medicine to make you better.”

“Aw wight,” she said, her voice already sounding sleepy.

I waited until I was sure she was asleep before I went back to Clare’s office. The ghost waited for me, a scroll of paper on the desk. Clare had worked on developing the ability to manipulate light objects like the scrolls and a special knob in the vault to slip them through.

I picked up the scroll and began reading it. It was a potion called, “Accelerated Growth.” I looked up at Clare. “Is this what it sounds like?”

“It should make her an adult again. If you do it right. It’s very tricky.”

I looked over the instructions for the potion. I had only to read a couple of lines of the parchment before I recognized the handwriting. “Agnes wrote this one, didn’t she?”

“Yes. Now that I think of it, I remember her coming down here about a hundred thirty years ago. She spent days down here working on it. You should be glad you didn’t have to see what happened to some of the test subjects.”

“Test subjects?”

“Chickens. A couple of them turned to dust. Another actually reverted back to an egg. But she finally got it to work—at least on chickens.”

I thought about it for a moment. A hundred thirty years ago—about the time when she had asked me to become twelve again for her. Tears came to my eyes. “She wrote it for me,” I said, my voice catching in my throat. “So that I could grow up again after the wedding. But I was too stupid to come back for it.”

“I’m sorry, Sylvia. If I’d known—”

“I know. It’s all right. I deserved what I got for running away.” I tried in vain to wipe at my eyes. “I was so jealous of her. So jealous that she found her true love and mine was, you know.”

“I know. And I know how much you loved my brother. He loved you just as much.”

“And I got him killed.”

“Of course you didn’t. Henri was a big boy. He made his own choices.”

“He would have made different ones if I hadn’t driven him away. We could have been happy together, like Agnes and Alejandro.”

“There’s no way to know that. You might have both died from a fever in two weeks.”

“At least it would have been together.”

“You don’t really think that, do you?” When I didn’t say anything, Clare shook her translucent head. “The Sylvia Joubert I know wouldn’t be sitting here feeling sorry for herself. She would be getting the ingredients for that potion together to help her sister and then she would go rescue her friend from these Nazis.”

I nodded at this. I had been doing a lot of feeling sorry for myself lately. There wasn’t any more time for that, though. Agnes and Ethan needed my help. I read the rest of the parchment, feeling a punch to the gut as I reached the end. The final ingredient were elfstones. These were almost impossible to find anymore. We had kept a few in the vault back in Rampart City, but the Nazis had taken care of that.

There was one other witch who would have some, though.

As usual, I found Regina Milton in her office. She hardly looked up from her papers as I vanished into her office. “It’s customary to knock first,” she said. “But then you never went to finishing school. You were practically raised by wolves, though wolves might have better manners.”

“I don’t have time for this right now. I need three elfstones for a potion.”

This got her attention. “What sort of potion?”

“My sister is back at the archives. The Nazis gave her something that made her two years old. This potion would change her back.”

“I see,” she said and then glared at me without saying anything.

“You have to help her. It’s just three elfstones. Then I can get out of your hair.”

“Have you considered that being a baby again might be good for Agnes? It might be good for both of you, to teach you to respect the coven’s rules.”

“Goddamn you,” I snarled. I reached into my jacket for the Colt. I leveled it at her head. She didn’t even blink. “I want the elfstones. Now. I’ll kill you and take them if I have to.”

“I think you’d find that I’m not as easily killed as one of your bogeymen.”

“I’ll find a way. It might not be pretty for you, though.”

Regina only smiled slightly. “I think raising a child might finally give you the discipline you’ve always lacked. If only you had kept that other little mistake of yours.”

I cocked the hammer on the Colt. “Don’t you ever talk about my daughter again, you understand?” I held the gun closer to her face. “Get the fucking stones. Now.”

“I’d suggest you take the matter up with Glenda. If she approves—”

“There isn’t time for hearings!”

“It would seem Agnes has plenty of time.”

I had my finger on the trigger when there was a flash of white light. I turned to the right to see Glenda and Hisae standing there. Glenda waved her hand and the Colt went flying against the wall. I joined it a second later. I lay on my rear, my hands raised in a defensive position, as Glenda came to stand over me. “That’s enough, Sylvia.”

“You finally decided to show up, huh? A better time might have been when they were poisoning my sister and threatening to kill her if I didn’t give Ethan to them. No, you just show up to protect your little friend there.”

“There was nothing we could do for Agnes—or for you. More witches involved would only have made the situation more volatile.”

“Well you can involve yourselves now and give me three elfstones to change Agnes back into a grownup.”

“Are you sure that’s the best thing for her?”

“Of course I am. I can’t let her go through that again, not—” I trailed off, not wanting to say the rest in front of that bitch Regina.

“Not like you did,” Hisae said. “That is what you are truly concerned about, my child.”

“Don’t give me that fortune cookie stuff. I can’t leave Agnes as a baby. She doesn’t deserve that. They only did that to her so they could get to me. She’s innocent.”

Glenda put a hand on my shoulder and while I wanted to shake it away, I didn’t. She helped me get to my feet and then kept her hand on my shoulder. “I think we should go talk. Regina, get the elfstones for her please.”

“If that’s what you think is best,” Regina said, though she clearly wasn’t thrilled by the prospect.

“I do. Sylvia is right: Agnes is blameless in all of this. We should do all we can to help her.”

Glenda led me out of Regina’s office and down the hall. We didn’t say anything as students ran past us in their purple jackets and plaid jumpers. A few gave me a second glance, probably thinking I was a drifter looking for a handout.

We stopped at a stone bench in the main courtyard, which was already covered in a layer of front; winter came early in Switzerland. Glenda sat down and then patted the seat next to her. Like an obedient child I sat down next to her and stared down at my boots. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You love your sister. There’s no fault in that. You wouldn’t have killed Regina anyway.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“She could have stopped you any time she wanted to; she just prefers not to use violence. You know how she is about that.”

Yes, violence was too messy and undisciplined for someone like Regina, who would prefer to talk her way out of any problems. “Thank you for helping Agnes.”

“You know I love Agnes. I love both of you.” Glenda shook her head. “Times like this I wish your mother were still here. She was always better at dealing with you three.”

“We are a handful.”

Glenda put her arm around my shoulder again and gave me a shake, like a mother. “I know you blame yourself for all of this, but it’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

I nodded. “You won’t get an argument from me.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Well, you would be right. I should have done something about this Headmistress years ago. But she’s very good at hiding her tracks and I didn’t think she was this much of a threat.”

“She knows all our secrets,” I said, thinking of what had happened in Nepal, Rampart City, and Edinburgh. “Or at least mine.”

“You think she’s someone in the coven?”

“That’s a possibility.”

“I hope you haven’t been bandying that around.”

“To who? None of you trust me anyway. Except Agnes and someone took care of her nicely.” I shook my head. “I suppose Hisae told you about the charms. Only one of you near the top would know about that.”

“Perhaps. It’s not that much of a secret. And it would be easy enough to find some of your hair lying around.”

I shook my head again. “I saw Hisae’s. It was black. When was the last time her hair was that color?”

“A long time ago. That doesn’t prove anything.”

“It’s occurred to me that you probably have some old charms lying around.”

“I do, in case some headstrong young witch decides she can do a better job of running the coven than I can.”

“Like me for instance? Or Agnes?”

“Agnes would never dream of running the coven. Neither would you.”

“Hisae?”

“She’s far too loyal for that. And you said they tried to kill her.”

“It might have been a setup,” I said, though I didn’t put much stock in this. I doubted even Hisae would have volunteered to have herself beaten to a pulp like that.

“I’m sure Regina is at the top of your list.”

“Why not? She probably thinks she can do a better job. She’s a senior witch too. And she’s a headmistress here.”

“Regina is content with running her school. That’s all the power she ever wanted.”

“Then who? Tabitha? Sabrina?”

“I don’t know. I’m sure you’ll find out. Perhaps when you go to rescue your friend.”

“Ethan isn’t my friend.”

“Don’t be silly. I know what happened back in America. There’s no shame in it. So long as you know where to draw the line.”

I nodded, thinking of Alejandro and our daughter. “I do.”

“Good.” She gave my shoulder another little shake. “Go back and help Agnes and then find your friend. I’ll keep an eye on the coven and see if I can’t root out the traitor—if there is one. Until I do, be careful who you talk to about any of this.”

“I will. Most of the others don’t like me anyway, remember?”

“That’s only in your imagination. We’re all very proud of you for what you’ve done.”

“Except Regina.”

“Even her—in her way.”

Regina had the elfstones on her desk, wrapped up in a handkerchief. I peeked into the handkerchief, seeing three purplish beads about the size of ordinary pearls. These were the key to making Agnes into an adult again, into getting my sister back.

“Thank you, Regina,” I said, trying to keep my voice level.

“You’re welcome. Give my regards to Agnes.”

“Sure.” Then I vanished back to the archives to begin work on the potion.

As a novice I had worked with Agnes to learn the basics of making potions. I had made an Angel Food one that left Agnes with wings and a halo for an entire week. During that time she had made sure not to visit any churches in case someone got the wrong idea.

This potion would be far more complicated. Most of the complication came from the elfstones. They couldn’t be used in their solid state; they had to be ground up into a fine powder and then boiled in beetlesap to make a paste. Eflstones were nearly as hard as diamonds, which meant it took a lot of elbow grease to get them into the powdered state. I was glad Agnes was still in bed so her little ears wouldn’t hear me while I used every curse word in the book.

This was only the beginning. There was a lot of measuring and brewing. It wasn’t like in the storybooks, where a witch just threw everything in a cauldron and mixed it up with a big spoon. It was more like how I imagined one of Ethan’s chemistry labs would look, with a lot of small bottles and pans steaming and bubbling.

I just about dropped the elfstone paste when I heard Agnes’s voice from behind me. “Sywvia?”

I spun around and forced myself to smile at her. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Did you go pee-pee again? Or pooh-pooh?”

“No.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No.” She crossed her oversized sleeves over her narrow chest. “I’m not a baby.”

“I know you’re not. You’re a big girl.”

“My bwain isn’t a toddwer’s,” she said, her chubby cheeks turning violet. “Not yet.”

“Of course it’s not. I didn’t mean—”

“Wet me hewp you.”

“I’m not sure—”

“I know more about potions than you do.”

“You do, but I’m not sure how much you can do right now.”

Agnes glared at me and then said, “The paste is too wumpy. It won’t work wike that.”

I looked down at the paste. It did look lumpy. “Oh. Right.”

I set the paste down and then helped Agnes onto a stool. From there she could watch me work and correct me when I was doing something wrong. It felt odd taking orders from a toddler, but at this point I was willing to do anything to get her back to normal.

We had to take a break a few times for her to nap—and once to change her again—but after probably twelve hours, the potion was ready. We didn’t have any vials in there, so I planned to spoon it into her mouth from one of the pans. Looking down at the murky brown concoction, I didn’t have much hope for what we were attempting. I remembered what Clare had said about Agnes’s experiments on chickens. She had never tried this on a human before.

“I should test this first,” I said.

“No, ow do it,” Agnes said, but I held the pan out of her reach.

“I don’t want to risk that it will do something worse to you.” I patted her curly head. “You’ve suffered enough.”

“Don’t be stupid, Sywvia. You have to save Ethan. There’s nothing for me to do.” She looked down at the folds of her nightgown, tears sparkling in her eyes. “I’m usewess.”

“No, Agnes, you’re not. I couldn’t have made this potion without you. We wouldn’t even have the recipe if it weren’t for you.” I knelt down to meet her eyes. “Clare told me about it. I’m sorry I didn’t come back so you could use it on me. It was stupid of me.”

“It was stupid of me to make you do that.”

I smiled at her and let myself pinch her cheek. “We’re a couple of stupid girls, aren’t we?”

She giggled and nodded. “Yes.” We hugged for what might have been the last time. Despite what everyone had told me, I still felt guilty about it. I never should have let Agnes get mixed up in all of this. She had always been so good to me, to everyone. All of us: me, Alejandro, and the coven had repaid her with betrayals and abuse.

“I’m so sorry, Agnes. I love you.”

“I wuv you too.” Her tiny hands snatched the pan from me as we hugged. Before I could stop her, she’d already drank a good portion of it. I didn’t see much choice but to let her finish it off. Once she did, I wiped the brown mess from around her mouth with her skirt. “Put me down,” she said.

I understood what she meant; if she was going to grow up again it would be much better to do it lying flat on the floor. I set her down on the stone floor, retrieving the pillow from Clare’s bedroom to prop under Agnes’s head. Then I gave one of the wooden spoons I’d used to her to bite down on.

“Oh my,” she whispered. Then it happened. It wasn’t like with the Inner Child potion or even the antidote Cecelia had given us. This looked more like an explosion in the way Agnes seemed to be expanding in every direction at once. Her scream was still echoing around the cavern when the potion finished its work.

It worked—mostly. Agnes had to be sixteen years old at least. The main difference was that she also had to weigh about two hundred pounds. The nightgown that had been so loose on her as a toddler could now barely contain her gut. Her face was just as plump, with jowls blotting out most of her neck. Even her hair was different, more of a wheat color and bobbed in an unflattering way. “Goddamnit,” I muttered. “I’m sorry, Agnes.”

“It’s my fault,” she said. “I must have missed something.”

“I probably didn’t do something right.”

She rolled into a sitting position, her gut resting on her ham-sized thighs. She patted her stomach and smiled. “It’s fine. Once I get my magic back, I can change myself back.”

“I hope so,” I said. Agnes had always been so beautiful, even as an old woman; I couldn’t imagine her living as a plain, fat girl. “Do you have any magic at all?”

She wiggled one pudgy foot. “It’s in there. I can feel it,” she said.

“Good.” I tried not to grunt as I helped her up to her feet. “Let’s get you back to bed. You need to rest.”

“I suppose so,” she said.

The bed was barely wide enough to fit her; she settled onto the mattress with a satisfied sigh. The effort of walking to the bedroom and climbing onto the bed had prompted sweat to break out on her forehead. Maybe some of that was from the effort of growing up so fast too. She patted her stomach and laughed. “I don’t think I have to worry about being cold. I’ve got as much blubber as a whale.”

“Agnes—”

“I know, it’s not funny.”

I tucked the pillow under Agnes’s sandy hair. “Like you said, it won’t be for long. Once I get back, we’ll go home and find a way to fix it. Then you can get back to your sewing. I’m sure your clients miss you.”

“Maybe.” She yawned, but when she rolled over to face me, she looked deadly serious. “When you find him, you have to promise me something.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t hurt my grandbabies. I know they’ve done some bad things, but I know they’re not bad people.”

“What are you talking about? Your grandchildren are dead.”

She shook her head. “No, they aren’t. They’re working for this Headmistress. She’s giving them potions so they can stay young and pretty.” Agnes sighed and tears bubbled up in her eyes. “I don’t know where I went wrong with them. They were such sweet girls. How could they become monsters like this?”

“I don’t know. You’re sure it’s them?”

“I know my own grandchildren. I was there when they were born. Do you think I could ever forget their sweet little faces?”

I thought back to Florence and the blond girl who had looked and sounded so much like Brigitte. I had thought it must be a coincidence, but what if it wasn’t? What if it was actually Agnes’s granddaughter? Not dead from a carriage accident, but saved by the Headmistress and kept alive with potions for over a century. “That’s impossible. Isn’t it?”

“I know it’s them.” The tears came more freely from her eyes now. “You have to promise you won’t hurt them, Sylvia. Whatever they’ve done, they’re still my babies. I love them.”

I nodded to her. “I promise. If I find them, I won’t hurt them.” Not unless I have to, I added to myself. If them and Cecelia tried to get in my way—

I stopped, thinking of Cecelia. I remembered seeing her in her true form for the first time in Casablanca, how much she’d looked like me. Only her skin had been a bit darker—like Alejandro’s. She was working for the Headmistress, just like Agnes’s granddaughters, who should have been dead a long time ago but weren’t. That was when it hit me like a punch in the face.

Cecelia was my daughter.

Chapter 20

2011-05-02T06:30:00.002-07:00

Chapter 20

I woke up before Ethan did. I slipped out of his embrace and then padded into the bathroom, a welcome addition from the last time I’d stayed here. I caught my reflection in the mirror and grimaced. I looked like a mess: eyes red and hair disheveled. I probably didn’t smell much better either. Not that Agnes was going to care what I would smell like when I came to make the exchange.

The shower was lukewarm at best, but it did give me some time to think. There wasn’t much point in fooling around, not until I knew what we were dealing with. If this Headmistress knew all of my secrets, then she would probably be able to guess what I would do before I could do it. I didn’t have much doubt that she would be the one calling the shots; she might even be behind the entire Nazi operation. That was a thought I didn’t want to think too deeply about, especially if Glenda was the Headmistress. She’d never claimed to have any interest in the affairs of mortals, but that might just be a clever cover story. Or she might have gotten sick of hiding in the shadows and decided to start taking control of the world.

In any case, my first duty was to my sister. Agnes had always been there for me, though most of the time I’d been too stubborn to seek her help. I wouldn’t let these Nazi bastards kill her. If they had, then I would make them pay. I’d burn the whole Nazi regime to the ground, starting with Hitler and Berlin.

I hadn’t brought any clothes with me from Casablanca, so I had to dress in the same outfit I’d been wearing when the prefect arrested me. I could use Agnes’s skills to sew up a couple of holes and to fix the hem that had become ragged. Maybe later, once we got her back. After the shower I looked less like a madwoman, but I didn’t feel much more confident about any of this.

Ethan was just waking up as I stepped back in the bedroom. “Good morning,” I said, trying to sound as chipper as I could manage. “Sleep all right?”

“Like a baby,” he said.

“Good. The shower’s a little cold.”

“That’s fine. A cold shower will help wake me up.” He brushed past me, a shy grin on his face I went back through my memories, trying to remember if we had done anything last night. No, we had just shared the bed and cuddled; that was probably as close to sex as Ethan had managed. Providing we survived this, I might have to set him straight about a few things.

While I waited for him to clean up, I used the traveling spell on my jacket to call it back from Casablanca. The jacket was a little wet, but none the worse for wear. Searching the pockets, I found everything where I’d left it, including my old Colt. I opened the chamber to check the load. If I had more time and the right equipment I could give the weapon a good cleaning, but I’d just have to hope for the best. If we were lucky, it wouldn’t come to any shooting.

Ethan looked about as fresh as possible under the circumstances when he came out of the bathroom. He was still wearing that same grin, at least until he saw me with the Colt. “I thought you threw that off the plane.”

“I keep a spell on it and the jacket so I can get them back.” I clicked the Colt shut. “They don’t make them like this anymore.”

“Why do you need a gun anyway? You have magic—”

“It’s a lot easier to kill demons and bogeymen with a gun or crossbow,” I said. “If I’d used magic that night in your bedroom, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t feel bad, there’s a lot about magic I still don’t understand.”

“Really? I would have thought after four hundred years—”

“Every witch has a discipline. Mine is killing monsters. Agnes’s is making potions.”

He must have heard my voice change when I mentioned Agnes. His smile returned, though it didn’t quite go with his eyes. “We’ll get her back. You’ll find a way.”

“Yeah, I’ve done a good job with everything so far.”

“Sylvia—”

“Skip it. Let’s get going.”

I took his hand and we vanished to Florence.

The amphitheater didn’t look much different than the last time I’d been here. The main difference was more of the Italian soldiers we’d seen in Venice were surrounding the place. They were blocking the entrances to keep the public out and I was sure they had a few snipers up in the seats to kill us if things went bad. Or at least they would try to kill us.

I vanished us right onto the center of the grassy field where once I’d imagined seeing my daughter. Ethan blinked a few times and then went pale when he saw the soldiers. The reality began setting in for him that this wasn’t going to be easy. “Where’s your sister?” he asked.

“That’s a good question. Let’s find out.” I raised my arms and then called out in Italian, “My name is Sylvia Joubert. I’ve come for my sister. Who is in charge here?”

The man who stepped forward wasn’t an Italian. He was a beefy blond with blue eyes and a swastika on the arm of his black uniform. He answered in German, “Your sister will be here soon. I see you have brought your friend.”

“That’s right, I’ve brought Mr. Fraser. If you want to get your grubby hands on him, you’d better make with my sister fast.”

“I assure you that she will be here very shortly. In the meantime, have a seat, won’t you?”

I grumbled at this, but decided at least for the moment to play ball with him. I took Ethan’s arm to lead him over to the bleachers. I took him up to the same row where my affair with Alejandro had finally ended. Looking down on the grassy plain, I again thought of the little girl I’d seen, the one with Alejandro’s face and my eyes. She was dead now; she had probably died before this century began. Did she have any children? Was a part of my love for Alejandro still alive somewhere?

Ethan shook my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“I wish you’d stop asking me that.”

“You just look really sad all of the sudden.”

I told him about what happened the last time I’d come here. “I had hoped the baby would bring us together, but it just tore us apart.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What happened to your baby?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know?”

“I gave her up for adoption.” I raised my finger before he could say anything else. “I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“Sure, if that’s what you want.”

There wasn’t any more time for conversation as I saw the guards by the entrance tunnel parting. Two SS men came through first, machine guns at the ready. Behind them were three hooded figures. Probably the blond girls I’d run into at the castle. Maybe Agnes was amongst them. Maybe they had brainwashed her into joining them.

But then I saw a fourth hooded figure, this one pushing a wheelchair. I began running down the steps, not caring how any of the guards reacted. I knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what until I reached the bottom of the steps.

The SS guards took a step off to the side to allow the hooded figures to step forward. They drew back their hoods and as expected they were the same three blond girls I’d fought before. They didn’t say anything, just took a step to let the wheelchair through.

Agnes was in the chair, but not the Agnes I had left behind. It wasn’t even the elderly seamstress I’d lived with for fifty years in Rampart City. This Agnes was even older, her hair entirely white and the skin of her wrinkled face sagging as if it were made of wax and being held up to an open flame. Even her eyes had lost their luster, having turned cloudy from cataracts.

The figure behind the wheelchair let her hood drop as well. Cecelia’s face grinned at me like back in Casablanca. “We meet again,” she said.

Ethan caught me before I could throw myself at Cecelia and wring the life from her. “What have you done to my sister?” I shouted.

“Sylvia?” Agnes said, her voice sounding like someone crumpling newspaper. “Is that you?”

I knelt down in front of the chair and touched her wrinkled cheek. Her head turned in my direction, but her eyes refused to focus on me. “I’m here, Agnes. I’m here to rescue you.”

“There’s no need, dear. My grandbabies are looking after me.” She waved a hand feebly towards the blond girls standing off to the side.

“Agnes, your grandchildren are dead. So are your great-grandchildren. Don’t you remember?” She only coughed in reply to this. When her head sagged down onto her chest, I thought for a moment she might be dead. Then I saw her stomach rise and fall; she was just sleeping. I looked back up at Cecelia. “What did you do to her?”

“The Headmistress said you’d be familiar with this. Except she’s made it more potent than last time.”

I stared at Agnes, but instead of her face I saw Mama’s. Our mother who had begun to wither away when she could no longer use her magic. Except that process had taken months, not two days. “You sons of bitches,” I growled. “When she dies—”

“She won’t die. At least if you give us what we want.” One of the blond girls reached into her pocket for a silver vial. She passed this over to Cecelia. “Agnes’s life in exchange for Ethan. I think that’s a fair trade, don’t you?”

It was Ethan’s turn to need held back before he could grab Cecelia’s neck. “How could you?” he shouted at her. “The girl I met at Cuthbert couldn’t do something like this! She was sweet and good and innocent—”

“She was a lie,” Cecelia snapped. “A cover story I made up so we could get what we wanted.”

“No, you can’t be that good of a liar. Some part of you had to be that Cecelia. Some part of you is still that girl. You don’t want to kill Sylvia’s sister and you don’t want to work for these monsters. Let’s put an end to this. We can go back home and start over again.”

For just a moment it looked as if Cecelia would go for it. Her mouth twitched and her eyes softened as she looked at him. Just as quickly the moment ended. She reached into her robe for one of her knives. She held this to Agnes’s throat. “I’ll kill her right now if you say another word.”

I gently pushed Ethan back. “Don’t,” I said. “We’ll figure something out.”

He looked down at the ground with tears sparkling in her eyes. “I don’t know her anymore,” he said.

“It’ll be all right.” I turned to face Cecelia again. Maybe it was my imagination, but Agnes seemed to have aged a few years while we had been sitting here. “How do I know that will actually cure her?”

“You don’t, but what choice do you have? Are you really going to let her die? Your own sister?” Cecelia grinned at me again. “But you already let your daughter die, didn’t you?”

She didn’t so much as flinch as I slapped her across the face. The guards raised their weapons, but one motion from Cecelia and they put the guns down. “Don’t you ever mention my daughter again or I will kill you,” I hissed.

“You’re not in any position to make threats right now.” To emphasize her point she pressed the knife to the loose skin of Agnes’s neck, enough to draw a trickle of blood. Agnes continued to snooze throughout this.

She was right about that. I knew Cecelia wouldn’t hesitate to kill Agnes if she didn’t think she would get what she wanted. And from seeing her in action, I knew Cecelia’s reflexes were such that I wouldn’t be able to stop her in time. She had me over the proverbial barrel and she knew it.

Ethan knew it too. “Let me go with them,” he said.

“Ethan, no—”

“We have”I to. Your sister is going to die otherwise.”

I remembered what Hisae had told me back in Nepal: it might be necessary to sacrifice Agnes in order to save the coven, and the world. I also remembered what I’d told her, that I would never sacrifice my sister, but would I hold to that even if it meant sacrificing Ethan? For the first time in a while I was completely paralyzed with indecision.

Ethan took me by the shoulders. He whispered into my ear, “You can rescue me after you make sure your sister is safe.”

“Ethan—”

“I believe in you.”

“Still?”

“Yes.” Maybe it was because of the time we’d spent together or maybe it was to spite Cecelia, but he leaned forward then to kiss me on the mouth. As much as I knew I shouldn’t, I kissed him back, even holding on to him so he couldn’t get away. “I love you,” he whispered.

I didn’t know what else to say, so I mumbled, “You too.”

Then Ethan took a step away from me. “Give her the potion. When we’re sure it works, then I’ll go with you.”

“Do you think I’m stupid? If I give her the cure, then she’ll vanish the three of you out of here,” Cecelia said.

He nodded and then stepped forward until he was just inches in front of Cecelia. He took the vial from her hand. The way she looked at him was the same I probably had been during our kiss. She didn’t react as he tossed the vial to me. “Now we can do it. Give her the cure and if it doesn’t work, you can kill both of us.”

“She won’t,” Cecelia said, sounding more like herself again. “She loves you too much for that.”

“We’ll see,” I said, summoning every ounce of strength I could. I took the cap off the vial and then shook Agnes. “Wake up, Agnes. It’s time for your medicine.”

“No medicine,” she whispered. “I’m not sick.”

“Agnes, please. Do it for me. Your sister.”

“No,” she said and went back to snoozing.

One of the blond girls leaned down and put a hand on Agnes’s shoulder. “Grandmama, you must take your medicine. We don’t want to lose you,” the girl said. Her voice was soft and sweet and when I squinted, I could swear she looked like Agnes’s granddaughter Brigitte. Except Brigitte had died nearly a hundred years ago in a carriage accident.

Even if it wasn’t Brigitte, what she said did the trick. Agnes stirred again, this time opening her mouth. “If you insist, dear,” she said. One liver-spotted hand touched the girl’s hair. “I’ll do it for you.”

She drank the contents of the vial in one long pull. Then the vial slipped from her hand to the ground. I thought again she might be dead, but her scream a moment later ended those doubts. The blond girl and I both stepped back, giving Agnes some room as the potion did its work.

Just like the Inner Child potion, Agnes started to become younger. The skin on her face tightened and her hair darkened a bit to gray. She tumbled out of the chair and the blond girl and I both leaned forward at the same time to help Agnes onto the ground. There her body bucked around like a live electrical wire as she became younger.

In just two minutes she was back to the young, beautiful woman I’d left behind in Rampart City days earlier. I was going to help her sit up, but then she bucked again. The potion wasn’t done yet. I could only watch in horror as Agnes descended back through puberty, her skin turning greasy for a few moments and pimples springing to life before fading away. She kept getting smaller, until she was a little girl and finally a toddler. I waited for the potion to continue taking her backwards in time, until she was an infant, but nothing more happened. She let out a sigh and went to sleep.

“You tricked us!” I shouted at Cecelia.

“I did nothing of the sort,” she said. “Your sister isn’t going to die now.”

“But she’s two years old!”

“That’s not our problem,” Cecelia said. She took Ethan’s arm, pulling him close. The blond girl who had sounded like Brigitte stroked Agnes’s hair and then stood up. She rejoined the other two and put the hood back up so I couldn’t see her face. “Now, we’ve kept our part of the bargain. I trust you’ll keep up yours too.”

“This isn’t over,” I growled at her, but for the moment I could do nothing more than watch as the Nazis hauled Ethan away.