I hear the girls whispering to each other. “Ask her.”
“No, you!”
Cecily clears her throat. “How are you feeling, Gemma?” she asks with pretend sympathy. “I heard you had a terrible fever.”
I spoon porridge into my mouth.
“Is that true?” Martha presses.
“No,” I say. “I was overcome by too much magic. And by the lies and secrets that make up this place as surely as the stones and mortar.”
Their mouths open in shock, and uncomfortable giggling follows. Fee and Ann look on with alarm. I’m no longer hungry. I push away from the table and walk out of the dining room. Mrs. Nightwing glances up, but she doesn’t try to stop me. It’s as if she knows I’m a lost cause.
Felicity and Ann come to visit in the afternoon. Their curiosity about my madness has won out over their anger. Felicity pulls a sack of toffees from her pocket.
“Here. I thought you might need these.”
I let them sit on the bed, untouched. “You went into the realms last night, didn’t you?”
Ann’s eyes widen. It is a wonder that she could make so fine an actress yet be so terrible a liar.
“Yes,” Felicity says, and I’m grateful for her honesty. “We danced and Ann sang and it was such a merry time that I didn’t care if we never came back. It is like paradise there.”
“You can’t live in paradise all the time,” I say.
Felicity pockets the toffees. “You can’t keep us from the realms,” she says, rising.
“Things have changed. Circe has the dagger,” I say, and I tell them everything I remember from last night. “I can’t hold the magic by myself anymore. We need to make the alliance and go after Circe.”
Felicity’s face clouds. “You promised we wouldn’t give the magic back until after our debuts. You promised to help me.”
“You might come away with enough magic of your own—”
“And I might not! I’ll be trapped! Please, Gemma,” Felicity begs.
“I’m sorry,” I say, swallowing hard. “It can’t be helped.”
Felicity’s passion cools, and I find her calm much more frightening than her anger. “You don’t hold all the magic anymore, Gemma,” she reminds me. “Pip has power, too, and it’s growing stronger. And if you won’t help me, I know she will.”
“Fee…,” I croak, but she won’t listen. She’s already out the door, Ann at her heels.
The afternoon is a suddenly chilly one, as if winter has one last gasp before summer takes hold. Inspector Kent has come to see about Ithal’s death. His men comb the woods for evidence of foul play, though they find none. Phantoms leave no trail. Mr. Miller is taken from a pub and brought round for an inquiry, though he protests his innocence, insisting there are ghosts in the woods of Spence.
Kartik has left his calling card—the red cloth—nestled in the ivy outside my window along with a note: Meet me in the chapel.
I slip inside the empty chapel and stare at the angel with the gorgon’s head. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. I understand you meant to protect me.”
A deep voice answers. “Go forth and conquer.”
I jump. Kartik shows himself from behind the pulpit. “Forgive me,” he says with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days. We’re quite the pair with our long faces and shadowed eyes. He runs a finger across the back of a pew. “Do you remember the first time I surprised you here?”
“Indeed. You frightened me, telling me to close my mind to the visions. I should have listened. I was the wrong girl for all of this.”
He leans against the end of the pew, his arms folded across his chest. “No, you’re not.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done, else you wouldn’t say that.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
It seems to take forever for the words to travel through the wreckage inside me. But they do come, and I don’t spare myself. I tell him everything, and he listens. I’m afraid he’ll hate me for it, but when I’ve finished he only nods.
“Say something,” I whisper. “Please.”
“The warning was for the birth of May. Now we know what it meant, I suppose,” he says, thinking already, and I smile a little because I know this means he’s heard, and we have moved on. “We’ll go after her.”
“Yes, but if I so much as dip a toe into the magic, I fear I’ll be joined to Circe, to the Winterlands. That I’ll go mad as I felt last night.”