Outside our windows, the still-bare branches scrape against the carriage. The night has claws, but we escape, bumping along until Spence comes into view once more. With its lamps still ablaze, the sprawling estate glows brightly in the sooty night. Only the East Wing is dark. The clouds shift; the moon shows her face. Atop the roof, the leering gargoyles perch, the high arches of their wings formidable shadows against the moon’s light. The stone beasts seem taut and ready. And for a moment, I remember that chilling hallucination in the carriage that day with Felicity—the creature’s open mouth, the glint of sharp teeth coming down, the thin stream of blood—and I have to look away.
“Well, I still say if there were some grand secret within the book we’d have discovered it by now,” I insist.
Ann peers out at the vast expanse of stars. “Perhaps we didn’t know where to look.”
An hour later, we’re in Felicity’s room, crowded around our copy of A History of Secret Societies, trying to read it by faint candlelight.
“Look for anything that makes mention of this Tree of All Souls,” I instruct. “Perhaps we missed it the first time round because it held no meaning for us before.”
We read page after frustratingly oblique page until the words begin to blind us. We take turns reading aloud. There are entries on the Druids, the Gnostics, witchcraft, and paganism, a few illustrations that add nothing. We read again about the Order and the Rakshana and find no new facts of interest. There is not a single word about a Tree of All Souls.
We turn the page and there’s an illustration of a tower. I keep reading.
“‘Glastonbury Tor. Stonehenge. Iona in the Hebrides. The Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza. These are all thought to be imbued with magic derived from the alignment of the earth and the stars,’” I read with a yawn. “‘Sacred points within the earth are indicated by various markers, which include churches, cemeteries, stone circles, the wood, and castles, to name but a few. For the great priestesses, the venerable Druids, the noble pagans believed that here the spirits walked—”
“Gemma, there’s nothing more there,” Felicity grouses. She hangs her head and arms over the end of her bed like a bored child. “Can we please go on to the realms? Pip’s waiting.”
“The book is five hundred pages long,” Ann agrees. “We’ll be here all night, and I want to play with magic.”