Page 111 of A Resistance of Witches

Lydia suddenly remembered where she had picked up that horriblephrase, all those years ago. It had been Sybil. Some joke she’d made to the girls on their first day of class; Lydia didn’t remember the particulars. She did remember that she’d laughed.

“Eva says you asked to see me,” Sybil said carefully. “Would you like to discuss things calmly, now that you’ve had some time to think?”

Lydia directed her gaze downward. “The story you told me. About your grandmother turning that boy into a goat. Was that true?”

Sybil nodded. “My grandmother could do a great many things the average witch could only dream of.”

Lydia kept her eyes on her cup. “I’ve read about transmutation in stories. I always wanted to learn it. I used to sit in my room by myself, staring at a sixpence, trying to make it turn into a crown. All I ever managed to do was give myself a headache.”

Sybil chuckled. “I used to do that as well.”

“They don’t teach transmutation at the academy. I asked about it once, my first year. Mistress Jacqueline said that was only in fairy stories.”

“Jacqueline has a small mind.”

Lydia set down her cup. “It made me wonder what else might be possible. What other things could be achieved that I was told were only in fairy stories.”

Sybil smiled. She’d never been one to pass up an opportunity to share her wisdom.

Sybil talked at length. She spoke of her grandmother, how she could make barren women fertile, cure disease, hex whole families. She repeated the stories her grandmother had told her as a girl, about witches who could fly under the full moon, transform into animals, wreck ships, or save them, depending on their mood. And she told stories that were older still—about the days before the Roman Empire, when the warrior kings of Europe bowed before the power of the witch, and knew their tribes would rise to greatness or fall into ruin at their pleasure. Lydialistened, and when Sybil finished, she sat quietly, her coffee growing cold.

“I never considered what it might be like to live openly. I always thought there was no way for us to live except in secret.”

Sybil nodded sympathetically. Lydia looked up from her cup and held Sybil’s gaze for the first time since they’d sat down.

“You hurt me terribly, you know. You broke my heart.”

Sybil’s face appeared to crumple before Lydia’s eyes. “I know.”

The tears that gathered in Lydia’s throat were real, and she made no attempt to hide the tremor in her voice as she spoke. “I’ve always trusted you. You’ve been like a mother to me. But this…”

Sybil reached across the table and took Lydia’s hand in hers. Lydia let her.

“It’s in the past. I promise you, from now on, we will have no secrets from each other.” Sybil’s hand felt like a vise. Lydia slipped from her grasp.

“But if I give you access to theGrimorium Bellum, people will die.”

“Darling,” Sybil said, and this time Lydia did not reproach her, “people are already dying. They’re dying on the battlefield every day. And they will continue to die until we put a stop to this war. We can do that with the power of theGrimorium Bellum.”

It sounded so logical, so reasonable. It sounded like peace, if peace meant the destruction of anyone who would dare stand against you.

“What are you planning to do?”

Sybil drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “Some accounts of theGrimorium Bellumrefer to a spell which calls forth a creature from inside the book itself. A silent assassin, which feeds on the souls of the caster’s enemies, reducing them to ash. Do you know the spell I mean?”

Lydia’s mouth felt dry. “The Unmaking.”

Sybil nodded. “I think it’s preferable to this messy famine and plaguebusiness, don’t you? It will be clean. Simple. Painless.” For a moment, Sybil looked almost saddened by the thought of so much death. But Lydia knew by now that it was all a show.

“And who will be the target? I expect Hitler would…” Lydia found she couldn’t quite finish the thought, and Sybil spared her from having to voice it.

“You expect Hitler would use the book to wipe out the Jews?”

Lydia swallowed the acid that burned in her throat. Even though she knew it was all a farce, she couldn’t help but feel a deep and terrible shame.

Sybil laughed, a sound that made Lydia’s skin crawl. “Oh no, darling. There will be plenty of time for that sort of thing later.” Lydia felt a sickening chill course through her. “Hitler has requested that the Witches of the Third Reich take on a more…strategictarget for now. Stalingrad, for instance.”

Something turned over inside Lydia’s chest. “You plan to wipe out all of Stalingrad? Why?”

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