Page 47 of A Resistance of Witches

Rebecca crouched next to the dead woman and removed one of her shoes and the stocking underneath, then wrapped the stocking tightly around her bloodied right arm. The witch’s red jacket lay where she had left it, draped across the back of the chair. Rebecca put it on. She considered taking the woman’s skirt, as well, but it was soaked through with blood, and would only draw unwanted attention.

She looked down at her shaking hands. She couldn’t possibly wield a knife in her condition. It would be taken from her in a second, and then she would be as dead as the witch on the floor. No, she needed a more forgiving weapon. She picked up the brick from its place by the door, tucked herself into the corner, and waited.

It wasn’t long before she heard a man’s footsteps echoing in the hallway. Rebecca stood next to the door with her body pushed flat against the wall, her heart hammering in her ears. She heard the lock disengage. The door swung open. Rebecca stood behind it and waited.

“Scheiße!” The Gestapo burst into the room and knelt by the dead witch, spewing expletives in German. Rebecca stepped out from her hiding place and lifted the brick high. The man turned, but before he could make a sound, she brought the brick down, hard and fast. He flinched, and the blow glanced, leaving a red gash behind his ear as he cried out in pain. She reared back and struck again, and this time the blow hit him in the temple, and he collapsed to the floor. She raised the brick one more time, ready to strike again, but the Gestapo lay motionless.

She could feel her pulse racing. Her vision swam. She nudged the man with her toe. He made a horrible sound, a low moan followed by a hiss of air. A pool of blood spread around his cratered skull. Rebecca knelt, searching his limp body until her fingers landed on the ring of keys stashed inside his right pocket. She gave them a quick glance, then kept searching, rifling through the man’s jacket until she found it—the key to her own beloved Citroën. She breathed a sigh of relief. They had confiscated her car, which meant it must be somewhere close by.

She stood and walked quickly out the door, shutting it behind her.

She was in a long, unguarded hallway, just like Lydia had described. The air was cold and damp, and smelled of urine. Doors lined the empty hallway. Some were identical to the one she’d just come out of, while others looked more like washrooms or storage closets. A great metal door loomed at the end of the corridor.

She wanted to run screaming from this place. She wanted to throw open every door until she found the sunlight, then flee as fast and as far as she could and not look back. Male voices floated through the air, coming from the door at the far end of the hallway. She was not free yet by any measure.

Rebecca tried the handle of the first door she came to, but the knob wouldn’t turn. She considered the mess of keys in her hand, but there were too many to try them all, and she abandoned the thought almost immediately. The second door swung open easily. It was a washroom with a cracked mirror hanging over a dirty sink. Two stinking urinals stood against the wall, along with a single stall. Rebecca opened the stall door to make certain she was alone, then stood in front of the dingy mirror. Dark brown blood had crusted on her bottom lip and under her nose, and there was a fat purple bruise forming on the left side of her face. She ran the water and dabbed away the blood as best she could, but there was nothing to be done about the bruising, or the cigarette burn on her neck. She hastily pulled the pins from her hairand rearranged it into a style similar to the one worn by the chestnut-haired woman, taking extra care to arrange her curls so they obscured the worst of the damage.

Rebecca took one last, shaking breath, then walked out of the washroom, striding toward the door at the end of the hallway. She could hear the men’s voices growing louder as she approached the door.

Don’t run, she told herself.If you run, you die.The door was unlocked.

She straightened her spine and walked through.

Fifteen

Lydia sat at the battered kitchen table at Château de Laurier, watching the rising sun slice through the morning mist like a scalpel.

“Did you sleep?” Henry asked. Lydia hadn’t heard him come in.

She shook her head. “You?”

“On and off.” He sat. He looked puffy and tired. “Have you found a car?”

“I believe so,” she said, although in truth, she wasn’t so sure. She’d been too exhausted to project again after the previous night’s efforts, and now she had no idea where Rebecca was, or whether she’d managed to escape. Lydia imagined Rebecca as she’d last seen her—dazed and bleeding in some Nazi interrogation room—and felt a quick pang of terror mixed with regret.

Henry grimaced at the morning light. He hadn’t looked at her since they’d left the cave. She imagined it had something to do with thethings she’d seen inside his head or, perhaps, something he’d seen in hers. Strangers weren’t often afforded such a private glimpse into each other’s minds, and the effect could be disconcerting, to say the least. She’d wanted to ask about what she’d seen—the dozens of lifeless eyes, the fear she’d felt, the sense of violation—but she didn’t dare.

“I’ve decided I’d like to come with you. To Auvergne,” he said.

She looked at him, surprised. “What about your art?”

He made a sound that was almost a chuckle, but not quite. “It won’t miss me. It’s just one day.”

“You’re very kind, but you don’t need to do that.”

Henry turned and looked at her then. His eyes were bloodshot, and Lydia realized that the heaviness she saw in his face wasn’t sleeplessness at all, but grief.

“René is my family. If he’s—” He stopped, took a breath. “If that’s his body you saw, then I need to go. I need to see that he’s taken care of.”

“You don’t know that it’s him. Maybe it’s someone else. Maybe he’d already moved on by the time—”

“I hope you’re right. Either way, I need to go.”

Lydia watched his face. The pain seemed to be caught there, like he was holding his breath to keep it from pouring out of him. She understood that pain and felt a stab of guilt for having caused it.

“All right. Of course. Yes.”

Henry nodded, and the tension seemed to seep out of his shoulders, just a little. He looked up at the window and frowned.

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