Page 55 of A Resistance of Witches

Lydia looked down at the book in her hands. She shook her head.

“Not so sure about taking it back to your academy?”

The academy.She knew she should have been gone already. She should have called for her Traveler and been back in London the second she laid her hands on theGrimorium Bellum. It would be safe there, she told herself. It had to be.

But when she closed her eyes, she could still see the shredded doorway in the warding, just as clearly as she had on that Samhain night. She imagined a shadowy figure, blade in hand, standing before that tattered portal. Even though she could not see the figure’s face, she was sure she knew who it was, just the same.

Vivian.

“I saw you, you know,” Rebecca said. “At the farmhouse. I saw what that thing did to you.”

Lydia looked into Rebecca’s knowing face.

“I may not have magic, but I can see well enough.” She nodded toward the book like it might turn around and bite at any moment. “A part of you disappeared when you opened that book. Your eyes, they were all wrong. Being in the room with that thing, it feels like being in a room with a corpse. It stinks of the grave.”

Lydia held the book closer and felt it turn warm, like a kitten in her lap.Funny, she thought. To her, the book only smelled like clean earth.

Rebecca’s eyes flicked to Lydia’s hands, softly caressing the book. “If you hold on to that thing for too long, it willeat you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Lydia looked down. The bloody streaks had disappeared, as if some hungry thing had lapped them up. She nodded.

“If you take it back to your academy, will it be safe?” Lydia did not reply. She didn’t need to. Rebecca saw the answer in her eyes. “You should destroy it.”

“What happened to using it against the Germans and ending the war?”

Rebecca stood with a grimace. “Is that what you think you should do? Now that you have it?”

For a moment, Lydia considered it—the glory and the power, the intoxicating violence, the triumph—and felt a wave of terrible shame wash over her. “No.”

Rebecca looked at her, and Lydia was sure that she could see the ugly truth, lurking just beneath her skin. That she had considered using the book. And that it had excited her.

•••

Later, Lydia saton the edge of her bed with theGrimorium Bellumbalanced on her lap. She knew she should try to sleep, but something about the book held her captive.

TheGrimorium Bellumwas dangerous. She knew it the way you knew a particular dog was dangerous, or a man who walks too close behind you on the street. It wasn’t so much about what it was doing, but what itcoulddo. Lydia could feel the potential of it under her hands, like a spring wound too tight, begging to be released. But there was something alluring in it too. The book seemed to speak to her, to want her touch. She felt it curling around her ankles, rubbing against her skin. Itlikedher.

Think of all the things we could do, it seemed to whisper.

Lydia stood and walked quickly to the chest of drawers across the room, and shoved the book inside. She needed to get away from it, just for a few minutes.

She stepped into the hallway, ignoring the way the book seemed to clamor for her attention, even from a distance. She walked, passing room after room, until she stood in front of Henry’s door.

She knew she should leave him be. He hadn’t spoken a word since the farm, not even to say good night. She understood all too well what he was going through, and knew she shouldn’t push her presence on him.Still, she had thought she might offer him some words of comfort, but now she felt foolish. Henry didn’t want to see her. He wanted to be alone. She was just about to return to her own room, when a voice drifted through the door.

“If you’re going to come in, then come.”

Henry was perched on the edge of the bed, just as he had been that first night when she’d stumbled into his room by accident. His head was bowed, but he looked up when she entered. He wasn’t crying. Lydia expected he would, later, but now he was looking at her with a naked mixture of grief and exhaustion that felt intimately familiar to her. It had changed the shape of him, making him both very young and impossibly old at the same time.

For a moment they were silent. It felt wrong, being in his bedroom like this, even though she’d been here before. It felt different, now that she was inside her body.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hover. I just…I wanted to see if you’re all right.”

He looked at her for a moment. Lydia thought he had never looked at her directly for quite that long before. Then the moment passed, and his gaze dropped to the floor again.

“I didn’t want to believe it was him. Even after the cave. Even after you told me…” He stopped, and Lydia watched the muscles in his throat constrict. “I didn’t want to believe he was dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said again. Henry gazed down at the blistered skin of his hands.

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