Page 99 of A Resistance of Witches

The silence stretched taut as bowstrings between them. Lydia imagined what Kitty would have said if she could see her now—probablythat Fiona was a haughty, uptight prig, and not to be trusted. Fiona stared at Lydia, her face a beautiful, impenetrable wall.

“Perhaps this was a mistake after all.” Lydia felt a wave of resignation. “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

She began to walk away, her mind already beginning to spiral. The full moon was in two days. Without a Traveler she would need to return to France by more traditional means, which would be slow and dangerous. She had wanted to confide in Fiona—for all her infamous frostiness, Fiona had always struck Lydia as someone who operated from a deep well of integrity. She’d never bullied the other girls when they were younger, never lorded her privilege or beauty over anyone. She’d never suffered fools, never hung around with silly girls, never spread ugly rumors. Once, in private, Isadora had hinted that if Lydia hadn’t been selected to serve as her apprentice, it would have been Fiona McGann in her shoes. And if Isadora had thought Fiona virtuous enough to stand by her side…

But Lydia could see now that she had misjudged. Fiona had always been a solitary animal—respected, admired even, but infamously aloof. She kept everyone at arm’s length. That had always been her way.

Lydia had walked only a few yards, pulling her coat tighter around her, when she heard Fiona’s voice call out.

“She didn’t tell me about the book, you know.”

Lydia turned. “What?”

“Sybil. She came to me that day in an absolute panic. She said you were in France on some secret mission and needed to be extracted right away. She told me you were in trouble. But she never said anything about any book.”

Lydia swallowed. “I see.”

“Seems a rather important thing to overlook.” Fiona looked at Lydia pointedly. “A few days later she remembered. She insisted that she had told me about the book from the start. Of course, I blamed myself. I lether convince me that the mistake had been mine. I returned to France. I looked for it everywhere. But I’ve gone over it in my head a hundred times since, and I’m absolutely certain: Sybil simply never told me to retrieve it.”

Lydia watched Fiona’s face. Fiona had always worn a sort of mask, separate from the intricate glamour that gilded her features, but no less cunning. It was a face that invited you in, but not too close, a mask of flashing eyes and coy downward glances and wry, pretty smirks. Utterly intoxicating and false as false could be, like beautiful armor. For the first time, Lydia saw the mask slip.

Lydia returned to Fiona’s side. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“It was only a feeling. If I was wrong, I would never regain the trust of the council, let alone the grand mistress.” Fiona stared down the empty, tree-lined path. “Tell me, Lydia. You know Sybil better than anyone. Doyouthink it was just an honest mistake?”

Lydia didn’t answer. They walked in silence, watching the people in the park, men and women all going about their days in the fading afternoon light.

“I have a proposal,” Fiona said. “I’ll go first. I’ll tell you my suspicions, based on what I’ve observed. Once you hear me out, you can decide whether to tell me what you know. If you decide not to trust me after all, well, that’s fine. I hope you’ll refrain from telling the high council about my wild and unsubstantiated theories, and in return, I won’t tell the grand mistress that you asked me to ferry you back to France. Do we have a deal?”

“That sounds fair,” Lydia said.

Fiona peered out across the windswept park. “Sybil is no fool. If she’d wanted the book brought to London, she would have told me. I think she knew that there would be Gestapo waiting outside that château when I arrived, and she preferred them to have it over us. A thing like that would be nearly impossible to remove from the academy oncethe council had their hands on it, after all. I think the only reason she mentioned it at all was because by then she’d discovered that the book hadnotin fact been recovered by the Gestapo, but had gone missing, along with your two friends, and she needed it found.” Fiona looked at Lydia then, her perfect glamour marred by worry. “I think Sybil has been compromised.”

The air had become colder, the sunlight dimming to a burnished bronze. As Lydia watched, Fiona rearranged her face. The clever, pretty mask reappeared before her eyes.

“Well, how did I do?”

As good as Fiona was at managing her face, it was her voice that gave her away. She was harboring a terrible suspicion, and she had no one she could trust—and she was scared. Lydia made up her mind.

“I have reason to believe that Sybil is not only working with the Witches of the Third Reich, she’s leading them. I have no idea which members of the high council might have been compromised, or whom we can trust. Meanwhile my only allies in France are in danger, the book is missing, and I need to find it before the Nazis do. And I can’t do it without you.”

Fiona stood for a moment, staring into the distance. She pulled a silver cigarette case from her pocket and offered it to Lydia. Lydia shook her head. Fiona lit her cigarette and exhaled a plume of smoke.

“I was sorry about Kitty, you know,” she said.

Lydia looked at her, surprised.

“Oh, there was no love lost between us, to be sure. But she didn’t deserve to die like that. She was one of us.”

Lydia’s eyes stung, and she blinked to keep the tears from falling.

“Do you think we’ll run into her? The witch who killed Kitty?”

A chill ran through Lydia’s blood. “Yes. I believe we will.”

Fiona took a thoughtful drag. Lydia noticed that her cherry-red lipsleft no mark on the cigarette. “I should like to meet her. I have a few things I’d like to express in person.”

“I daresay you’ll get the chance,” Lydia said. “There’s just one thing we need to do first.”

---