The Twelfth Enchantment

“It is too late to stop.”

Lucy clutched her niece even more tightly, as if her hold on this infant could steady her while her world appeared to whirl around her. “Mary, you cannot. I have Emily. I have the pages. With your help, we can escape and defeat Lady Harriett another day.”

“It cannot be undone,” said Mary. “Gold and sulfur have been set down, and I have made this sacrifice. Like Mrs. Emmett, I make the sacrifice for you.”

Mr. Morrison turned to her. “No, Mary, you cannot.”

“Oh, Jonas, I am sorry you must see,” she said. “I tried to love you—to remember what it was to love you, but that part of me died with my flesh. Even so, I feel compassion for you, and I beg you not let the past stop you. And Lucy, you have been my friend. I have loved you, and I do this for you.”

“Oh, Mary,” said Lucy, “please don’t.”

Mary smiled at her. “It is better to be nothing than to become like one of them.” She looked at Lady Harriett and Buckles. “How long until I forget what I was, and care nothing but for my own pleasures? How long until, like her, I am willing to murder an infant for some strategic advantage or the pleasure of shocking my own sensibilities, to destroy a world if it will better suit my needs? How long until I become like those wraiths she shepherds, existing but hardly alive? If I can end my existence in an act of love, then how much better for me to face oblivion as some reflection of my true self, than eternity as a perversion of what I once was.” She took out a vial, this one containing mercury, and she began to pour it in a circle around her. “Thank you, Lucy,” she said.

And then she was gone.

There was no flash, no cry, nothing to mark her passage. She simply dissolved out of existence, as though the air folded over her. At the same instant Mr. Buckles was gone. He was no longer in the room with them, and Lady Harriett stood in mute astonishment.

Lucy set down the child behind Mr. Morrison, who kept his gun trained on Lady Harriett. She needed her hands free. Reaching into the hidden pocket of her frock for her little pouch and fishing out the talisman she needed, finding it by touch even as she worked herself into a sprint, Lucy ran directly at Lady Harriett. Perhaps she was about to die, but she would not let anyone else die for her. There had been sacrifice enough, and Lucy would rather die than let Mrs. Emmett and Mary destroy themselves for nothing.

With the talisman in her hand, she leapt at Lady Harriett, shoving it deep into the revenant’s black gown. It was the talisman to vulnerability, the one she had made in Lady Harriett’s house after seeing Byron tossed across the room. The wards should have rendered it useless, but Lucy remembered Mary’s words the day she had first told her about the Mutus Liber. The most powerful sacrifices could nullify the most powerful of wards, she’d said, and the most powerful sacrifices are those that friends make out of love. Two of Lucy’s friends had obliterated themselves from the universe out of love for her.

Lady Harriett toppled under her. Lucy saw the look of surprise on her face as the two of them struck the earth of the mill. Lady Harriett tried to rise, tried to push her off, but her arms had no strength, and Lucy saw the panic in her ancient eyes.

Straddling Lady Harriett, holding her still with the weight of her body and her left arm, Lucy fished in her bag until she found her tiny vials of gold, sulfur, and mercury. Placing them between her fingers, pressed near her knuckles, she removed the cork stoppers with her teeth. She then gripped all three vials in her tight fist, and glared hard at Lady Harriett.

“You are a fool if you don’t know that I am immune,” said Lady Harriett.

“Oh, I know,” answered Lucy.

“Then what do you mean to do with your elements?”

“I mean to make you eat them.”

She pressed her free hand to Lady Harriett’s jaw and forced it open, as one would with an animal, and poured in the contents of all three vials. Lucy shifted hands, using her left to hold Lady Harriett’s head still. The revenant’s eyes bulged. Her body bucked weakly, and her arms flailed ineffectually at Lucy’s sides. She might have been immune to the elements, but surely they were unpleasant. Beneath her shut mouth, Lady Harriett appeared to retch.

Maybe her efforts would amount to nothing, and maybe all her friends had given would be in vain, but what Lucy intended seemed possible. She might suceed, and so Lucy intended that she must succeed. The pages would want that. Twelve pages and twelve enchantments. By itself that meant little, but with everything Lucy knew and did, with everything Mary and Mrs. Emmett had given, perhaps those twelve enchantments would mean everything.

“Mr. Morrison,” called Lucy. “As we have been disarmed, be so good as to find a knife for me as quickly as you might.”

Mr. Morrison, with his free hand, drew one from inside his waistcoat and handed it to Lucy. “Sleight of hand,” he said. “But what do you mean to do, Lucy? The power of those sacrifices must wear off soon, and the elements may make her unhappy, but they shan’t kill her.”

“Let’s see about that,” said Lucy. She took the knife and began to carve into Lady Harriett’s forehead. She would have to act quickly because she knew that the revenants healed with remarkable speed, but she believed she could effect it in time. That she was straddling this woman, carving into her flesh, she was distantly aware of, but she was too focused on the act, on the necessity of what she did to dwell on its strangeness and barbarity. First she drew a square of tolerable symmetry, and then, within it, a triangle. Below her, Lady Harriett struggled against the power of the symbol, and she understood its meaning. She redoubled her efforts to throw Lucy off, and Lucy detected a new strength. Perhaps it was her will to save herself, or the power of the sacrifice was already fading. Either way, Lucy was almost finished. It was the same symbol Lucy had left upon Mr. Gilley, who was so afraid of catching cold—the talisman to make its victim susceptible to what he most feared.

With one last quick stroke, Lucy made an X inside the triangle, completing the charm by speaking Lady Harriett’s name. Briefly Lucy wondered how she would know if it worked, but it was but an instant, for Lady Harriett was gone, vanished as if she had never been there. Lucy knelt over the empty earth, knife in her hand, and even its tip was clean of blood.

* * *

Lucy rose, letting the blade fall to the earth. She scooped Emily off the floor and cradled the cooing child to her breast. She had done it. She had done it all. She had rescued her niece, saved the book, and destroyed the most powerful and dangerous creature to walk the earth. It had cost her Mrs. Emmett, and it had cost her Mary, and Lucy could take no joy in what she had done. She must settle for relief.

Lucy wanted to cry for her friend and for herself and for her loss, but she would not. She would cry later. “Have we won?” she asked Mr. Morrison. “Is there more to do, or have we won?”

Mr. Morrison stared at the spot where Mary had stood, he looked at the empty circle. “Yes,” he said. “You have done it.”

Lucy clutched the baby tighter. How she resembled Martha, and also her namesake, Emily. There was nothing of Mr. Buckles in the baby, though perhaps that was wishful thinking. What mattered was that the child was safe. Lucy had the sweet, sleeping child in her arms. Their struggles were over. Mr. Morrison had said so.

She turned to him to say something to comfort him, to let him know that he was not alone in his grief. She was about to speak, but no sound came out for she watched as his chest exploded with blood.

* * *

Lord Byron strode into the room, tossing aside the freshly fired pistol. In his other hand he held a torch, and with his newly free hand he removed another pistol from his pocket “That was so we know that I’m serious. Also, I’ve always hated him. Now, Lucy, give me the book, and give me the baby. The baby you shall get back. It is merely a means by which I can get away unharmed. You’ll not curse me or bring down any dark magic upon me if the baby is in my care. When I am somewhere safe, I shall send you the child.”

With Emily clutched to her breast, Lucy bent over Mr. Morrison. He was breathing, but his breaths came shallow, and there was blood in his mouth. She needed to work magic upon him, but she could not do it in the mill, not with all the wards set upon it.

“You have not much time to act,” said Byron, tossing his torch onto a pile of hose. It went up at once, and the flames began to catch, spreading over the stocking frame, and then catching to the next. “Hand me the pages, Lucy. And the child. If you do not, I shall shoot you and take the pages off you myself. How shall your niece fare then?”