No—the cold, sucking wound was in the place where the Stone had been. Will had taken the Stone.
The door splintered, caving over the wardrobe that no one had moved out of the way. Valentin climbed through and pulled Rahel away from the window, away from me.
I started to sway and reached out to hold the window frame. I stared at the gate Will had vanished through, wondering where he could have gone. It seemed a long time before two of Valentin’s men ran into view, starting toward the gate, after Will. But they were stopped by two policemen. The Prussians shouted at them, pointing after Will, but it seemed the police did not speak German. They took the Prussians firmly by the arms and escorted them back into the house.
Will was getting away. I felt the Stone’s distance from me growing, and as it grew so did a strange panic inside me. I wanted to jump out the window after him, but I could not move my limbs. Everything in me screamed for the Stone, like a mother might for a kidnapped child.
“Thea!”
My name rang up the stairs and through the hall. Someone was looking for me. I found I didn’t much care who. Still, I managed to pull my wits together and look around myself. The room was empty. Rahel and Valentin had left, perhaps to set after Will. I had to do the same. I put one foot in front of the other—a simple action that required a herculean effort—and immediately lost my balance. I staggered toward the bed and grabbed its post.
“Thea!” It was my father’s voice, closer now. In another moment he appeared in the doorway.
“Thea!” He ran to me and put his hand on my arm. “Are you hurt? Are you—?”
Mad? Was I? I closed my eyes and tried to take stock of my body and mind. I was full of cold and panic, but not because the madness pulled at me. I couldn’t feel that chasm, the danger of falling. All I felt was the Stone—or rather the absence of it. And that feeling was stronger every moment. I opened my eyes. My vision blurred, but not with the yellow mist from before, only with tears. And at this moment, crying was the sanest thing for me to do.
A sob escaped me.
“Oh, my poor child,” said my father. The sympathy in his voice broke what was left of my control. I let him pull me into his arms, where I sobbed into his chest.
17
We left London. We left the house, the Germans, the mess Will had left behind. We spoke to the police before we went, but they did not hold us.
We left Dominic.
That had been the worst of it all. I watched as Valentin negotiated with the police for Dominic. They argued. Money changed hands. Graf Ludwig will want to study him, Valentin said as we watched Dominic writhing against the full-body restraints, screaming past the bit they had put in his mouth to keep him from biting off his own tongue. I had been where he was and felt what he felt. If there was a hell, there could not be worse torments there than those he now suffered. And he had done it for me, expecting nothing in return.
I could not thank him, where he had gone. I could not beg his forgiveness. I could do nothing for him at all.
Will got away. He was no longer in London, I could feel it by now. The Stone was not as close to me as that. And so when my father said we should go home, I didn’t say what I felt—that I had no home. I went back with him.
Now I was in Oxford, sitting in the dim parlor of my father’s rooms, nursing a long-cold cup of weak tea. I was like a beef cow that had been clubbed on the head to stun it before slaughter, except the slaughter itself had been left unfinished. I would not die, but without the Stone I was only half alive. And it was Will—my first friend, my only love, my ally against the world—my Will who had taken it from me.
I set down my tea cup so hard the saucer underneath cracked in two. The thought of Will had been the only thing that could wake me from my stunned bovine state in the last few days. But I did not like the way it woke me. My rage frightened me. It was too strong to control, and under it was too great a pain. If I started to allow myself to feel it, I knew at once that I couldn’t bear it. Perhaps I chose these cowlike feelings.
I put the cup aside and picked up the pieces of broken china. I felt the slightest pang of guilt; my father didn’t have many good dishes. At least I could clean up the mess.
Unlike the one you left behind in London.
I’d heard my mother’s voice often since we returned to Oxford, enough that I had begun to wonder if she really was speaking to me from the hell of her madness. Always, she urged me on, insisting I must find a way to get the Stone back. As if I didn’t already know that. As if there were a way.
It wasn’t my fault. I did all I could.
It was all you could do to let him snatch the Stone from you? To watch while he ran? When did you become this helpless, useless—
I threw the china into the bin, making a loud enough crash to drive the voice, but not the thought, from my head.
I went to the window and stared out at the busy street. It was well into springtime now, but you wouldn’t know it from the dreary sky or the cold, wet streets of Oxford. I allowed myself to think for just a moment of going back to France, where spring at least came with
