We were all totally silent for a minute, and then Margaret Twigg said, “Well, I’d say that spell’s been broken.”
Jennifer and I looked at each other. I was almost too scared to go forward and see what the book said, but she was bolder.
“I can’t read this book in the candlelight, but it’s definitely old. Like, very old.”
I came up beside her then and saw exactly what she meant. I’d seen old alchemy texts before. Rafe had quite a few of them, and this looked like those. The pages were faded, the drawings intricate. I reached forward, almost hesitant to touch it, but when my fingers rested on it, I only felt linen paper and calfskin leather binding. I nodded. “The spell is broken.”
Margaret looked at both of us. “Your friend has great power,” she said. I felt proud, as though I’d had anything to do with Jen’s progress as a witch.
“Now, if you’ll close the circle, I’ll be getting to bed,” Margaret said. Compliments were clearly over for the night.
The next day we went back to Rafe’s place. Olivia, her tools restored, was busy outside with a couple of helpers putting up tents on the grounds. It reminded me how close our wedding was.
Rafe was in his study working. Like me, he was trying to get all his loose ends tied up so that we could actually enjoy a holiday together. When William ushered us into Rafe’s study, he looked up, pleased to see me.
“Lucy. Jennifer. Did you get caught up on your sleep?”
Hardly. We’d had another midnight task last night. I felt as jet-lagged as Jen. “Did you get Tilda tidied away?”
“Yes. By the time I returned to Wallingford, nearly everything was done. Theodore had supervised and I believe his time painting sets for a theater company paid off. He staged her body and surroundings so it looked as though she’d fallen on her way to collect supplies for making creams.”
“That’s great, but how long before anyone finds her body?”
“Oh, that’s been done. Seems Karmen’s husband arrived yesterday morning and found her. He alerted the police.”
“Good.” I walked up and put the book in front of him on his worktable.
He opened the cover and nodded. “You’ve lifted the spell. Well done.”
“So far, so good, but it might as well be spellbound for all the sense we can make of it. I need you to translate.”
He nodded. Taking his time, he turned each page and looked at it. It wasn’t a very big book, and there were a lot of woodcut engravings or whatever you called those things. They featured pictures of suns and moons, snakes wrapped around a person with the face of a woman on one side and a man on the other. I thought that was supposed to be a hermaphrodite. A couple of times he chuckled. Trust Rafe to find an alchemy book funny.
Finally, he said, “A lot of this is what I would call window dressing. I think the pages that are the most interesting are these two.”
He read silently and nodded. “What this seems to suggest is that the recipe always needs an existing stone to build on.” He glanced up. “Very clever, really. One would need both the recipe and a little of the existing elixir in order to make more.”
“You mean like a starter for sourdough bread?” Jen asked.
He chuckled. “Yes. Something like that.”
He showed us the page. “And, you see here, the same quotes she had written on her kitchen wall. The cygnet becomes the swan.” I pointed to the inked drawings of runes. “And that’s the same message on the box, isn’t it? As above, so below.”
“Yes. Well spotted.” I glowed inside with pride.
And then he turned another page and concentrated on it as though he hadn’t already read it once. He said, “And this, unless I’m very much mistaken, is her recipe.”
“Her recipe? You mean like her formula for her…” I couldn’t even say the word.
He finished my sentence. “For the elixir of life. Yes.”
And then he picked up the book and handed it to me. He didn’t say anything, just handed it to me. But I understood in that moment that he was saying, This is up to you.
I was being given a chance to stay young with him, never grow old, without having to be a vampire. It was almost too good to be true.
Jen and I didn’t stay long after that. I claimed we had bride stuff to do, but the truth was, Karmen’s message had come through.
We waited until we were in the car, driving back towards Oxford, the book clutched in Jennifer’s hands. She said, “Tilda was looking in the wrong place.”
I nodded. “I think so too.”
“But what do we do?”
I sighed. “We have the key now, but Karmen’s house is going to be overrun with cops now her death’s been discovered.”
“You don’t think the police will put a guard on the place overnight?”
I shook my head. “Why would they? I don’t think they have that kind of staff. And it’s not like there’s anyone there in danger. Karmen and Tilda are both dead. No, they’ll move the body, do some forensic investigation. Between them, I bet the vampires even left a few clues to make it obvious that Tilda killed Karmen. Case closed. If we go in late at night, we’ll be okay.”
“Maybe we should have a nap so we’ll be rested for tonight.”
When we got back to my flat, Sylvia and my grandmother were sitting in my living room, waiting for us. Jennifer jumped. But I was accustomed to these two showing up in my house whenever they felt like it. So much for our nap.
“Sylvia. Gran. What can I do for you? We were just about
