“Times change,” Ysabeau said crisply. “If you would like me to leave . . .”
“Nonsense.” Linda shot a warning glance at her fellow witch. “Diana asked for you to be here when she cast her spell. We will all muddle through somehow. Won’t we, Cassandra?”
The elderly witch gave a curt nod.
“Make way for the maps if you please, ladies!” Leonard said, his arms full of tubes. He dumped them on a rickety table encrusted with wax and beat a fast retreat up the stairs. “Call me if you need anything.” The door to the crypt slammed shut behind him.
Linda directed the placement of the maps, for after much fiddling we had found that the best results came from using a huge map of the British Isles surrounded by individual county maps. The map of Great Britain alone took up a section of floor that was around six feet by four feet.
“This looks like a bad elementary-school geography project,” Sarah muttered as she straightened a map of Dorset.
“It may not be pretty, but it works,” I replied, drawing Master Habermel’s compendium from my bag. Fernando had devised a protective sleeve for it using one of Gallowglass’s clean socks. It was miraculously undamaged. I got out my phone, too, and took a few shots of the murals on the wall. They made me feel closer to Jack—and to Matthew.
“Where should I put the pages from the Book of Life?” Ysabeau had been given custody of the precious sheets of vellum.
“Give the picture of the chemical wedding to Sarah. You hold on to the one with the two dragons,”
I said.
“Me?” Ysabeau’s eyes widened. It had been a controversial decision, but I had prevailed against Sarah and Linda in the end.
“I hope you don’t mind. The chemical-wedding picture came to me from my parents. The dragons belonged to Andrew Hubbard. I thought we could balance the spell by keeping them in witch and vampire hands.” All my instincts told me this was the right decision.
“Of c-course.” Ysabeau’s tongue slipped on the familiar words.
“It will be all right. I promise.” I gave her arm a squeeze. “Sarah will be standing opposite, and Linda and Tamsin will be on either side.”
“You should be worrying about the spell. Ysabeau can take care of herself.” Sarah handed me a pot of red ink and a quill pen made from a white feather with striking brown and gray markings.
“It’s time, ladies,” Linda said with a brisk clap. She distributed brown candles to the other members of the London coven. Brown was a propitious color for finding lost objects. It had the added benefit of grounding the spell—which I was sorely in need of, given my inexperience. Each witch took her place outside the ring of county maps, and they all lit their candles with whispered spells. The flames were unnaturally large and bright—true witch’s candles.
Linda escorted Ysabeau to her place just below the south coast of England. Sarah stood across from her, as promised, above the north coast of Scotland. Linda walked clockwise three times around the carefully arranged witches, maps, and vampire, sprinkling salt to cast a protective circle. Once everyone was in her proper place, I took the stopper out of the bottle of red ink. The distinctive scent of dragon’s-blood resin filled the air. There were other ingredients in the ink, too, including more than a few drops of my own blood. Ysabeau’s nostrils flared at the coppery tang. I dipped the quill pen into the ink and pressed the chiseled silver nib onto a narrow slip of parchment. It had taken me two days to find someone willing to make me a pen using a feather from a barn owl—far longer than it would have in Elizabethan London.
Letter by letter, working from the outside of the parchment to the center, I wrote the name of the person I sought.
T, N, J, O, W, T, E, S T J WESTON
I folded the parchment carefully to hide the name. Now it was my turn to walk outside the sacred circle and work another binding. After slipping Master Habermel’s compendium into the pocket of my sweater along with the parchment rectangle, I began a circular perambulation from the place between the firewitch and the waterwitch. I passed by Tamsin and Ysabeau, Linda and Cassandra, Sarah and Sybil.