“As you are in the role of a new initiate,” Hunt said, “and as this is not an initiatory night, you will not be privy to any of the secrets. You will watch through a veil, and you will see the shape of things, but not the detail. Follow the guidance of my voice, though, and you will still be able to lend your aid to our Work.”
Jane shivered. Vingh might have claimed that this was only pageantry, but she was growing less certain by the second. The whole thing was too elaborate, too real-looking.
“And what is the purpose of the circle?” she asked.
“Many things,” Hunt replied. “Containment, protection, focus.”
And Jane was at the center of it. She chanced a glance at the nearest window.
Through her veil, it remained blank.
She watched as they all arranged themselves about the circle, inside the chalk line, all their murmuring, intoxicated conversations ceasing. Nobody held a lit cigarette, nobody held a glass. They moved solemnly and with great focus, as if it were a dance upon a stage. Then Hunt took up a ceramic bowl with a spout at one end. Standing at the inside edge of the circle and facing outward, she began to move her lips in a soft whisper. Slowly, she poured a stream of something from the bowl, walking sideways as she marked the perimeter.
Salt.
When she reached where she had begun, she handed the ceramic bowl to the man who stood closest to her. She and Reese left the perimeter and approached the center of the circle, taking up positions across the table Jane knelt before. She could barely see them, between the angle and the veil. Instead, her eyes focused on the two candles sitting on the table. One was small and already burning, the other tall and in an elaborate setting, unlit and fresh. The room filled with an expectant silence, one that almost thrummed upon the air. It felt real. It felt alive.
“Let this candle be the light that guides us in our Work,” Reese said, her voice clear and deep, ringing across the space. She held something to the burning flame, and once it caught, used it to light the taller candle. “Let the power in its incandescence enchant the circle that circumscribes the realm that we inhabit, so that we may do the Work safely and in total focus.”
Jane should stop them. Mr. Renton had played these games of chalk and salt, and ended up dead on the operating table. This was dangerous. This was not right.
“By the senses, we align ourselves this night to the Work before us. By the burning of these offerings, we place ourselves upon the path to the Work.”
Hunt set fire to the contents of a bowl. As Jane watched, the smoke that rose from it turned dark before bursting into a dance of colors, sparking and leaping, that she could see even through the veil. There was a sharp crack. Several of the participants jumped at the sound as the bowl fell to pieces, smoldering.
Jane smelled blood.
She tried to stand and found herself immobile. The iron stench grew, grinding against the empty spaces of her skull. She wavered on her knees. Somebody was hurt. Somebody had to be hurt, perhaps from the breaking of the bowl. She straightened her spine, trying to see over the table, trying to see Hunt’s hands, the other woman’s, but the world was growing dim.
Distantly, she heard Reese intone, “We guide ourselves to the imbalance, to the missing member of our ranks. His mind has been clouded by grief and his hands turned clumsy by doubt. By the flowing of this water, we align ourselves to the forces at work and begin to see their origin, their path, their conclusion.”
They had come for Augustine, to call him home. This was all for Augustine. They had put her in the circle as—what? An offering? A sacrifice?
The stench of blood grew. Her head spun. She tried to scream and could not.
Instead, she saw Elodie.
Elodie laid stretched across a shining white plinth of stone before her. There was blood in her eyes, on her lips, obscuring her features. Crimson oozed from beneath her. But she was alive. Her chest rose and fell, her breath rattled. Jane gasped but could not move, could not turn her head. Could they see this?
Dr. Nizamiev. She needed Dr. Nizamiev.
But instead of Dr. Nizamiev, she saw Augustine, dressed in traveling clothes. He rushed into the room, the library blended with an unfamiliar chamber of hewn stone walls. She tried to reach out for him, to beg him to stop this. And he turned to her, her and Elodie. He ignored the dim shapes of the men and women around them. He ran to the table—the plinth—and for a moment she was overjoyed, because Elodie might still be saved. She could not speak, could not explain, but there he was, rucking up his sleeves, pulling out a blade—
No. This was wrong. This was no operating room, and this was no way to treat his dying wife. Where was the grief, the tenderness? Where, even, was his doctor’s manner, his steady reassurances that he would help?