The first tears took her by surprise. She’d forgotten.
She pressed a hand over her lips and nose, blinking rapidly in a desperate attempt to clear them before Mrs. Purl could see. It was futile. The older woman grimaced, one hand lifting as if to offer comfort, then dropping back to her side. Jane waved her off and turned back to the carriage window, staring out at the trundling landscape.
The tears cleared, but left her trembling in their wake. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, not sure if she was apologizing for her preoccupation or her weakness.
“I understand, ma’am. It’s very disturbing, the doctor’s disappearance. Everybody is worried.”
She thought of Mr. Lowell and the magistrate, walking the countryside. What would they think, if they saw her bog moss and grave loam, and the strange assemblage of ingredients in Mrs. Purl’s baskets?
“The food,” Jane mumbled, then wiped away her tears and tilted back her head, inhaling deep and slow. “The food, I’m sure Mrs. Luthbright will ask about it.” River grass, rabbit stewed in blood, an unchanging cycle of disgusting, ritual meals. Better now to get ahead of it, than to be caught flat-footed. “It’s—it’s a superstition I learned from my parents, to bring him back safely.”
The lie came more easily to her lips than she wanted it to. But it was almost truth, and so she almost began crying anew.
She resisted.
“I’ve worked a love charm or two before,” Mrs. Purl said, half confession and half balm. Wonderful it was, that superstitions provided a familiar excuse. “I would wager so has Mrs. Luthbright,” the maid continued, “though she wouldn’t admit to it. I’ll let her know, if you like.”
Jane almost said yes, then hesitated. “Will she make the food regardless?” she asked.
“Of course, ma’am.”
She wetted her lips, her heart beating double-time in her chest. “Don’t tell her, then,” Jane said, voice throaty with nerves. “I feel—weak. I’d rather she not know, if she doesn’t have to.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mrs. Purl worked her mouth a moment, then asked, “And would you like one of us to stay the night, keep you company?”
She did not sound enthusiastic. It was an offer of formality, not desire, and so Jane didn’t feel guilty when she responded with, “No, I’d prefer to be alone.”
* * *
THEY REACHED LINDRIDGE Hall with only an hour left before sunset. Jane retreated to the study with her materials and shut herself up. Following the text, she cut into the wax of candles, braided thread, and felt herself grow drunk on the heady gasses of the oils she worked into it all.
The servants locked up and left without coming to fetch her, by her direction. Dinner would wait for her downstairs, beneath a cloche; it was to be taken after the dusk working, cold and wretched, a mass of river grass and sprouted grain.
When the sun was bedded down along the horizon, Jane took her supplies up to the library. She hesitated at the threshold, shivering, wondering. Dr. Nizamiev’s photographs danced in the shadows of her mind, and Aethridge’s ring felt heavy upon her finger.
But then she thought of Orren, and the safety of the circle, and Augustine’s screaming from the walls.
If nothing else, her guilt would drive her forward. She dripped with it. She was pickled in it.
She stepped inside the room.
She pulled all the rugs aside and laid out her accoutrements: chalk and salt, candles, dark glass bottles filled with oils, a dish, bog moss, cold ash from the third-floor bedchambers, and Renton’s grave loam.
Jane skimmed the instructions once more, then took up her chalk. She tied it to a length of string, fixed the other end to the floor with a heavy pin. Pulled taut, the string would keep an equal distance between chalk and center. She inscribed a perfect circle, then followed over it with salt, picturing the wall, building it up as she had before. For a moment, there was nothing—and then it came, its eel skin still slippery, but familiar and warm.
The wall went up steadily, stone by stone. She felt the world fade away, and where the night before she’d felt stunned relief, now she felt a strange wonder kindling in her soul. The rush and reassurance of magic’s reality was intoxicating, frighteningly so.
She worked the pin free from the floor and coiled the string around it, then set it, the chalk, and the salt aside. She knelt before the rest of her tools. Cool evening air chilled the glass vault above her, and it fogged from the warmth within, the glowing coals in the hearth that Mrs. Purl had built up and banked for the evening.