Chapter Eleven
She didn’t sleep well. Half her dreams were of girls wearing dresses made of blood, of Lilibet whispering in her ear that
she was falling into the same trap. And the other half were of him doing the trapping. Just luring her in with things that
seemed like good advice, but more than likely were not.
Connecting to magic via emotion might actually make it burst out of you and burn your own face off, she told herself, in the middle of getting dressed the next day. And she told herself it again, as she sat across from Anaya
before the breakfast rush, wolfing down thick slices of buttery toast and huge mugs of tea.
“I just feel like everybody has mastered basic stuff, even before we get to the practical classes. So of course, they’re all
going to survive being attacked by some possessed skeleton or a serpent scooped from the Underneath or whatever else gets
thrown at us. But we won’t. And with barely two months to go to the end of term,” her friend was saying. So naturally, she
wanted to tell her what Harker had told her. To share possibly valuable information, like she had before the maze.
But in the end, she just couldn’t.
Not yet, anyway.
She had to figure out, first, if he was being honest.
After all, it was bad enough that he and his secrets were a danger to her.
She couldn’t endanger her friend, too. She couldn’t endanger anyone.
She didn’t even want to be endangered herself, and yet somehow, she got to the theater at the exact time he had asked.
Seven, he had said in his letter, this time.
As if he wanted to give her a little extra time to fill her head with nightmares.
Though he didn’t look like someone who would ever do such a thing, when she stepped into the room. He was sprawled across
the stage, one hand propping up his head, the other holding a book. And the book was, inexplicably, The Velveteen Rabbit. As she watched, he licked his thumb and turned the page.
Even though she knew he could bespell those pages to move on their own. Hell, she’d read about one particular piece of magic
that made the words in a book simply leap into your head, all at once. And she felt sure he could have done it, if he wanted
to.
It made her wonder: Was it the novelty of not?
Or did he find using magic for things you didn’t need wasteful?
She knew some did. Professor Hargreaves had talked about it the afternoon before, in her lecture “Conservation and Practicalities.”
Magic is not a disposable tissue, there to be used frivolously and lazily and then discarded, she had said. In fact, I would invite you all to question if it is even natural for us to use it at all.
And the memory made her come close to asking him.
As did the way he currently looked. He seemed almost soft now. Almost ordinary—lazing with a book, sleeves of that baby-blue
sweater too long and almost covering his hands, hair hanging over his forehead, battered sneakers on his feet.
But then she remembered that yesterday, he had told her a story so terrifying she was still sweating about it now.
Yesterday, he had almost set her hair on fire and split the strap of her dress.
In fact, he’d split the material of the blouse below it, too.
She found a cut so fine in the shoulder of the material that it looked like it had been done with a razor.
So better to keep seeing him as the monster he was, she felt.
And she was glad she had, when his gaze suddenly flicked up to hers.
For some reason, it thumped her hard in the gut. “I didn’t think you’d return for a second round,” he said, while she was
still recovering from whatever those eyes had just done. Tried to get me in a headlock, she thought and looked away before she answered, in as unbothered a manner as she could muster.
“Well, you hardly managed to rattle me yesterday, so it seemed a little less foolish to. Though don’t take that as me dropping
my guard. I upped the iron dust, just in case you decided to really put your back into being evil,” she said, in a tone that
came so close to withering. In fact, she tensed for a second, wondering if she’d gone too far. Goaded him, instead of just
making clear that she wasn’t a pushover.
But when she let her gaze go back to him, he looked almost amused.
And just a little irritated. “I know. I feel like my lungs are on fire,” he said, breezily enough that some of the tension
went out of her. She didn’t flinch, either, when he got off the stage in one sinuous roll and stepped a little closer.
She just sank into the first thought she had.
“So you do actually breathe, then. Like a human.”
“Is this you trying to ask if I stole someone’s skin to wear?”
“Well, there’s at least a fifty-fifty chance you did.”
“They overstate how common that is, to make anything that comes here in human form seem disgusting and like a thief. Instead of something that could have possibly gone there, and then returned.”
“You were taken as a child, then.”
He hesitated. Touched his pocket, where that silver case sat.
Then finally, he answered. Just one tight word: “Yes.”
It didn’t sound convincing, however.
“That seems like a lie, somehow.”
“Even though I have no reason to.”
“Maybe you want me to feel sorry for you.”
“I doubt there is a single unendurable agony I could suffer that would garner your sympathy,” he said, voice light and almost
amused. Like it was a joke, like it was meaningless. Even though that choice of words stood out, a neon sign in the dark.
So it has been beyond endurance and absolutely agonizing, then, she thought.
And didn’t like how hard it made her stomach drop.
“You’re right. Nothing ever could,” she said.
Much to his satisfaction.
“Then you understand I’m telling you the truth.”
“I don’t know. There could be other reasons to lie.”
“Name one.”
“You want to hide something worse.”
“All right. Let’s test how human I once was then, shall we?”
No, she thought automatically. Even though she had no idea what he intended to do. She only saw the wand suddenly in his hand,
and his free one open as if to take hold of something, and knew she didn’t want to see this. And sure enough, he drew a line
of glittering blue through the air.
And now he had a knife.
Near transparent, gleaming.
But keen as a shard of glass.
“Don’t,” she said, but too late, too late. He drew that sharp edge down the inside of his forearm, in one stroke. Like someone
trying to end their life the fastest way they could, it seemed. And even more so when that red line split open. She could
see parted muscle. She could see bone.
“Oh my god, oh my god, what have you done?” she cried, too horrified to even pretend she could cope with this. Blood had already
covered his hand. It was pattering onto the floor. This was too much, it just was.
No matter how casual he was being about it.
“Shown you how human I am underneath my skin.”
“And you needed to make a ten-inch gash to do that? Holy shit, you are bleeding everywhere; you are bleeding so much. I have to go get someone. I have to get you to the infirmary.”
“Mina, you know how fast I heal.”
“Right, but—”
“But what? You thought a hole through my body went away in a week, but this flesh wound was going to stick around long enough
to need some kind of magical medical intervention?”
“I would hardly call a knife hitting bone a flesh wound.”
“To me it is.” He held up his arm. The one that had been all but split in two a moment ago—but now had no split in it all.
There was just smooth skin beneath the coating of blood. “See. All gone. Good as new. And plus now you’ve seen the sort of
thing you need to conjure in order to actually kill me.”
“So that’s the only way to cut off your head, then.”
“Yes. A knife forged in magic, with a particular sort of edge.” He turned the blade so she could see. It almost seemed to disappear; it was that fine. “Though of course you need to do it yourself. A spell cast cannot be turned against—”
“The caster, I know.”
“You can hold it, though.”
“What would I want to do that for?” she asked. But she took the knife when he spun it in his hand, and held the hilt out to
her. She marveled over the lightness of it, like she wasn’t really holding anything at all. And how it shimmered, in the low
light.
But of course that meant she wasn’t paying attention, when he stepped back, slowly, into the shadows. When the shadows started
to gather and deepen, until everything dimmed. “For practice,” he said, suddenly so low and deep, into that abrupt veil of
darkness. “Now come for me, before I come for you.”
Then she looked up, just in time to see one of those velvet curtains lift and reach for her. Like a ghostly arm, like there
was something underneath it—even though she knew nothing was. It was just material bespelled. He was trying to frighten her
with cheap tricks.
Yet somehow it was no less terrifying for it.
She stepped back so fast she stumbled and almost went to one knee. In fact, she only managed to stay upright because her hand
flailed out, and fell on the back of the chair she’d sat on the other day. It helped her, and helped her again when that red
velvet hand stretched farther. It almost stroked her cheek, and she lifted that rickety wooden thing and tried to throw it.
Only the thing wasn’t wooden anymore.
It was melting in her hand, turning pliable and soft and, god, disgusting.
God, it felt disgusting. And it wouldn’t let her let it go.
It stuck to her hand when she shook it; it seemed to squirm and slither until it became clear.
He’d turned the chair into a sort of creature.
A snake thing, that looked at her with one gimlet eye.
Use the knife, she thought, as it twisted its way up her arm.
But just as she went to try to stab the thing—unsure if it would work against creatures he had magicked, but willing to try—the
velvet hand snatched at her. It got her by the wrist, while she was too busy paying attention to anything else. And after
it had, she didn’t need to worry about the snake anymore.
It smothered her so fast she knew she had no more than seconds. She went to scream, and it seemed to fill her mouth. The only
breath she could take stuffed her throat with material, heavy and thick and tasting of tattered ruins. Though even if that
hadn’t been the case, she suspected the result would be the same.
The velvet had her around the throat and chest.
And it was tightening, tightening, tightening. It made her think of medieval torture devices, of being trapped while someone
turned a handle—and of course, she knew who was doing the turning. It was him; he was doing this. She had let her guard drop
enough, and now he was seizing his chance to torture her to death.
And it was her fury at that injustice that made her act.
She couldn’t move her hand, but she could move the knife within it. She could tilt it up, until it touched velvet. Then it
was just a matter of forcing, of pushing, and making that fucking material rip.
It shocked her when it did, though.
She felt it give and almost sobbed with relief. Because the moment she managed that, the rest of it seemed to retreat. It melted away from her, as fast as it had come, while she continued to tear and stab and wrench her way back out. She burst free, like something being born.
And there he stood, laughing at her. Laughing.
She’d almost suffocated, and he thought it was hilarious.
“You didn’t even get anywhere close enough to kill me,” he said, with so much contempt and so much amusement that she wasn’t sure what happened. She just felt
something boil up inside her, something that felt like her and yet not, something that knew how to hurt someone without needing
to be near at all.
Toss it up and catch it by the blade, this voice said.
Because by the blade makes it easier to—
“Throw,” she said, and then somehow she just did. Like someone had taken over her arm briefly, and made her something other than clumsy and slow. It took only a split second
to turn the knife, to get it by the tip. And even less time than that to hurl it. One straight shot directly at his heart.
Perfect in a way she knew she wasn’t.
But once you were, the voice said.
As the knife thudded into his chest, easy as pie.