Chapter V
V
The Lumen, the distinctive feature visible in all witches, is characterized by a luminescence of the iris.
It is visible from birth, though only under specific conditions.
The appearance of the Lumen varies between practitioners.
Scholars have yet to determine a link between Lumen appearance and the abilities of the witch in question.
Heeding Max’s warning about wandering the castle should have been easy.
But being cloistered in an unfamiliar space brought back memories.
Her mother had done something similar to Vic as a child, and often.
Meredith would bring Vic to a random building—sometimes claiming it was a doctor’s office, or an administration building, or a still-under-construction wing of a new hospital—put her in a room by herself, and tell her to wait.
Vic had disobeyed this instruction only once.
Her mother had left her in a supply closet.
Vic remembered sitting cross-legged on a big orange bucket turned bottom-up into a makeshift stool, reading a library book from a town they’d left the week before.
Vic finished the book, flipped the plastic-coated cover shut, and started picking at the edges, but Meredith did not come back.
Vic waited for what felt like ages as boredom sank its teeth into her.
She would only look outside for a moment.
Meredith could not have gone far.
The door wasn’t locked, and it swung open easily. Fluorescent lights gave the speckled linoleum a pallid tone, made grayer with age and grime. Looking to either side of the hallway, Vic saw no sign of her mom.
Vic didn’t call out for her, afraid that Meredith would scold her for leaving her hiding spot. But Mom shouldn’t be angry with her, Vic reasoned. She had waited for a long time.
When a light flickered at the far end of the hallway, Vic followed it. She crept forward, her small feet padding against the hard floor.
She’d almost reached the bend when she heard it.
An awful sound came around the corner, and Vic slammed to a stop. A low growl quivered in the air. Then, a wet slap. And another, the growl getting louder, and Vic realized that was the sound of footsteps, the footsteps of something much bigger and stronger than she. Loud and wet and inhuman.
Vic plugged her fingers in her ears and screwed her eyes shut. She could feel it, whatever made that horrible sound, as it came closer, the growl growing into a roar. Closer and closer until it was about to round the corner.
There was a splatter and a shriek, and Vic’s shrill scream echoed in the empty hall.
Someone shook her, hard. Vic’s eyes flew open, and her mother’s face was inches from hers, wearing an expression of fear completely foreign to Vic.
Her ears rang. Meredith was yelling at her, deep lines carving the skin of her forehead.
Meredith screamed at Vic for not staying put, for putting them both in danger.
Her fingers dug into Vic’s arm as Meredith dragged her from the building as fast as the child could run.
The ride home was quiet. Meredith wouldn’t speak to her, and Vic stared out the window in a glaze of panic she would not shake for weeks.
Vic did not cry. Nor did she complain the next time Meredith left her behind.
In the years since her mother died, Vic often wondered why she hadn’t realized sooner that Meredith lied about how she spent her days.
And Vic never figured out what made that sound, though it echoed in her mind throughout the years that followed—in the shadowed corners of unfamiliar rooms, in the back seat of the car when she drove alone at night.
Twenty years of life gone by, and Vic hadn’t learned a thing. With a furtive look at Henry’s closed door, she slipped into the hallway.
The castle now lay dark and still. Moonlight reflected off the snow outside and cast long shadows in front of her.
Vic clutched her phone out of habit. Fat lot of good it would do her here.
She didn’t know if the Order intentionally cut visitors off from the outside world, or if the lack of signal was an unintended perk of the castle’s location in the middle of nowhere.
Not that she had anyone to call. The only person she would ever ask for help had come with her.
Dozens of doors identical to her and Henry’s lined the hallways, the pattern only occasionally broken by an arched window or a gilded painting, either of which would have looked more at home in the Renaissance wing of a museum than hidden in the mountains of New York.
Vic watched to see if the portraits’ eyes followed her as she passed, but none did.
The paintings hung motionless, right where they belonged.
In one, a man in velvet held a serpent in an outstretched hand as if it were a glass of wine best swirled before tasting.
Some places buzzed with life even after their inhabitants took their leave.
A well-loved home never really felt empty.
Vic tried to imagine such life in this place.
Generations of young witches eager to master their mysterious abilities—huddled on their way to class, books tucked against their chests, heads thrown back in laughter.
But when she looked down the vast stone passageways around her, Vic could not conceive of revelry or joy in a place like this.
The air felt thick with some other kind of history. Some empty and cloying thing.
Vic wondered how much time her mother had spent here. She wondered if Meredith felt more at home here than in any of the temporary residences she’d shared with her children.
Rounding a corner, Vic expected to find the staircase Max had led them up earlier. But another narrow hallway unraveled in front of her. Vic turned around when she realized she was lost.
The hallway behind her led straight back. The turn she’d taken seconds ago was gone.
Vic spun slowly, incredulously. Hallways did not move of their own accord.
But the castle had a mind of its own, Max had said. And it wanted her to continue.
Vic fought panic as she ventured forward. Maybe the castle was a great stone dragon, like she’d imagined outside. Maybe it would eat her.
Winding down hall after hall, she searched in vain for something she could use to find her way back to the apartment.
She paid too much attention to the empty space around her, expecting noises where there were none, until she came upon a break in the endless maze of passages.
On either side of Vic, hallways spilled into an open landing like a knot of roads meeting at a junction.
An iron railing kept Vic from the edge, and her jaw dropped.
Opposite her loomed a stained-glass window that must have been thirty feet tall.
Like the arched ceiling above it, it curved to a point.
Thousands of glass pieces came together in a style she’d never seen, far too modern for the churches of old.
Countless individual fragments, none of which was larger than Vic’s fist, were lit from behind by moonlight.
Near the center of the image, a woman cloaked in indigo clutched something to her breast, slumped onto her knees.
Squinting against the low light, Vic caught a sliver of green between the woman’s fingers.
A box, maybe, or a jar. The woman’s other hand lay limp at her side, her fingers loose around a thin disk of the same vibrant hue.
The lid. Out of the woman’s chest poured a black shadow, which crept across the frame like spilled blood.
The monster ate its way through the image, all pointed edges and fangs, depicted in crude, sharp shards.
The icy railing pressed against her hips as Vic leaned forward, and she saw that the woman’s eyes were closed.
The expression on her face might have been exquisite relief, or anguish.
It was beautiful. And wrong.
Around the edges of the window, the landscape outside peeked through clear pieces of glass. Miles and miles of unbroken woodland, above which a pale moon cast anemic light on the treetops. The evening’s gloom had cleared, and the clouds shifted to reveal a tapestry of close-knit constellations.
Something moved outside.
Where the forest edge met the castle grounds, a shadow darted from the trees.
Vic barely had time to focus on it before it disappeared in the direction of the castle, but what she saw was horrible.
The thing wrenched itself across the ground with unnatural speed—too large to be a person, too fast to be an animal.
It pulled itself forward with tendrils of something intangible, as thick and dark as smoke creeping under a doorway.
Her breathing came fast and hard as it dawned on her that that thing—whatever it was—was heading toward the castle.
She stepped away from the railing and hurried back the way she had come, fighting the knot of anxiety in her belly as it crystalized into something sharper. A familiar fear given an unfamiliar face.
When she stumbled back into the hall leading to their apartment, Vic rushed to the correct room number with a sigh of relief.
Reaching for the doorknob, Vic froze.
The scarlet handle lay under a thick coat of dust and left a sooty print on her palm. But that wasn’t right. It would have taken ages to accumulate that much dust. Years.
Apprehension wrapped around Vic’s spine as she twisted the knob and pushed the heavy door inward. The room within was not their apartment, and Vic had the impossible realization that the castle would let her return when it was ready, not when she wanted to go back.
But Vic did not believe in buildings making decisions for her.