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He stared into me with an uneasy gravity. “They’re looking for you…” He murmured. The electricity in the air grew even sharper, the intensity of it stung at my nose and my eyes. I’d never experienced such a thing. Ruan himself had wondered if this was a place of power. He had to be right.

Félix held my gaze. “He will not stop until you’re back and then he will kill you both for what we’ve done.”

Both? We?

My mind stumbled over his words. Did he mean Ruan and I? Or perhaps he was confused and meant my mother and Djhan Wauters, who disappeared together? I took his shoulders in my hands. “Who, Félix. Who will hurt us? What have we done?”

Félix at last lifted his left hand from the dead man and reached out for me, touching my brow with his icy fingers. He was always so cold, yet somehow the contact sucked the remaining heat from my core. His artist’s hand drifted gently across my forehead when suddenly his expression shifted and a darkness came over him. “You are Eva’s daughter … Eva’s daughter should not be here. Eva’s daughter must not die.”

I reached out, holding his hand against my cheek. Unwilling to let him go. He knew what was happening here, I simply needed him to tell me. “Please. I can help you. I need you to tell me what’s happening. I will not let any harm come to you or any of the other patients. I swear it. But I need you to let me help.”

Félix turned away from me, staring at the darkness of the tree line on the far side of the lake. He was so impossibly pale with a wraithlike delicacy. The instability in the atmosphere grew stronger—the wind picking up as if nature rebelled against itself. There was something familiar about it, both like Ruan and not. It was unwieldy. Uncontained. The wind lifted, roaring through the trees in an echo of Félix’s earlier cries. I glanced back to Ruan, half expecting to see the telltale flickers of silver fading from his eyes—the only outward sign he’d called upon his power—but they weren’t there. His eyes were green, as usual, with that solitary dark cloud marring the one.

A sick sensation settled in my belly.

The power I felt was not Ruan’s. It belonged to someone, or something else.

My breath grew shallow, uncertain which was worse—that I stood hip-deep in a lake barely above freezing with two dead men—or the fact there was another witch here at Saint Oda’s. One as strong, if not stronger than Ruan. I swallowed hard as Félix spoke in that oddly melodic lilt of his. “You should not be here. It is not safe. I have seen it…” His voice cracked and rose ever so slightly. “I have seen … it?”

Was he talking to me, or someone else entirely?

The electricity in the air grew stronger yet. It echoed in my head, piercing through my skin and for a half moment I thought the world around us might succumb to it consuming us all in a great flash.

Félix didn’t flinch as I took him by the shoulders. His attention was rapt upon the woods, back in the direction of the priory. “We need to get you out of the water. It’s freezing.”

He turned to me, with an unsettling birdlike movement. “Daughter of Eva, you must run. You can’t help them if you’re dead. I will take care of them. I will take care of them both as I always have. It is not safe for you here, nor is it still safe for Eva. You should be dead. I have seen it. You do not belong here…”

His words echoed those von Keller had told me the first time I saw him, the day I’d first set foot on priory grounds, but they certainly held a great deal more weight after my poisoning. My jaw ached from the cold. I needed answers. I needed truth, which evaded at every instance. Then a second thought struck me. Félix spoke to me as if my mother were yet alive. He said is it safe for Eva … not was …

My breath hitched, my mind scarcely able to believe I was asking the question at all. “Both … who? Do you mean to tell me my mother is alive? Please. Where is she?”

But before he could answer, Dr. von Keller came bursting through the undergrowth into the clearing with Father Étienne, the young priest, at his side. “Félix, God man, I had no idea where you’d gotten off to.”

Félix’s grip on the dead orderly tightened and he scrambled back into the water.

Alive? Could it even be possible?

The doctor’s face paled as he took silent inventory of the scene before him. From Narcisse’s body still cradled in Félix’s arms to that of Alfred, the barman, lying upon the shore at Ruan’s feet. Father Étienne stepped out from behind the doctor, his beautiful face stricken as he looked at Félix.

In the moonlight the young priest put me in mind of the Lucifer of Liège, that breathtaking sculpture in the cathedral there. Exquisite in his pain. His sorrow sublime. Suspicion clawed at me as he moved to Félix’s side.

“Oh, my dear brother—” Father Étienne’s arms were outstretched as he drew closer to Félix. “Let me take your burden. Come…”

And without a word, without a fight, Félix surrendered the body of Narcisse into the arms of the young priest. Félix watched Étienne as he carried the dead man away. Mrs. Wauters had told me they’d been close, but it was painfully clear Félix trusted Étienne.

Félix stumbled and I hurried to him. He allowed me to lead him to the shore. He pressed his hollow cheek against my shoulder, his skin impossibly cold.

Von Keller searched the dead orderly’s body for a pulse. One I knew he would not find. Narcisse had been dead for hours. As had Alfred. No one had seen the young barkeep after I left the café. Now I knew why.

Félix’s earlier words echoed in my mind, as if he’d etched them there himself. You can’t help them if you’re dead. He gripped the sides of my face between his palms. A clanging bell from the priory rang out, and birds fluttered up, disturbed by the commotion. He pressed his forehead against mine. The pressure of his skin against mine sapped the remaining warmth from my very bones as the words came out on a whisper. “She lives, daughter of Eva. Your mother lives. But you must not look for her. You must not stay here…”

The air left my lungs in a rush, the earth began to tremble beneath my feet. I could not think. Could no longer feel the cold or the guilt. None of it. For my mother lived. She was here. How could he tell me that and expect me to leave her now? I had been given a second chance, a way to save her, and I’d be damned if I abandoned her again.

CHAPTER TWENTYWhich Witch?

RUAN and I remained behind with the bodies while von Keller and Father Étienne took Félix back to the priory and to fetch help. Ruan made a small campfire along the shore, placing me before it. I couldn’t be certain if it was to ward off my second death in as many days, or if it was to simply busy his hands so he didn’t have to focus on what had occurred here. I’d not voiced what Félix told me of my mother. Could scarcely wrap my mind around the revelation.

I cradled my knees and stared out onto the smooth surface of the water. The orange flames licked up overhead. The moon and stars reflected onto the water, making it difficult to tell which was sea and which was sky. The warmth of the fire seeped through my wet dress, and into my very skin, but I no longer felt it.