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“So then how did those two men end up in the lake tonight—and why was Félix here with them?”

Dr. von Keller stared into the orange of the flames. “Félix saw their deaths. He’s been unerringly accurate with these visions of his. At first, I thought it a sickness but the more time I spend with him the more I am convinced the Lord has given him a terrible, terrible gift. One I would not wish upon my worst enemy.” The doctor made the sign of the cross. I’d not thought him a religious man, but perhaps in the presence of Saint Oda one could not help but believe.

I swallowed hard. “Did he tell you what he saw today? Is that why you and Étienne knew where to find him?”

A bird cried out in the distance. “No. He did not have to. When Father Étienne told me Félix had vanished again, we both knew where he’d come. We simply did not know who we would find in the lake.”

The wind whipped up around us, sending the flames dancing. “And before…”

He nodded grimly. “It is why I don’t believe it is possible your mother could be alive. Félix told me he saw her death. I am sorry. I feel like a madman myself even voicing such things aloud.” He let out a cynical laugh. “But what is madness if not simply a different way of engaging with the world? For the vast number of patients I see, they are not mad. They are not understood by the world around them. Félix. Étienne. Perhaps I am one of them too? Living in a world turned upside down. I must do what I can to keep them safe.”

The guilt was written all over his face, not of murder—but of caring too much about his charges. I couldn’t make sense of him. Félix had told me my mother lived. Yet he told von Keller she had not. Only one could be true.

That one single inconsistency raised every alarm bell in my mind. Why … why would Félix do such a thing?

An animal rustled the bushes nearby. I remained silent, staring into the dark water as if in its reflective depths I would find the answer I sought.

VON KELLER LEFT shortly thereafter, headed back to the hospital to tend to the bodies in the morgue. Ruan quickly damped the fire and the pair of us returned to the boardinghouse. I didn’t utter a word all the way back. I didn’t need to. Once safely ensconced inside, I peeled out of my frozen clothes, knocking off the bits of ice forming upon the outer layers.

My teeth chattered so loudly I thought they might crack in my jaw.

Ruan brought an old copper hip bath up into our room along with bucket after bucket of steaming water. It wasn’t much, but it would help me rid myself of the remnants of the lake. Bits of chaff and dried grass had stuck themselves to my skin. I picked it off as best I could before slipping into the steaming tub. My mind was stuck upon von Keller’s revelation about Félix’s gift—his ability to foretell the future. What von Keller described was far beyond my own dreams. Mine were ephemeral things, never anything solid enough to know in advance what would come. But what von Keller described was something else entirely.

Félix had the sight.

I blew out a breath, shifting in the hot bathwater. I’d known one other with that ability—the White Witch from Cornwall. A woman I’d met in my first investigation. She, too, had an eerie coldness about her. Just as Félix did. She spoke in riddles. Half thoughts. Ruan had called her one of the old ones, whatever they were, but I’d come to understand that Hecate, the White Witch, had lived for centuries. A curious thing on its own. I could also feel the power upon her like I did Ruan. Could Félix himself be like the White Witch, an old one? Mrs. Wauters said he came to the village as a boy, an orphan. But he’d grown up with Étienne and Djhan. I blew out a breath. The things I knew about the otherworld paled in comparison to those I did not. It was simply something I’d have to learn.

I glanced back over my shoulder to where Ruan had sat down at the table, rummaging around in the basket.

“What happened back there at the lake?” I finally asked, making myself as small as possible in the water.

He pulled a folding knife from his pocket and began peeling an apple. “Other than your recklessness?”

I snorted, lathering up a flannel cloth and doing my best to rub the warm water over me, without exposing more of my body than necessary to the cold night air. What I wouldn’t give for a true bath, one deep enough to fully submerge in and gather my thoughts. This scarcely counted. More an oversized washbasin. But a true bath would have to wait until I got home. The scent of the rosemary and lavender soap filled the room. “I think there was a second witch at the lake. Surely you could feel it? It was … extraordinary.”

Ruan grew eerily still. For a moment I wondered if he even heard my question. I slipped on the warm copper of the tub, turning to look at him. He sat behind me, an apple slice loosely held in his fingers. “What did you say?”

The oil lamp flickered, casting shadows across his dear face. I brushed my wet hair back from my brow. “It’s rather obvious. Whenever you use your … abilities … there’s a certain—” It was odd to tell a person you can smell power upon them, despite all Ruan and I had shared. I reached over snagging the apple slice hanging from his fingers and took a bite, ignoring his discomfort. I shifted in the water, resting my chin on the high back of the tub. The metal warm from the water. “It’s not just you. I could sense it on Hecate too, the White Witch … at least I could when we were together.”

He gave me a wry smile, his eyes clouded. “Yes. I’m familiar with who she is.” Of course he was, she called on him from time to time in Cornwall, determined to teach him the extent of his power.

I waved away his barb. “When she used it, it was a quieter, subtle sort of thing. Not like you and certainly not like whatever happened tonight.”

Worry creased his brow as I continued. “I thought it was you. There was this raw unbridled energy whipping through the woods. The wind picked up and I…”

Ruan’s jaw fell open as he stared at me. “Ruby … it was still as a grave.”

That’s not true. I felt it. Stronger than anything I’d ever experienced. “You didn’t notice it?”

He shook his head.

I caught my lower lip in my teeth. The only other person there tonight was Félix. “Do you think it’s Félix? That he could be … like you? Another pellar?”

Ruan placed a slice of apple in his mouth, before cutting another and handing it to me. “He cannot be, I don’t have visions as he does. I scarcely dream at all.” He hesitated, as if there were something more he might say, but he kept it to himself.

His words sank into me like the very knife he was holding. If not Félix then who? No one else was in the wood tonight.

Ruan bit another piece of apple from the knife and interjected quickly, having sensed my unease. “I suppose it’s possible he could be. Truth be told, I don’t know what to make of him … You see, when people are under such strong emotion … grief, fear, anger. That’s when their thoughts slip through to me. I can hear people more clearly when they are in distress. But tonight, at the lake…” He paused leaning forward on his knees, offering me another piece of the apple. “I couldn’t hear him at all. He may as well have been as dead as the two men in the lake.”