The Death of Jane Lawrence(48)

“And what is the purpose of the circle?” she asked.

“Many things,” Hunt replied. “Containment, protection, focus.”

And Jane was at the center of it. She chanced a glance at the nearest window.

Through her veil, it remained blank.

She watched as they all arranged themselves about the circle, inside the chalk line, all their murmuring, intoxicated conversations ceasing. Nobody held a lit cigarette, nobody held a glass. They moved solemnly and with great focus, as if it were a dance upon a stage. Then Hunt took up a ceramic bowl with a spout at one end. Standing at the inside edge of the circle and facing outward, she began to move her lips in a soft whisper. Slowly, she poured a stream of something from the bowl, walking sideways as she marked the perimeter.

Salt.

When she reached where she had begun, she handed the ceramic bowl to the man who stood closest to her. She and Reese left the perimeter and approached the center of the circle, taking up positions across the table Jane knelt before. She could barely see them, between the angle and the veil. Instead, her eyes focused on the two candles sitting on the table. One was small and already burning, the other tall and in an elaborate setting, unlit and fresh. The room filled with an expectant silence, one that almost thrummed upon the air. It felt real. It felt alive.

“Let this candle be the light that guides us in our Work,” Reese said, her voice clear and deep, ringing across the space. She held something to the burning flame, and once it caught, used it to light the taller candle. “Let the power in its incandescence enchant the circle that circumscribes the realm that we inhabit, so that we may do the Work safely and in total focus.”

Jane should stop them. Mr. Renton had played these games of chalk and salt, and ended up dead on the operating table. This was dangerous. This was not right.

“By the senses, we align ourselves this night to the Work before us. By the burning of these offerings, we place ourselves upon the path to the Work.”

Hunt set fire to the contents of a bowl. As Jane watched, the smoke that rose from it turned dark before bursting into a dance of colors, sparking and leaping, that she could see even through the veil. There was a sharp crack. Several of the participants jumped at the sound as the bowl fell to pieces, smoldering.

Jane smelled blood.

She tried to stand and found herself immobile. The iron stench grew, grinding against the empty spaces of her skull. She wavered on her knees. Somebody was hurt. Somebody had to be hurt, perhaps from the breaking of the bowl. She straightened her spine, trying to see over the table, trying to see Hunt’s hands, the other woman’s, but the world was growing dim.

Distantly, she heard Reese intone, “We guide ourselves to the imbalance, to the missing member of our ranks. His mind has been clouded by grief and his hands turned clumsy by doubt. By the flowing of this water, we align ourselves to the forces at work and begin to see their origin, their path, their conclusion.”

They had come for Augustine, to call him home. This was all for Augustine. They had put her in the circle as—what? An offering? A sacrifice?

The stench of blood grew. Her head spun. She tried to scream and could not.

Instead, she saw Elodie.

Elodie laid stretched across a shining white plinth of stone before her. There was blood in her eyes, on her lips, obscuring her features. Crimson oozed from beneath her. But she was alive. Her chest rose and fell, her breath rattled. Jane gasped but could not move, could not turn her head. Could they see this?

Dr. Nizamiev. She needed Dr. Nizamiev.

But instead of Dr. Nizamiev, she saw Augustine, dressed in traveling clothes. He rushed into the room, the library blended with an unfamiliar chamber of hewn stone walls. She tried to reach out for him, to beg him to stop this. And he turned to her, her and Elodie. He ignored the dim shapes of the men and women around them. He ran to the table—the plinth—and for a moment she was overjoyed, because Elodie might still be saved. She could not speak, could not explain, but there he was, rucking up his sleeves, pulling out a blade—

No. This was wrong. This was no operating room, and this was no way to treat his dying wife. Where was the grief, the tenderness? Where, even, was his doctor’s manner, his steady reassurances that he would help?

Absent. All absent, replaced with a fevered look as he slit Elodie’s nightgown open down the front.

And then he split her chest in two.

Elodie was weak but alive. She was fighting, thrashing, screaming, and Jane felt tears upon her cheeks as she stared up at the plinth in horror, so close that she could feel the chill radiating from the stone, feel blood spattering across her brow. Her hands spasmed and she jerked forward, but she could not rise from her knees. Stop! Stop! You’ll kill her! she tried to scream, but the words would not leave her throat. She could hear nothing but her own heartbeat, the crack of bone, and Elodie’s convulsing limbs sliding weakly over the stone.

Augustine plunged his hands into the wound. Blood coated him, coated Elodie and the white stone below her, and it was all Jane could smell. His hands were inside her chest, and he was sobbing. He was laughing. There was none of his calm control during surgery, none of his procedure, his confidence, his solemnity. He looked wild.

Jane screamed. She had to stop him. She had to stop him!

What has he done?

Hands gripped her, and Jane wailed, thrashing. The veil slid from her face, and then the cool, musty air of the library flooded her nose.