“There is no way forward that doesn’t have him in it,” I said.
Anger burned through my veins, followed by a crashing wave of power—fire, air, earth, and water—that swept everything else before it. I felt a strange absence, a hollowness that told me I had lost something essential to my self.
For a moment I wondered if it were Matthew. But I could still feel the chain that bound us. What was essential was still there.
Then I realized it was not something essential I’d lost but something habitual, a burden carried so long that I had become inured to its heaviness.
Now it was gone—just as the goddess had foretold.
I whirled around, blindly seeking the library entrance in the darkness. “Where are you going, Auntie?” Gallowglass said, holding the door closed so that I couldn’t pass.
“Did you not hear me? We must go after Matthew. There’s no time to lose.”
The thick panels of glass turned to powder, and the brass hinges and handles clanged against the stone threshold. I stepped over the debris and half ran, half flew up the stairs to Duke Humfrey’s.
“Auntie!” Gallowglass shouted.
“Diana Bishop! Have you lost your mind?” Months of reduced cigarette consumption meant that Sarah was making good progress pursuing me.
“No!” I shouted back. “And if I use my magic, I won’t lose Matthew either.”
“Lose Matthew?” Sarah slid on the slick floor on her way into Duke Humfrey’s, where Fernando, Gallowglass, and I were waiting. “Who suggested such a thing?”
“The goddess. She told me I would have to give something up if I wanted Ashmole 782,” I explained. “But it wasn’t Matthew.”
The feeling of absence had been replaced by a blooming sensation of released power that banished any remaining worries.
“Corra, fly!” I spread my arms wide, and my firedrake screeched into the room, zooming around the galleries and down the long aisle that connected the Arts End and the Selden End.
“What was it, then?” Linda asked. She’d taken the stairs at a more sedate pace and arrived in time to watch Corra’s tail pat Thomas Bodley’s helmet.
“Fear.”
My mother had warned me of its power, but I had misunderstood, as children often do. I’d thought it was the fear of others that I needed to guard against, but it was my own terror. Because of that misunderstanding, I’d let the fear take root inside me until it clouded my thoughts and affected how I saw the world.
Fear had also choked out any desire to work magic. It had been my crutch and my cloak, keeping me from exercising my power completely. Fear had sheltered me from the curiosity of others and provided an oubliette where I could forget who I really was: a witch. I’d thought I’d left fear behind me months ago when I learned I was a weaver, but I had been clinging to its last vestiges without knowing it.
No more.
Corra dropped down on a current of air, extending her talons forward and beating her wings to slow herself. I grabbed the pages from the Book of Life and held them up to her nose. She sniffed.
The firedrake’s roar of outrage filled the room, rattling the stained glass. Though she had spoken to me seldom since our first encounter in Goody Alsop’s house, preferring to communicate in sounds and gestures, Corra chose to speak now.
“Death lies heavy on those pages. Weaving and bloodcraft, too.” She shook her head as if to rid her nostrils of the scent.
“Did she say bloodcraft?” Sarah’s curiosity was evident.
“We’ll ask the beastie questions later,” Gallowglass said, his voice grim.
“These pages come from a book. It’s somewhere in this library. I need to find it.” I focused on Corra rather than the background chatter. “My only hope of getting Matthew back may be inside it.”
“And if I bring you this terrible book, what then?” Corra blinked, her eyes silver and black. I was reminded of the goddess, and of Jack’s rage-filled gaze.
“You want to leave me,” I said with sudden understanding. Corra was a prisoner just as I had been a prisoner, spellbound with no means to escape.
“Like your fear, I cannot go unless you set me free,” Corra said. “I am your familiar. With my help you have learned how to spin what was, weave what is, and knot what must be. You have no more need of me.”
But Corra had been with me for months and, like my fear, I had grown used to relying on her.
“What if I can’t find Matthew without your help?”
“My power will never leave you.” Corra’s scales were brilliantly iridescent, even in the library’s darkness. I thought of the shadow of the firedrake on my lower back and nodded. Like the goddess’s arrow and my weaver’s cords, Corra’s affinity for fire and water would always be within me.