“Until next evening,” he said, giving Janet and me a small, formal bow.
“We should call him Nickie-Bertie,” Janet commented. “He and Benjamin would make a right pair of devils.”
I smiled.
“Are you free tomorrow for lunch?” Janet Gowdie asked as we walked out of the meeting chamber and into the cloister, her rich Scots voice reminding me of Gallowglass.
“Me?” Even after all that had happened tonight, I was surprised she would be seen with a de Clermont.
“Neither of us fits into one of the Congregation’s tiny boxes, Diana,” Janet said, her smooth skin dimpling with amusement.
Gallowglass and Fernando were waiting for me under the cloister’s arcade. Gallowglass frowned to see me in a witch’s company.
“All right, Auntie?” he asked, uneasy. “We should go. It’s getting late.”
“I just want to have a quick word with Janet before we leave.” I searched Janet’s face, looking for a sign that she might be trying to win my friendship for some nefarious purpose, but all I saw was concern. “Why are you helping me?” I asked bluntly.
“I promised Philippe I would,” Janet said. She dropped her knitting bag at her feet and drew up the sleeve of her shirt. “You are not the only one whose skin tells a tale, Diana Bishop.”
Tattooed on her arm was a number. Gallowglass swore. I gasped. “Were you at Auschwitz with Philippe?” My heart was in my mouth.
“No. I was at Ravensbrück,” she said. “I was working in France for the SOE—the Special Operations Executive—when I was captured. Philippe was trying to liberate the camp. He managed to get a few of us out before the Nazis caught him.
“Do you know where Philippe was held after Auschwitz?” I asked, my tone urgent.
“No, though we did look for him. Was it Nickie-Ben who had him?” Janet’s eyes were dark with sympathy.
“Yes,” I replied. “We think he was somewhere near Chelm.”
“Benjamin had witches working for him then, too. I remember wondering at the time why everything within fifty miles of Chelm was lost in a dense fog. We couldn’t find our way through it, no matter how we tried.” Janet’s eyes filled. “I am sorry we failed Philippe. We will do better this time. ’Tis a matter of Bishop-Clairmont family honor. And I am Matthew de Clermont’s kin, after all.”
“Tatiana will be the easiest to sway,” I said.
“Not Tatiana,” Janet said with a shake of her head. “She is infatuated with Domenico. Her sweater does more than enhance her figure. It also hides Domenico’s bites. We must persuade Satu instead.”
“Satu Järvinen will never help me,” I said, thinking of the time we’d spent together at La Pierre.
“Oh, I think she will,” Janet said. “Once we explain that we’ll offer her up to Benjamin in exchange for Matthew if she doesn’t. Satu is a weaver like you, after all. Perhaps Finnish weavers are more fertile than those from Chelm.”
Satu was staying at a small establishment on a quiet campo on the opposite side of the Grand Canal from Ca’ Chiaromonte. It looked perfectly ordinary from the outside, with brightly painted flower boxes and stickers on the windows indicating its rating relative to other area establishments (four stars) and the credit cards it accepted (all of them).
Inside, however, the veneer of normalcy proved thin.
The proprietress, Laura Malipiero, sat behind a desk in the front lobby swathed in purple and black velvet, shuffling a tarot deck. Her hair was wild and curly, with streaks of white through the black. A garland of black paper bats was draped over the mailboxes, and the scent of sage and dragon’s-blood incense hung in the air.
“We’re full,” she said, not looking up from her cards. A cigarette was clasped in the corner of her mouth. It was purple and black, just like her outfit. At first I didn’t think it was lit. Signorina Malipiero was sitting under a sign that read VIETATO FUMARE, after all. But then the witch took a deep drag on it.
There was indeed no smoke, though the tip glowed.
“They say she’s the richest witch in Venice. She made her fortune selling enchanted cigarettes.”
Janet eyed her with disapproval. She had donned her disguising spell again and to the casual observer looked to be a frail nonagenarian rather than a slender thirty-something.
“I’m sorry, sisters, but the Regata delle Befane is this week, and there isn’t a room to be had in this part of Venice.” Signorina Malipiero’s attention remained on her cards.
I’d seen notices all over town announcing the annual Epiphany gondola race to see who could get from San Tomà to the Rialto the fastest. There were two races, of course: the official regatta in the morning and the far more exciting and dangerous one at midnight that involved not just brute strength but magic, too.
“We aren’t interested in a room, Signorina Malapiero. I’m Janet Gowdie, and this is Diana Bishop.
We’re here to see Satu Järvinen on Congregation business—if she’s not practicing for the gondola race, that is.”
The Venetian witch looked up in shock, her dark eyes huge and her cigarette dangling.
“Room 17, is it? No need to trouble yourself. We can show ourselves up.” Janet beamed at the stunned witch and bundled me off in the direction of the stairs.
“You, Janet Gowdie, are a bulldozer,” I said breathlessly as she hustled me down the corridor. “Not to mention a mind reader.” It was such a useful magical talent.
“What a lovely thing to say, Diana.” Janet knocked on the door. “Cameriera!”
There was no answer. And after yesterday’s marathon Congregation meeting, I was tired of waiting.
I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob and murmured an opening spell. The door swung open. Satu Järvinen was waiting for us inside, both hands up, ready to work magic.
I snared the threads that surrounded her and pulled them tight, binding her arms to her sides. Satu gasped.
“What do you know about being a weaver?” I demanded.
“Not as much as you do,” Satu replied.
“Is this why you treated me so badly at La Pierre?” I asked.
Satu’s expression was steely. Her actions had been taken in the interest of self-preservation. She felt no remorse. “I won’t let you expose me. They’ll kill us all if they find out what weavers can do,” Satu said.
“They’ll kill me anyway for loving Matthew. What do I have to lose?”
“Your children,” Satu spit.
That, it turned out, was going too far.
“I bind thee, Satu Järvinen, delivering you into the hands of the goddess without power or craft, for you have proved yourself unfit to possess them.” With the index finger of my left hand, I pulled the threads one more inch and knotted them tight. My finger flared darkly purple in the color of justice.
Satu’s power left her in a whoosh, sucking the air out of the room.
“You can’t spellbind me!” she cried. “It’s forbidden!”
“Report me to the Congregation,” I said. “But before you do, know this: Nobody will be able to break the knot that binds you—except me. And what use will you be to the Congregation in this state? If you want to keep your seat, you’ll have to keep your silence—and hope that Sidonie von Borcke doesn’t notice.”
“You will pay for this, Diana Bishop!” Satu promised.
“I already have,” I said. “Or have you forgotten what you did to me in the name of sisterly solidarity?”
I advanced on her slowly. “Being spellbound is nothing compared to what Benjamin will do to you if he discovers that you are a weaver. You’ll have no way to defend yourself and will be entirely at his mercy. I’ve seen what Benjamin does to the witches he tries to impregnate. Not even you deserve that.”
Satu’s eyes flickered with fear.
“Vote for the de Clermont motion this afternoon.” I released Satu’s arms, but not the binding spell that limited her power.
Satu tried and failed to use her magic against me.
“Your power is gone. I wasn’t lying. Sister.” I turned and stalked away. At the doorway I stopped and turned. “And don’t ever threaten my children again. If you do, you’ll be begging me to throw you down a hole and forget about you.”
Gerbert tried to delay the final vote on procedural grounds, arguing that the current constitution of the governing council did not meet the criteria set out in foundational documents dating from the Crusader period. These stipulated the presence of three vampires, three witches, and three daemons.
Janet stopped me from strangling the creature by quickly explaining that since she and I were both part vampire and part witch, the Congregation was equally balanced. While she argued percentages, I examined Gerbert’s so-called foundational documents and discovered words such as “unalienable” that were decidedly eighteenth-century in their tone. Presented with a list of the linguistic anachronisms in this supposedly Crusader document, Gerbert scowled at Domenico and said these were obviously later transcriptions of lost originals.
No one believed him.
Janet and I won the vote: six to three. Satu voted as we told her to do, her attitude subdued and defeated. Even Tatiana joined our ranks thanks to Osamu, who had devoted his morning to mapping the precise location of not only Chelm but every Russian city beginning with Ch just to prove that the Polish city’s witches had nothing to do with her grandmother’s skin affliction. When the two entered the council chamber hand in hand, I figured she might have switched not only sides but boyfriends.
Once the vote was tallied and recorded, we didn’t linger to celebrate. Instead Gallowglass, Janet, Fernando, and I took off in the de Clermont launch, headed across the lagoon for the airport.
As planned, I sent a three-letter text to Hamish with the results of the vote: QGA. It stood for Queen’s Gambit Accepted, a code to indicate that the Congregation had been persuaded to support Matthew’s rescue. We did not know if anyone was monitoring our communications, but we’d decided to be cautious.
His response was immediate.
[BEGIN CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGE]
Well done. Standing by for your arrival.
[END CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGE]
I checked in with Marcus, who reported that the twins were always hungry and had completely monopolized Phoebe’s attention. As for Jack, Marcus said he was as well as could be expected.
After my exchange with Marcus, I sent a text to Ysabeau.
[BEGIN CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGE]
Worried about the bishop pair.
[END CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGE]
It was another chess reference. We had dubbed Gerbert, onetime bishop of Rome, and his sidekick Domenico the “bishop pair” because they always seemed to be working together. After their latest defeat, they were bound to retaliate. Gerbert might already have warned Knox that I had won the vote and we were on our way.
Ysabeau took longer to reply than Marcus had.
[BEGIN CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGE]
The bishop pair cannot checkmate the king unless the
queen and her rook allow it.
[END CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGE]
There was a long pause, then another message.
[BEGIN CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGE]
And I will die first.
[END CELL PHONE TEXT MESSAGE]
39
The air bit through my thick cloak, making me withdraw from the blast of wind that threatened to split me in two. I had never experienced cold like this and wondered how anyone survived a winter in Chelm.
“There.” Baldwin pointed to a low huddle of buildings in the valley below.
“Benjamin has at least a dozen of his children with him.” Verin stood at my elbow, a pair of binoculars in her fingers. She offered them to me, in case my warmblooded eyes weren’t strong enough to see where my husband was being kept, but I refused them.
I knew exactly where Matthew was. The closer I got to him, the more agitated my power became, leaping to the surface of my skin in an attempt to escape . That, and my witch’s third eye, more than made up for any warmblooded deficiencies.
“We’ll wait until twilight to strike. That’s when a detail of Benjamin’s children go out to hunt.”
Baldwin looked grim. “They’ve been preying on Lublin, bringing back the homeless and the weak for their father to feed on.”
“Wait?” I’d done nothing but for three days. “I’m not going to wait another moment!”
“He is still alive, Diana.” Ysabeau’s response should have brought me comfort, but it only made the ice around my heart thicken at the thought of what Matthew would continue to suffer for the next six hours as we waited for darkness to fall.
“We can’t attack the compound when it’s at full strength,” Baldwin said. “We must be strategic about this, Diana—not emotional.”
Think and stay alive. Relucantly, I turned away from dreams of Matthew’s quick release to focus on the challenges before us. “Janet said Knox put wards around the main building.”
Baldwin nodded. “We were waiting for you to disarm them.”
“How will the knights get into position without Benjamin knowing?” I asked.
“Tonight the Knights of Lazarus will use the tunnels to enter Benjamin’s compound from below.”
Fernando’s expression was calculating. “Twenty, maybe thirty, should be enough.”
“Chelm is built on chalk, you see, and the ground beneath it is honeycombed with tunnels,”
Hamish explained, unrolling a small, crudely drawn map. “The Nazis destroyed some of them, but Benjamin kept these open. They connect his compound and the town and provide a way for him and his children to prey on the city without ever appearing aboveground.”