She jumped. For a moment, Lily felt suspended. She looked down and saw her body lying on a dirty mattress. Her torn dress hung off her in ragged threads. Her face was streaked with filth, and her elbows, hands, and knees were rubbed raw and bleeding. She wasn’t looking with eyes—there was no light to see anything in the dank, cramped prison her body was trapped in—but Lily could see perfectly. She flew out into the alcove and looked around.
The shaman glowed like a pillar of fire in the next cell. The light of a thousand strange suns illuminated his body. Each sun showed him as a slightly different man. Lily saw him as old, young, beautiful, and dying at once. His spirit held every stage of his life inside him and refracted them back to Lily’s new farseeing eyes as if through a prism. He was everyman.
“There you are, girl,” he whispered, looking up at her. “Welcome home.”
Lily! Where did you go? Your mind went silent. Don’t leave me!
The screams of her sister brought Lily slamming back into her body.
I’m here, Juliet. I’m back. I’m sorry.
Lily pulled in a shuddering breath. The demands of her body assaulted her immediately, and she regretted coming back to such a dismal state of being. Everything ached. Without her willstones, she was cut off from the world again. Sick. She heard the shaman sigh.
“I couldn’t ignore her,” Lily mumbled, realizing she’d done exactly what he’d told her not to do. “She thought I’d died.”
“Well. I guess it would be worse if you didn’t love anyone that much,” he said. His voice sounded old and tired. “Get some sleep. We’ll try again tomorrow.”
* * *
Gideon was excited to start work. He didn’t know for sure if this divide-and-conquer strategy was going to succeed. He almost couldn’t believe that no other mechanic had tried it, except for the fact that it was really rare for a witch to have more than one stone. Maybe witches avoided bonding with more than one stone for this very reason, although if witches did it on purpose, they didn’t tell mechanics that. This other Lillian probably hadn’t known to limit herself to one stone.
It was small things like that which made Gideon suspect that this other Lillian didn’t have much experience with magic. He was even beginning to believe that she came from a world where there were no witches or magic at all. Gideon looked forward to going there one day. He imagined he would seem like a god among the non-magical people, which would be a welcome change.
Gideon saw how people looked at him, like he had no talent. He’d only gotten his position because of who his father was. It was true that he’d been presented to Lillian when they were children because his father was on the Council, but that was common enough. Lillian had claimed dozens of Councilmen’s sons, but Gideon was placed in her inner circle. He was supposed to have been special. Then she’d favored Rowan and Tristan over him and ignored Gideon. His one consolation was that Lillian had never claimed Tristan either. Gideon didn’t know why. Lillian had claimed hundreds, but in her inner circle, those who she saw and worked with every day, she’d only claimed Rowan and Juliet. A year ago, she’d been forced to claim Gideon and make him her head mechanic—but he was that in name only. And everyone knew it.
This was Lillian’s fault. She’d pushed him to this. She’d claimed him, but then refused to utilize him, leaving him with no other option. If he couldn’t find true power in the witch system, then that system had to be overthrown.
Gideon had big plans. He was already talking to mechanics who specialized in growing willstones. They’d told him it might be possible to tailor them and make it so witches routinely bonded with more than one stone. His father was already drafting the legislature that would make it the law for all witches to bond with multiple stones so that they too could be controlled by their mechanics. Once that was pushed through the Council, the world was going to change. Witches would be ruled by their mechanics. They would still be a power source, of course. But Gideon saw a day when they wouldn’t be the only power, as they were now. In fact, after he surveyed all that the other worlds had to offer, the witches might just find themselves obsolete. And begging him for a job.
Carrick was already in the oubliette when Gideon climbed down the rope and joined him. The girl was crouched in the far corner of her cell with her arms over her head. Her willstones were out on top of the desk, and Carrick was staring at them. That was unfortunate.
“Let’s get something straight, Carrick,” Gideon said, sighing regretfully. “You’re not to try to touch her willstones, or even look at them again unless I tell you to. Are we clear?”
Carrick looked up at Gideon with a confused expression on his face. For a moment, Gideon thought he saw something foreign in Carrick’s eyes. Carrick shook his head as if to clear it, and his usual coolness returned. Gideon angled himself in between Carrick and the stone
s. He couldn’t take them from the oubliette. That kind of distance between a witch and her willstones would make her too ill to do anything.
He was going to have to find some kind of safe to keep the stones in so Carrick wouldn’t be tempted. It might take a few days to get something like that out here, but Gideon knew he’d have to make arrangements. Gideon had been avoiding Salem, lying low. He’d have to go all the way to Providence to buy a safe, but he didn’t have a choice about that now. Carrick was becoming attached to her willstones—and maybe to her.
“Are we clear, Carrick?” Gideon repeated.
“We’re clear.”
“Good. She should be weak enough now that it’ll be safe to run a little test.” Gideon picked up the edges of the handkerchief and went to her cell. The girl hugged her stomach, biting her lower lip to stop the nausea. It must be so disorienting to feel your willstones picked up by another and moved around while you sit still, Gideon mused. He didn’t know. He’d never had the displeasure.
“We can give her the littlest stone, and see if she can transmute a tiny bit of energy with it, while I hold the other two for safekeeping.” Gideon met her eyes, pleased to see a wealth of anger there. She really was just like Lillian. This was going to be so much fun for him. “I’m always going to keep at least one of your stones with me. Wouldn’t want you to get any ideas above yourself. Now would I, Lily?”
The girl’s glare dissolved into pleading. Now she was starting to get it. With two of her stones held hostage, Gideon was the one in control of her magic. Unless she wanted to suffer, she’d better do every thing he said exactly as he said it.
“This is a power storage cell,” he continued, putting a heavy but small black box in front of the bars of Lily’s cage. He handed her the smallest willstone. “I am going to give you a tiny bit of heat and I want you to turn that heat into electricity and put it into the storage cell. Do you understand?”
Lily nodded blankly. “You want me to charge that battery.”
“We’ll start there and work our way up. If you’re good, we can move on to something more fun. Remember, there’s a gauge on this battery, as you called it, so don’t try keeping any power for yourself. I’ll be watching.” He squeezed her other two willstones, still cupped in the palm of his hand to give her a taste of the punishment she’d get if she tried to trick him. Lily gripped her head, stifling a scream in the back of her throat. “If you’re good, we’ll keep working our way up to higher and higher levels of energy. Who knows how far we’ll go? Maybe all the way into another world.”
* * *
Rowan has a way to find you, no matter how deep they bury you. Please don’t lose hope, Lily. We’re coming for you.