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“Among the spells within the book was a prayer for calling upon the Devil and receiving his aid. I spoke that prayer aloud with all the anger in my heart. As I finished the clock struck midnight. I knew then my bargain had been taken. The Devil had become my ally. When my father fell ill some days later, I knew the sickness would be his death, though the doctor had not yet spoken the words ‘typhoid fever.’ I dreamed of Tommy’s funeral in perfect detail and felt nothing more than idle curiosity.”

She stopped, but the Lady in Grey was not finished with her.

“As you won your freedom from Tommy,”th e Lady in Grey said, no approval in her cold eyes for Maud’s courage in articulating this horrid memory, “so you later won it from the uncle appointed your guardian, though it meant alienating his own daughter from him, and taking your sister from a quiet life that might have suited her and saved her from the unhappy marriage she later made. No matter the cost to others. You must have again the wild freedom of a child, running with the wind in the heather.”

Maud laid her face in her hands and realized that her skin was as cold as that of her adversary.

“Shall we talk of other deaths you have brought, Fearless? Of the men who, inspired by your words, have gone to fight and die? Of the peasants who have been evicted for defying their masters and have later died in ditches? Of little George, whom you mourn now in your costume of black? Would George have grown ill if his mother had spared time for him—but she must deny him in favor of revolution . . .”

“Why are you tormenting me?”

“I am not. If you fear nothing, you cannot fear the truth about yourself. It cannot torment you.”

“You are evil . . .”

“You know best.”

WILLIE

Willie gazed in horrified fascination at what his magic had wrought. Maud stood transfixed, staring at her own reflection in the window glass, speaking unintelligibly, not hearing when he spoke to her.

When a touch on her arm did nothing, he went past her and pulled the curtain over the glass. She continued to interact with the reflection she could no longer see.

Growing frightened,Willie reviewed his rituals, seeking one that would break the first summoning.When those symbols did nothing, he began drawing signs for a ritual meant to sharpen his own perception of what lay beyond the veil.

The first few sketched symbols had no effect, but then Willie thought of an elaborate combination evoking Maud’s birth planet conjoined with Venus followed by his own conjoined with Mars, following the whole with Mercury, for Hermes is the guide to travelers and the patron of magic.

At the conclusion of this ritual, Willie felt a trembling, then a wash of cold and dampening of sound. Then, with outline blurred and substance cloudy, yet clear enough not to be mistaken for a product of his imagination,Willie saw the Lady in Grey.

I have parted the veil, he thought, pride and apprehension mingling in his breast.

He could hear but fragments of the conversation between Maud and the Lady in Grey, the words as faint to his ear as if heard across a broad field, where an occasional word was tossed to him by the wind.

“Maud!”h e cried. “Tell me what she is saying!”

MAUD

As a butterfly might feel the touch of a summer zephyr, so Maud felt Willie’s mystic workings—she was aware of them, but they did not distract her from her object.

She faced the Lady in Grey and spoke of the cost of truth.

“Parnell,”Maud said slowly, “ruined himself and his cause by his actions. He loved well, but not wisely.”

“As did you,”th e other replied.

“The agent of Parnell’s ruination was truth—not love.”

“And what his enemies did with that truth.”

“They would do more to me,”Maud said, “for I am a woman, and my sex is held to higher standards. Parnell’s enemies forced him into exile. I would not be so lucky. I would be paraded through the streets, and even those who have been helped by my actions would drown me in their poison.”

“True.”

“Even so, I do not fear for myself or my reputation. I gave up fearing for my petty respectability