She found, suddenly, that it had. She didn’t want to know what could put an expression like that on a boy’s face, as though his eyes were carved from ice, and his heart had turned to stone. She no longer wished to face the person who had murdered the Director in cold blood. Looking down, she nodded.

Nathaniel made to leave, then paused. “Before I go, can I ask you something in return?”

Staring at her supper, she waited to hear what the question was.

“Why did you grab my hair that day in Summershall?” he asked. “I know you didn’t do it by accident, but I can’t for the life of me come up with a rational explanation.”

Her stomach unknotted in relief. She had expected him to ask something terrible. Distantly, she thought, So he does remember me from the reading room, after all.

“I was finding out whether you had pointed ears,” she said.

He paused, considering her answer. “I see,” he said, with a serious expression. “Good night, Miss Scrivener.” He strode around the corner.

Elisabeth wasted no time dragging the tray inside. She was so hungry that she set upon her dinner on the floor, devouring it with her hands. She barely noticed in between bites that someone, somewhere else in the inn, was laughing.

EIGHT

AUSTERMEER’S COUNTRYSIDE FLOWED past the coach’s window. They passed farms, and rolling wildflower meadows, and wooded hills tinged gold with autumn color. Mist pooled in the hollows between the valleys, and sometimes stretched fingers across the road. As the afternoon shadows deepened, the coach clattered into the Blackwald, the great forest that slashed through the kingdom like the stroke of a knife. Everything grew dark and damp. Here and there among the undergrowth stood shocking white stands of birch trees, like specters floating among the black gowns of a funeral party. Gazing out at the gently falling leaves, the thick carpets of ferns, the occasional deer bolting into places unseen, Elisabeth was enveloped by a pall of dread, as though the mist had seeped inside the coach and surrounded her.

Nathaniel would make the attempt here, she was certain. When he reached the city without her, he could claim she’d run and vanished among the trees. In a place like this, no one would find a girl’s body. No one would even bother looking.

Escape felt increasingly hopeless. She had tried again last night, but after breaking her room’s window and climbing down the roof, Silas had been waiting for her in the inn’s garden. Strangely, she didn’t remember the rest. She must have been overcome by exhaustion. Afterward she’d had an unsettling dream of being back in Summershall’s orchard, digging the emergency salt canister out from under the angel statue. But this time the statue had come alive, and looked down at her with vivid yellow eyes.

A nudge against her hand interrupted her thoughts. Frowning, she tore her gaze from the forest to the grimoire on her lap. This was the third time it had bumped her with its cover, like a dog begging for attention.

“What is it?” she asked, and the Lexicon gave another, more insistent nudge, until she loosened her grip and it flipped itself open with an eager flutter.

It had opened to the same section as last night, Demonic Servants and Their Summoning. Elisabeth shuddered. Illustrations from books flashed through her mind: drawings of pentagrams and bleeding maidens, of demons with horns and snouts and tails feasting on entrails like ropes of sausage. But the Lexicon wanted her to read this for a reason. Steeling herself, she bent over the pages.

Relatively little is known about demons even within the sorcerous community, it told her beneath the heading, in part due to the danger of conversing with demons, who are notorious deceivers, and will seize any chance to betray their masters. For once a bargain with a demon is struck, it is in the demon’s best interest to see its master dead; thus it may secure another bargain with a new master, and maximize the amount of human life that it receives in payment.

Demons populate a realm known as the Otherworld, a plane adjacent to our own, which is the source of all magical energy. Without the connection established by a demonic bargain, humans cannot draw energy from the Otherworld. Therefore sorcery’s very existence is contingent upon the summoning and servitude of demons—a regrettable, but necessary, evil. It is both a blessing and a curse that demons crave mortal life above all else, and are therefore eager to treat with humans. . . .

Could this be Nathaniel’s weakness? She grasped in vain at the thought. Her head felt muddy, as though she had been reading for hours instead of only seconds. The grimoire nudged her hand again, and she realized she’d been staring off into space. Determinedly, she rubbed her eyes and continued reading.

The Otherworld teems with hordes of lesser demons: imps, fiends, goblins, and the like, which are not difficult to summon; but they do not make reliable servants, for they are little more intelligent than common beasts. Being the province of criminals and unskilled dabblers, lesser demons are illegal to summon as of the Reforms. True sorcerers seek only the service of highborn demons, which for all their danger may be bound to the conditions of their summoning, and therefore compelled to obey the orders given to them by their masters.

“Where on earth is Nathaniel’s demon?” Elisabeth murmured. It seemed odd for him to travel without it. She briefly had the sensation of teetering on the edge of a revelation, but the epiphany leaked from her mind like sand, leaving only a tinny ringing in her ears.

Further speculation on the nature of demons and the Otherworld exists, the Lexicon continued on the next page, but by and large the sources are highly inconsistent—if not fabricated outright—and their value dismissed by contemporary scholarship. The most notorious example of these is the Codex Daemonicus, by Aldous Prendergast, written in 1513, once held in high esteem but now believed to be nothing more than the ramblings of a madman. Prendergast was declared insane by his own friend, Cornelius the Wise, for his claims that he entered the Otherworld and discovered a terrible secret, which he concealed within his manuscript in the form of a cipher—

“Miss Scrivener?”

Elisabeth flinched and slammed the grimoire shut. She had been concentrating so hard on reading that she hadn’t noticed the coach had come to a halt.

“We’ve reached our stop for the evening,” Nathaniel went on, opening the door wider. “It’s best not to travel in this forest after dark.” His eyes tracked her as she set the Lexicon aside, but he didn’t comment on its presence.

When Silas helped her out of the coach, she tensed. The coach had pulled off the road into a forest clearing. Stars glittered above, and the trees clustered close around them, dark and watchful, breathing mist. They were far from any sign of civilization, even an inn.

This was the place. It had to be. Her hands curled into fists as Nathaniel stepped away into the meadow, casting around on the ground as though searching for something. A place to bury her body? She shot a look over her shoulder, only to find Silas standing close behind her. Though he kept his gaze politely lowered, she felt the weight of his attention.

“There are no buildings in the Blackwald,” he said, as though he had been reading her mind. “The moss folk do not take kindly to intrusions on their territory. While few of them remain, they can still prove dangerous when the mood strikes them.”