Her heart skipped a beat. She had read this grimoire’s title before, and not long ago. Where had she seen it? In Nathaniel’s coach, traveling through the Blackwald . . .

I’ll have what I need before Harrows, Ashcroft had said. Whatever he needed, it sounded as though he would find it in this book. She wracked her memory, trying to recall why the Lexicon had mentioned this volume. It had been in the chapter about demons. All she could remember was that it supposedly contained the ravings of a mad sorcerer, who claimed to have hidden some kind of secret inside—

Footsteps clipped down the hall. Breathless, Elisabeth snatched Ashcroft’s cloak and yanked it back over the grimoire. Hoping that its psychic screams had been audible only to her, she scrambled across the room and threw herself back on the floor, arranging her limbs as closely to their original position as she could manage.

She wasn’t a moment too soon. A shadow fell over her just seconds later, and then an acidic smell seared her nostrils, zinging through every nerve in her body. She shot upright, strangling back a shout, only for Lorelei to catch her in an unyielding grip, a suggestion of claws pricking through the lace of her gloves. The demon held a crystal vial full of what appeared to be salt.

“There, there,” she soothed, her tone cloyingly sweet. “You’re all right. It was just smelling salts, darling. You had a little spell, but it’s over now.”

“Give her to me,” Ashcroft said. “This farce has gone on long enough. It’s time.”

Lorelei let go of her and stepped back. Before Elisabeth could react, Ashcroft seized her and spun her around. His expression was terrible to behold. It was as though he had spent all of his kindly charm putting up with Lord Kicklighter, and he had none left to maintain the act.

His patience with her had reached an end. Now, she was about to meet the monster beneath the man.

“Listen to me, girl,” he said, and shook her until her teeth rattled, “you will tell me what you know.” And then he splayed his palm over her forehead, and Elisabeth’s thoughts exploded outward like a newborn star.

The study vanished; everything went pitch black except for her and Ashcroft and sharp-edged silver fragments that hung glinting in the darkness around them. Familiar images flowed over the surfaces of the fragments in silent flashes of color and movement. They were her own memories, floating in a void like the shards of a shattered mirror. Each one showed a different scene. The Director’s red hair shining in the torchlight. Warden Finch raising his switch. Katrien’s laughing face.

Though Elisabeth still dimly felt the Chancellor’s brutal grip on her arm, in this place, he stood apart from her. He turned, taking in the fragmented memories, and then raised his hand. The shards began to spin around them in a glittering cyclone, blurring together to show him not just isolated fragments out of order, but whole memories, Elisabeth’s life flowing past on a shimmering river of glass. Distorted sounds echoed through the void: laughter, whispers, screams. Her stomach clenched as she saw herself as a little girl bounding through the orchard toward Summershall, her brown hair flying out behind her, Master Hargrove struggling to keep up. These were her memories. They were not for Ashcroft to see.

“Show me what you’ve been hiding,” the Chancellor commanded. His cruel, hollow voice rang from every direction.

The bright summer afternoon faded away, replaced by a ghostly image of Elisabeth descending the Great Library’s stairs in her nightgown, a candle raised high. She felt his magic drawing the memory out of her, a force as inexorable as the undertow of a tide, and panic squeezed her lungs. She could feel the memory, hear it, smell it. She watched as Memory-Elisabeth unlocked the door and stood gazing wide-eyed into the dark. Any second now she would notice the aetherial combustion, proof that a sorcerer had committed the crime.

Elisabeth had to stop it. But she couldn’t resist the pull of Ashcroft’s sorcery. She sensed that if she fought him, her memories would shatter into a thousand pieces, gone forever. He would destroy her mind—her very life—if he had to. She needed to show him something.

So she reached deep inside herself, where her most precious memories were hidden, and found something that she could give.

“Do you know why I chose to keep you, Elisabeth?” the Director asked.

Elisabeth’s breath caught. The memory had sped forward to the moment that she had found the Director’s body. They were the same words from the vault, but this time whispered from the Director’s dying lips, last words meant for Elisabeth alone. She had succeeded in blurring the two memories together. And it felt real, because to her it was real. Grief and longing speared her heart like an arrow. She had never expected to hear the Director’s voice again.

“It was storming, I recall.” The halting words fell from the Director’s cracked lips. “The grimoires were restless that night. . . .”

Gazing up at the memory, Ashcroft frowned.

“The Great Library had claimed you.”

Ashcroft shook his head in disgust and turned away. He gestured, and the shards began to disintegrate, crashing like a sheet of water toward the floor.

“No!” Elisabeth shouted. Too late, she remembered what Lorelei had said two days ago. Take the memory from her by force, and destroy the rest.

“You belonged here. . . .”

Reality flooded back in a tempest of color and sound. Someone was screaming. Elisabeth’s throat was raw. All of her was raw, and she tasted salt, and copper, and the world stank of singed metal.

Ashcroft’s voice coasted above her agony like a ship on a calm sea. “She knew nothing. That memory she hid from us—it was just a sentimental trifle. Important to her, perhaps, but not to us. Fetch Mr. Hob. The arrangements have been made.” His voice receded, or perhaps that was her getting farther away, tumbling down into some dark place from which there was no return. “She will be sent to Leadgate tonight.”

FIFTEEN

OUTSIDE THE COACH’S windows, the night hung in tatters. Greasy clouds cloaked the city, bleached by the full moon, which shone like a silver coin lost in a dirty gutter. Elisabeth hadn’t seen this part of Brassbridge when she and Nathaniel rode in last week, aside from a dismal smear of factory smoke on the horizon. The old brick buildings were blackened with soot, and the coach’s wheels splashed through foul-looking puddles. A clammy chill permeated the air. Somewhere nearby, a bell tolled mournfully in the dark.

She sat slumped forward, shivering uncontrollably. Disjointed thoughts filled her head like broken glass, and agony lanced through her skull every time the coach bounced over a rut in the road, whiting out her vision.

My name is Elisabeth Scrivener. I am from Summershall. Chancellor Ashcroft is my enemy. I must expose him. . . .

She recited the words over and over again in her head until they began to feel real. One by one, she pulled the jagged edges of her memories together. The spell Ashcroft had used on her should have destroyed her mind, leaving her an empty shell—but it had not succeeded. She was still herself. Even the pain only served to remind her that she was alive, and had a purpose.

A tall, serrated metal fence flashed past the window. The coach began to slow. It jostled to a halt outside a wrought iron gate, beyond which squatted the edifice of Leadgate Hospital. The hospital was a long, rectangular building with a hint of classical architecture in its pillared front and domed chapel, but these flourishes only served to emphasize the institutional bleakness of the rest. It loomed above the surrounding squalor and misery like something out of a nightmare. She knew instinctively that it was a place of suffering, not healing. A place where unwanted people, like her, were made to disappear.