Perhaps I should go to Nathaniel, she thought. He’ll know if there’s a way to restore its magic.

She dismissed the idea at once. Nathaniel seemed willing to tolerate her efforts to expose Ashcroft, but only under the condition that she didn’t involve him in any way. He might take the mirror from her, especially if it turned out to be dangerous, or if he feared that she would break it. Better to wait and see if the magic returned on its own.

Nathaniel . . . she still didn’t understand him. He wasn’t being unkind to her, but he obviously didn’t welcome her presence, either. Her arrival had disturbed him for some reason—his argument with Silas had made that clear enough. They never shared meals together, and he only spoke to her when absolutely necessary. When they weren’t in his study, he avoided her completely.

Perhaps he didn’t want to encourage her. He might not be interested in women, as the ladies had suggested during the dinner at Ashcroft Manor, or he could be like Katrien, who possessed no interest in romantic matters whatsoever. Either might explain why he’d never courted. But she hadn’t mistaken the way his eyes had darkened the other morning, or the tension that had suffused the air between them.

She flipped over beneath the covers, restless. She imagined padding down the hallway in her nightgown and knocking on Nathaniel’s bedroom door. She pictured him answering in the dark, his hair tousled with sleep, his nightshirt unlaced down the front. When she finally drifted off to sleep, it was to the memory of how soft his hair had felt in Summershall, and the callused brush of his fingers when he’d touched her hand.

• • •

When she awoke the next morning, the first thing she did was sit up and seize the mirror, her hair falling around it in a tangled curtain. The magic was back. Images moved beneath the frost again. But before she could invoke Katrien, a knock came on the door. She shoved the mirror beneath the blankets, holding her breath.

Silas slipped inside with breakfast. His yellow eyes traced over her, but if he sensed anything amiss, he said nothing. Elisabeth thanked him hurriedly as he brought the tray over, and upon realizing that her thank-you had sounded rather peculiar, seized a pastry and stuffed it whole into her mouth. Nothing about this performance seemed to surprise him, as he bowed and departed without comment. She waited several long moments after he had gone, certain that his senses were far keener than a human’s. Then she scrambled to retrieve the mirror, ignoring the bite of its frozen metal.

“Show me Katrien,” she commanded, and breathed against the glass.

The mirror swirled. Katrien was sprawled facedown on her bed, partially burrowed into the crumpled balls of paper. After Elisabeth had said her name several times, she snorted awake and rolled straight onto the ground. Elisabeth winced at the thump she made on the rug.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Katrien stumbled over to the mirror, squinting in the morning light. “I was going to ask you the same question, but I see you’re eating breakfast in bed.”

“I’m safe, for now.” Elisabeth hesitated. “Katrien, you look . . .”

Pale. Overworked. Exhausted. She cursed herself for not noticing it the other day. The bags beneath Katrien’s eyes and the grayish pallor to her brown complexion spoke of far more than just one night’s worth of lost sleep.

Her friend glanced over her shoulder at the door, and paused for a moment as if making sure no one was outside. “Director Finch has been running the place like a prison,” she confessed, lowering her voice. “The wardens perform random room inspections every few days. He’s doubled the amount of work apprentices have to do, and we get thrown in the dungeon if we don’t finish it.” She rubbed her wrist, where Elisabeth glimpsed the swollen marks of a switch. “If you think I look bad, you should see Stefan. But don’t worry. This won’t last for much longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d tell you, but I’m worried we’ll run out of time again. Trust me. I have the situation under control.” She leaned closer. “So, I managed to have a look at the records last night.”

Elisabeth sat up straighter. “Did you find it?”

Katrien nodded. “There were only two copies of the Codex Daemonicus ever written. One went missing hundreds of years ago, and the other is shelved somewhere in the Royal Library.”

“So Ashcroft must have the missing copy. . . .” She trailed off, thinking hard. She had found out from Silas that the Royal Library was one of the spired buildings overlooking the river, a short walk from Hemlock Park.

“Elisabeth,” Katrien said.

She looked up to find the frost creeping back across the mirror, swallowing up Katrien’s face. Elisabeth’s heart leaped to her throat. “Only sorcerers are allowed into the Royal Library,” she said rapidly. “And scholars, if they receive permission from the Collegium—but they have to have credentials. I need to find a way in.”

“That’s easy enough,” Katrien replied. “Get a job there as a servant.”

“But they’ll never let a servant study a grimoire.”

“Of course they won’t let you. You realize what you have to do, don’t you?”

Elisabeth shook her head, but her mouth had gone dry. Truthfully, she knew what Katrien was going to tell her, and she didn’t want to hear it.

“I know you don’t like it, but there’s no other way.” Her friend’s voice was fading quickly. “You have to find out where the Codex is shelved in the Royal Library. You have to get in there,” she said, “and then you have to steal it.”

NINETEEN

FINDING A JOB at the Royal Library proved less challenging than Elisabeth had anticipated. As it turned out, a maidservant had quit just that morning after a giant booklouse skittered up her leg, and the Royal Library was in need of an immediate replacement. Elisabeth demonstrated to the steward that she would be an ideal candidate by lifting up one end of a cabinet in his office, uncovering a booklouse underneath, and stomping on it, much to the delight of a young apprentice who happened to be passing by. She then sat down opposite the steward’s desk and answered a number of job-related questions, such as how quickly she could run, and whether she strongly valued keeping all ten of her fingers. The steward seemed impressed that she found all of his questions perfectly reasonable. Most people, he explained, walked straight out the door.

“But this is a library,” she replied in surprise. “What do they expect—that the books won’t try to bite off their fingers?”

After her interview with the steward, she had to meet with the Deputy Director, Mistress Petronella Wick.

Elisabeth had never heard of a Deputy Director, but she gathered that the Royal Library was large enough to need one. She instantly understood upon entering the office that she was in the presence of an exceedingly important person. Mistress Wick wore the indigo robes of a decorated senior librarian, clasped high about her throat with a golden key and quill. Her hair had turned silver with age, but that didn’t diminish the elegance of her artfully piled braids. She had dark brown skin against which her white eyes appeared almost opalescent, and her posture was so impeccable that Elisabeth felt her own gangliness fill the room like a third presence. She was certain Mistress Wick could sense it, though she was clearly blind.