Chapter 24

Chapter 24

I t was nine o’clock before the twilight was deep enough to allow Santoro to restart the engine and slowly creep toward Isola della Stella. I’d taken this journey many times, and knew from experience that there was no sight of Fludd’s memory palace or a floating Labyrinth from the lagoon. The witches must maintain robust concealment spells in addition to the other wards that protected the island from curious passersby and unwelcome visitors.

It was those complicated wards that would present our first real challenge. Janet and I hoped their magic would recognize Santoro as a regular visitor—even though he was driving a far less luxurious craft than was his habit—and release their hold for two visitors, one a former Congregation member who was also a de Clermont, and the other a current representative. We would not know for sure until we crossed into the shallower waters surrounding Isola della Stella.

The wards flexed and shifted as the prow of the delivery boat crossed one of the island’s invisible channel markers. The wards were caught between a sense of familiarity and a suspicion that something was not quite right.

“Hold tight.” Janet closed her eyes and murmured a spell in Gaelic. “Nobody panic. Any hint of panic will trigger the alarm.”

Janet repeated her spell, and the wards whooshed open.

“We’re in,” Janet said, relieved.

“Nice work,” I said, admiring her skill.

Santoro pulled into a covered bay marked with a hexafoil. It was not where I was used to arriving, for the de Clermonts used the vampire entrance nearby. He pulled the delivery boat level with the floating platform and I hopped onto its undulating surface.

I checked my watch. It was nearly nine-thirty and the fireworks would start soon.

“We must leave no later than four o’clock, Serèna, ” Santoro remindedme.

Venetian summer nights were short, and the skies to the east would be growing pale by then.

“Six hours is more than enough time,” Janet said with a confidence I didn’t share.

I helped Janet from the vessel, shivering in the cold air. If we were caught…

“Don’t give in to fear, Diana,” Janet warned. “Darkness is already interested in us. Stay in Shadow.”

That meant embracing the uncertain outcome of our mission to Isola della Stella, rather than worrying about what might go wrong. I nodded and focused on our next challenge: getting me into the witches’ precinct. I settled my Yale Crew cap more firmly on my head and zipped up the neck of my dark fleece pullover.

Janet conjured up a dim shadowlight. It was enough for me to see by but wouldn’t draw attention if some member of the Congregation or its staff saw it. The island was full of haunts and shades, and Janet’s glimmering bit of Shadow would be shrugged off without a second thought.

Janet walked with brisk purpose straight up to the door to Celestina. It had no handle, and no keyhole. The vampires employed a porter named Jacopo to check names against his roster of expected visitors, but the witches relied on magic. The portal would not open unless we were here on official Congregation business. Mere familiarity would not be sufficient to let Janet or me pass through this security checkpoint.

“Janet Gowdie and Diana Bishop, Yale University,” Janet said crisply, putting her hand on the door’s carved frame. “Here to visit the archives and consult the Codex Incantamenti to determine if Professor Bishop can understand its contents.”

The door cracked open an inch and light spilled onto the landing from the torches on the other side.

“Put your hand on that moon just there,” Janet said, nodding her head toward a carved crescent.

I did as she commanded. Electric tingles pulsed through my palm as the door’s spells performed an entry scan that Miriam, whose laboratory security system was forever breaking down, would have envied.

The wards tugged and pulled, considering our request. Finally, they opened the door.

Welcome, sisters, a ghostly voice murmured. The archives are expecting you.

Before tonight, I had only been in the formal rooms where the witches held occasional receptions for Congregation members—never in this part of the Casa delle Streghe. The dark corridors Janet and I walked were covered with vivid wall paintings of mythical and magical subjects, and the carved beams were thickly inscribed with spells, curses, and sigils.

Shadow clung to Janet and me, fanning away from us as we proceeded deeper into the heart of the complex, avoiding the main thoroughfares in favor of old passageways once used by servants and rooms filled with moldering furniture and bric-a-brac.

“Mind your thoughts,” Janet said, drawing a wand out of her knitting bag and swatting at a tendril of Darkness. “These bloody wards are better than an antidepressant in forcing you to adopt a positive outlook.”

The doors of the witches’ archives swished open to welcome us. Inside, the shelves bulged with curious objects and manuscripts, and apothecary cabinets stood where card catalogues would be in an ordinary library.

“We must at least open the Codex Incantamenti, ” Janet said, leading me inside. “If we don’t, we’ll rouse the wards’ curiosity and that is the last thing we need. Thankfully, the thing is so enormous it’s always out on a stand.”

Janet directed me to a carved oak table that looked as though it had been specially built to accommodate the gigantic bound volume. The codex’s heavy cover was studded with bosses, and I reached to touch them. Janet grabbed my hand.

“There will be no touching of books,” Janet said. “Not after what happened with the Book of Life. Let me do it.”

She lifted the cover, gave the codex a perfunctory riffle of the pages, and closed the volume with a bang.

“There. We’ve met the ward’s conditions. How about a cup of tea?” Janet said, ushering me into an adjacent room.

The witches’ common room looked like every Oxford University senior common room I’d ever been in, the walls steeped in tradition as well as the scents of tea, wine, old books, and tobacco.

Janet glanced at a Bakelite clock next to a kettle. “Fancy some fresh air instead?”

Janet was announcing every step of our journey through the witches’ chambers.

“Hopefully the wards will get bored with all the innocuous chatter and go back to sleep,” Janet murmured, taking me through a passageway that wound through the personal rooms that had been assigned to the three Congregation members. I spotted kitchens, laboratories, stillrooms, and storerooms, all of them jammed with personal items left by generations of witches. Once, there would have been staff to keep things tidy and neat, and some rooms still bore traces of their presence in narrow iron bed frames with lumpy mattresses, rickety clothing stands, plain ceramic washbowls and pitchers, and threadbare wool blankets.

“There go the bells,” Janet said as the campanile chimed ten o’ clock. A boom followed. “And there go the fireworks.”

Janet let her wand drift through a marbling of Shadow and Darkness. A door straight out of a children’s story appeared at the far end of the passage. It was arched, with simple iron fittings and a gap at the bottom large enough for a cat to slide through in pursuit of a mouse. Unlike the substantial slabs of wood and metal that guarded the Congregation meeting chamber, this ancient door looked as though it would fall off its hinges at the slightest pressure.

But things were not always what they seemed when magic was involved, as I knew from crafting Apollo’s daily disguising spell. What appeared to be a rickety wooden door with cracks and gaps could be a superficial glamour placed over something far more impenetrable.

Janet touched the door and it opened easily, proving that some things were exactly as they seemed. A black cat streaked by us, hissing with indignation.

“One of Sidonie’s moggies,” Janet commented. “She’ll be off to report to her mistress.”

“Sidonie is here ?” I said, my heart clenching into a knot.

“No, as that infernal cat will soon discover.” Janet brushed aside the cobwebs of Darkness spun across the peak of the arch. “After you.”

A flash of brilliant red, followed by green and gold, burst in the night sky. In the distance, I spotted the glimmer of water threaded between dark walls, and the gleam of a clock tower topped with a winged figure balanced on an hourglass and holding a scythe. The witches’ memory palace may have been cloaked from outside view, but it was wholly visible from their precinct even though the rest of Celestina was spared the sight.

I studied Fludd’s memory palace from its floating stone foundation to its tower finials with astonishment. I’d always thought of it as something imaginary. Seeing it constructed out of wood and stone was nearly as surreal as the shades of the Ravens’ Wood.

“Unfuckingbelievable,” I murmured, making use of one of Chris’s favorite phrases.

“It really is an eyesore,” Janet agreed. “Everything else at Celestina is Gothic and soothing, but that baroque monstrosity assaults the eyes like a coronet assaults the ears when it sounds reveille.”

We took the route Ysabeau had traced on the map at Ca’ Chiaramonte, and passed into the former monks’ garden. The lush beds of herbs and flowers were well tended. The witches must still employ servants, for not even magic could maintain such an extensive garden with its carefully pruned grapevines and labels that indicated what was planted where.

Beyond the gardens was the orchard, as Ysabeau’s map had promised. Most of the trees were in leaf, flower, and fruit, just like Gwyneth’s garden in the Ravens’ Wood. The trees were protected from the worst of the elements with a brick wall, creating a microclimate that would ripen their fruit more evenly.

Keenly aware of the time, Janet and I moved through another door in the wall and between trees along a dirt track that should lead to the squero, where the Congregation still employed master boatbuilders and specialist squerarióli to tend to their vessels. Once we reached the place where sawhorses and cradles awaited boats in need of repairs, the indistinct outlines of the Labyrinth’s palings came into focus. I saw the arched bridge that spanned the short distance from the witches’ formal gardens to the sloping bank where a witch would climb into a waiting mascareta to pilot her way through the Labyrinth’s narrow, twisting waterways.

“There’s a boat there,” Janet said, pointing to the short, round mascareta that was lying upside down like an empty walnut shell. “Hopefully it’s lagoon-worthy.”

We carried it to the water and flipped it over.

“Do you want me to row?” I said, making sure that my baseball cap was securely in place and my ponytail pulled through the gap in the back as though I was about to enter a race.

“Have you ever rowed standing up, with one oar?” Janet blinked atme.

“Good point,” I said, picking up the nearby oar and handing it to Matthew’s granddaughter, who climbed aboard the vessel. Once Janet was settled inside, I pushed the mascareta into the water, jumping from the bank into the broad-bottomed craft as I didso.

It tipped under my weight, but Janet used her oar to keep level before pushing off the muddy bed.

“I’m getting too old for this kind of lark,” Janet complained. “It’s time for me to retire.”

Circumnavigating the outer walls of the Labyrinth required that Janet leave the shoreline and enter the lagoon. Otherwise, we ran the risk of capsizing the boat due to its shallow draft or crashing into the palings, carried into them by strong currents and the stiff breeze that had risen as darkness fell.

That meant passing through the wards a second time. They shuddered in surprise, unused to boat traffic here. I held my breath, hoping the wards would relax of their own accord. Janet let out a stream of colorful Gaelic while she continued to steer the mascareta in a wide arc that headed back toward the memory palace.

It was only then that I realized the memory palace was no longer visible. It had disappeared behind the wards along with the Labyrinth. All we could see from our vantage point was the abandoned squero and the vine-encrusted wall of the witches’ garden.

“How are you at dead reckoning?” I asked Janet, wondering how else we would find our way back to the palace without landmarks to guideus.

“I was born in Inverness,” Janet said under her breath. “I’m used to poor visibility.”

The wards were more than low-lying fog, however. They were a mirage of Shadow and reflected Light that would have disoriented even the most experienced sailor.

Janet was as good as her word, and steered unerringly toward a decapitated statue that was half-buried in the soft earth by the shoreline. We passed through the wards again. They were wide-awake now and tracking our strange movements with curiosity.

Puzzled but obedient, the wards parted and the memory palace shimmered before us once more.

“We’re through.” Janet heaved a sigh of relief.

I peered at the pale walls of Fludd’s building, looking for Ysabeau’s landing. “There!”

A listing, rickety dock was attached to a single rotting post. No one had landed on it for decades, and it was by no means clear we could safely do so now.

“That looks like a death trap,” Janet commented, as the festival’s final burst of fireworks filled the sky with light. Soon, it would be completely dark except for the lamps on the bows of the vessels taking home those few prudent souls who didn’t wish to stay in Venice and drink themselves into a stupor.

I spied the outline of a bricked-up doorway where the dock remained tenuously affixed to its mooring. The cargo entrance was sealed. Had we come all this way for nothing?

Janet used her oar to snag a loose corner and pulled the mascareta into position between what remained of the dock and the foundations of the palace.

“What now?” I said, thinking of Gwyneth’s Finnish TNT spell. Perhaps we could blow a hole in the wall. Hopefully, anyone within earshot would think it was just more fireworks.

Janet murmured a few words and poked the bricks with her wand, shredding the illusion cast over the door.

“Impressive,” I murmured.

“ Och, that glamour had seen better days,” Janet said modestly, resting on the narrow bench that spanned the mascareta ’s gunwhales. “You could see the latch right through the bricks.”

The time had come for me to enter the memory palace. We had agreed at Ca’ Chiaramonte that Janet could not enter for fear that its magic would recognize her and inquire after her purpose. She wouldn’t be able to tell the truth, nor would she be able to lie.

“Remember, if the palace asks you a question, you must answer it as truthfully as you can,” Janet warned. “Keep it short and to the point—that’s how to stay on the right side of the remaining wards.”

Sarah was an expert in half-truths, but I was not.

“The goddess only knows what Shadow and Darkness will throw at you inside, never mind the dazzles and glaems Light will produce to distract you,” Janet continued. “When you find your memory bottles, don’t wander or dawdle. If you do, you might be lost forever. The memory palace’s magic is perilously mutable.”

“Thank you, Janet.” I opened my mouth to say something more, but Darkness was waiting to pounce, and Light snatched the words from my lips before I could utter them.

“There’s no need,” Janet said, the skin around her eyes creased with worry. “Listen to your instincts, Diana, and do not doubt them; they are how the goddess speaks to you.”

I hopped out of the mascareta and onto the part of the landing that was still supported by the post. It sank a few inches, filling my sneakers with water, then bobbed up again. I reached for the iron latch on the door, but it had not been used for ages and the mechanism was stiff with salt and grime. I put my shoulder to the wood and pushed with all my might. Reluctantly, the door swung open, scraping against the floor on the other side.

Magic swept over me as I entered the memory palace, whooshing to greet me and passing through the open door. The force of it caused the door to bang shut, and I wondered if it could be opened from the inside.

But it was too late to worry about that now. I cast a flickering shadowlight so that I could get my bearings in the cavernous space. Holding it in my palm, I lifted it, hoping to see into the corners of the room. Darkness quickly absorbed its pale glimmer, but the illumination had lasted long enough for me to learn that I was standing in a wooden arcade with rectangular openings like unglazed windows. It reminded me of the stands at Hampton Court’s tennis play, where spectators were able to view the action from a protected position.

I conjured another shadowlight and searched the panels until I found a simple catch. It snicked open, releasing a section of the enclosure so that I could pass onto the room’s black marble floor. This was no tennis court. The lines and patterns in the marble were magical: a pentacle held in concentric rings, with an elemental circle at each point of the star.

My eyes adjusted to the absence of Light and I swept the room for further clues about its purpose. The ceiling was as dark as the four walls and the floor, and a silver crescent moon shone from it, casting the only light in the windowless space. A silvered frieze with the repeated legend theatrum tenebrarum wound around the room.

The Theater of Darkness.

This was where my mother faced Peter Knox in a magical duel, the conditions so gloomy that she wouldn’t have seen the wand in front of her face.

Janet had warned me not to dawdle and I reluctantly left the Theatrum Tenebrarum behind me and found my way to a torch-filled hallway wide enough for four witches to walk abreast. A touch of witchfire would have illuminated them, but I couldn’t risk detection.

In the hallway, Darkness was still present, but it was held in check by layers of magic and countermagic in a palimpsest inscribed and reinscribed by hundreds of witches to keep the spells vital. But the loosening knots of the spells had not been re-tied with the shining threads a weaver like me used. These were woven out of Darkness, Shadow, and Light—the fabric of higher magic.

I passed by other rooms and sped down other corridors: a room lined with shelves, each laden with books; a dining room, with a table set for a banquet, and thirteen seats gathered around; a room like a theater, without players or audience.

I came upon the palace’s kitchen, where a man in a dark jacket and knee britches sat by the fire, his back to me. He stirred a cauldron filled with something dark and fragrant. A black bird with a sharp ebony beak and a thickly feathered neck perched on his shoulder. The raven cocked its head to look atme.

The man felt my gaze and turned.

John Proctor. I recognized him from the carriage road and Grissel Gowdie’s memory bottle. Why was he in the witches’ memory palace?

There’s nothing for you here, he said. Hearth and cauldron will never be home for witches like us. You must climb higher to find what you seek.

The raven rose from John’s shoulder, leading me into another part of the palace. I followed the bird to a space where the light was pearlescent gray and shifting, rather than dark and thick. I searched high on the walls and wasn’t surprised to see theatrum umbrarum —the Theater of Shadows—spelled out there.

A carved chair stood in the center of the room. A black bearskin—head and all—was thrown over the back and seat so that anyone who dared to sit in it would be held in the creature’s legs. Next to it stood a bucket with a silver dipper and a chalice studded with jewels. Unlike the Theater of Darkness, the Theater of Shadows felt like a ritual space.

Curiosity saved the witch, croaked the raven circling above me. You must aim high. The black bird flew off in a flurry of dark wings.

I looked up, and saw another labyrinth suspended above me, this one made of air and Shadow rather than wood and water. Through some marvel of architecture and magic, the suspended labyrinth managed to be both diaphanous and solid, with the vaulted dome of the heavens visible aboveit.

Through the shifting clouds of the labyrinth I saw a glimmer, then a sparkle. I narrowed my eyes in an effort to see more clearly.

Glass. Memory bottles.

A spiral staircase rose behind the bearskin-covered chair. It was not until I put my foot on the first tread that I realized the stairs resembled a double helix, with two separate flights twining around a central axis.

As I climbed, the labyrinth grew more substantial. When I reached the top of the stairs, the landing was solid under my feet and I stood at the central point of the palace where the witches’ memories were kept.

Signs pointed to oriens, occidens, septentrio, and meridies— the four cardinal directions. I stepped through the eastern arch and into a demented library of curved shelves and twisting aisles. Hundreds of bottles crowded the shelves, along with boxes of brittle call slips for indicating when a bottle had been removed, and a few odds and ends of unknown origin and purpose: a bird’s skull, a crossbow with a wand for a bolt, a crumbling silk cap with a gold tassel. A thick layer of dust covered everything.

I scanned the labels on the nearest bottles. Ema Howat. Ana Novak. Maja Krajnc. These were Eastern European names, possibly from Venice’s near neighbors Slovenia and Croatia. A few bottles suggested they belonged to witches closer to Venice, like the one labeled with the name Zorzi Vascotto.

Curiously, each label not only had a name but a six-digit code. 197402. 196813. 195101. 195904. Could the first four digits be a date? If so, what did the last two numbers signify?

“Oh, Granny Alice,” I murmured. She would be horrified by the jumble. If the numbers were dates, they should have been arranged in ascending or descending order. If they weren’t dates, then the bottles should have been shelved alphabetically.

There was no time to bring order to the chaos, for I was in the wrong part of the memory palace. The bottles containing Proctor and Bishop memories would be in the occidens section reserved for witches who lived somewhere west of Venice.

I crossed the landing again. In the western part of the palace, the shelves extended as far as the eye could see in one direction, then twisted off into Shadow. There was no dust, and the slips that marked the places to reshelve bottles were fresh and crisp. I pulled one free. Sidonie Von Borcke, 24 June 2017. My nemesis had been here only a few weeks before, pawing through memories that didn’t belong to her.

The bottles on the shelves closest to the entrance were labeled: 201701, 201705, 201713. The next were marked 201603, 201607, 201608, 201611.

My hunch was confirmed: The first four digits designated a year—probably the year the memories were collected from that particular class of potential adepts. The last two digits must be a secondary sorting system.

Matthew’s mention of eugenics echoed in my thoughts, reminding me that the Congregation was not only interested in storing witches’ memories but evaluating them, too.

“Rankings.” My mouth twisted in distaste. After the witches removed the memories from the newly certified adepts, they were reviewed and assigned a rank according to their skills and power. Matthew’s fears were justified.

These memories had been recently culled, so my mother’s would not be among them. I tore myself away and went deeper into the library of bottles in search of hers.

I sped along the millennial shelves and reached the ’90s. There were twice as many bottles here, but I had no time to wonder why. I ran down the next aisle, searching for the 1960s. I overshot the mark, and found myself among the memories of witches who had been here before World WarII.

1932, 1933, 1934.

1935.

I breathed deeply, trying to quiet my racing heart.

Thomas Lloyd, 193601

Joanna Bishop, 193602

Taliesin Proctor, 193603

Nina Garnier, 193608

Janette Gardener, 193609

Viola Cantini, 193613

If the final two digits were a ranking system, then three of my grandparents had received top marks in their Labyrinth examinations.

I had no flowers to offer to their memories, as I had at Proctor’s Ledge. Nor could I take the memories into my heart where they belonged. All I could do was reclaim them.

I pulled a rolled-up tote bag from where I’d stashed it in the waistband of my black leggings. One by one, I removed my grandparents’ bottles, moving as quickly and surely as I could.

The aisle twisted to the left and I peeked around the corner. Another range of shelves extended into the distance. The past beckoned me to explore further, but I turned my back to it and set my sights forward.

This time, I used my instincts to find the other family bottles.

Gwyneth Proctor, 194802

I nestled Aunt Gwyneth’s memories into the bag next to her brother’s. The more family memories I reclaimed, the louder my power sang.

Janet Gowdie, 194903

Naomi Proctor, 195713

In the bottles went, the weight of the bag pulling on the straps.

I reached the 1960s, my fingers tingling.

Isaac Mather, 196503

I searched further, and found what I sought on the bottom shelf.

Rebecca Bishop, 196901

Mom had been top of her class, like her father before her.

I stooped to put my mother’s memories into the bag and noticed another bottle beside it with her name and a date traditionally written out. It was 5 August 1976 —only eight days before I was born. I took that bottle, too, freeing a retrieval slip from the shelf. I grabbed it before it could pass through the clouds and fall into the room below.

There was a name, date, and description of the item taken—just like on a request slip at the Bodleian.

Bishop, Rebecca. Memory Bottle 3, 28 August 1983.

Fire and ice filled my veins. Some ghoul had taken my mother’s memories on the day she had died.

“Peter Knox,” I said, voicing my worst fear.

It was even more horrifying that someone else had custody of them now. I looked for the name of the witch who had my mother’s memories, expecting to see Sidonie’s initials.

Tinima Toussaint, 26 May 2017.

It was not Sidonie who had taken the bottle, but the Congregation’s new recruit. She had done so on the day the ravens came to New Haven to give their message to Becca.

My eyes strayed to the shelves on the left, where I found other bottles that belonged to me and mine.

Emily Mather, 197405

Julie Eastey, 197606

Had some other witch been spying on Em, or Julie? Furious at the possibility, I put them in my bag, too.

The Bodleian tote couldn’t hold any more items. The taste of unfinished business and unmet desire soured my tongue. It would remain there until I had reclaimed every shred of family from this place.

I was leaving the occidens section of the memory palace when one final bottle caught my eye.

Margaret Skelling, 200804

I hesitated. My intention had been to recover only what belonged to my kith and kin.

Take it, Darkness whispered. It serves her right, after turning you and Gwyneth in to the Congregation.

It doesn’t belong to you, Light murmured. I made a Faustian bargain and slipped the bottle into my pocket.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I wish it had been yours,” I said.

The floor underneath me went from solid to vapor and I fell—up, up,up.

I was flung into the inky sky. Instead of constellations, the Darkness was filled with a swirling galaxy of leaves, dragonflies, toads, and feathers. A ladder whirled around the center of the vortex, followed by a broom, a golden ring, even a doll’s house, as though I had been transported to Kansas and would soon find myself inOz.

I held the bag of memory bottles close, not wanting them to be sucked into this strange universe.

“Looking for this?” A tall, slender witch sat cross-legged in the middle of the dark galaxy, holding up a memory bottle. She was dressed in white, her head wrapped in a scarf. “I’ve been expecting you, Diana Bishop.”

“That belongs to me.” The air was thick with power and I struggled to swim throughit.

“Not according to the label.” Tinima’s high cheekbones cast her fine features into Shadow until her face resembled Death’s head. “You must be one of those witches who thinks all the magic in the world is theirs for the taking.”

“And you must be Tinima.” I hovered nearby, careful to keep my mind blank and not to wish or want for anything—not information, not this witch’s sudden, painful demise, not even the return of my mother’s remaining memories.

But I was not careful enough.

“This is not your first time exploring a labyrinth, I see.” Tinima’s eyes narrowed. “Someone’s been walking where they hadn’t ought. Only a true child of Shadow could have come so far, unchallenged. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, Diana.”

“You knew I was coming to Isola della Stella,” I said, “just as you knew when the ravens came to New Haven.”

“The spirits have been restive,” Tinima replied, “and the candle flames full of whispers.”

I’d left the black bird oracle at Ca’ Chiaramonte—thank the goddess. Hopefully Madame Toussaint was not yet aware that I, too, had a way of divining the future.

“Fireworks have never been my favorite poison,” Tinima said, “so I remained on Isola della Stella to see you myself.”

“Here I am,” I said with a shrug that I’d learned from Ysabeau.

“Hmm.” Tinima watched me closely, gauging my reactions. “Sidonie is obsessed with you, which tells me you have power. Janet barely mentions your name, which confirms you are a witch of great ability. She doesn’t trust me and I don’t trust her, you see, so we keep our secrets close.”

Wise decision, I thought.

“And neither of them knows who—or what—they’re dealing with when it comes to you,” Tinima murmured, her eyes boring into me with a tingle that verged on painful, probing my strengths and making note of my weaknesses. “I’m glad I had the opportunity to judge you myself. You don’t disappoint, Diana, even though you are in over your head.”

I couldn’t argue with that. But I was a quick study, and soon I would be swimming with the best of them.

“The bottle.” I held out my hand.

Tinima laughed. “If you want it, you’ll have to come closer.”

I didn’t want to be anywhere near Tinima Toussaint. I wished to be back on terra firma.

I blinked and found myself in the chair I’d seen earlier, the bearskin’s head looking over my shoulder.

Tinima now watched me from the shadow of the staircase, her white lace dress blending into its stone traceries. Her expression had changed, and wariness darkened her features.

I rose to my feet. If Tinima was intent on a magical duel, I needed to be ready. More importantly, I needed to protect the memory bottles I’d taken from damage.

“If you’re going to challenge me, let me put the bottles down first,” I said. “Oh. I don’t have a wand. It will have to be hand-to-wand combat, if that’s okay.”

The wariness vanished as Tinima’s expression turned to outrage, her eyes smoldering. “How dare you suggest I would take advantage of a novice. ”

The embers of Tinima’s eyes burst into flame. With a strength that was not of this world, Tinima flung the bottle she was holding skyward.

“No!” I cried as my mother’s precious memories joined the ring and the shells, the leaves and the ladder, the feathers and the dragonflies, swirling around the black hole in the strange galaxy at the center of the palace. The fiery bottle disappeared like a blazing star into Darkness, burning brightly before it was extinguished.

“How could you?” I cried, tears streaming.

“Go!” Tinima roared. “Take your bottles, and do not return here until Shadow calls you home.”

I took a step back, then another, astonished that Tinima, like Meg, was letting mego.

The witch held up her hand in farewell, her eyes still burning bright.

“We will meet again, Diana Bishop,” she promised. “Sooner than you think. We will settle the score then.”