Page 59 of A Resistance of Witches
“Are you leaving?”
“Yes.” She walked stiffly toward the door.
“But—”
Rebecca turned on him, blood racing. “Butwhat?”
Henry looked down and said nothing.
She limped slightly as she walked. She was sure she saw that monstrous figure again at the edge of her vision, but when she turned, it wasn’t there.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said.
She opened the door and stopped. Three black cars were coming up the hill toward the château. Her heart lurched in her chest. “Someone is here.”
Henry sat up. “What?”
“Look.”
In a second, he was next to her. “Shit.”
Rebecca ran, taking the stairs two at a time until she reached Lydia’s door, and pounded with her fist until it swung open. Lydia was still holding the book in her hands, so tightly that Rebecca could see the bones of her knuckles pressing through the skin.
“The grand mistress is sending a Traveler to bring me home,” Lydia said. “She’ll be here soon, and then I’ll—”
Rebecca cut her off. “Someone is coming.”
“What?”
Rebecca turned and ran back down the stairs without bothering to repeat herself. Lydia followed a moment later.
“I think they’re Gestapo.” Henry was standing at the window now. The door was shut and bolted.
Rebecca felt her blood stutter. She went and stood next to him. “How many?”
“Seven? No, nine.”
“How did they find us?” Lydia asked. “If they followed us from the farmhouse we would have—” She stopped suddenly.
Rebecca turned and looked at her. “What is it?”
Lydia sat at the table, holding the book tight against her chest. “It’s her.”
“Her?Who isher?”
“I still don’t know her name.” Lydia’s voice was nearly a whisper. “The witch from the academy. And from the farmhouse.”
“The one who killed your friend?” Rebecca thought of that bone-handled dagger again and felt a sickening dread in her veins.
Lydia nodded.
“Is she tracking the book?” Henry asked. “I thought she could only do that during the full moon.”
Lydia shook her head. Her right hand moved absently over the book, tracing the cracks in the leather. “Once you touch something, you can track it anytime you like. No full moon. No coven.” She looked at Rebecca. “It’s how I found you, when you were captured.”
Slow, creeping realization dawned on Rebecca. “She touchedyou.”
Lydia looked down at her hand as if there were a mark there that she could wipe away. “The night she attacked the academy.” She looked at Henry. “I should have thought of it. I should have remembered that she touched me. I should have tried to track her, the way she tracked me, but I was only thinking of the book. I—” She stopped and shook her head in shame and disbelief. “You were right. She never knew the location of the farmhouse.”
