Emma stumbled over the uneven ground. Her captor didn’t slow. He dragged her onward, his arm around her throat. He stripped off his white dress gloves—awkwardly, given he was also holding Emma—and balled the musty cotton into her mouth.
Emma clawed for fox form. It would not come. Fear crushed her in its grip. She tripped, landing hard, and lifted her head to a chorus of green smells. The river lapped at the bank before her. Her tormentor was kneeling to free a punt. She was being taken somewhere else, then. Emma looked at her hands, pressed into the mud. There, on her left hand. Just one fox claw had appeared, razor-tipped and perfect.
Emma covered her left hand and let herself be shoved into the punt.
“Well,” said her captor, some minutes later. “Isn’t this cozy?”
Emma’s hands were bound with a white bow tie. The rest of her was strapped to the backrest of the punt with what had once been a mooring rope.
The figure poling the punt took no notice of her discomfort.Poor, dull, dependable Richard, always in Jasper’s shadow. She had liked him, pitied him, even. She had underestimated him. Overlooked his passion for history and tradition. Forgotten who had handed Jasper every object on the night of the ritual. She barely recognized the face above her. The cold eyes. The frustration and fury.
“You know what? This is boring,” he said at last. The punt rocked as he lunged. Two plump pink fingers forced their way into Emma’s mouth. Before she could recoil or scream or—
bite tear rip him
—a ball of damp white cloth had fallen into her lap, and Richard was back up on the till, looking down on her. She took a deep breath.
“Scream if you want,” he said politely. “We’re past any of the river colleges. I don’t think anyone will hear you. But if it makes you feel better, please do.”
Emma screamed until her throat burned, until every breath tore ragged strips from her lungs. They both listened as the noise died away.
Richard was breathing heavily from poling the punt along, haystack hair pasting to his forehead. And Emma saw, for the first time, the cold glint of the combat knife strapped to his waistband. So when he began to talk, she didn’t interrupt. Instead, she worked her claw at the cloth binding her hands. Barely moving, tearing thread by silent thread.
“I wonder.” He stabbed the pole into the riverbed. “Can you even imagine the trouble you’ve caused?”
Apparently, she didn’t know how difficult it was for him. She couldn’t appreciate the stress he’d been under from the Turnbull alumni. She hadn’t been there, facing the old boys in their boardrooms in London. For the first time in centuries, the ritual had not produced its reward. The Turnbull list of demands had not been met.
Shewouldn’t be able to appreciate the scope, of course. Deals fallen through. Investments failed. Could she imagine the litany of collapsed election bids, the corporate fraud scandals that had surfaced? No, of course she couldn’t. It had been a blow to the senior Turnbulls. One they wouldn’t forgive.
Half the graduating Turnbulls had failed their exams, and who did the old boys blame? Him. Not their sons. No, indeed. Their precious sons didn’t even have the burden of knowing the Turnbulls’ history. Perhaps the brighter ones guessed some of it. But the full knowledge was Richard’s responsibility alone. That was their decision, the old boys, to keep their secret safe. Only one Turnbull in each batch at the University was allowed to hold the knowledge of their ritual. For three years, he’d served the old boys faithfully. They hadn’t even deigned to keep Richard as the president of the Society—though who could deserve it as he did?—yet he’d been expected to do all the work, messing about with bowls and incantations to smooth the way for their heirs. And who do you think they blamed when it had all gone wrong?
They’d left him on his own. They’d taken the ritual bowl back to London, to do their own trials. None of which would work, of course. The senior Turnbulls weren’t capable of understanding such elemental power. But he, Richard, had done his own research. His own experiments. The first man since John de Turnbull whohad even come close to harnessing the mysteries of the Power. Not that the members gave him the respect he was due. He alone…
Emma was astonished to find that she was feeling—bored? She should have been fascinated. Here was the explanation she’d longed for. But the sheer self-pity of the man. He was actually looking to her for sympathy, eyes glistening.
The smallest snap. The last thread on the bow tie had given way. She tensed, sure Richard had noticed, but he droned on. Her hands could be free with a shake of her wrists. Her body was still tied to the punt, but that might change once they made land.
Richard climbed down the punt and loomed over her. He had drawn out the knife. Long as her forearm, it swam toward her through the gloom. She heard the water lapping at the banks, the rasp of her breath, her heart beating once more, once more.
The point of the knife came to rest on her neck.
And in a book-filled cottage across town, the Sister jumped out of her chair with a curse.
Julia Colefax-Lee had spent the last year keeping her head down. Literally. She barely remembered the last time she’d raised her eyes from her shoes. People’s faces were horrid. Their voices were too loud. She’d heard them all whispering. Wondering why Hugo still put up with her.
She tugged a strand of hair. She wasn’t going to panic. He would be back soon. The queue for the champagne tent was long. Maybe he’d had to stop to say hello to—Well, he said he didn’t speak to those boys anymore. The Turnbulls. She tugged her hair a bitharder. She realized she’d forgotten to wash it again. Then a hissing nearby caught her attention.
Julia recognized Nat Oluwole’s tall, agitated form, pouring a static-burst of whispers into the ear of a blond in a glittering mirrored gown. Venetia Kent, as lovely and vicious as ever. An odd alliance had blossomed there. They’d worked together on the committee for Emma’s memorial service, and found common ground. Venetia had wanted to see the Turnbulls brought down as much as Nat did. She’d always hated that aura around the boys, the feeling that they could get away with whatever they wanted. Nobody loathed being the second-most powerful in a room more than Venetia. And Nat had been in a frenzy to go after the Turnbulls when the police wouldn’t. To keep looking until he found what they did to Emma, and some way to prove it. He had promised Emma’s mother, when Dr. Curran had eventually left England. She had flown in after Emma disappeared, blazing with cold fury, and spent months hassling every police officer within reach. But door after door closed in her face. Emma had been taken by an unknown assailant, they said. Her daughter had likely been dead for some time. It was best for her to accept that. But Diana Curran had refused to accept it, and so had Nat. When Dr. Curran finally boarded a plane out, determined on following up leads with her international colleagues—with the slim hope that Emma had fled to a former home, perhaps in Tasmania or the Philippines—Nat had picked up her campaign. He seemed to have found Venetia a willing coconspirator. But Julia had only wanted to keep her head down. On her pillow, preferably. She was just so tired. They’d messaged her a few times. Did she want to interview a potential witness with them? Did she want to help them coax shopkeepers intoshowing their CCTV tapes? Julia had ignored all of the messages, numb to the core. Everything had been too tiring, for a long time now.
Venetia didn’t lower her voice at all. “No, she’ll be useless. She’s crazy.” A frenzied burst of hissing. “I don’t care if I ‘shouldn’t say that,’ Nathaniel, she literally had a breakdown and now she’s some kind of freak shut-in.” More whispering. “Fine.Fine.”
Julia’s breath faltered. She edged away, but Venetia had blocked her escape. A pale hand closed around her arm like a python’s coils. “We need your help.”
Nat’s kind face loomed over Venetia’s shoulder. “Venetia, let go of her! Julia, this will come as a shock—”
“What will be a shock?” said a hearty voice, with a hint of warning. Julia felt her breath come more easily. It always did when he was near.
“Oluwole, good man, how are you?” Hugo pumped Nat’s arm with enough vigor to set him shaking like a scarecrow in a gale-force wind.
