“What are you doing?” M. Voland’s eyes narrowed.
Come,she thought.Show him the way.Her eyes flew open as something hit the glass, claws scrabbling, wings beating. Crows spiraling above the glass ceiling like a beacon.
It hadworked.
M. Voland backhanded her. Sam fell sideways, her ears ringing, unable to brace herself with her arms.
“I hope that was worth it,” he said, his voice dangerous. “If the crows could break the glass, they would have done it already.”
“Touch her again,” Hel said, her voice serrated.
“And you.” M. Voland gripped Hel’s hair and slammed her head against the stone floor. “You’re the reason I was expelled from the Golden Dawn.”
“Hel!” Sam cried, not having to hide the horror in her voice. Hel slumped over.
“This never had to be painful,” M. Voland said, having the temerity to sound exasperated as he loomed over Sam. “If you’d only stop resisting.”
A shadow passed overhead.Jakob,Sam thought, her heart thrilling. She had never been so glad to catch him on her trail. But she couldn’t let herself look, couldn’t so much as glance in his direction. Couldn’t do anything that might give away what he was doing?—whatshewas doing?—or M. Voland would end the Mórrígan, and everything they were doing would be for nothing.
She had to keep M. Voland’s attention. Play her part. It wouldn’t be hard; it was embarrassingly close to reality.
“Don’t touch me,” Sam pleaded as she scrambled backward with her legs. M. Voland’s eyes lit up as he strolled after her, watching her struggle. Sam knew how men like this worked. Knew how to make herself satisfying prey, buying Jakob time.
“Are you still trying to be strong?” M. Voland taunted. He lowered his head to her ear and whispered, “I know girls like you. You used up your strength on the way here. You were made to be prey to men like me.”
The noise Hel made then. Sam flicked her eyes in Hel’s direction, to Heathcliff hiding behind Hel’s hip, looking exceptionally self-satisfied, cleaning bits of rope from his teeth. Hel’d baited him, gotten herself to where Heathcliff could free her, and now she was going to launch herself at M. Voland, going to pull his veins out of his throat and strangle him with them.
But not before he ended the Mórrígan.
Sam locked eyes with Hel, and she shook her head minutely.Trust me.
The pain on Hel’s face.
“Please,” Sam begged Hel, while looking at M. Voland. It might have looked like he was in control, but Sam knew exactly what she was doing. For once, she was the one pulling the strings.
“Don’t worry,” M. Voland said, an amused hum in his voice. He raised the fleam. She wondered how he meant to collect her blood, or if he simply meant to lick it from her arm. “I’ll be gentle.”
A cacophony of cawing raged in the room, suddenly louder than it ought to be. Jakob must be through. But how? She hadn’t heard the glass shatter?—
The knife. It could cut through damn near anything. He must have realized how delicate the situation was and cut through the glass, lifting it out rather than shattering it so as not to attract attention.
Still, M. Voland frowned at the sound of the crows. Sam’s heart nearly flipped inside out as she urged the crows to quiet. He was going to turn, he was going to look up, and he was going to see Jakob. His weight was already shifting. She had to recover his attention, or everything she’d done would be for nothing. And so, she did the only thing she knew worked one hundred percent of the time.
She laughed.
The laugh was small at first, bubbling up, almost a hiccupping of fear and dread and excitement, but soon it was great silvery peals of laughter that rang off the stone walls.
M. Voland advanced on Sam just as Jakob dropped to the floor, a fury in his eyes terrible enough to make her soul quail in her flesh. But still, Sam made herself speak. She would give him what he wanted?—what he’d wanted since the moment he met her in that back alley in Paris.
“You want to know what I see when I look at you?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice hungry.
“Spiders,” she said. “You’re a skin of a man filled with spiders. Venomous and many legged and easily squished.”
His face twisted behind his mask. “You’re lying.”
“You’ve always underestimated me,” Sam said. “But I’ve known what you are from the moment we met. A weak man who worships at the altar of his appetites, who hates that which he craves simply because it is not his. A man who?—” Sam hesitated as M. Voland pressed his fleam to her throat.
