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“None of this is going in, is it, Caroline? Perhaps some more ECT would help you pay attention—”

I heard a muted protest at that, and my fingers were closing around the door handle before I knew what I was doing.

“If the boy comes again, mademoiselle, you’re to let him see his mother,” the director said. “And you, Caroline, if you want to see your daughter again, will tell your son to cooperate. He simply needs to take our agent to Rose Penrose and you’ll all be reunited. You’ll tell him so, and not to be clever, because people get hurt when mistakes like him try to be clever.

“Tell him to take the good doctor to his patient. And not to waste our time leading Gar to her body. It’s her mind we want.

“You’ll tell him it’s the right thing to do, because she’s ours after all. We made her. And we’ve just misplaced her…somehow.

“This mess has already required the Great Smith to call on the worm.” A degree of nervousness polluted the authority in the man’s tone. “Any more delays and the master might feel compelled to leave his forge, leave London, and dirty his hands as I’m having to do now. And he will not like that. Oh no. Not one bit.”

Chapter 23

Rose

Rose stood stunned, her mind on fire despite the enfolding peace of the well-spaced trees, the cropped grass, and the deep, deep pools of crystal-clear water, unrippled by the blow that had shaken her to her core.

“The worm made me? How? Why?”

Hannah Cooper, looking more like a witch than seemed safe given the when she lived in, studied Rose before answering. “The doctor, the madman, the vagrant, Alan Gar, he is the worm’s tool. Just as the worm is a tool wielded by a hidden hand, just as you’re intended to be a tool for that same man to deploy, to set to a task.”

“Who!” Rose demanded, fists clenched at her side. “Who did this?”

Hannah gave her a narrow look. “Everyone uses everyone else. We’re all tools in someone else’s hand.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re using me right now. You freed me for a purpose. And I am using you for reasons of my own. And we’re both using that boy.”

“We are not!”

“You didn’t want me to send him to see his mother? It will help him find his sister, and then he’ll no longer be a tool for the one-eyed man to wield against you.”

“How do you know all this?” Rose narrowed her eyes at Hannah, seeing for a moment those white hands clawing at the inner surface of the crystal before Red had broken it somehow by digging the witch’s book from the bookshop wall. “Wait…do you know where his sister is?”

“Does it matter?” Hannah shrugged. “He’s more use to her than we are. He at least stands a chance of getting her back to her world.”

“Where is she?” Rose stamped her foot then, self-consciously resolved not to do it again, as it was the kind of thing small girls did. “We have to at least tell—”

“We have much more important things to do.” Hannah pulled a small, round mirror from one of the many pockets in her skirts. “Look!” She held the disk up on its chain. It was mirrored on both sides, and when she flicked it, the disk became a fuzzy, flashing ball.

“I don’t see—”

“Look closer.”

Rose, wary of some spell but remembering that this was the Chimney Woman who the Muse had brought her to see on many occasions as a small child, leaned in to peer. And as if she were now peeping from some hole through a wall, perhaps the jagged-edged cavity where Hannah’s book had lain for so long, she saw once more into the bookshop alcove where she had stood hand in hand with Red.

A man stood there with his back to Rose’s view. Not Red, not the bookshop man either. A tall, thin man in a dirty coat, stooped and peering at the shelves in front of him. As if sensing her scrutiny, the man swung suddenly, advancing until his face filled Rose’s vision and she stumbled back with a cry of horror.

“The worm man!” The doctor with the scalpel. The home invader, polluting her mother’s grief with his grimy boots and prying fingers.

“He’s looking for you,” Hannah said. “For us. For this book.”

“Red must have it,” Rose said uncertainly. “Or the bookshop man.”

“Or the bookman’s hedge-witch grandmother, or his charm-maker of a sister.” Hannah didn’t try to hide her scorn of these “lesser witches.” “It doesn’t matter who has it. The worm’s man will find them and take it from them. And if blood needs to be spilled, he will spill it.”

“We need to stop him!” Rose looked around, unsure of the way back to the cottage.