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Gabriel stared imploringly at Blair, desperate to get through to him. He spoke every word with an authority he rarely employed. “Listen to me. If I can be here, so can you.”

But Blair was still shaking, the tendons in his neck standing out, a vein pulsing in his forehead as he fought desperately for control. Gabriel’s hands tightened on his shoulders. Back in the sanctuary, Iris’ clear voice rang out with the second chorus, tender and moving. Gabriel remained silent for a moment, hoping her words might break through to Blair, might ground him in the present moment.

Fall on your knees…. O hear the angel voices…. O night divine…

Something strange was beginning to take place before him, something Gabriel wasn’t at all sure he was prepared for. Blair’s eyes were solid crimson, as though they had been consumed by fire. His aura flashed, bright and sharp, and Gabriel forced himself not to look away.

He knew the time had come to use his final weapon, the one he had been holding back, his last-ditch effort to get through to the man before him.

Heart beating wildly, Gabriel wrenched Blair up to a standing position and shoved him against the back wall, angling Blair’s head to face him. He tried not to recoil at the depthless void of Blair’s alchemized eyes.

“Look at me,” Gabriel demanded. “Listen. Do you seriously believe someone completely irredeemable would be prophesied to find love and peace?”

Through the haze of his transformation, Blair seemed to focus on Gabriel’s face for a moment, though he continued to sway, his teeth ground together as if in pain. “What…” He gasped. “What do you…?”

“I know, Blair. I read your journal. I know why you came to find us.”

Gabriel knew at once that his plan had backfired. A violent ripple was making its way up Blair’s spine as if an enormous snake were about to erupt from him.

Blair heaved in a jagged breath, one hand slamming into the sink counter and curling around the edge. His voice was surprisingly strong as he ordered, “Lock the door, Gabriel.”

Gabriel hesitated, transfixed and horrified as a bone-chilling ripping noise erupted from Blair’s back, as⁠—

“Now!”

Gabriel leapt for the door, wrenching the deadbolt into place. A second later, there was a crash as something enormous and dark as a starless night slammed against the mirror above the sink, shattering it on impact.

And Gabriel stood facing a creature straight out of a nightmare, a creature he had last encountered two centuries ago in the basement of a broken-down church in New York.

A weapon, the witch had whispered, her voice like ice as it had coiled up around them in the frigid sanctuary.

A weapon, kept in a cage like a dying songbird.

A weapon Gabriel had let inside the walls of his home not once, but twice.

PART II

THE SECRET

17

BARNSTABLE COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

AUGUST 1805

Across their sandy, windswept village, it was a widely agreed upon fact that there were no more eligible daughters than those of the lauded ship builder, Mr. John H. Bird.

Chastity, Temperance, Modesty, and Obedience were—as might be expected from girls with such names—finest examples of grace and beauty. Add that to the fact that their father was rich (richer than he perhaps ought to be), and coupled with their intelligence and good humor, it was hard to imagine better prospects on the otherwise rather stale marriage market.

As of yet, none of the girls had shown the slightest bit of interest in marriage, possibly owing to the state of their own long-wedded mother. She had once been beautiful too, but it seemed the ravages of time and the salt-stained air had been unkind to her, making her appear as withered and lifeless as an aphid-infested tree drained of sap.

In the daughters and the father, at least, the villagers saw wealth, beauty, prestige.

Only from within the walls of the family’s fine yet modest single-story home could one detect the familial decay that slipped between the gleaming windowpanes, the resentment, rancid, that seeped beneath the doorframe.

The evil spirit who lurked within its walls was adept at hiding his true nature from all but his own family. For while there were few men as winsome as John Bird, there were even fewer who possessed his level of malignancy.

Even so, his youngest daughter did not set out to kill him.