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He’d spent a dizzying amount of time over the past couple of days trying to pick through his own mind, attempting to piece his recollections together to form a coherent picture. He couldn’t pretend to know what the witch wanted from him after all these years of silence. True, he and Clement had outed her to the council for dangerous witchcraft, but hadn’t she gotten retribution when she’d told the locals about their home for accused witches? And anyway, if she had wanted to get even, why wait two centuries to do so?

It was of course possible that she was only after Blair, but even that didn’t compute. Obedience had expressed all those years ago that her two “weapons” hadn’t proven themselves to be as formidable as she’d hoped. Plus, if she wanted Blair, it would have been only too easy for her to have disappeared with him without involving Gabriel and Iris.

No; Gabriel was certain that the only reason she would have decided to make a scene like the one with Iris’ father was if she wanted to lure them to her for a direct confrontation.

Which was why he had no doubt whatsoever that Obedience would be expecting their little visit.

Even so, he had gone over every option with Clement, and it was clear that the forgetting spell was their best bet in defeating her without resorting to cold-blooded murder. And when dealing with a powerful witch like Obedience, even that would have been far from foolproof.

As he started up the flagstone walkway that led to the church’s large domed double doors, Gabriel’s thoughts turned back to Blair. He wondered for perhaps the millionth time if his friend would recognize this place. Gabriel didn’t imagine so. Blair had described being blindfolded on the carriage after he was kidnapped, only seeming to remember the cage in the dank basement.

Gabriel was haunted by the possibility that Obedience might remove her glamour before Clement had the opportunity to perform the spell, that Blair might discover Anna’s true identity and how Gabriel had stood by while she’d performed her heinous tests on him and Lucy.

Blair would despise him almost as much as Gabriel despised himself for his past cowardice. No matter how many years passed, he would never even begin to forgive himself for the way he’d failed to intervene, allowing one life to be destroyed, another left permanently scarred.

Standing before the heavy oak doors, Gabriel grasped the cold brass lion knocker.

But the doors yawned open before he had a chance to knock, the church ushering him inside the empty entryway with a creak of metal hinges.

38

While vacant, the lobby was far from silent.

An orchestra of violins and cellos, accompanied by a solitary piano, assaulted Gabriel’s ears the moment he stepped over the threshold.

It was the same song as before, the one that until the previous afternoon he had counted among his all-time favorites: “The Secret History” performed by the Chamber Orchestra of London. The amped up bass reverberated through the floorboards, buzzing beneath Gabriel’s boots as he stepped deeper into the foyer, his eyes peeled.

Twin chandeliers dangled from the vaulted ceiling, a spotlight for the lavishly decorated hall. It was replete with fine furnishings, an ornately patterned rug draped over the shining cherry-wood floors, and original oil paintings in elaborately ornamented frames. Given what Gabriel remembered of the crumbling foyer, the place was barely recognizable.

The door leading to the old sanctuary was closed. Gabriel looked to his far left, where a dark passageway spilled out into a spiral stone staircase that led into the underbelly of the church—the basement that had been both a haven for accused witches and a place where unspeakable horrors had taken place under his very nose.

Knowing Obedience, that’s exactly where he would find her.

Gabriel took a step forward and froze as the music came to an abrupt halt and his vision became severely distorted. He blinked, struggling to make sense of what he was seeing.

The orderly lobby had transformed into a jumble of shapes and colors like pieces to a dozen different puzzles, the furnishings deformed and jutting out at unnatural angles. He couldn’t make sense of the physics of it; the way the rug suddenly appeared to be flung out against one wall, its pattern choppy, while the chandelier was now twisted out of shape with its image cast against the floor, close enough for him to trod on if he had a mind to.

Strangest of all were the dismembered images of his own face and body, strewn across the room to commingle with the chaotic furnishings—the left side of his face here, his right arm there, the hem of his coat and a single boot in the far corner.

It was as though he stood amidst the remains of a stained-glass window that had been smashed so thoroughly, the original image was impossible to ascertain.

And that’s when it hit him. He was surrounded by glass. But not a window.

Mirrors.

Small, jagged mirrors covered nearly every surface, sharp as knives. Gabriel looked down at the floor, noting the only area that was clear, his one available path. It would usher him straight to the spiral staircase that led to the basement.

As if he had expected anything different.

But just as he started toward it, there came a flurry of motion in the mirrors along the back wall, adjacent to the sanctuary.

Gabriel watched in horror as the disjointed parts of his body reflected across so many mirrors began to slide into neighboring shards until they were congregated in one area. Slowly, the pieces of his reflection began to fit together, his hair, face, eyes, chest, legs, and feet sliding into place. In less than a minute, a full-sized mirror image of himself stood before him, spanned across several shards, each blade of glass like a seam in his skin.

Another mirror-shard figure was moving spasmodically toward his own. It was Obedience as he had once known her, smooth blonde hair and guileful emerald eyes. Her image flickered as it skipped between jagged pieces of glass until it took up the lump of shards to the left of Gabriel’s distorted reflection.

Gabriel looked around in a blind panic, searching through the chaos to see if the real Obedience was in the room. If she was, her form was hidden amongst the glittering debris.

When mirror-Obedience reached Gabriel’s reflection, her hands curled around his waist like a vise, and Gabriel’s stomach roiled at the familiar scene. He knew what would happen next, had replayed this moment in his head over and over and⁠—