The spell growled like some beast from hell, seeming to shake the mansion to its foundations. Mariz’s spectral guide, the young man in Renaissance garb, appeared beside him and eyed Ethan with interest.
“The leaves are gone,” Sephira said in a hushed voice.
“Aye,” Ethan said. “Let’s hope that means it worked.”
“Now you’ll take us with you?” she asked.
He hesitated, but not for long. He would need her help getting past Ramsey’s crew, just as he would need Mariz’s help to overcome the captain’s conjurings. “I’d be grateful,” he said.
Sephira nodded. “Good. I’m going to dress. When was the last time you ate?”
Ethan allowed himself a breathless laugh. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“I assumed as much. I’ll have breakfast prepared. We’ll eat, and then we’ll hunt.”
By the time the sun was up and shining through Sephira’s windows, Nap, Gordon, and Afton had arrived at the mansion. So, too, had several of Sephira’s other toughs, men with whom Ethan had but limited contact. Sephira had returned to the dining room, dressed as usual in black breeches, a white silk shirt, and a waistcoat that fit her with unnerving snugness.
Nap and the two brutes Ethan knew so well could not mask their surprise at finding him already in the house, supping with Sephira at a table laden with breads, cheeses, eggs, and sweet pastries. Nap and Gordon exchanged a quick look; Nap even raised an eyebrow. Ethan suppressed a grin. Let the men believe what they would. For this day, at least, he and Sephira were allies, as they had been when last Ramsey cast his spells in Boston.
“We need to locate Ramsey and his men more precisely,” Sephira said, sipping coffee and watching as Ethan filled his plate yet again. “You can find him with your witchery, can’t you?”
“I can,” Ethan said, “but I won’t.”
“Why on earth not?”
Ethan shifted his gaze to Mariz. While Sephira would be more than willing to help Ethan kill Ramsey, she would be less eager to follow Ethan into the coming battle. She trusted in her own leadership, and no one else’s, and Ethan assumed that this was merely the first in what would be a series of questions regarding his decisions. This day would be easier if Mariz would explain at least some of the choices Ethan made.
Sephira’s man appeared to understand.
“The conjuring of which you speak, Senhora, is a finding spell. It will allow us to locate Ramsey, but it will also alert Ramsey to the fact that we are coming. He will feel the conjuring and thus prepare himself for our arrival.”
“He doesn’t think we have any idea of where he is,” Ethan said. “For the first time since all this began, we have an advantage, however small it might be. I won’t squander it for convenience.”
Sephira didn’t mask her displeasure at having her suggestion dismissed, but she acquiesced with a curt nod.
Ethan ate what remained of his breakfast, and pushed back from her table, feeling considerably better for having eaten a decent meal. He could have done with a few hours’ slumber, but he didn’t dare delay their confrontation with Ramsey any longer.
Sephira stood as well. “Have my carriage brought around to the front of the house,” she said to Afton.
The big man lumbered toward the back entrance.
“The two of you will ride with me,” she said to Ethan and Mariz. “The others will follow us.”
“Aye, all right. But heed me, Sephira. Ramsey’s men are not the enemy. Mariz and I will try first to put them to sleep. Failing that, you and your men will have no choice but to fight them. If some try to escape, let them go. If you can overcome them with blades and fists, do so. Only resort to pistols if nothing else works.”
“Are you truly trying to instruct me in the art of fighting?” she asked, her voice cold, the look in her eyes as hard as sapphires.
“I’m telling you not to kill them unless they leave you no other choice.”
“Do you expect Ramsey’s men to be so gentle? Will he instruct them to spare our lives? Or will he direct them to do murder, and will he do a bit of killing himself, as he did when Nigel died?”
It was the first time either of them had spoken to the other of Nigel Billings, the man in her employ whom Ramsey had killed with a spell, since the yellow-haired man’s funeral the previous summer. Ethan had no answer for her righteous rage.
“We go to fight,” she said. “If I tell my men to hold back, I put their lives at risk. Even you should understand that.”
“We’re better than he is, Sephira. We should fight that way.”
She shook her head. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, surprising himself and her. “You’re better than Ramsey. He doesn’t scruple to kill, even if his victims have done nothing wrong other than get in his way. You’re … different…”
Her smile was thin, and yet somehow genuine. “Saying it doesn’t make it so. I’m more like Ramsey than either you or I would care to admit. I’m helping you today because I’ve sworn to avenge Nigel’s death. And you’re allowing me to come with you because you need me, and you need Mariz. But let’s not lie to each other. I’ve killed for no more reason than you assigned to Ramsey’s crimes. And I will again. You of all people know this. Tomorrow, when Ramsey is dead, and you and I are no longer allies, you’ll hate me once more, as you did before you knew that Ramsey was back in Boston.”
“And you’ll hate me.”
Her smile this time was reflexive and cruel. “No, I won’t, Ethan. You’re not important enough to me to inspire such passion one way or another.”
Ethan laughed, but his mirth was short-lived; he and Sephira were left eyeing one another.
“You can try your sleep spell,” she said. “And my men will use pistols as a last resort. But we fight as we always fight, and woe to Ramsey’s men if they dare stand against us.”
It was more than Ethan had expected from her, and as much as he could reasonably ask. She was right: If her men fought timidly, afraid to strike a killing blow, they would imperil their own lives.
“Fair enough.”
They left the mansion a few minutes later, Sephira wearing an elegant black cape over her street clothes. She and Ethan sat in the carriage opposite Mariz and Nap, while Gordon perched on the box and took up the reins. Behind the carriage, Afton stood with ten more men, all of them armed with blades. Ethan had no doubt that they all carried flintlocks as well, but for now they kept them concealed.
The day had dawned clear and cold, though not as biting as recent mornings had been. The sun on Sephira’s snow-covered gardens was almost blinding, and a flock of jays, their plumage a match for the cloudless sky, scolded from a bare birch tree at the front of the house. It was too fine a morning for what they were about to do.
They followed Summer Street to Winter, and Winter to the edge of the Common. Here, they turned and skirted the open land, rolling by the Granary Burying Ground and past King’s Chapel onto Treamount Street and then Sudbury, so that they passed in front of Kannice’s tavern. Sephira watched Ethan as they went by the Dowser, curiosity in her cold eyes. Ethan gazed back at her, impassive. But he did wonder what Kannice would have thought had she seen him in such company.
A short distance beyond the tavern door, they turned onto Hillier’s Lane and then Green Lane, which took them through the heart of New Boston. The men walking behind the carriage had been speaking in low voices, but they fell silent now. Ethan felt his apprehension rising and saw that Sephira’s expression had turned grim. She stared out the carriage window, the muscles in her jaw bunched.
“Near here, Mariz?” Ethan asked.
“Farther, I think. Closer to the point.”
They reached the corner of Leveret’s Street and turned due north. Ethan pushed open the carriage door and hopped out onto the lane. He slipped on the ice but righted himself without falling. Mariz joined him, and then Sephira and Nap.