Lady Harriett looked through them again. “You lie. I have seen the false pages, and these are not the same, but they are of the same hand.”
“I had them of the artist who drew the true pages,” said Lucy. “They were a parting gift from a very wise man. I believe this is what Mr. Morrison would call sleight of hand.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Morrison gazing at her with open admiration. She suspected that if she took the time to think about it, she would very much like the feeling.
Lady Harriett looked at the false pages. She stared at them and then sniffed them like a dog and rubbed them against her face. The truth of Lucy’s claim made itself known to her, and she tossed Mr. Blake’s drawings down in disgust.
“Very clever,” said Lady Harriett. “But I do not make idle threats. A father sacrificing a child on my behalf—a sacrifice on that order shall give me the power I need to force you to gift me the book. Kill the child, Buckles.”
“He shall not!” cried Mary. “Lucy, be prepared to take the baby.”
Lucy turned and saw that, while their attention had been on Emily, Mary had surrounded herself with something upon the floor, a circle that glinted and sparkled in the dim light. Lucy understood at once what it was—Mary had encircled herself in gold.
Casting her gaze to Mr. Buckles, she saw him standing in mute horror, the baby still cradled in his arm, but he appeared to have forgotten it. He made no effort to harm it. He merely stared in disbelief.
“No,” said Lucy, her voice cracking. She remembered the story Mary had told her, and she knew what the circle meant. “There must be another way.”
Mary shook her head. “No, my dear Lucy. There is but one way.”
Lady Harriett had her eyes fixed upon Mr. Buckles, and seemed not to have noticed the circle upon the floor. “Buckles, why is that child still alive? Sacrifice it to me.”
“Look at the Crawford woman,” he snapped back. “She’s drawn a circle.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Lady Harriett. “Spells won’t work here.”
“Not a spell circle,” hissed Buckles. “One of our circles.”
“It is far more elemental than a spell,” said Mary. “You should know that. It is the flow of the universe itself, and your wards will no more hold it than you could hold back the wind with a basket.”
Lady Harriett turned toward Mary, and seeing the thin line of gold upon the ground, she set her jaw hard, perhaps in defiance, perhaps in disdain. “You’ll not sacrifice yourself for that infant.”
“I cannot let you have the book. If you take possession of it, the age of the machine will be ushered in, and nothing will stop it.”
“No,” said Buckles, his eyes wide with understanding. He understood what Mary did, what it meant. “I won’t harm the child. Here, Quince, take it.”
Mrs. Quince shrank back. She wanted no part of the child either, and so, desperate, Mr. Buckles rushed forward and handed his daughter to Lucy. “Take it! Take it, and see that I do not harm it. Now stop your friend.”
“You blockhead!” cried Lady Harriet.
“Get behind me!” shouted Mr. Morrison, raising his shotgun. “This may not kill you, Lady Harriett, but I’ll wager it will sting.”
Lucy retreated behind Mr. Morrison. Emily was deep in infant sleep, but healthy and unharmed. It was her niece. She hugged her to her chest, feeling her warmth, listening to the low rumble of her breathing, smelled the yeasty odor of milk about her mouth. It was truly her niece in her arms, safe at last.
Lady Harriett stepped forward, but Mr. Morrison put his finger on the trigger, and she stopped.
“That’s right,” he said. “It’s hard to retrieve a baby when you are writhing upon the floor in pain. I recall that is how it was with your husband. The first blast did not kill him, but it made him much easier to manage.”
Lady Harriett balled her fists in rage. Her face turned red, and she whirled on Mrs. Quince. “Do something!”
“I don’t know what to do!” Mrs. Quince cried out.
Mr. Buckles was in full panic. “She hasn’t stopped. Why hasn’t she stopped? I’ve returned the child. One of you must stop her.”
Mary looked up, and her eyes were moist. Her hands trembled as she poured a sprinkling of sulfur atop the gold, but there was a smile upon her lips. “I cannot let you live while you are willing to destroy what Lucy loves best. You would harm your own daughter simply to gratify your mistress, and so that is why I have already done it. Can you not see that? I have contained myself in the circle. I cannot turn back.”
“Please,” said Mr. Buckles. “Miss Derrick, you have the child. Tell her to spare me.”
“Mary,” Lucy said softly, beginning to understand what her friend intended. “You may stop.”
“It is too late to stop.”
Lucy clutched her niece even more tightly, as if her hold on this infant could steady her while her world appeared to whirl around her. “Mary, you cannot. I have Emily. I have the pages. With your help, we can escape and defeat Lady Harriett another day.”
“It cannot be undone,” said Mary. “Gold and sulfur have been set down, and I have made this sacrifice. Like Mrs. Emmett, I make the sacrifice for you.”
Mr. Morrison turned to her. “No, Mary, you cannot.”
“Oh, Jonas, I am sorry you must see,” she said. “I tried to love you—to remember what it was to love you, but that part of me died with my flesh. Even so, I feel compassion for you, and I beg you not let the past stop you. And Lucy, you have been my friend. I have loved you, and I do this for you.”
“Oh, Mary,” said Lucy, “please don’t.”
Mary smiled at her. “It is better to be nothing than to become like one of them.” She looked at Lady Harriett and Buckles. “How long until I forget what I was, and care nothing but for my own pleasures? How long until, like her, I am willing to murder an infant for some strategic advantage or the pleasure of shocking my own sensibilities, to destroy a world if it will better suit my needs? How long until I become like those wraiths she shepherds, existing but hardly alive? If I can end my existence in an act of love, then how much better for me to face oblivion as some reflection of my true self, than eternity as a perversion of what I once was.” She took out a vial, this one containing mercury, and she began to pour it in a circle around her. “Thank you, Lucy,” she said.
And then she was gone.
There was no flash, no cry, nothing to mark her passage. She simply dissolved out of existence, as though the air folded over her. At the same instant Mr. Buckles was gone. He was no longer in the room with them, and Lady Harriett stood in mute astonishment.
Lucy set down the child behind Mr. Morrison, who kept his gun trained on Lady Harriett. She needed her hands free. Reaching into the hidden pocket of her frock for her little pouch and fishing out the talisman she needed, finding it by touch even as she worked herself into a sprint, Lucy ran directly at Lady Harriett. Perhaps she was about to die, but she would not let anyone else die for her. There had been sacrifice enough, and Lucy would rather die than let Mrs. Emmett and Mary destroy themselves for nothing.
With the talisman in her hand, she leapt at Lady Harriett, shoving it deep into the revenant’s black gown. It was the talisman to vulnerability, the one she had made in Lady Harriett’s house after seeing Byron tossed across the room. The wards should have rendered it useless, but Lucy remembered Mary’s words the day she had first told her about the Mutus Liber. The most powerful sacrifices could nullify the most powerful of wards, she’d said, and the most powerful sacrifices are those that friends make out of love. Two of Lucy’s friends had obliterated themselves from the universe out of love for her.
Lady Harriett toppled under her. Lucy saw the look of surprise on her face as the two of them struck the earth of the mill. Lady Harriett tried to rise, tried to push her off, but her arms had no strength, and Lucy saw the panic in her ancient eyes.