Nebekah swam through the ocean of blood in her brain to reach the reality before her. Her lungs pressed into her throat, and she wanted to vomit. She knew before opening her eyes that her hands were bound behind her with heavy rope, and another rope around her ankles suspended her.

  The room thundered red, white, and black, and Nebekah wasn’t sure if it had actually changed or only her perception of it had. Rivulets of water streamed down the plaster, only to disappear at the wainscot cap, and that might not have been real either. But the pentagram she dangled over, and the candles that surrounded it, were definitely not going away.

  The Heart watched her. It must have been waiting for her to awaken. It sat in its chair before the fireplace, in the form of an old woman clutching a brass-knobbed cane. Its face fell in deep wrinkles except for the forehead, where the skin stretched taut and too broad. Its iron-gray hair started after that, in scrag-gling wisps unable to hide the liver spots beneath. When it stood, its back bent forward, making more shapeless still the burlap-brown dress. “You’re awake, you naughty girl,” it said in what had once been the local accent, in a voice ancient as the east wind.

  “Granny,” Nebekah acknowledged humbly. “Am I being punished? I didn’t mean to be bad.”

  “Girls should stay in their rooms,” Granny snapped.

  “I’m sorry,” Nebekah said. “I thought you’d want me here; it was an honest mistake. May I please try again? I’ll be good.”

  Granny stumped forward. Its eyes were two holes. It stopped outside the candle circle and probed Nebekah with the brass knob of its cane, send-ing her swinging. “Girls should be pious,” it said.

  Ah, piety. Like the inscriptions above the doors—Nebekah had assumed those were unimportant. The country of her birth had had pious men. Monks who passed through the village, bringing medicine and bless-ings. Their exist-ence had been alien to her, and became only more alien once she moved to the capital. Existences like this Heart were far more comfort-able.

  “It is good and right to be pious,” Nebekah said. “I accept this rebuke and will improve.”

  The ropes were a problem, and the dizzy sickness wasn’t helping. She doubted she could work free even without the Heart watching. Ideally, the Heart itself would free her. She could use that cane against it—or snap the cane and lessen the Heart’s power. If only she could stop swinging.

  “Girls,” said the Heart, “should stay in their rooms.”

  “I will return immediately,” Nebekah said. “Only, I seem to be tied up.”

  “Girls should be pious,” Granny said, and Nebekah wondered if it was able to say anything else. If this was the limit of its intelligence, how could she trick it? Then it knocked her again with the cane, striking her collarbone. The blow reverberated up and down her spine. Her vision narrowed, and she twisted instinctively and uselessly. She must have blacked out again, because the next time she could see, the fireplace roared with new fuel.

  Granny stooped by the fire, and the burning-flower aroma of incense filled Nebekah with memory. Then Granny was returning to the pentagram, lighting candles with the incense stick and muttering to itself. Unholy fire burned in the holes of its eyes, and shadows like charcoal underscored its wrinkles. The vein in Nebekah’s chest waggled excitedly, its roots jangling within her.

  Nebekah had always known she might die like this. She’d bleed out quickly, upside down. But even with the vein in her chest and the Heart before her, it would never have occurred to her to consider herself a victim.

  Granny lit the final candle and stabbed the incense stick into a blown-glass jar. Then it raised its arms and began chanting guttural rolls of nonsense conso-nants that made Nebekah’s skin crawl and etched demonic faces before her eyes. Nebekah watched passively as the faces paraded by, think-ing behind them and observing Granny. They did not disturb her because they, too, were not alien.

  Granny poked the cane in Nebekah’s gut so that she swayed again, never quite hard enough to cross the line of smoke. “Girls should be pious,” Granny said. It drew back its cane to hit her with and then paused, veins pulsing. It turned its head to the door beyond the fireplace, the one Nebekah suspected led circuitously back to the stacks. Frowning, Granny stumped out of the room, slamming the door behind.

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  Nebekah rubbed her wrists vigorously together, trying to loosen the rope. Her pulse thudded in her eyes, and her ears pricked at a soft noise behind her. Clenching her teeth, she contorted around in time to see the third door open and Vivienne rush through.

  It was the real Vivienne, not the Mimic; there were tears in her eyes. She hurried to the wall anchor and uncoiled the rope to lower her partner. Nebekah swung hard, so that she landed on the floor beyond the pentagram and rolled without disturbing any candles. Her vision rebelled and her stomach heaved, and she curled up without knowing it.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” Vivienne was whispering over and over in a tremen-dous rush. She knelt beside Nebekah, drawing her knife. “It took her ages to leave! I set so many lures, but she just wouldn’t go. I thought she was going to beat you to death, and I didn’t know what to do!”

  “Shoot it,” Nebekah rasped. “As soon as it gets back.”

  “I will!” Vivienne promised, sawing through the rope at Nebekah’s wrists. “Or I will once I get this vein out of you, so you don’t get hit by backlash. Ooh, it’s bad! I’m so sorry, I’m sorry. Hold still.”

  “Draw your gun,” Nebekah said. “Give it to me. It’s coming back.”

  “How did you get this tangled?” Vivienne asked, putting the knife by Nebekah’s fingers and picking at the thread with silver gloves. “I can’t believe I never taught—”

  Nebekah fumbled for the knife, but the rope had been too tight, and her fingers wouldn’t grasp.

  “I’m so sorry,” Vivienne explained wildly. “I came as quickly as I could. I never meant for you to be a victim, I swear! That trap didn’t care about me at all—it must’ve been only after you. And once it succeeded, I couldn’t get it to come back no matter what I did, and I couldn’t find another trigger. Then I remembered that mirror on the second floor, and I thought, Well, maybe I could go through it, because you can do that sort of thing in Fantasy, and even if it got me in trouble, that wouldn’t matter, because if I’d gotten you killed, then I deserved to die.”

  Granny’s steps stopped outside the door, and the doorknob rattled.

  “Vivienne—”

  “I won’t let you die! I won’t kill you! Oh, get out! Get loose!” Vivienne tore at the thread. Nebekah didn’t know what her partner was doing, but she could feel a loosening in her chest.

  The door opened, and Granny stepped in. Vivienne glanced at it but never paused in her feverish pulling.

  “Shoot it!” Nebekah gasped, trying and failing again to grasp a weapon.

  “Girls should be pious,” Granny said, stumping over and raising her cane.

  Vivienne’s eyes widened, but she didn’t stop. “It’s okay,” she whis-pered as she tore the final root free. “I deserve this.” The vein came out at last and fell—an awful, wriggling thing, its roots as long as her arm. Nebekah curled up again, wracked with coughs. The cane struck the side of Vivienne’s skull with a dread-ful hollow noise, knock-ing her aside.

  “Girls should stay in their rooms,” Granny said, grabbing Vivienne by the hair and pulling her limply struggling body through the third door. “And women should know their place.”

  The door slammed behind them, and then Vivienne began screaming in earnest.

  Nebekah rolled to her stomach and pulled her knees beneath her. Her fingers finally closed around the knife hilt, and she sheathed it as a backup. On its own, it wouldn’t be enough. Poker and shovel stood by the fireplace, long neglected iron heavier with dust than with ash.

  Nebekah could hear Vivienne still screaming as she maneuvered burn-ing logs out of the fireplace and onto a sacred cloth. She dragged the whole bundle into the pentagram, sending candles rolling. Their small flames caught here and there.

  Nebekah listened to the screams as she threw more pamphlets onto the fire, along with her ropes and various holy books. The fire stretched for the ceiling, blisteringly hot.

  Nebekah kept one ear sharp for the screams even as the Heart rushed back into the room, face contorted with rage, cane swinging at her with inhuman strength. She ducked the swing and speared Granny in the chest with the poker, then bore down on it, pressing it into the mass of flames. A golden mallet lay by her side, and she hammered the poker through Granny, through the rug and into the wooden floor beyond. When Granny flailed at her, she ground her boot into its wrist, shattering the delicate bones.

  Nebekah strained her hearing, but she could no longer catch any hint of screaming over the roar of the flames and the fury of the Heart as its veins boiled and burst and it died.

  The heat was terrible. Nebekah ran for the third room and threw the door open. There before her was a narrow space with barren shelves and a concrete floor. It was, entirely and flawlessly, empty.

  There was no time. The Heart was dead, and there was no stopping those flames. She needed to escape before they reached the stacks, or she’d never escape at all. She had to run now, but her knees had locked. “. . . Vivienne?” she asked in a small voice.

  The fire cracked, and instinct took hold. Nebekah fled back through the Heart’s domain, back through the dark room beyond—which was now much smaller and much lonelier. Back through the stacks—which were, after all, only the normal length of the house. Back past the concrete furnace room and up the stairs.

  The ground floor was unlit by gas, but sunlight streamed through broken shutters and tattered drapes. Nebekah sprinted through the halls and up to the second floor and the third, calling Vivienne’s name. She ran around the mirror and into the room where they’d been separated, where she’d woken up, but the house was empty. Empty and dead; crumbling, decrepit, and burning.

  In those last moments—in that final minute—

  Nebekah didn’t know what had happened, but there was nothing more she could do. Noth-ing but stand on the sidewalk opposite the house. Nothing but watch it burn and not leave until only dust and ash remained.