I stooped to pick up the round, silvery object from where it lay gleaming on the dusty floor. It was smooth and cool in my hand, and I recognized it at once: an old-fashioned pocket watch on a tarnished chain. I pressed the side of the case and it sprang open. The initials S.J.F. were engraved on the inside of the case, and a date, 1883. It had been a gift for Sebastian’s eighteenth birthday. I was actually touching something he had touched. I wanted to shout and sing.

Then the voice in my head started up again. Remember Sebastian James Fairfax…remember him….

“What is it? What have you found?” Sarah and Helen crowded into the little room behind me, and I showed them the old watch and its markings.

“We’re so close,” I said. “He’s here somewhere.”

Sarah began to examine the empty room, tracing signs in the dust on the floor. Then she laid her hands on the walls and felt her way around the edge of the room. Her fingers found a twisted knot in the wood of the wainscoting. She pushed it sharply, and a door swung open to reveal crooked steps leading up to the very eaves of the building.

Without thinking, I ran up the steps to where a velvet drape hung in tatters across an archway. I flung the drape to one side and saw a low chamber littered with a muddle of jars and parchments and curious brass instruments and piles of musty books. It was like Agnes’s secret study, but there was no air of promise here, only the sharp breath of decay and disappointment. Everything was moldering away, like an abandoned castle in a half-forgotten dream.

A dream. A faint moan. The echo of a sigh. Someone was hunched over a desk in the darkest corner, poring over some papers.

“Sebastian! Oh, Sebastian!”

I threw myself across the room and the next second I was at his side and in his arms.

“Evie…I called you….”

The rest of the world wheeled about us unheeded as we held on to each other. Nothing else mattered. But when I finally let him go, I saw that Sebastian was as haggard and beautiful as a dying star. He was pale and gaunt, his ink-stained fingers shook, and his eyes were wide with pain. I kissed his forehead and eyes, my heart choking with pity. “What are they doing to you; how can I bear it?”

“I know I am changed,” he groaned, slowly pushing back his long hair from his face. “I am ashamed to be like this.”

“Don’t say that—”

“I wanted to be strong. I wanted us to walk and ride and journey, and live free young lives together. But it’s too late. It’s all too late. Everything is destroyed and finished.”

“It’s not, Sebastian. We can still do those things, and more.” I kissed his hands and tried not to cry. “I’ve come to help you. I promise.”

“No one can help me now. All I could hope for was to see you again. I’ve been thinking of you, writing to you…trying to reach you.” He began to cough weakly. I beckoned to Sarah and Helen, who were hesitating by the entrance to the room. They helped me to move Sebastian to a shabby sofa, but he grimaced as we touched him, as though every bone in his body were on fire. His eyes rested on the others and a tremor passed over his face.

“Do you remember my friends?” I asked gently. “Helen and Sarah are like sisters to me. They understand about the Mystic Way, about everything. They’ve seen you before; they were in the crypt that night at the end of last term. They helped us to escape. Do you remember?”

“Not really. Everything is going; everything is leaving me…everything except you.” He clutched my hand. “You found me, Evie. I didn’t think you would.”

“That’s all I’ve wanted ever since I got back to Wyldcliffe,” I said. “And now I’m here. Everything will be all right, I promise.”

“No…no…it’s too late. I went down to the Abbey. I saw that girl. She recognized me for what I am—a monster. And I saw the boy too. He loves you, Evie. I know he does. And you…you must forget me…. Walk with him in the sun….”

“Don’t say that! He’s just a friend—he’s nothing. And I love only you, Sebastian; you must know that. I don’t want anyone else. I’ll never love anyone but you.”

“But you must,” Sebastian said urgently. “You must live and love and have children—” He coughed again and gasped for breath. “You must travel and work and see the world, and do all the things I can never do.”

“I only want to do those things with you.”

“It’s over for me. It’s too late.” Sebastian touched my face and tried to wipe away my tears. “Don’t cry, my darling.” He shut his eyes and fell back onto the mildewed cushions, exhausted by the effort of speaking. “I want you to be free of me.”

“I don’t want that kind of freedom. I can’t let you go, Sebastian,” I said through my tears. “It’s not over yet.”

“You can’t stop this. The fading process is nearly complete. I am hanging on by a thread.” He paused for breath. “Soon I will no longer be myself. When the next new moon rises, I fear I will no longer be human.”

“Sebastian, it’s not going to happen; it can’t. I’m going to reverse the fading; I’m going to use the powers that Agnes left me to stop it. We just need a little more time.”

“There is no more time left.” The shadows in the room seemed to quiver blacker and deeper, like demons dancing and gibbering in the lost lands of the shadow world. I saw their hideous faces; I smelled the foul stench of their breath and sensed their vile desires for torment and unhappiness. Sebastian couldn’t become like them, no, no, no, never, never, never….

“I’ll make time,” I said fiercely. “Sebastian, don’t you remember what the coven did for you? The Dark Sisters each gave you a year of their lives to give you back your strength. I can do that too.”

“No!” His voice was harsh, but clear. “There will be no more soul stealing. I want you to live for me, not die for me. That girl…Laura, I killed her doing that…. I deserve what is happening to me now.”

“You didn’t kill her; it was Celia Hartle,” said Helen in a low voice. “It was my mother who murdered Laura. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.”

“I blame myself for everything,” he groaned. “I took the beauty of the Mystic Way and twisted it. It was wrong. I broke Agnes’s heart.”

“Yes, you did wrong,” Helen replied. She was as stern as a judge, wrapped in her remote beauty, but there was pity in her eyes. “Agnes forgives you, Sebastian. She wants us to help.”

“Agnes….” He sighed. “I see her, surrounded by light, and Evie next to her—”

“Sebastian, you must listen,” I said. “Agnes told us to find the Book. She wants us to learn its secrets so that we can save you. I’ll become a healer, like Agnes. Do you have it?”

“The Book. Of course. I had forgotten about such things.” Sebastian looked up at Helen, his eyes bleary with pain. “Your mother—she claimed it from me when I was weak. She wanted to know everything, as I once did.” He laughed bitterly, then bent over and coughed long and low, before dragging himself upright again. “The Book is at the Abbey, with the High Mistress.”

“She’s not there,” I said. “She has gone.”

“I don’t believe that. I feel her searching for me, like a fire in the dark, trying to find a way to betray me. I no longer have the strength to fight her. I am wounded, Evie, right to my soul. Not even Agnes could heal me.” Sebastian closed his eyes and started to mutter to himself. “I was afraid of dying—wanted to live forever. And now dying isn’t the worst thing. I have lost myself…. Soon I will be a slave…a demon lost to humankind….” He suddenly called out, “Evie, Evie, where are you?”

“I’m here,” I murmured, frightened and horrified, yet glad to be at his side. “I’m here, Sebastian, I’ll take care of you—”

“Oh, Evie,” he said, quiet again, “how I wish I could die and go where Agnes has gone before me. All I want now is to pass into the next world, our true home, where even the poorest beggar is welcomed by death across God’s threshold. I do not want to be exiled in the shadows as an outcast. But the way is barred. I cannot follow Agnes. I cannot even put an end to my wretched life. And now I am falling into eternal darkness.”

“You mustn’t torment yourself like this,” I pleaded. “You must rest until I come back.”

“Yes, rest…rest.” He sighed. “To rest…and sleep…and die…. I’m burning…burning….”

I glanced around to see if there was any water in all the confusion of that crowded room, however dusty and stale. The water of life… I noticed a small glass beaker half-hidden by the paraphernalia on the writing desk and asked Sarah to pass it to me. The beaker was empty. I circled my hands around it and, closing my eyes, I reached out in my mind to the silent, mysterious lake by the ruins. For an instant I was there again, swimming in the cool water with Sebastian, my body entwined with his, tasting his wet skin against my lips.

The water of our veins…the rivers of our blood…the water of life…

When I opened my eyes the glass was full of water, as cool and pure as melted ice.

I wet Sebastian’s lips; then I bathed his face as gently as I could. For a moment his eyes shone clear and blue, straight into my heart. We clung to each other and kissed, as though our life together were just beginning, not coming to an end.

“Evie, it’s time,” I heard Helen say. “We have to go.”

I tore myself from Sebastian’s embrace. “I’ll be back.”

“You mustn’t come back!” he cried. “Not unless you can truly heal me. I don’t want you to see me at the very end. Promise me, Evie; do this for me. Don’t come back.” He grew wilder. “You must promise, you must!”

“Yes, yes, all right,” I stammered. “I promise.”

He seemed soothed and, making a great effort, raised my hands to his lips. “Let this be good-bye, girl from the sea,” he said haltingly. “Let this be my last memory of you, before I lose everything.”

But I wasn’t going to let that happen. As Helen gently tugged me away from Sebastian’s side, I knew that I wasn’t ready to say good-bye.