Sebastian?”

He raised his haggard white face to mine. I didn’t know what to think or feel or do, and for a moment I stood paralyzed. Then Sebastian raised his hand and pointed to Harriet, gasping. “No…no…no…”

“Harriet, what’s happening?” I cried. “What are you doing?” Harriet turned to me with a peculiar smile on her face. She was clutching Sebastian’s silver dagger in her hand, and she passed it lightly over her wrist.

“No—wait!” Sarah shouted. But Harriet let the blade cut her skin. A single drop of blood fell from her wrist onto Agnes’s grave. Harriet’s face began to convulse, her eyes rolling in her head. A strangled noise came from deep inside her. “I…am…not…Harriet….” Her breath curled and thickened in the wind like smoke. “I…am…Celia…Hartle.”

The smoke grew into a billowing shape full of flickering fire. Harriet screamed and fell back unconscious, and Mrs. Hartle emerged from the thick fumes, dreadfully thin and scarred, but terrifyingly real. She clicked her fingers and the silver dagger flew from Harriet’s hand to her own.

“So. Here we are again,” she said silkily. “The High Mistress and her devoted students.”

We stumbled backward, stunned and horrified. I feverishly called out in my mind to Agnes, trying to summon her fire to attack our enemy, but the High Mistress laughed as though she could read my thoughts. She flashed the dagger, making swift patterns in the air, and ropes flew from its point and bound our hands behind our backs. We fell to our knees before her, and a fog seemed to choke my mind and will. Both fire and water were beyond my reach, and I was helpless before Mrs. Hartle’s hypnotic gaze.

“Dear Evie,” she crooned. “So kind, so considerate, trying to save poor little Harriet—while all the time she was my creature, not your friend. Oh, you weakened me last term, I admit that. It was well done, most impressive.” She spoke lightly, but I sensed the anger inside her, like a snake, as she stroked the scar on her face. “But even though you had weakened me, I was able to linger in Wyldcliffe’s secret places until you returned, bringing this pathetic girl with you. It was easy to enter her feeble mind and body and bend her will to do my bidding. She fed me, sacrificing animals that I used in ancient rituals, drinking their blood until I was fully restored. And dear Harriet was a most useful spy. She found out where you had hidden this.”

Mrs. Hartle cut the air with her knife, and the next moment the Talisman hung from the blade, glinting in the fitful moonlight.

“Harriet would have killed you if I had told her to, while I inhabited her mind. But I wanted to keep your death for this moment.” The High Mistress laughed exultantly. “Let me tell you how I have outwitted you at every turn, Miss Johnson. Last night I followed you to Fairfax Hall and you led me to Sebastian. I had searched long for him, but his only defense—his nauseating love for you—had repelled me. But once he turned his back on you, those defenses were destroyed and it was easy to take him. He is no longer my master. I rule over him now, not the other way around. Next, I worked through Harriet to destroy the papers Agnes left you—yes, I know all about them. I knew that this would anger you beyond any other thing and turn you against your poor, weak friend. Then I drove her to write that suicide note, knowing equally well that good, kind, noble Evie would not be able to resist its cry for help. Quite the little martyred heroine, aren’t you? Always trying to save others. And now you need saving yourself.”

She seemed to tower over me, and I shrank back, dreading her touch. But with a quick, deft movement she turned to Sebastian and slipped the Talisman over his head, laughing as he writhed with the pain of it. “Sebastian won’t lift a finger to help you now, Evie. He will never return to your clinging embrace. He will destroy you, awaken the Talisman, and deliver me and my Sisters from death forever.”

“No…no…no…” Sebastian groaned. Mrs. Hartle ignored him and walked up to Helen.

“Ah, my daughter, so we meet again, here at the Traitor’s grave,” she taunted. “Why do you not greet your mother?”

Helen jerked her head away. “You’re not my mother! You’ve never been a mother to me. My mother is the air and the wind and the stars. I despise you.”

Mrs. Hartle’s face grew thunderous. “By the end of this night you will acknowledge me as both your mother and your mistress, to be obeyed and feared. I have everything I need. The only thing missing is my circle of Dark Sisters—I wish them to see and share this moment. You will all come with me to where my Sisters are waiting.” She looked around crazily and called out to the wind, “I come, my Sisters, I come!”

At that moment Sebastian raised his head and murmured, “My brothers…my brothers…”

He looked straight at me, and I saw that his eyes were clear and blue and brimming with an ocean of regret. And then he smiled, and his smile was no longer bitter or mocking, but clear and calm like a summer’s day.

“Sebastian!” I tried to reach him, but the High Mistress screamed and flashed her knife in the air, and we were dragged away from the churchyard into a terrifying vortex of noise and speed and black, whirling stars.