He slept on his side, his hair in his eyes. Fiona dove toward the floor, bracing herself as she allowed her muscles and skeleton to snap back to human form. Her lungs and intestines swelled. A sharp pain screamed through her head for a moment, and she dry-heaved as Tobias stirred.
Tobias jolted awake. “Fiona. Are you okay?” He rubbed at something on his chest.
“Transforming is supposed to get better over time, isn’t it?”
“What’s happening?” Alan sat up, gripping his sheets to his chest.
“It’s just me. I have the key to the holding room.” She held it in the air like a trophy.
“Nice.” Alan threw off his sheets. “Are we going invisible?”
“I think Tobias and I should fly into the attic. Mrs. Ranulf has guards patrolling the hallway tonight with revealing dust.”
Alan crossed his arms. “So I’m just supposed to wait here and do nothing?”
“You can be lookout. Signal Byron if we need to hurry back.”
“Nobody likes to be lookout.” He threw himself backward on his bed.
Tobias stood next to his own bed in a gray T-shirt and underwear. He looked… stronger, somehow, his arms more thickly muscled, and she caught a glimpse of his toned abdominals when he stretched his arms over his head. She could see why Munroe was so eager to get his attention. He rubbed his hair, still waking up. “Are you ready to transform?”
Fiona rose, trying not to stare. “Yeah.”
She whispered the spell. The pain seared her head again as her body compressed on itself, and her arms burst into wings. She swooped down to the floor, grabbing the key. She circled by the ceiling, orienting herself until she sensed the flapping of Tobias’s wings outside the window, his movements more fluid than hers. She followed him into the humid night air, the howls still rising from the cemetery. On the third floor, windows jutted out from the sloped black roof, but they were shut tight. Fiona swooped in an arc. Sound waves formed an image of vents between the windows—just large enough for a bat to fit through.
She slipped through a vent and flapped over the crib they’d seen yesterday. She swerved closer to the floor, hovering for a moment, and then burst into her human form again. On her hands and knees, she gagged in the pitch-black attic. After catching her breath, she stood up. She stepped carefully on the precarious attic floor toward to the window where Tobias flapped outside. After she unlatched it, he glided in, landing quietly on a floorboard.
There was a tearing sound as he transformed, and then a few moments of quiet while he caught his breath.
“We made it in,” said Fiona, straightening. “And I’ve still got the key.”
Tobias chanted the light spell, and an incandescent sphere of foxfire appeared between them. He tiptoed across a plank. “Watch that you don’t fall through the ceiling this time. ”
Fiona frowned at the note of accusation in his tone. He might as well have said, “Try not to screw everything up like you usually do.”
The holes she and Mariana had created had been plastered over. The floorboards creaked beneath her, but they arrived at the holding room door without punching any more holes into Mrs. Ranulf’s room.
As she stood next to Jolly Jasper, Fiona inserted the long silver key into the lock and turned it to the right. The lock clicked open. She exhaled, pushing the door inward. Tobias sent the light forward, and they slipped inside a small, musty room.
It looked like an old office. A spindle-legged oak desk abutted the wall opposite the door. Above it, paintings crowded the wall, their red tones standing out against the black fleur-de-lis wallpaper. The images all depicted the same scene: a woman tied to a stake, burning to death while she appealed to the heavens for mercy.
A shudder ran down Fiona’s spine. “This is awful.” She inspected a representation of Joan of Arc, who was burned for witchcraft in the 15th century. A horrible thought sent a stab of fear through her chest. “They’re not going to burn Mariana, are they?
Tobias shook his head. “Munroe said they’re giving her some kind of medical treatment. I don’t imagine it’s burning.”
To the right, dark wooden cabinets lined the wall. On the top of the cabinets, glass panes showcased shelves of faded books, while the bottom half comprised rows of drawers.
“What is this?” Tobias was pointing at something to her left.
Fiona’s breath caught in her throat as she glanced at the canvas strips and buckles hung from a wooden board. So this is why they called it the holding cell.
She felt sick. “That must be where they kept Mariana last night. Then they must have transferred her somewhere else.”
“What about the crypt key? Did Byron tell you anything?”
“That one Mrs. Ranulf keeps around her neck.” Fiona crossed to the drawers, pulling one open near the bottom row. She yelped. A twisted, charred human hand lay at the bottom, and a small, yellowed note lay on the top. Lady Glamis, purified in 1537.
Tobias moved closer, peering over Fiona’s shoulder. “One of the Purgators’ noble victims.”
She swallowed. “But Jack said women weren’t philosophers in the old days. They weren’t allowed to learn Angelic.”