The Followers sat very still, their eyes wide open, their hands in their laps, like rows of dolls. Emma recognized Belinda and some of the others who had come to retrieve Sterling. Their heads were tilted to the side—a gesture of interest, Emma thought, until she realized how awkward the angle was and knew that it wasn’t fascination that kept them so still. It was that their necks were broken.
Someone pressed forward and put a hand on Emma’s shoulder. It was Cristina. “Emma,” she whispered. “We must attack. Diego thinks we can surround Malcolm, that enough of us could bring him down—”
Emma stood paralyzed. She wanted to run forward, to attack Malcolm. But she could feel something in the back of her mind, an insistent voice, telling her to wait. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t her own hesitation. If she hadn’t known better, if she didn’t think it would mean she was going crazy, she would have said it was Julian’s voice. Emma, wait. Please wait.
“Wait,” she whispered.
“Wait?” Cristina’s anxiety was palpable. “Emma, we need to—”
Malcolm strode into the circle. He was standing close to Tavvy’s feet, which looked bare and vulnerable in the light. He reached out to the draped object standing at the foot of the table and twitched the cloth off it.
It was the candelabra Emma remembered, the brass one that had been bare of candles. It had become a far more macabre thing. Onto each spiked point was jammed a severed hand, wrist down. Rigid, dead fingers reached for the ceiling.
One hand bore a ring with a flashy pink stone. Sterling’s hand.
“Do you know what this is?” Malcolm asked, a gloating note in his voice. “Do you, Diana?”
Diana looked up. Her face was swollen and bloody. She spoke in a croaking whisper. “Hands of Glory.”
Malcolm looked pleased. “It took me quite a long time to figure out that this was what I needed,” he said. “This is why my attempt with the Carstairs family didn’t work. The spell called for mandrake, and it was a long time before I realized that the word ‘mandrake’ was meant to stand in for main de gloire—a Hand of Glory.” He smiled with keen pleasure. “The darkest of dark magic.”
“Because of the way they’re made,” said Diana. “They’re murderers’ hands. The hands of killers. Only a hand that has taken a human life can become a Hand of Glory.”
“Oh.” The small gasp in the darkness was Ty, his eyes wide and startled. “I get it now. I get it.”
Emma turned toward him. They were pressed against opposite walls of the tunnel, looking across at each other. Livvy was next to Ty, Diego on his other side. Dru and Cristina were beside Emma.
“Diego said it was weird,” Ty continued in a low whisper, “that the murder victims were such a mix—humans, faeries. It’s because the victims never mattered. Malcolm didn’t want victims, he wanted murderers. It was why the Followers needed Sterling back—and why Belinda cut off his hands and left with them. And why Malcolm let her. He needed the murderer’s hands, the hands they’d killed with—so he could do this. Belinda took both hands because she didn’t know which one he’d killed with—and she couldn’t ask.”
But why? Emma wanted to demand. Why the burning, the drowning, the markings, the rituals? Why? But she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, a scream of rage would come out.
“This is wrong, Malcolm.” Diana’s voice was choked but steady. “I’ve spent days talking to those who’ve known you for years. Catarina Loss. Magnus Bane. They said you were a good, likable man. That can’t be all lies.”
“Lies?” Malcolm’s voice rose. “You want to talk about lies? They lied to me about Annabel. They said she had become an Iron Sister. All of them told me the same lie: Magnus, Catarina, Tessa. It was from a faerie I found out that they had lied. From a faerie I learned what had really happened to Annabel. By then she was long dead. The Blackthorns, murdering their own!”
“That was generations back. The boy you have chained to that table never knew Annabel. These are not the people who hurt you, Malcolm. These are not the people who took Annabel from you. They’re innocent.”
“No one is innocent!” Malcolm shouted. “She was a Blackthorn! Annabel Blackthorn! She loved me, and they took her—they took her and walled her up and she died there in the tomb. They did that to me and I do not forgive! I will never forgive!” He took a deep breath, clearly forcing himself to be calm. “Thirteen Hands of Glory,” he said. “And Blackthorn blood. That will bring her back, and she will be with me again.”
He turned away from Diana, toward Tavvy, and picked up the knife that lay on the table by Tavvy’s head.
The tension in the tunnel was sudden and silent and explosive. Hands reached for weapons. Grips tightened on hilts. Diego raised his ax. Five pairs of eyes turned to Emma.
Diana struggled even more desperately as Malcolm raised the knife. Light sparked off it, strangely beautiful, illuminating the lines of the poem on the wall.
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
Julian, Emma thought. Julian, I’ve got no choice. We can’t wait for you.