For a moment she thought she’d guessed wrong, but then the yellow glow faded. Relief washed over her. Finally getting somewhere.

Her eye raced along the titles on the books’ spines. There were copies of the Fasciculus Chemicus and the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, an ancient-looking book simply called DAEMONS, and an Angelic book that translated to “Lenus’s Healing Spells and Poultices.” Bingo. She pulled it from the shelf with a thud, barely able to lift herself off the floor. She flipped through it, translating the Angelic spell names at the top. God, she was so tired. She needed to sleep…

But if she fell asleep, she’d wake again bathed in flames.

Fear pushing her on, she refocused her attention. Spells for curing rashes, tinctures for alleviating gout, and conjurations by Ashmole, Norton, and Starkey. She flipped through an entire section on bovine maladies and crop sickness, rapidly losing the will to live.

Her hands were beginning to shake uncontrollably, and she glanced back at the shelf. One book was different from the others—smaller and made of leather, with no name on the spine. It looked more like a journal than a spell book. Henry’s ledger. She pulled it from the shelf and flipped through page after page of Henry’s adventures as a hellhound—each soul he’d claimed, rendered in his spindly handwriting. Desperately, her eyes searched for anything about injuries or a healing spell, until at least she neared the end of the book.

“Collected a pact from Gloria Franklin. A beautiful woman, but Emerazel’s fire made her quite the diva. She scratched me so deeply that I had to incant Starkey’s Conjuration…”

She almost screamed with relief. Starkey’s Conjuration it was. She’d seen that one. She flipped back through Lenus’s Healing Spells. Her vision began to narrow, darkening at the edges.

Please, gods, work.

She focused her dimming sight on the page, and read through the Angelic words about healing waves of light. The words rolled off her tongue, and as she got to the final stanza, she nearly smiled—it was the part she’d heard Kester recite over her broken body after she’d fought the moor fiend—the part about healing waters and leaching away pain.

At the final words, the air charged with a crackling electricity that traveled over her body in a rush, washing through her flesh and muscle. When it reached her arms and legs, a tremendous shock ripped through her. Her tunnel vision narrowed all the way down to a point, until nothing remained but Ursula and the darkness.

Chapter 33

Ursula opened her eyes, staring at the library ceiling, her head resting on Lenus’s Healing Spells. Her gaze darted to the window—still dark outside. Wind rattled the pane.

I’m not burning in an inferno. I must be alive.