She enters the room. A neatly folded stack of linens sits on the end of each bed as if no one lives here yet. So I’m not in the present. Does that mean I’m in the past? In the future?

Norah props a package on one of the pillows. It’s wrapped in brown paper stamped with delicate red designs. A tag is attached to the front, and Norah flips it over to reveal a single word written in elegant script: Saskia.

The air freezes in my lungs, making it impossible to draw breath. Latham didn’t leave the spell book in my room.

Norah did.

But she couldn’t have known what she was delivering. Could she?

I shift my attention to her face, hoping if I just study her carefully enough, I might be able to read her intentions. Outside the vision, my stomach rolls over and I think I might be sick. The vision dims and I nearly pull my hands from the bones, but then a shaft of moonlight falls across Norah’s face. I’ve moved forward in time, but Norah is in the exact same place again. She stands in the middle of my room. But now I lie in bed, my hair unbraided and fanned across my pillow. My face is relaxed, as if for once my dreams are untroubled.

Norah pulls a cloth from her pocket and holds it over my nose and mouth. A heavy stone of dread drops into my stomach. Am I in the future now? Is she trying to suffocate me?

In the vision, I swat my hand over my face, as if trying to scratch an itch, but then I go suddenly limp. My hand falls heavily back to the mattress. Norah pulls a bone needle from her pocket and plunges it into a vein at my elbow. Outside the vision, my pulse thunders in my ears. It’s exactly like the needle I used on Declan to steal his blood—made from the wing of a vampire bat, infused with the animal’s numbing saliva so it pierces without pain. The chamber inside the needle fills with my blood as I lie motionless, drugged by whatever potion Norah soaked into the cloth.

I think of Tessa’s horrified expression as she lifted the vial of my blood in the shop. Saskia, how did Latham get this? Is he doing readings on you?

Suddenly the pieces fall into place. Norah discouraging me from going after Latham. The way each bone game has seemed specifically designed to torture me. Norah firing Rasmus as an excuse to leave me exposed. The realization is like a knife to the gut.

I was right that Latham had someone working for him on the inside. But the traitor isn’t someone on the Grand Council.

The traitor is Norah.

Chapter Twenty-Six