You have to help me.

“It is too late. I can do nothing.”

Make me live again. You can, Lilith. I know you can. I’m not ready to die. My life cannot be over, not yet, not like this. It wasn’t meant to be this way. Please, I am so scared. Please, help me!

“Freddie, you don’t know what you are asking…”

Yes I do. I heard you and Papa talking. He told me all about it when I was a boy. At first I didn’t believe, and then when I did I was frightened. But I know you can do this, Lilith. You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to. Father wouldn’t let me die. You mustn’t!

I look down at his ghastly, terrified face. How can I leave him like this? How can I let him go into the Land of Night when he is so very frightened? All of a sudden he is just my baby brother and it is up to me to protect him. It is not fair. He has been made to suffer because of my position in the coven—Stricklend has struck at him to try and get what he wanted from me. None of this is Freddie’s fault. Well, if he must pay a price for my being the Lazarus Head Witch, then it is only right that he should benefit from who I am, too.

I stand quickly, wiping my tears from my face, and hurry to open the door. I shout down for some help and a footman arrives breathlessly.

“My brother has been taken ill and I must see he gets home immediately,” I tell him. ‘Please have my driver bring the carriage round. Is there a door at the rear of the house?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Good, we shall use that. I do not wish to disturb the other guests or cause a fuss. We must do this discreetly, do you understand?”

“Of course, ma’am.”

“As soon as you have sent word to the driver, come back here with another footman. My brother is unconscious and will need to be carried.”

The journey back to Fitzroy Square is barely three miles but feels interminable. I have the driver run in and fetch Withers. We pretend to take Freddie into a room at the back of the house, saying we do not want Lady Annabel worried, but in fact we slip into the garden, Withers carrying Freddie’s limp body in his arms, and hasten down the secret stone stairwell into the catacombs below.

*   *   *

Bram’s attic rooms seem bleak and bare after the opulence of the ball. By the time he slumps onto his bed, still wearing Perry’s second-best clothes, his head is throbbing from a surfeit of noise and champagne. In the distance, the sonorous bells of Big Ben chime four.

The dark before the dawn, he tells himself.