Bram shakes his head. “You know, I don’t believe it is that … family pressure. She was prepared for disapproval from her mother, yes, and telling her fiancé … breaking off their engagement … of course it would be difficult. But, when we were together … being with her meant everything to me.”

“You love her.”

“Ha!” He gives a mirthless bark of a laugh. “That is such a small word for what I felt. What I feel. The truth is … enormous! The way she affects me, the way she consumes me so completely … To be with her, to love her, I have lost myself to her utterly, do you understand what I’m saying? Can you? Can anyone? Do I?” He runs a hand through his tangled hair.

“You don’t think you were mistaken?”

“No.”

“Or perhaps that you might … win her back?”

“We are not in a situation to play games,” he says, glancing at Perry. “There are … complicated things about our being together. If she has decided she cannot be with me, then … I will not change her mind.”

“So, what will you do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know! How can I know?” He stands up, draws back his hand, and hurls the glass against the wall. The resulting smash falls horribly short of the noise he was hoping for. It goes no way to expressing the mixture of rage and sadness that are now, fueled by the brandy, surging through him. “I must get away,” he says at last. “I cannot stay here. Cannot be in London, where she is, and be without her. I cannot.”

*   *   *

As the motor car speeds through the sunlit streets I glance at Louis. His profile, against the strong light, is visible only in silhouette, but even so I can detect the grim set of his mouth. He answered my cry for help and came at once, as of course he must, but he is deeply shocked by what I have done and unable to successfully mask that shock.

“How could you do it, Lilith?” His voice is scarcely more than a whisper. “How could you bring yourself to do it?”

I know that he is not simply asking me how I found it within myself to undertake such a difficult piece of magic. He is questioning my loyalty to the coven. My integrity. As well he might. I have justified my actions to myself, but I will not as easily convince others that I did what I had to do.