“Lilith?” Louis is becoming concerned. “What is it? Tell me what is wrong.”

I shake my head, as much to try to clear it as to indicate to him that I cannot speak. My mind is filled with the ever-increasing bellowing of my own name. I have never been so assailed by the voice of a spirit.

Stop! Stop! “Stop!” I cry aloud.

Louis kneels before me, putting his hands on mine, at a loss as to how to help, anxious to ease my distress.

There is nothing he can do. Abruptly, the shouting ceases. All that remains is a buzzing echo in my mind. I meet Louis’s troubled eyes as he searches my face for answers.

“It’s all right,” I tell him, though in truth I am still shaking. “There was a voice, a spirit, very loud, very … strong.”

“But you didn’t call anyone?”

“No. I did not.” I am unable to clearly understand what has just taken place, but the message delivered in such a startling way by the unwelcome spirit is clear. I am a witch who calls herself skilled in necromancy, a person who summons the dead to help me when I wish. Only this time, the dead are summoning me.

Chapter 5

5.

Bram has visited several artists’ ateliers, some belonging to painters, others the workplaces of sculptors, but he has never in his life seen anything like Mangan’s studio. The space must have originally consisted of a large room at the rear of the house. A wall has been roughly knocked down to extend it into an adjoining room. This in turn has had its doors and far wall removed so that both spaces now run into the rather rickety conservatory that clings, spiderlike, to the back of the building.

“Light! Light, my young friend,” Mangan explains, waving an expansive arm at the devastation wrought upon the old house. “An artist cannot work without it. Art cannot thrive in the darkness. What is comfort, what is convention, what is property next to the value of the aesthetic? All must be subjugated to art. There can be no half measures.”

This man is incapable of any action which is not extreme, Bram thinks. His opinions, his politics, his personal life, even the way he moves and speaks—all are extreme. Is it any wonder he produces such radical work? But which came first? Does the man shape the nature of what he creates, or does it shape him? If I stay here long enough will I, too, become extreme? Will being in his company draw from me further my own obsessive nature, so that I, too, am consumed by my art? Such an existence can only be a short step away for me. Would I produce my best work this way, or would I merely lose stability further?