I think of the day they dragged my brother’s body from the river, how something permanent in me died, how I thought I’d never go on. If Oliver leaves me too, I really don’t think I’ll survive it this time. I wouldn’t want to.

I run until my lungs are screaming and my bones are aching and my muscles won’t go anymore.

I run until I reach the doors of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. This late, the doors are locked, but I remember how my magic worked once I was close to the veil. I’m likely standing right on top of it now. It flickers below the sidewalk, six stories down, like the flames of hell.

This close to the catacombs, I can feel my magic spark awake again. “Briseadh,” I whisper the unlocking spell. Agonizingly slow, the lock in the door turns, and the door opens with a low thud.

The church is dark, shadows dance in every corner, and my frantic steps echo all the way up to the pitched roof.

The chapel is quiet and still. Perhaps that is good news, perhaps it is not. The heavy silence is holy or it is cursed, I will soon find out which.

The storage room leading to the staircase is even more terrifying at night. I bang my shin on an abandoned pew, cursing as pain radiates up to my knee, but I press on. I don’t know how much time I have. I don’t even know if my hunch is correct, but I feel in my bones it must be.

“Briseadh,” I whisper to the locked door on the far end of the room. The magic comes quicker this time, as if sensing I’m closer to the source.

Down and down I climb, as if into the belly of the earth itself. The spiral staircase creaks under my frantic steps, but I do not slow. Each beat of my heart sounds like Oliver’s name. What if I’m too late? I can’t be too late.

My entire body is shaking with exhaustion by the time I feel the sharp buzzing. Like earlier, it stings, like a paring knife through the juncture of my jaw, tracing along the fissures of my skull.

Then, from out of the darkness, there comes the low rumble of voices—male and angry.

They’re fighting.

With careful steps, I traverse the hallway of bones, illuminated in flickering red by my prayer candle.

I tuck my body behind a corner and peek a single eye down the hall I know leads to the veil.

It’s still there, flickering like a silver pool of water up the far wall. It’s who’s in front of it that makes my heart stop.