Page 54 of The Mirror of Beasts

“Great Mother, I did not see! I did not know! Forgive me—forgive me—!”

Neve’s shocked face mirrored my own. She brought a hand up to her chest, touching the pendant hidden beneath her shirt. I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking it too.

What are you?

But when silence finally came, there were no answers to be found there, either.

Rivenoak Manor was as impossibly grand as I remembered it, made more so by the dusting of snow and the shimmering lights upon its towering facade.

The palatial home had been an exercise in delusions of grandeur by some Elizabethan courtier who’d had no way of knowing his descendants would be brokers of stolen relics, not power.

We weren’t Rivenoak’s only visitors that evening. The lit torches lining its long drive and the parade of sleek cars heading toward the house had been our first sign of trouble. It only got worse from there.

Douglas firs had been hauled in to decorate the entryway. Their sweet smell filled my chest as I took in a deep breath. The glow of the party fluttered like golden wings against the house’s many windows. Entering its light was like crossing into an Otherland—as tempting as it was forbidden.

My attention narrowed onto the man in a white tuxedo collecting invitations at the base of the marble stairs, at the very center of the circular drive. The arriving guests were kitted out in formal wear, glittering with jewels and warmed by dead animal skins. A black-tie affair.

I glared at Emrys through the velvet curtain of night, shifting so the boxwood hedge was no longer poking my cheek. “Did you know about this?”

“Yeah, of course,” he whispered back. “I always try to show up when I’m most likely to be caught.”

“Should we … come back?” Neve ventured, daring to peek over the bushes we’d ducked behind. Having been able to use the hedgerow along the drive to shield ourselves from the view of passing headlights, we’d finally reached the end of it.

“Can we just go around to the back of the house?” Caitriona asked.

Emrys considered the idea for a moment. “No, the only way to access the library is from a door inside, or by climbing through that window there—” He nodded to the third-to-last one on the house’s face. “We have a better chance with the window. We just need to wait for the last guest to arrive—”

Neve let out a soft, pitchy hum, her eyes fixed on one of the decorative trees on the left side of the door. Within seconds, it went up like kindling.

As the man in the white tuxedo and several security guards turned their backs to rush toward the fire, Neve seized the initiative and leapt ungracefully over the hedge, leaving the rest of us to rush after her.

“—or a distraction works too,” Emrys whispered, pained.

By the time we heard the hiss of the fire extinguisher, the five of us had managed to crawl into the narrow space between the wall and the wild thicket of rosebushes—though not without a cost.

“Why did it have to be roses?” Olwen whispered, carefully removing thorns from her hands and jacket sleeves. My own neck looked like I’d been in a losing fight with the library cats.

“Ooh,” Neve whispered, sliding a hand under one of the bushes to pluck something from the ground. “Herald of winter!”

Emrys whirled around the best he could in the cramped space. “Really?”

Neve held the small yellow-bodied mushroom out for him to see. I snapped my fingers, drawing their attention back to me. “Fungi later. Focus.”

A hint of “Greensleeves” drifted through the windows above us, played lavishly by a string quartet. When I turned back to face front, I saw that I’d lost both Caitriona and Olwen, too. They’d stuck their heads up just enough to see through the lustrous glass, to the world of the massive stone hall beyond it, and the sparkling contours of the candlelit party swirling inside.

Several revelers blocked our view, their raucous laughter animated by the light, fizzy delirium of champagne. Their glasses clinked carelessly together as they toasted themselves.

I knew from Nash’s journal that the west wing of the grand country home was reserved for Wyrm and his family, the east for the members of his guild, but Cabell and I had been made to wait outside like street dogs, blocked by the pig-faced butler from even glimpsing the foyer. As sweeping and immaculate as the exterior of the house was, it was an appetizer to the feast awaiting our eyes inside.

I drew in a breath as the partygoers drifted apart and the soaring height of the hall revealed itself.

It was impossible to take it all in at once. The hoarfrost clinging to the glass gave everything a dreamy, unreal quality. Guests danced around the frothy towers of champagne glasses, tucked safely beneath the ostentatious stonework bracing the hall like a rib cage. A giant Yule log burned in the hearth, the flames gorging themselves on the last of the ribbons and dried berries tied to it.

“All of this for one family?” Olwen whispered.

I understood her horrified amazement. The tower of Avalon had been enormous, but served a purpose as the heart of the isle and had housed dozens of families by the end. Here, the size of the house was only meant to make the rest of us feel inferior.

Here and there, I saw faces I recognized, from my own guild and the London one—more intriguing were the collectors, the black market traders, and the auctioneers who served as the connective tissue between what a Hollower found and their payday.

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