Freshly gripped with panic, she stomped on the clutch, threw the old-fashioned gearshift into drive, and punched the gas—
As she swung out of the parallel parking spot, she caught a glimpse of the door she’d come out of. It was just closing. Balthazar had kept his word and watched her to make sure she got to the car safely.
Just like he had protected her before.
Leaving him seemed wrong, but the fear inside her was so powerful, she had no choice but to give in to it and flee the garage, flee him and his world.
As she shot down Shore Avenue, she had no idea where she was going. Or where she was except for, well, down on the shores of the Hudson River, traveling deeper into downtown. Which was the wrong way. She should go home.
That was what she had to do. She needed an on-ramp to the Northway, so she could head in the opposite direction than she was going now.
She needed to go back to her apartment… which wasn’t actually an apartment, but a townhouse that she had not properly claimed as her home because there had been no home for her, not since she was sixteen.
Her place. That was right. Even though she was no more safe there than anywhere else, she was like someone in the hospital with a dreaded disease, whose only thought was that if they could just get back to their own bed, everything would be okay.
It was a foolish belief.
But an undeniable one.
* * *
Standing over the Book, Devina read the spell that had been created for her and her alone for the third time. Which was what the spell informed her she was supposed to do. Three times with the reading, like it was worried that she’d be so excited, she couldn’t concentrate.
Which, of course, she couldn’t. But she got the gist of things just fine.
Turning to her collection, she had to smile.
It was so fucking remarkable, and yet completely apt, how perfect the spell was for her. Then again, over the course of eons, she had come to understand the way the Book worked. Between those covers, in all those infinite parchment pages, was a portal that opened in a different way for whoever it chose to serve, as if each soul who approached it had a separate key for a specific unlocking. And as for the written words themselves? They were infinitely transmutable, all the languages ever spoken or read within its grasp, an endless horizon of power available, expressible in an incalculable number of ways.
Always on its terms, however.
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she murmured as her eyes caressed her clothes, her accessories, her shoes. “But you really do know me, don’t you.”
Her spell was the absolute tailored fit for who and what she was, and what she had to do to follow its recipe struck her as magnificent. The second and third readings had been unnecessary. She had known immediately what she was going to use for what had been prescribed.
And for once in her immortal life, she was going to follow instructions.
As desperate as she was for the outcome, she was unhurried as well, the sense of anticipation like a delayed orgasm, something that was a delightful, burning frustration. So she was slow and easy on her wander, zeroing in on her destination in a roundabout way that took her on a review of all that was precious to her, all that she had chosen and curated with care… all that she loved.
Walking by the racks, she put her fingertips out and encountered all manner of fabrics, from blue jean and cotton to satin and silk. Sequins, too. She even paused to pull out a set of Stella McCartney velvet hip-huggers. They were from the Fall/Winter collection a couple of years before.
Annnnnnnnnd now Devina was finally in front of her Birkins, the Lucite stands making her think of that book room back at the Commodore, where the Book had been and been determined to stay. But as she thought about its obstinance, she wasn’t going to get pissy with the thing. Hell, for what it was giving her tonight, she’d be kind and generous to it for the rest of eternity.
Maybe even get it a tufted pillow instead of that trash bin to rest on.
Her eyes lifted to the summit to her Mount Everest of Hermès. That pinnacle display position had remained barren, the stand empty as if a vital organ had been removed, but no transplant was available.
As she summoned back the little coffin, she thought it was so ironic. She’d been in this exact spot, laying to rest her most beloved, figuring it was gone forever and of no more use—and now she was back, finding a purpose for the thing even though it was ruined.