When I come down the stairs, Henry is sitting in his chair by the window in the parlor. Treasure Island lies open in his lap, but he is not reading. Instead, he stares out at the grounds on the other side of the window pane.

I don’t bother trying to silence my footfall as I approach. I know well what it is like to be so deep in thought, and I’ve no wish to startle him. Even still, he takes no notice of me until I speak.

“Good morning, Henry.”

He looks up, blinking as if I’ve woken him from a trance. “Good morning.”

I tip my head, looking deeper into his eyes and trying to define the expression I see in their brown depths. “Are you all right?”

He stares at me a long moment and is opening his mouth to speak when Alice rounds the corner into the room. We both turn to look at her, but when I return my eyes to Henry, his gaze does not leave Alice’s face.

“Henry? Are you all right?” I repeat.

Alice raises her eyebrows as she looks quizzically at our brother. “Yes, Henry. Is everything all right?”

It takes him a moment more to answer, but when he does, his response is given to Alice, not to me. “Yes. I’m only reading.” A note of defensiveness has crept into his voice, but before I can think more about it Aunt Virginia enters the room, stealing our attention.

“Lia?” She stands in the doorway, an odd expression on her face. “Someone is here to see you.”

“To see me? Who is it?”

Her eyes skip nervously from my face to Alice’s and back again before answering. “She says her name is Sonia. Sonia Sorrensen.”

Sonia and I don’t speak on our way up the hill to the cliff overlooking the water. In the vacuum of the words we do not say, I focus on the sky, an endless sapphire that goes on and on. I can almost see the curve of the horizon, and I wonder how anyone could have thought the Earth flat when faced with this kind of sky.

I try not to think of Alice, of her barely concealed fury at the mention of my visitor. I was both relieved and surprised when she left the parlor before Sonia was escorted in by Aunt Virginia. It saved me from having to come up with an explanation, but I am under no illusions; Sonia’s arrival and Aunt Virginia’s presence only bought me a little time with my sister. Alice will not let so curious a caller go unquestioned.

By the time Sonia breaks our silence, my nerves are taut with unspoken words.

“You mustn’t go so far, Lia.” Her gaze remains fixed in the distance as if nothing was said at all.

A swift and forceful anger fills my chest. “Tell me, how does one measure ‘far,’ Sonia? Perhaps you can tell me how to measure distance when I am flying out of my body in the middle of the night.”

She takes a minute to answer, her profile as clear and beautiful as the marble statues we sketch at Wycliffe. “Yes. It must be confusing. If you’ve never done it before, I mean.” Her voice is a murmur.

“If I’ve never… Well, of course I’ve never done it before!” I stop, tugging on her arm so that she must stop, too. “Wait! Are you saying you have done it before?”

She looks into my eyes, shrugging and pulling her arm away. Turning, she continues to climb the rise leading to the lake. I hurry to catch her and am breathless when I finally reach her side.

“Won’t you answer?”

She sighs, looking over at me as we walk. “Yes, all right? I’ve done it before. I’ve been doing it since I was a child. Some people do it without realizing it, thinking they are dreaming, for example. Others can do it on command. Many, actually. Many people in my world anyway.”

She says this as if we are not walking side by side on the very same ground, as if she occupies some strange corner of the universe, invisible and unreachable to me.

“In your world? Whatever do you mean?”

She laughs a little. “Are we not from different worlds, Lia? You live in a grand house, surrounded by the family and things you hold dear. I live in a small house governed by Mrs. Millburn, with only the company of other spiritualists and those who pay us to describe the things they cannot see.”

Her words silence my questions. “I… I’m sorry, Sonia. I suppose I didn’t realize it wasn’t your home, that the woman, Mrs….uh, Mrs. Millburn was not your… relative.”

Even from her profile, I see the flash of anger in her eyes. “For goodness’ sake! Don’t pity me! I’m quite content with the way things are.”

But she does not sound content. Not really.

We finally reach the rise, that last invigorating moment when we step onto the top of the hill making me feel, as always, that I have stepped into the sky. Despite all that has happened on this ridge, it is impossible not to appreciate the majesty of the view.

“Oh! I didn’t know there was a lake here!” In Sonia’s voice is the awe of a child, and I realize she mustn’t be much older than I. She takes in the view—the lake, shimmering below us, the trees swaying in a breeze too soft for autumn.

“It’s well hidden. Even I don’t come here much, actually.” Because my mother fell from this cliff, I think. Because her broken body lay on the rocks of the lapping lake below. Because I simply cannot bear it.

I gesture to a large rock set back from the edge. “Shall we sit?”

She nods, still unable to remove her eyes from the call of the water below. We settle side by side on the boulder, the hems of our skirts touching over the dusty ground. I have questions. But they are unfathomable things, dark shapes that swim just below the surface of my consciousness.

“I knew you were coming.” She says this simply, as if I should know exactly what she means.

“What? What do you—”

“Yesterday. At the sitting. I knew it would be you.”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

She looks right into my eyes in the way that only Alice ever has. As if she knows me. “Lately, when I try to hold a sitting, I close my eyes and all I see is your face. Your face and… well, many strange things I don’t usually see.”

“But we have never seen each other before yesterday! How could you possibly see my face in your… in your visions?”

She stares toward the lake. “There is only one reason I can think of….Only one reason why I would see you, why you would come.”

She turns her face from the lake, looking down and avoiding my eyes as she removes the glove covering her left hand. She lays the glove across her lap, pulling the sleeve of her gown up over her wrist.

“It’s because of this, is it not? Because of the mark?”

It is there. The unmistakable circle, the slithering snake.

Just like mine. Just like the one on the medallion.

Every cell in my body, every thought in my mind, the very blood in my veins, seems to go still. When everything begins moving again, it is in a great rush of shock.

“It cannot be. It… May I?” I reach a hand toward her.

She hesitates before nodding, and I take her small hand in mine. I turn it over, knowing without looking a second longer that the mark is the same. No, not quite the same. Her mark is not red, but one shade lighter than the rest of her skin. It is raised, just as mine is, as if it is an old scar.

But that is not all. That is not the only difference.

The circle is there, and the winding snake, but that is the end of Sonia’s mark. The C does not appear on her wrist, though it is otherwise an exact replica of mine and the one on the medallion.

I return her hand carefully, as a gift. “What is it?”

She chews her lip, before tipping her head toward my hand. “First let me see.”

I thrust my wrist toward her. She takes it, tracing with her finger the outline of the C in the middle of my circle. “Yours is different.”

My face burns with shame, though I’ve no idea why. “Yes, a little, though we might just as well say yours is different. How long have you had it?”

“Forever. Since I was born, I’ve been told.”

“But what does it mean?”

She breathes deeply, fixing her gaze into the trees. “I don’t know. Not really. The only mention of the mark, the only one I know of, comes from a little-known legend told in the circles of spiritualists and others interested in the Watchers. And in the lesser known pieces of their story.”

“The Watchers?”

“Yes, from the Bible?” She says this as if I should know, as if I should have an intimate understanding of the Bible when our religious upbringing has been haphazard at best. “They were angels, you see, before they fell.”

A tale about angels or… demons, I think.

Cast from the heavens…

She continues, unaware of the recognition firing through my mind. “The most accepted version is that they were cast from heaven when they married and had children with the women of Earth. But that isn’t the only version.” She hesitates, bending to pick up a stone and rubbing it clean with the hem of her skirt before returning her eyes to me. “There is another. One far less told.”

I fold my hands in my lap, trying to calm the rising unease thrumming through my mind. “Go on.”

“It is said the Watchers were tricked into their defiance by Maari.”

I shake my head. “Who?”

“One of the sisters. One of the twins.”

The sisters. The twins.

“I have never heard of a twin by that name in the Bible. Of course, I’m no scholar, but even so…”

Sonia worries the stone, round and flat, between her fingers. “That is because it isn’t found in the Bible. It’s a legend, a myth, told and passed down through the generations. I am not saying it’s true. I’m only telling the story as you asked.”

“All right, then. Tell me the rest. Tell me about the sisters.”

She settles farther back on the rock. “It is said that Maari began the betrayal by seducing Samael, God’s most trusted angel. Samael promised Maari that if she gave birth to an angel-human, she would receive all the knowledge denied to her as a human. And he was right.

“Once the fallen angels, or Watchers, took the humans as wives, they imparted all manner of sorcery to their new partners. In fact, some of the more… enthusiastic members of our society believe that is where the gifts of the spiritualists originate.”

“So then what? What happened after the Watchers took their human wives and shared their knowledge?”

Sonia shrugs. “They were banished, forced to wander the eight Otherworlds for all eternity until the Doom of Gods, or as Christians call it, the Apocalypse. Oh yes, and after that they were not called the Watchers.”

“What were they called?”

“The Lost Souls.” Her voice drops, as if she is afraid to be heard uttering the words aloud. “It is said there is a way for them to return to the physical world. Through the sisters, one the Guardian and one the Gate.”

My head snaps up. “What did you say?”

She shakes her head. “Just that there is a way—”

“No. After that. About the sisters.”

But I know. Of course I do.

A small line forms on the bridge of her nose as she remembers. “Well, the way I’ve heard it told, sisters of a certain line continue the struggle, even today. One remains the Guardian of peace in the physical world, and the other the Gate through which the Souls can pass. If the Souls ever make their way to our world, the Doom of Gods will begin. And the Souls will fight the battle with as many lost souls as they can bring back from the Otherworlds. Only… I’ve heard there is a catch of sorts.”

“What sort of catch?”

Her brow furrows. “Well, it is said the Souls’ Army cannot commence the battle without Samael, their leader. And Samael can only make his way through the Gate if he is summoned by the sister destined to call him forth. It is said the Army accumulates, passing into our world in great numbers through the Gates, waiting…”

“Waiting for what?”

“For Samael. For the Beast, known to some as Satan himself.”

She says it simply, and I realize I am not even surprised.