57

The Twelfth Charm: The Heart

KAT WAS LOST. She had a sword, and she had her chatelaine, but she feared she had already lost her soul. She was already part monster.

Then Father’s voice as he left that day, as he picked up his suitcase, came to her, so clear: “Keep calm, Kitty. Carry on. And remember, no matter what happens, keep faith.” And Great-Aunt Margaret’s voice, like an echo: “In times like these we require other, equally important qualities. Like imagination. And faith. And hope.”

Kat raised Peter’s sword and braced. She was done for, but she still had to fight back.

She saw nothing in the Lady but her determination to take Kat’s soul.

Yet the Lady had raised Kat’s charm—and Kat saw that it was the heart—as she came, and only feet away from Kat, she paused. It was an instant, a flicker of a movement, but the monstrous hand that was stretched toward Kat holding the heart charm dropped just a hair, and the Lady hesitated.

In that momentary hesitation, Kat saw the Lady and the Lady’s heart now as a perfect clockwork: how the gears meshed, how the wheels joined, how the cogs were placed. All her time spent with her father as he worked on clocks cleared her mind to see the Lady as a mechanical thing.

And something else. The heart. If Kat had nothing else left at all, she still had her own real heart, full of love for her family. The Lady was offering her a heart, as if it was meant out of love. The offering made Kat sad; and then it made her brave.

The Lady came on again with nothing but hatred in her one real eye.

The Lady’s own momentum drove her onto the sword blade, and for a fraction of a second Kat hoped that it had stopped her, but no. The sword went right through some moving assemblage of gears and the Lady laughed. Kat let go of the hilt and stepped back, and the Lady took hold of the sword, slid it from her body, and dropped it to the floor.

Kat had nothing left. Nothing except her own chatelaine, which she held in her own monstrous right hand.

The glittering reflection of the chatelaine as Kat lifted it made the Lady pause. Hesitate again. She pointed. “What is that?”

“It’s my chatelaine,” Kat said. “A gift to me.”

Kat withdrew the pen from its holder; she thought of her father making a gift of the pen to Great-Aunt Margaret, and maybe, she thought, just maybe that meant it was from Father to Kat. Her left hand, gripping the pen, shook so badly, she feared she might drop it as she pointed it at the Lady.

“Is that . . . a pen? A pen?” The Lady laughed, a long and horrible laugh, throwing her head back as her laughter echoed around and around the castle, reverberating off of bare stone. “I thought you had real magic. And all you have is a pen!”

“Yes, my Lady. This is a pen.” Kat shifted the pen into her steady and unnaturally strong right hand and held her arm out straight and pointed the pen directly at the Lady’s heart. Yes, the Lady’s heart had a weakness, for though it was beautifully made, it was only clockwork after all, and Kat focused on that spot where the gears nicked together, forcing herself to be still and firm and keep her eyes fixed, and her own mechanical right hand tightened around the pen in a grip like steel.

Then Kat said the only thing she could think of, as loudly as she could, her voice ringing around the echoing space of the hall: “And the pen is mightier than the sword.”

The air seemed to shimmer just a bit, and the pen took on a strong blue glow, and Kat thought, Oh! But she held her arm out straight and true, her terrible hand firm, and she pointed the pen directly at the weak place in the Lady’s steel and silver and copper heart.

The Lady snarled, and Kat almost shut her eyes against the sight of the wheels and gears, but she held the pen tight, and when the Lady came at her again Kat drove the pen into the Lady’s chest.

Where it wedged between two of the gears in that steady beating heart, which ground instantly to a halt.

The Lady froze, the pen shuddering ever so slightly in Kat’s hand as the gears meshed, locking the pen between two copper teeth.