Chapter 30

“Who, exactly, are you?” Lex asked. “And how did you come under Geoffrey O’Neill’s spell?”

Alice, the one who had caught Bay’s eye when he’d looked at the fountain, replied, “He kidnapped me. Well…all of us. About…” She hesitated. “What year is it?”

“Twenty-eighteen,” Lex told her.

She shivered. “Then we’ve been…like that for eleven years or so. Before he married her.” She pointed and Lex turned to see Camilla enter the room.

Camilla looked puzzled as she stared at the four women. Then she whispered, “Oh my God. Lex, tell me these aren’t…”

“I’m afraid they are, or were.”

“That bastard!” She hurried across the room to the women. “I am so sorry for whatever it was he did toyou to turn you into…” She winced. “Part of the fountain.”

“A rather nasty spell,” Lex said. “And one he cast before the two of you met, Camilla.”

She sat down suddenly in the nearest chair. “So he was evil even then. It wasn’t Elias’s death that turned him.”