Marion massaged one bruised temple. Black Flag melted into My Bloody Valentine on the other side of the door.
“This is secondhand, the word of a woman who also claimed Astrid turned into a white cat at night to ride the devil. But Astrid and Howlett were definitely obsessed with immortality, and this servant claimed Astrid had figured out a way to keep her spirit intact when she died. Intact, and close.”
“Like a haunting?” I tried to say it coldly, but it came out in a whisper.
“Like a dam.” Even now, Marion spoke of it with wonder. “A stopping place for her spirit between life and death, attached to the house itself. She figured out a way to catch herself, to build a place where she could wait to be summoned. Then she hid the spell where she knew it would be found.”
Sharon was raking her nails through her hair as she listened. Sparks gathered in their wake, sizzling on her fingertips and scenting the air with cordite.
“Whoops.” She shook the sparks to the floor. “Okay. Let’s recap. What we’re dealing with is a dead occultist who has spent the last however many years in magical solitary, losing her undead mind, and who will now be haunting us till we give her what she wants. Which is another go at the spell that will reanimate her. Is that everything?”
Marion jerked to her feet and pushed open the door to the shop, gesturing at us to follow. She stopped right below the speaker and drew us in, draping our four heads in a crimson throw.
Her breath was warm and sour and barely there. I almost couldn’t hear her over the wall of dreaming sound. “Everything I said—it’s true, but it’s not the point. Astrid’s here. She’s listening.”
Our hair crackled against the cotton. Everyone looked seedy in the red-dyed light.
“We have to be very careful now,” Marion said. “We have to do just as I say. We’re gonna do the spell again, to draw her out—but this time we’ll end it with a banishing.”
“You think we’re gonna trust you again just like that?” I hissed. I wished I had a new penny to hold between my thumb and my left ring finger. Penny bright, penny true, tell the lies that are told to you. If the copper tarnishes, you know you’re being taken for a ride.
“Look at me.” Astrid’s marks stood out on Marion’s face like grains of black rice. “She’s gonna hunt me till this is through.”
Then the cloth was ripped away, trailing constellations of static shocks. It hovered over our heads before being flung to the floor with force.
The punk girl goggled at us from behind the register, hands up. “Holy shit.”
“So we’re agreed,” Marion said, bruised and beady. “We do the spell again.”
Fee wrapped her fingers in mine. She squeezed. I heard what she didn’t say. Astrid is listening. Tread carefully.
“Right,” I said, voice raspy.
Sharon rolled her neck. “Tonight? Get it over with?”
“Not the right kinda moon,” Marion said shortly. “Next Friday’s will work. Okay?”
Five days away. Five days to figure out a fix that didn’t involve trusting Marion. I held onto Fee’s hand and nodded my assent, for now.
Marion looked at the air over our heads. “Hear that?” she said. “We won’t abandon you, Astrid.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The suburbs
Right now
I checked the locks on the doors again, because Sharon had told me to. But I knew it didn’t matter. The girl stalking my mother had found her way in twice; she could do it again.
I’d been awake too long. In my bed, behind a locked door, I watched the dawn sky shade from purple jelly to pre-storm green, the atmosphere fattening like a wallet with unspent rain. Then the weather broke. A pause and a sizzle, the heat giving way. I closed my eyes.
While I slept the storm flooded the fields and pulled down branches and made the creeks swell up like black eyes. Rain leaked through the window seams and humidity tangled its fingers in my hair. When I woke my brain was beautifully blank. Then it caught hold of everything I’d gone to sleep to escape.
Nausea scratched at the back of my throat. I snatched up my phone, but its screen was empty. I tossed it aside, crossed the hall, and flung open my parents’ door. I wanted so badly for her to be lying there, back safely from wherever she’d been, that for a moment I saw her shape beneath the sheets, her face against the pillow. But the illusion faded. No one was there.
It was half past three in the afternoon and it felt like the end of the world. Rain was still falling and the house was as dark as if it were underwater. I went to the kitchen and ate cereal from the box. When I drifted to the window I could see Billy out there, jogging between car and house, carrying disintegrating bags of groceries. His T-shirt was plastered to his skin, his hair water-dark and running.