She gestured around the room. “See how cold it is? How dark? It’s been doing that every day since I got here, and it’s just getting worse.”
Vivi slowly made her way over to the candle, and immediately saw what Tamsyn meant. The whole thing was radiating a kind of dark energy that let her know Piper’s ghost might still be trapped, but it was very unhappy about it.
“Eurydice Candles aren’t supposed to do that,” Rhys said in a low voice, coming to stand beside Vivi.
“Yeah, no shit,” Tamsyn replied, placing one hand on her hip. “I’ve bought and sold tons of the things but that one? It’s completely busted. And I can’t just dump it somewhere, and I definitely did not want to take it to the witches at your college, so I’ve been stuck here, trying to figure out what to do, and then you two showed up like some kind of witchy angels.”
“You’re not a witch, then?” Vivi asked, looking back over her shoulder at Tamsyn.
“Definitely not,” she replied with a little shudder. “Just make money off their stuff.”
“And lie to people to obtain said stuff,” Rhys said, to which Tamsyn shrugged.
“No one got hurt.”
“Yet,” Vivi said, reaching down to pick up the candle. It was so cold to the touch, it almost burned, and she winced as she tugged at her sweater, covering her hand so she could carry it.
“Why are you still so close to Graves Glen?” Vivi asked as she turned around, the candle still freezing in her hand. “I would’ve thought you would’ve gotten as far from there as you could’ve.”
“That was the plan,” she said on a sigh, then nodded at the candle. “But do you wanna take that thing on a plane?”
“Fair point,” Rhys muttered, glancing around the obviously haunted room.
“I guess we can do you the favor of taking this off your hands,” Vivi said, making herself sound irritated and not relieved.
“At great personal cost to ourselves,” Rhys added, his voice solemn, expression so serious Vivi had to bite back a grin.
“Oh god, thank you,” Tamsyn said, her shoulders sagging. “And seriously, I’m sorry about tricking you into trapping the ghost for me. Really. You seem nice. And I liked your office.”
“Thanks?” Vivi replied, and then Rhys had his hand on her lower back, steering her toward the door.
“Christ, that was easy,” he muttered once they were out in the hall, and then he looked around at the heavy wooden doors. “You know, we have some extra time now. I expected this to take up much more of the day. So if you wanted . . .”
“No,” Vivi replied, poking him in the chest. “We’re not getting a room. We’re taking this thing straight to Aunt Elaine.”
Giving a heavy sigh, Rhys cupped her face with one hand, leaning in to brush a kiss against her mouth. “I both love and hate when you’re sensible, Vivienne.”
Okay, we probably should’ve gotten a room, Vivi thought several hours later as she sat shivering in the woods beyond Elaine’s cabin. They’d gotten back to Graves Glen before noon, but Elaine was insistent that this kind of magic needed to be done at night, under the moon, although now, as Vivi huddled a little closer to Rhys, she wondered if this was more of Aunt Elaine just leaning into aesthetics.
Across from her, Gwyn sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, watching Aunt Elaine pour a salt circle on the forest floor, the Eurydice Candle in the middle, still radiating cold. “This is extremely metal of us,” Gwyn observed, then glanced down at herself. “Probably would be more metal if I weren’t wearing my pumpkin jammies, but what can you do?”
Snorting, Rhys wrapped an arm around Vivi’s shoulders, tugging her closer. “Trust me, having seen this ghost in the . . . well, in the flesh isn’t appropriate, but having seen it . . . in person isn’t good either, is it? In any case,” he finally said, shrugging. “The ghost is metal enough for all of us.”