Nova let out a growl, making me jump.
“What?” I gasped.
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make it all sound so reasonable so that I can’t argue with you!” she yelled, slamming her palm into the steering wheel.
I pressed my lips together as a barrier to the laugh that was threatening to burst out. If I pissed her off now, she’d turn on me again out of pure spite, and I knew it. I watched her nostrils flare for several seconds like the gills of a fish, counting her breaths. Finally…
“Fine.”
“Fine… what?”
“Fine. I won’t say anything. But I’m staying out of it, Wren. I’m not helping you. Whatever you’re doing, I don’t want to know, and if anyone asks, I am not taking any heat for you,” Nova said, glaring at me. “And if this goes sideways and this Jess woman turns out to be a Kildare in disguise or some shit, that’s all on you. Don’t you dare ever say I helped bring her back to life or whatever the fuck happened tonight. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” I would have preferred her help, but I wasn’t going to push it. If the best I could get was her silence, I would take it.
“Damn it, Wren,” she muttered under her breath as she started the car. We rode in silence all the way back to Lightkeep Cottage. She parked down the road from the house so no one would hear her engine. I took off my seatbelt and put my hand on the door handle.
“Do you want me to like… text you?” I asked.
“Not a word,” she said.
“Isn’t that gonna kill you, not knowing what’s going on?”
She glared at me. “You’re going to mess with the Source, and you thinkI’mthe one who should be worried about dying?”
“Right. No text then,” I said. I hopped out of the car and leaned down to the open window.
“Nova?”
“What?” she snapped.
“You’re the only person I’d call to help me break into a morgue. Thanks.”
“Whatever,” she muttered, throwing the car into drive and speeding away—but not before I saw her lip twitch into the merest suggestion of a smile.
15
If anyone noticed the fact that I was zombie levels of tired at the kitchen table the next morning, they didn’t mention it. Maybe they simply expected me to be practically comatose after discovering a dead body, and I probably would have been. The fact that I then went on an adventure to resurrect said dead body a few hours later was, apparently, an unnecessary piece of the puzzle.
“Would you like some tea, Wren?” Rhi asked me.
“Coffee. Turbo-charged,” I muttered in reply.
Rhi bustled around the counter for a few minutes, and returned with a hot cup of coffee, which she set down in front of me.
“I’m surprised at you, Wren,” my mom said from the chair beside me. I looked over at her, and saw that she was staring at me with narrowed eyes, like she was trying to read something printed on my face.
“Why?” I asked, my heart fluttering a little with anxiety.
“I thought you’d come storming down the stairs demanding to know what happened to the grimoire.”
I couldn’t believe it. In all the chaos of the previous night, I’d completely forgotten about the grimoire. I tried to keep my face impassive and my voice calm as I replied, “Give a girl a second, will you? I’m barelyconscious yet.” I took one scalding sip of coffee, and then looked pointedly at my mother. “So? What happened to the grimoire?”
“Well, the good news is that no one noticed the Binding,” Rhi said, as she slid into the seat on the other side of me, with a slight creak in her knees. “Or if they did, they didn’t mention it. Personally, I think most of the Conclave knows us well enough to know we wouldn’t let that book out of our sight without tying ourselves to it somehow.”
