Nova had already distanced herself from Jess and everything to do with the Vesper grimoire and the Source. I hadn’t spoken to her since those texts the day after we broke Jess out of the morgue. She wasn’t standing in our way, but she also wasn’t helping. Could she possibly be persuaded now to do something to aid our cause?
“Do you think she could get her hands on it?” Jess asked eagerly.
“I don’t like getting a child involved,” Rhi said, wringing her hands on the table.
“Rhi, she’s already involved. Every Claire is involved, at least indirectly,” Persi said.
“And she’s not a child, she’s seventeen,” I said. “The same age as me!”
Rhi’s answering smile was sad. “You’re both children to me, my love.”
“It’s not like we’d be asking her to be there when we summon Sarah,” my mom said. “We don’t want to put her in danger. We’re just asking her to… borrow something for us.”
“Do we absolutely need it?” I asked Jess.
“Not necessarily,” Jess said slowly. “It is possible we could lure Sarah out without it. But the pull would be much harder to resist if we had something like the Claire coven grimoire in the circle.”
“Then I’ll try Nova,” I said. “If there’s anything we can do to hedge our bets, we should try it.”
“Agreed,” Persi said.
“Let’s say we do successfully summon Sarah Claire. What then?”
“Then we find out what she’s done to that Gateway so that I can try to repair it,” Jess said. “If the Gateway can be restored to working order, then your spirit abilities should return, and your Source should be stable again.”
“What are we waiting for, then?” Persi asked, half-rising from her seat, but Jess held out a hand to stay her.
“Hang on, now,” Jess said. “There’s another factor here, and that’s the so-called Darkness. There’s not much in the spirit world I haven’t dealt with, but entities like the Darkness are above my pay grade. If we go through with this, what are the chances we summon more than just a ghost, and what the hell will we do about it?”
I watched my mom and her sisters look at each other in silent conference. Then my mom turned to Jess again. “The Darkness has been Bound from the Source since the last Covenant was signed. That said, if the Darkness ventures to rear its ugly head during your summoning, the Vesper Coven will be there to meet it head on.”
I shivered, though whether from dread or excitement, I couldn’t tell. Everything—every unanswered question, every fear, every half-understood warning and cryptic message—it all seemed to be coming together in this moment. And instead of running from it or waiting helplessly for it all to happen, we were walking right into it, battle ready.
I felt terrified. I felt elated. But as I looked at each of the four women sitting around me, there was one feeling that overwhelmed all the others.
I feltready.
The phone on the wall rang shrilly, making us all jump. Everyone’s expression immediately morphed into visible panic. Had someone spotted us? Had we left evidence behind? Had Eva and Zale been caught and forced to confess what we’d been doing? The bleak possibilities flashed through my mind, each more horrifying than the last. I watched with my heart in my throat as Rhi rose from the table and hurried to answer it.
“Hello?” she said, keeping her voice even. She listened for a moment, and then her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Oh! Sure, I can… hang on…” She placed her hand over the mouthpiece and called over to the table. “Persi, it’s for you, honey. It’s one of the nurses at the health center.”
Persi’s complexion went pale, and she rose to her feet. Nobody spoke as we watched her cross the room and take the phone from Rhi’s hands, pressing it to her own ear.
“This is Persephone Vesper,” she said, and then, “Oh hi, Jacinda, iseverything—” She listened for a moment in silence. Then, so slowly that it felt like a dream, we watched as she sank right to the floor with a terrible moan.
“Persi!” Rhi cried, dropping to the floor beside her. “Honey, what is it? What’s wrong?”
But my heart—or maybe something else entirely—was telling me. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. I knew it.
“Bernadette,” I whispered.
My mother hurried over to her sister’s side as Persi’s voice rose in a keening wail, and then fragmented, like shattered glass, into heaving, broken sobs.
“No,” she just kept saying over and over again. “No, no, no, no…”
Beside me, Jess was frozen with horror, waiting. It seemed to take forever for Rhi to prise the phone from Persi’s hand, and place it to her ear again. She listened, stricken, as the nurse continued to speak. She closed her eyes and stroked Persi’s hair, as Persi continued to sob inconsolably. Then she said, in a husk of a voice, “Thank you for letting us know.” Then she rose slowly to replace the receiver.
We all stared at her.
