My thoughts scramble. “Someone in your family then.”
“It’s possible,” she says softly. “If it’s true, I’ll free him, I promise. Everyone agreed to leave him alone, El. I haven’t heard a peep about any plans to get him back.”
“You honestly weren’t aware of this?” Tears finally start to fall, fueled by the relief that my best friend didn’t betray me. But that relief is short-lived. If the Gowdies didn’t abduct Damien, who did?
“I swear on the Earth and the goddess who created it,” Maeve says. “I don’t even think it’s possible. His blood is no longer in our possession. No one kept it because no one believed he’d ever be free of the candle.”
“Shit. But if it’s not you, then who? Fuck, I have to find him, Maeve. I have to.” My knees give out, and I slump to the floor, rubbing a growing ache in my chest. “It feels like my heart is ripping in two. It’s racing and, oh God, everything hurts. I’m dying. I’m dying.”
“Take a deep breath.” I hear Maeve draw air in and out. Eventually I follow along. In two, three, four. Out two, three, four. We do it together again and again. Somehow it helps.
Maeve is the first to speak again. “I have no personal experience with this, but I think what you’re feeling is the mating bond. Mates aren’t supposed to be separated. It’s a good sign you can feel that in your chest. As long as you can sense the bond, you know he’s still alive.”
I blow out another breath, cling to that. He’s still alive. He’s still alive.
Maeve speaks up again. “I’m going to help. I’ll go now and ask my family. I’ll come see you first thing tomorrow with what I find out. We will get to the bottom of this, okay?”
“Okay.” My voice cracks.
“I love you, Eloise. We’ll find him.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I remain silent as she ends the call.
What now? I bury my face in my hands, a new wave of hopelessness blowing through me like an arctic wind. If it’s not the Gowdies, who could it be? If it’s not them, where can we even start to look for him?
I turn toward my mother’s grimoire, the one where I found the spell to send Damien home. I still don’t understand my family’s magic. I came up here for the first time yesterday. I didn’t even know this room existed until my parents told me about it during the vision I had when Tony almost killed me. The message they passed on during my near-death experience was a simple one: find their journals. Everything I needed to know would be in them. In the end, this book had found me—literally dropped onto the end table next to the reading chair in the corner of my attic. The book opened itself for me, its pages flipping to my family’s keyspell, one meant to open a portal between worlds. I intended to use it to send Damien home to Tenebris.
But Damien refused to go without me.
He loves me too much to leave me.
He promised to wait for me.
A sick feeling swirls in my stomach. We deserve better than this. We deserve more time.
I snatch my sweatshirt off the floor and pull it over my head. My eyes sweep the room in all directions. Maybe there’s something in my parents’ grimoire to help find Damien. I grab the book and start thumbing through the pages, but all the words run together.
I’m no witch. Even the spell to send Damien home was risky, and I only tried it because the book seemed to be encouraging me in that direction. I didn’t actually know what I was doing. I followed the instructions like a recipe. All of this, it’s like it’s written in a different language. Some of these spells have ingredients I’ve never even heard of. What the hell is elecampane? Even finding the right spell seems impossible. It’s not like the spells are cross-indexed. I’ll have to go through each one.
My vision starts to blur, and I wipe my eyes again.
Everything I know about myself, everything that makes me me, started in this house. The Harcourt name is a crucial part of my identity, a linchpin into who I am. Finding out that my parents and grandmother kept this room from me my entire life, kept this power from me, makes me feel like a hermit crab in search of a new shell. Everything that was my security, my safety, is gone, and in its place is this mystery, this living library of magical information that seems hopelessly beyond my full understanding.
I slam the grimoire closed and start to sob again, Damien’s loss crashing back into me like a returning wave. Deep, wrenching sobs come from a place within me so dark I never knew it existed until now. I’m exhausted. Grief over my grandmother’s recent death springs up within me like a sleeping wolf whose tail I’ve stepped on. It compounds with memories of losing my parents. My grief is a growing thing, the memory of one rattling free memories of them all, layer by interlocking layer. Suddenly I’m achingly lonely. So lonely I’d call Maeve back if I didn’t think she needed her phone to investigate Damien’s disappearance.
A tingle brushes the back of my neck like someone straightening my collar. I whirl, but there’s no one there. The room, however, is now drenched in the creeping red haze. I rub my eyes, wondering if it’s from crying, but it doesn’t go away. It’s like the entire attic is awash in smoky red light. The scent of rosewater fills my nose. My grandmother’s soap. I blink again, and she’s standing there, a worried expression on her face.
“Grams?” It’s like she’s a newsprint version of herself. Grayscale with silver eyes and dark, pinprick pupils. Unlike the last time I saw her, when cancer had left her bald and frail, she’s round cheeked and her sleek curls frame her face. She smiles warmly at me, and all the air vacates my lungs. I reach for her. “I miss you so much.”
She reaches back. Her lips move but there’s no sound. Hand on her heart, she shakes her head and mouths something again.
“I-I don’t understand!” I want to touch her, hug her, but when I try to approach, the space between us seems to widen. The red flickers. And then she’s gone. So is the snowing ash. The scent of burning. The crimson haze.
“Grams!” I raise my hand and reach for the place she just was, but my fingers pass through nothing but air. The attic is quiet as freshly fallen snow. I can’t even feel the buzz of the books anymore.
For a moment I just breathe, and then I can’t move fast enough. I pull on my leggings and race down the stairs, barely stopping for my jacket and boots. Pushing out the back door, I ignore the cold night air and sprint straight back to the family cemetery, stopping only when I reach my grandmother’s grave. My tears are streaming again.
“Grams?”
