“We were long-distance,” he said. “We had friends in common, talked online. When I moved here, we started dating—actually dating. That lasted a couple of weeks, and then we broke up.”
That was entirely plausible, and probably some of it was the truth. But not all of it. Maybe not even most of it.
“So you’re pissed she broke it off,” Theo said, crossing his arms. “And you’re trying to get even?”
“No.” His voice was hard now.
“Oh, we’re listening,” Theo said, “but nothing you’ve said makes any sense. If you broke up, how’d you find out about the magic?”
“My clients. I didn’t know until one of them told me, asked me to investigate. And then I could feel it. Ariel’s part of a coven,” Jonathan explained. “There are five of them in the group, and I found out what she’s trying to do. The leader of the coven said an apocalypse was coming, and they have to make sacrifices to stop it. That it’s necessary to fight darkness with darkness. I’m trying to stop the spell.”
“Why?” Connor asked.
“Because they’re doing it wrong. Because the magic they’re making won’t stop an apocalypse; it willstartthe apocalypse. I told Ariel the truth. And now I think she’s in danger because of it.”
“She told you that?” I asked.
“She called me, for the first time in weeks. I didn’t answer, but I found a message.”
Something in his tone had goose bumps lifting on my skin. “What was it?” I asked, quietly.
“The sound of a bell.”
The three of us looked at each other.
“You have to find her,” Jonathan said. “And you have to stop them from completing this.”
“Tell us where they are,” I said, “and we’ll be on our way to do just that.”
This time, he met my gaze. “I don’t know where they are.”
I watched him for a moment. “That might be the first honest thing you’ve said since we came in here.”
Magic pulsed, faded. Either he didn’t think it worth the trouble to challenge my assessment of his character, or he didn’t think the odds were in his favor.
“Look around,” Theo said. “See if we can find something that tells us where they might have gone. Grimoire, notebook, another screen, a grocery list for bells and candles. Whatever.”
Jonathan moved to rise, but Connor’s hand on his shoulder kept him in place. “You stay. We look. And if you so much as consider standing up, Elisa will show you what else she can do with that sword.”
He stayed and we looked, but found nothing in old journals, new notebooks, a beaten desk, or the junk drawer in the kitchen. Itossed through a stack of mail, checked pockets in a coat closet, and came up empty.
I cursed, looked back at Jonathan. He was still and silent but stared out the window beneath a furrowed brow.
“Where would the coven work?” I asked again.
“I don’t know,” he said again. “She mostly didn’t talk about them. The rituals, she said, were for her, for them. Not for me.”
Mostly truth, I gauged, and turned around. I ended up facing a chalkboard that hung between the coat closet and the front door. “Be kind!” was written in white script above a simple drawing of a daisy. And below, scrawled in handwriting so slanted and rushed it was nearly impossible to read, was a single word:elevator.
Memory hit me with the power of a punch.
Lulu, Connor, Ariel, me, probably sixteen or seventeen years old, in an abandoned grain elevator not far from McKinley Park. We’d thought ourselves urban explorers, had backpacks of water, granola bars, and flashlights. We’d climbed over the fence, then hurried to the tall concrete cylinders that once stored feed grain for waiting trucks. And we’d made our way into the main building—a long rectangle where metal chutes dropped from the tanks—and played a game of truth or dare.
“I dare you,” Ariel had said, smiling at Connor. “To kiss me.”
“That’s not much of a dare,” Connor had said, and he’d given her a chaste kiss on the cheek. It had been a tease, totally innocuous, and Very Connor.
But Ariel—whether driven by hormones or magic—had been embarrassed and furious that he hadn’t kissed her properly. She’d ended up storming out with Lulu in tow behind her.
