“Your father has access to this account? He could track the purchase to us.” I gaped at him. How could he be so stupid?
“Relax. My father has so much money in so many different accounts, he’s not going to notice a tiny ice cream purchase. He has no idea I still have this card. He’ll have forgotten all about it. Now, eat your ice cream before it melts. Let’s go back to Deborah’s place. I bet the dogs could use a rest.”
Trey’s clipped tone dictated the end of the discussion. I didn’t share his certainty about Vincent’s lack of interest, but I couldn’t do anything about it now. He’d done the damage, now we just had to hope Vincent wouldn’t pick up on our location.
Trey better be doing a fuckton of ‘hoping,’ because I was all out of hopes to give.
Chapter Thirteen
It was weird hanging out in someone’s house while they weren’t there, but the fully-stocked kitchen cupboards and the dogs enthusiastic (if slobbery) excitement soon put me at ease. Trey spent the rest of the day playing with the dogs on the deck. It was amazing to watch him come alive as he rubbed bellies and threw balls and sticks for them. I found stacks of medical books on Deborah’s shelves and cracked them open, surprising myself by how much I understood just from listening to Gail’s descriptions of her lab.
“Why are you reading those?” Trey asked as he came inside for a snack, three happy canines circling his heels.
I set down the book. “I don’t know. I guess… I find it interesting. I wonder if I might have been a chemist or a phlebotomist or a pathologist if I had another life. If I’d graduated from a different school.”
Trey’s ice eyes swept over the text, hardening as they lifted to meet mine. “You could still be those things.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right. Even if I do survive my year at Derleth, which is unlikely, then I doubt any respectable college will accept my diploma – if I earned a diploma, which is even more unlikely.”
I realized as I spoke I sounded just like Trey did earlier, quashing his dreams of being an engineer before he’d even had a chance to try, all because of shit he felt he had no control over.
Trey must’ve realized it too. He pounded my book with his fist, his eyes flashing. “Don’t sacrifice your future for me, Hazel. I don’t want that. You should run as far as you can from me, from Derleth. I could wire you some money. Get yourself into a good school, graduate with honors, live your life the way you were supposed to before we fucked it up for you.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening.” I gripped the spine of the book so hard my knuckles turned white. “I’m staying right here.”
“No. I forbid it.” Trey’s face twisted with rage.
“You can’t forbid shit. I’m a fugitive now. A fugitive with no high school diploma and a bargain with a cosmic god hanging over my head. Getting into medical school isn’t even on my radar. I’m not leaving you guys to fight this yourselves. I care too fucking much, and even if I didn’t, I have to stay and fight because it’s my future on the line, too.”
Deborah arrived home, diffusing the tension flowing between us with two heaving bags of Chinese takeout. Trey peered into the containers, apprehensively sniffing the contents. “What’s this?” he demanded. “I’ve been to China. This isn’t Chinese food.”
“Poor little rich boy. He’s never had food served from cardboard cartons before,” I explained to Deborah as I shoved a heap of sweet and sour pork and moo shu vegetables onto his plate.
Trey gulped down the food like he hadn’t eaten a mountain of ice cream, and loaded up his plate with seconds. I leaned over and wiped a smudge of sauce from his cheek. Away from Derleth and all the trappings of wealth he wore so perfectly, Trey was so much more… human.
I liked it. I hated how much I liked it.
Deborah reached under the table and pulled out a thin book. “I have something to show you both.” She set the book on the table and opened the cover.
I recognized the symbols dotting the pages as sigils – a ritual drawing that denoted the names of entities or the patterns of a spell. Between the symbols, delicate watercolor illustrations showed animals playing in the trees or detailed line drawings of plants and flowers. It reminded me a little of Parris’ skin-bound grimoire, except prettier.
“This book belonged to one of my ancestors,” Deborah explained, turning the page. I peered at the image of a deer wreathed in a border of flowers and herbs. “She was a great magic worker, but she wasn’t content to dabble in healing potions and midwifery – the types of ‘soft’ magic usually reserved for women. She was interested inpower– especially the power of what we now term a soul. She wanted to know how to obtain power, wield it, and redistribute it from those who had it to those who didn’t. A lot of her writings read like proto-feminism – shocking ideas for a time when even being a literate woman with ideas would likely get you killed. This was her grimoire – written and illustrated in her hand and the hands of her descendants. It’s been passed down through the women of my family for generations.”
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. “Why are you showing it to us?”
“Because my ancestor was Rebecca Nurse. This is her grimoire.”
“I know. Zehra had your name on a family tree. But why didn’t you think to show us this before?”
Deborah paused. I knew there was something else she wasn’t telling us. Unease prickled up my spine. I trusted her, and she was keeping secrets from us. “I needed time to think about whether you require it. I thought it might just be a coincidence – you sought me out because I worked with Hermia, not because of my ancestors.”
“Don’t you think that seems like an unlikely coincidence?”
“Not necessarily. I grew up in Arkham. Many of the families in the area have been here for centuries. Descendants of Parris’ cult still inhabit the area, including my own. Many members of the Eldritch Club, including Trey’s father, are descendants of the cult.”
“Did you show this to Zehra?”
A shadow passed over Deborah’s eyes – a flicker so fast I barely registered it before it was gone. She closed the book and pushed it across the table to me. “I didn’t. I knew she would want to take it with her. I tried to take photographs of the pages to send her, but they all come out blank – something magical in the binding doesn’t allow it to be copied. This is the most precious thing I own – a record of the magic flowing through my veins. And look,” Deborah opened the book and pointed to an entry at the back. “This is my sister’s handwriting. She wrote it before she ran away from home. She was fifteen. It’s the last thing I have of hers. I didn’t want to part with it unless it was absolutely necessary.”
