“Loretta, what the fuck—” But I couldn’t ask her any more questions.
She had vanished.Again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Because we’re the murderers.
What did she mean by that? Loretta wasn’t a murderer. She was a super-intense orphaned Southern Baptist girl with severe depression and suicidal thoughts.
Who wasn’t dead.
Loretta wasn’t dead.
And it sounded to me as she was keeping it a secret.
I longed to ask her exactly what happened in that cavern beneath the gym, but she’d never tell me, so I had to guess. They lowered her into the god’s prison, into that void of infinite blackness, and he was supposed to drink from her tortured soul until she was dead, and then Ms. West was supposed to bring her back to the frozen life of the edimmu. But if the god didn’t kill her…
That meant Ms. West knew Loretta was alive. She knew something was wrong with the god, and she hadn’t told the Eldritch Club. Interesting. I remembered my dream from the other day and the conversation I’d overheard in her office where she’d complained about not being rewarded for her work. I wondered if perhaps Ms. West and Vincent Bloomberg were no longer working toward the same purpose.
What interested me the most was the god’s decision. If the god spared Loretta, then it meant he acted of his own free will, if such a concept as free will existed for a cosmic deity. It meant that Ms. West didn’t control him. Vincent Bloomberg didn’t control him.
I could use that. I didn’t know how, but I could use it.
I shuffled around the perimeter of the graveyard in a half daze, searching for other signs of a ritual. But the trees were so dense, vines twisted through the metal fence and weeds choking the roots, that I had no hope of finding anything in there. Besides, maybe I had a much easier way of figuring this out.
Maybe I could just ask the god.
He showed me things in my dreams. Sometimes those things were true – like when he sent Trey to me. Sometimes they were things other people wanted me to see. But I had a feeling the communication went both ways. When he’d shown me Ms. West and Dr. Atwood when I was on the bus, that hadn’t come from them. The godmeantfor me to know.
And he’d tried to speak to me. He’d tried to have a conversation even though neither of us could comprehend the other. Loretta was right – hewascurious.
Maybe there was a way I could get the god to reveal more of his secrets.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Here!” I jabbed my finger at the page in Rebecca’s book.
“Read it out,” Quinn demanded, slouching over the bed. Trey leaned against the wall, frowning at the book.
I held up the page and exalted in my best Shakespearean accent. “The Nurse sigils cannot be used to summon spirits or beings from other planes of existence. We do not believe in dragging others between the realms against their will. Instead, these sigils allow open communication through the veil by way of dreams, where the magician’s mind is most open and receptive, and where the spirit has access to the full spectrum of weird imaginings with which to find a common ken. The magician’s earthly form and worldly concerns will not hinder communion—”
“Sounds like a load of magical twaddle to me,” Quinn said. “So what you’re suggesting is…”
“We draw one of these sigils on the wall,” I said. “And then I go to sleep and talk to the entity in my dreams. And I get him to tell me where Greg is.”
“No.” Trey frowned.
I glared back at him, ticking off points on my fingers. “A. You’re not in charge here, so I don’t have to listen to you. B. It’s not dangerous. I’m not actually going to talk to the god. I’m just dreaming and you’ll be here to wake me up if anything seems wrong, and C. If this is going to help us find Greg, then we have to try it.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Trey growled. “Besides, how do you know you’re a magician?”
I touched my hand to my scar. Trey’s frown only deepened – a fact that should have been physically impossible given the sheer amount he wasalreadyfrowning.
I sighed. “Look, I know you guys don’t give two fucks about Greg, but I do. And I’m not—”
“We care about Greg,” Quinn piped up.
“No, you don’t.” My hands balled into fists. I was done with this. Done with sitting in this room while my friend was out there having cosmic-god-knows-what being done to him by Ms. West. Done with the Kings not understanding why it was important. Tired of them not giving Greg or Andre the respect and friendship I knew they were capable of, because they didn’t think my friends deserved it. “You barely even remember his name.”
