“Possibly…” I shake my head. “I don’t know. Honestly, I haven’t seen a lot of nightmare rituals.” I try for a joke—something to cut the tension—but it doesn’t hit.
A second silence falls over the table as Raven and Atticus exchange glances. A part of me wishes I’d never brought it up. I don’t want to scare them away from using their gifts. But maybe there are things in this world that truly are frightening. I wonder if we should change course and try for something smaller and less dangerous.
Maybe the book should have burned a long time ago.
Atticus lets out a heavy sigh. Raven simply stares at the empty plate in front of her, her brows knitted in concentration.
“I’ve read most of the histories written about the school,” Raven says, “and I’ve never heard of anything like that. Ritual murder? Summoning? Wouldn’t everyone have heard about it? Wouldn’t it have been all over the news? If some student died…”
“I know,” I say, understanding what she’s getting at. “It doesn’t make sense, not yet. But I do know what I saw. And unless my power shows me things that aren’t true, which I doubt…”
“You’ve never had issues with your magic—right?” Raven asks. “It shows you the past, and it’s never been wrong?”
“Never,” I repeat so it sinks in. I’ve never been wrong.
Which means a student died on the pentagram, summoning the shadow I saw in my vision.
12
Atticus
But hers also was the misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair moon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness.
—Mary Shelley,Frankenstein
I sense Ravenbefore she knocks. I know she’s in the hall. My power, it’s growing. I open the door and she stands, fist raised in the air, frozen for a moment before her eyes land on me. “Atticus,” she says, recovering from her surprise.
“I knew it was you,” I say, smiling.
I step back, waving her into my apartment.
She arrives with only a backpack and a singed antique trunk on a small cart. I push it inside and close the door behind us. Raven follows. Her gaze slowly moves through the room, and I watch her carefully, gauging her emotions.
“What do you think?” I ask. “I’ve tried to make it my own.”
“It’s perfect,” says Raven. “Like your taste.”
She isn’t wrong, but I can’t take credit for the apartment, not entirely. It was furnished when I moved in. It’s on the second floor of a brick walk-up, with a living room, a small kitchen, one bedroom, and a bathroom, but it’s the design itself that spoke to me, called to me. Crown molding, wood-coffered ceiling, a bespoke fireplace, William Morris wallpaper, built-in bookcases filled with the previous owner’s old books, tall casement windows, originalwood floors. It even smells like history. Musty, in a good way. And age.
She lets out a little gasp when her attention falls to the books. “Is that a first-edition Louisa Elmore?”
Louisa Elmore was a famous apotropaic wizard, a nineteenth-century scholar who studied the art of good luck symbols to ward off evil spirits. Of course Raven would find the rarest one in the collection. I laugh as she takes it off the shelf and moves to the couch to read. The dark corduroy love seat is a leftover from the previous tenant, and it still smells of rose perfume and fresh linen.
“This is incredible.” Raven flips through the Elmore book, shaking her head and smiling. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“And spoil the surprise? The person who lived here before left a bunch of cool stuff behind.”
I sense Raven’s emotions swirling around her, not a tumultuous storm but a settling breeze. She was excited about coming here, eager to leave her old apartment behind, but she’s also nervous for some reason. When she looks up from the book, her dark eyes capture mine. “This place is so you,” she says. “So Paris Left Bank.”
“Really?” I beam. I’m inordinately pleased about the reference. “I was worried it looked too try-hard.”
Raven shakes her head and admires my thrift-store valuables—antique lamps I found at Connecticut estate sales, a collection of miniature marble obelisks (a symbol of Paris), velvet curtains, and throws.
“Are you hungry?” I ask. “I’m cooking pozole.” The scent of stew fills the air. It’s my grandmother’s recipe, a dish that has to simmer for eight hours for the meat to melt, but it’s worth every second.
Raven looks over the linens I’ve prepared. “You’ve already done so much,” she says. “I wish I’d broughtyousomething.”
I wave her off. “Please. It’s no problem. I was cooking anyway,and itisbad luck if you don’t have a little housewarming when someone new arrives. Elmore will tell you that.” I point at the book still in her hands, and she grins, relaxing in the chair.
