“Why not?” Zara tilted her head. “Taking her access key for a few hours seems like minimal recompense. I would wager she hardly even uses it.”
“That’s not—” Ramona stopped. Started again. “Are you doing your demon temptation thing on me?”
Zara’s mouth quirked up in the tiniest of grins.
Across the table, Kashvi suddenly became very interested in her drink.
“You could ask,” Kashvi suggested carefully. “Explain that you need access to the archives for research. She doesn’t have to know what you’re researching.”
“She’ll ask questions. She’ll want to know why. And then—” Ramona shook her head. “She’ll either say no or she’ll tell the whole coven that I’m trying to get back into Thornwood, and then everyone will know, and?—”
“Then we take it without asking,” Zara said. “When’s the next time you’ll see her?”
“I don’t—” Ramona stopped. “Ostara. Spring equinox. But that’s the day after the new moon.”
“Then that’s too far away.” Zara’s voice was firm. “The corruption is spreading now. We need to move faster than that.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“Breakfast.” Zara said it like it was obvious. “This weekend. We invite ourselves over for a casual visit.”
Ramona stared at her. The candlelight made Zara look unreasonably composed for someone proposing a felony in a bar on a Thursday. “You want to voluntarily subject yourself to another meal at my mother’s house.”
“I want to acquire the access key we need,” Zara corrected. “And expedite our timeline. Waiting gives the corruption more time to spread. Better to handle it now.”
“And what — you distract her while I steal from her study?”
Zara blinked. “Pretty much.”
“You really are demonic.” Ramona’s voice was flat. “You love watching people suffer.”
“I don’t love watching you suffer.” Zara’s expression shifted — something warmer, more mischievous, the look that meant she was about to say something Ramona wasn’t going to be able to respond to in public. “Though I do enjoy certain other activities you’ve thought about back in that bedroom?—”
Ramona’s face went hot. “Zara?—”
“Remember that dream you had?” Zara’s voice had dropped lower, intimate, completely unconcerned with the fact that theywere in a bar. “The one where I bent you over that little desk with all your old trophies above us?—”
“Zara!”
Kashvi had started coughing with aggressive pointedness. The hedge witches in the corner glanced over briefly and then returned to their argument, unbothered, because this was The Grimalkin and people minded their own business.
“I’m just saying,” Zara continued, completely unruffled by Ramona’s mortification, “there are perks to going back there. We grab the key, we make some dreams come true?—”
“We are not—” Ramona looked around wildly. “Kashvi is right here.”
“I’m not listening,” Kashvi announced loudly, typing aggressively on a laptop that wasn’t even open to anything relevant. “I hear nothing. I am a professional researcher focused entirely on archive security protocols.”
“See?” Zara’s smile was absolutely wicked. “No one’s listening.”
Ramona smacked Zara’s shoulder, her cheeks still burning. Somewhere behind the bar, Parliamentarian opened one eye, deemed the situation beneath him, and went back to sleep. “You’re actually evil.”
Zara’s voice went soft. Affectionate. The shift that still caught Ramona off guard every time. “And you know I’m right. About breakfast, at least. The sooner we get the key, the sooner we can fix this.”
Ramona wanted to argue. Wanted to say absolutely not, that she’d rather wait for Ostara than voluntarily return to her mother’s house for another round of passive-aggressive commentary and disappointed sighs.
But Zara was right. The corruption was spreading. Every day they waited was another day the convergence point died. And iftheLiber Purgationis Maleficaereally did contain what Kashvi thought it did…
They needed it. Both rituals. Convergence point cleansing and a modified severance approach.
