Zara laughed, lifting Ramona’s hand to kiss her knuckles. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay? One demonic temptation at a time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The parking lotof the community park was mostly empty when they arrived. Her car let out a sputter of protest as she pulled into one of the open spots near Felix’s car, parked at the trailhead.
Ramona patted her pocket where Eleanor’s key sat, still warm with enchantment. They’d done it. Stolen from her mother’s study right under her nose.
Now they just had to confirm what the fox had shown them.
Felix was leaning against his car, Gerald perched on his shoulder, laptop bag in hand. Kashvi stood beside him with sparks already shooting from her fingertips. Posey’s tiny electric car pulled in behind them, Cammie emerging from the passenger side.
“You got it?” Felix asked as they approached.
Ramona pulled out the key. The Thornwood seal gleamed in the late morning light.
“We got it,” Zara confirmed.
“Good.” Kashvi gestured toward the trail. “Because you need to see this. The corruption is worse than what the fox showed you.”
They hiked into the woods with a sense of urgency. The fox trotted ahead of Ramona, tail low and agitated. The trail wasn’t marked, but Ramona knew it from the night of the ritual. She could feel the pulse of the convergence point, but it felt wrong. Sickly.
“You okay?” Zara asked quietly, falling into step beside her.
Through the tether, Ramona felt Zara’s attention — warm, present, but also tense. Worried.
“Just thinking,” Ramona said, watching the fox’s ears flick nervously. “About the last time we were here.”
“It’s less ominous in daylight,” Zara offered.
“Oh, what was that, Ms. ‘I’m the scariest thing in these woods’?” Ramona joked.
Zara shrugged, not even bothering to look ashamed.
The trail opened into the clearing after five minutes of walking. Ramona stopped at the edge.
The convergence point looked smaller in daylight than it had that night. An open clearing in the trees, ringed with ancient oaks, with early spring wildflowers struggling to bloom between them.
The smell hit her immediately. Sulfur and ash.
“Oh no,” Ramona breathed.
“Yeah,” Kashvi said grimly. “It’s bad.”
The grass near the stones looked sickly, gray in patches, brown in others. The wildflowers were stunted, dying. Stones on the ground had dark marks spreading across their surface like infection. Not carved. Growing.
“When did this happen?” Ramona asked, moving closer. “Right after the ritual?”
“Based on the growth pattern?” Posey knelt. “It started around the time you did the ritual. But it’s accelerated in the past week.”
Ramona circled the clearing slowly. The corruption was spreading outward from the center — from exactly where she and Zara had cast the severance ritual.
“This is demonic corruption,” Posey said quietly, running her fingers just above the ground without touching it. “Hell energy. It’s poisoning the convergence point.”
“What happens if it spreads to all the trees?” Cammie asked.
“If a convergence point corrupts fully?” Kashvi’s voice was grim. “Everything connected to it destabilizes. Spells fail. Wards collapse. It could take decades to recover. Assuming it recovers at all.”
Zara was standing in the center of the stone circle, turning slowly, taking in the corruption. Through the tether, Ramona felt something complicated — guilt, alarm, and something darker.
