“It is. We have a plan. We’ll make it without the grimoires. We have your friends who are shockingly on board with crimes.” Zara smiled slightly. “We have a fox who’s clearly chosen you. We have everything we need.”
The fox made a small sound, as if agreeing.
Ramona managed a shaky laugh. Zara’s thumb wiped away the tears on Ramona’s cheek. “You don’t have to have all theanswers right now. You just have to rest. Process. Let yourself be angry and scared and uncertain,” Zara said.
“That doesn’t sound very productive.”
“Healing isn’t productive. It’s necessary.” Zara paused. “And you’ve been wounded. Deeply. For a very long time. You’re allowed to feel that.”
Ramona closed her eyes. The fox was warm across her lap. The grimoire sat open on the bed in front of them, promising answers if she could just be brave enough to try.
Ramona opened her eyes. Looked at Zara — at the demon who’d been summoned by accident and stayed by choice, who’d held her through panic attacks and made her business plans and defended her to her mother.
“Okay,” Ramona said softly. “Okay.”
“Okay you believe me, or okay you’ll try to believe me?”
“Okay I’ll try.”
“Good enough.” Zara smiled. “Now drink your tea before it gets cold. And then get some sleep. We have quite a full schedule ahead of us.”
Ramona carefully closed the grimoire. Set it on the nightstand. The fox shifted but didn’t wake, just settled more comfortably across her lap.
She picked up the mug of tea — chamomile, honey, something soothing. Took a sip.
Through the window, the sky was starting to lighten. Not quite dawn, but getting there.
In eight days, they’d cleanse the convergence point, break the curse, and break the tether.
One problem at a time. Kind of.
“Thank you,” Ramona said quietly.
“For what?”
“For staying. For believing in me even when I don’t. For not being mad about us losing the grimoires. For—” Ramona gestured helplessly. “All of it.”
“You’re welcome.” Zara ran a hand through Ramona’s hair. Ramona drank her tea while Zara sat beside her and the fox slept across her lap. When she finally set down the empty mug and slid under the covers — careful not to disturb the fox, who simply adjusted and stayed put — Zara was still there.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Zara murmured.
And for the first time in a very long time, Ramona believed her.
The morning light already streamed through the window, warming the room. She fell asleep with Zara’s hand in hers and the fox curled at her side and the grimoire, the book holding the answer to a question she’d asked for almost her entire life, waited on the nightstand.
Later, they’d start fixing things, but right now — just for a little while — she let herself rest.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“My sister wantedme to give you this,” Ramona groaned, sliding a tiny piece of paper across the kitchen table to Kashvi later that day. She’d opened it that morning to find nothing on either side.
Kashvi held it in her hand, her brow furrowed.
“Why is my sister giving you?—”
Ramona would have finished the sentence if Kashvi hadn’t whispered a phrase, blowing on the paper in her hand. The paper turned into sand as she blew, and appearing on the table before her — the three grimoires they’d taken from the library. The three grimoires she’d left in the bag in her car.
“Are those…” Felix asked, the coffee he was pouring spilling over the sides of the cup he was holding.
