Kashvi went limp, and the ghosts descended as if they would rip her body to shreds.
“No—” Cammie scrambled toward her.
Eleanor and Iris didn’t say a word. They just stepped into the ritual circle, took positions on either side of Ramona, and began to chant.
Eleanor’s voice was strong. Commanding. A banishment that Ramona didn’t know but could feel — ancient, powerful, absolute. It rolled through the clearing like thunder.
The ghostsheardit.
They turned from Kashvi, looked at Eleanor, and began to dissipate.
They didn’t disappear quickly. They moved with slow reluctance, like they were being torn away from something they wanted. But the important thing was that they went, shredding apart like smoke in wind, their screaming faded to whispers, to nothing.
Kashvi writhed on the ground. Breathing. Gasping. Alive.
Iris knelt beside the burning bark. Her palm was bleeding, and she let the blood drip onto the bark. She began to speak in the curse-breaker’s tongue — words Ramona had only read, never heard. They sounded like unweaving. Like unpickingstitches. Like taking apart something that should never have been put together.
The cold fire began to dim.
Gerald twitched, his clawed feet flexing in the air as Felix cradled him on his back.
Felix’s sob was loud in the sudden quiet. “Gerald, I thought I lost you.”
But the curse still wasn’t breaking.
The bark was burning lower but not dissolving. The magic was too old. Too strong. Too deeply rooted in a lifetime of belief.
Ramona could feel it. The curse clinging. Refusing.Hers hers hers. “It’s not working,” she said. Her voice was flat. Empty. So tired. “It’s still not working.”
Eleanor’s chanting faltered. She looked at Ramona. And for the first time in Ramona’s life, her mother looked uncertain.
“The curse is too complex,” Iris said. Her hands were shaking over the bark. “I thought with the convergence point clean, with the blood and the right spell… but it’s been active for too long. It’s integrated too deeply. I can feel it. It’s woven into your magical core. Into your sense of self.”
“So what do we do?” Zara’s voice was sharp. “We can’t stop.”
“There’s no time,” Iris interrupted. “Look at the bark. It’s starting to regenerate.”
She was right.
The edges of the bark that had been burning away were growing back. Healing. The curse was fighting their attempts to break it by literally rebuilding its anchor.
Silence.
Except for the sound of the bark crackling. The cold fire dying. The curse winning.
Ramona fell to her knees.Hers. She was worthless, even without a curse. She didn’t really think removing the curse would fix her life, did she? She’d messed up her entire life all onher own. A curse hadn’t made her ex-wife have an affair, it didn’t make her try to hex her best friend. She was a bad person, deep down, and she deserved?—
Movement at the edge of the clearing.
They came through the woods like a procession.
Witches in ritual robes. Emerging from the darkness. Silent. Solemn.
Some Ramona recognized from Thornwood Coven. Others she’d never seen before. Except none of them were the inner circle. They weren’t the powerful, prestigious Council members.
They were the outcasts.
The ones who’d been expelled or demoted. The ones who’d questioned the Council’s decisions. The ones who’d been pushed to the margins for being too loud, too different, too much. She recognized them from classes, from The Grimalkin, from Mystic Moon.
