And on Kashvi’s lap sat a cat.
Translucent. Pale. Definitely not solid.
A ghost cat, Ramona realized with curiosity.
Once the group realized she was awake, Cammie bounded toward her, wrapping her in a hug that felt bone-crunching. Something bright and silver glowed in Cammie’s eyes as she smiled at Ramona.
“Cammie, your eyes?—”
Just as quickly as she’d seen it, the silver disappeared.
“Hey! You’re awake,” Kashvi said with a wide smile. “Good morning.”
Posey smiled at her from where she leaned by the window, giving her a small wave.
“Is everyone okay?” Ramona asked.
“Depends on your definition,” Kashvi said, and Ramona could see now that her neck was bruised where the spectral hands had choked her.
“Everyone is alive and slightly improved from eight hours ago?” Ramona clarified.
Three women nodded back at her.
“Now that we’re all here, I have something to confess to everyone,” Kashvi said. She looked nervous. Determined. Her eyes had a slightly wild quality to them, like she’d had too much coffee or not enough sleep, or both. “I can see and talk to ghosts. I mean — I always could, a little bit. But now it’s—” Small sparks flew from her fingers. Blue-white. Brief. Like static electricity but more purposeful.
“It’s everywhere,” Kashvi continued. Her voice was slightly frenzied. “I can see them all. All the time. There are three in this room right now. One’s a Victorian lady who’s very upset about Eleanor’s interior design choices. Another is a man who died in a hunting accident in 1847. And this…” She gestured to the cat. “This is Percival. He’s been following me since we left the convergence point. And, and look. I can do this now.”
She held up her hand. The sparks intensified. Formed a small ball of light that hovered above her palm. Then split into three balls. Then six. They orbited her hand like planets around a sun before dissipating.
“All right, now that’s very cool,” Ramona said, watching the balls of light encircle Kashvi’s hand. “That’s way more than you used to be able to do.”
“So much more. The ritual last night must have amplified what I already had by, like, a thousand percent. I can feel it like electricity in my veins. Like I’m vibrating at a different frequency than the rest of the world.” She laughed, a little wild. “I haven’t slept. Can’t sleep. Too much energy.”
“You need to ground,” Posey said from the window. Her voice was quiet but certain. “Channel some of that excess energy into the earth before you burn yourself out.”
“I know. I will. I just—” Kashvi looked down at the ghost cat. “It’s overwhelming. But also kind of amazing?”
Felix shifted. Gerald fluttered to the back of a chair, and kept fluttering. Not settling. Moving with a precision that seemed different. More calculated.
“Gerald’s wing healed,” Felix said. “Like, completely. Not just healed. He’s way stronger than before. Watch.”
Gerald took off. Not his usual clumsy pigeon flight. This was controlled. Precise. He flew in a perfect figure eight around the room, then landed on the chandelier. He dove backward, drew a circle in the air, then landed back on Felix’s shoulder without a single wobble.
“He’s never been able to fly like that,” Felix said. His voice was awed. “Pigeons aren’t acrobatic birds. But now he can—” Gerald demonstrated by doing a barrel roll. “He can do that.”
“How?” Ramona asked.
“The convergence point,” Posey said slowly. “When we cleansed it, all that energy had to go somewhere.”
“And that combined with the unbinding ritual. It seems that it might not have been a curse stifling our magic, not like yours, but something else was,” Kashvi explained.
“Self-doubt, perhaps?” Felix offered, shrugging.
“It went into us,” Kashvi said. “Amplified what we already had. Made it stronger. More.” She looked at Posey. “You felt it, too, didn’t you?”
Posey was still staring out the window. At Eleanor’s garden. The one with the banewood tree. And now the banewood tree was dead. Truly, this time.
Ramona could see it from here, or rather, couldn’t see it. The tree that had loomed dark and large over the garden for as long as she could remember was simply… gone. The curse’s anchor, destroyed when they broke the spell.
