Ramona dropped her bag by the door and immediately headed for her bedroom, desperate to change out of the nice clothes she’d worn to impress her parents. Clothes that had done absolutely nothing to soften Eleanor’s passive-aggressive commentary or make Thomas acknowledge her existence beyond basic pleasantries.
She flipped on her overhead light with rebellious fervor and was halfway through pulling on sweatpants in the closet when she heard a thud.
Then another.
And another.
Ramona emerged from the closet to find Zara unpacking books from her pockets onto the floor. A lot of books. Analarming number of books, actually, considering Zara didn’t carry a purse.
“Where did those come from?” Ramona asked, approaching slowly.
“Your childhood bedroom.” Zara set down another stack — medieval grimoires, linguistic theory texts, a few worn paperbacks that Ramona recognized from her graduate seminars. “You left quite the collection.”
“I didn’t say you could take those.”
“You didn’t say I couldn’t.” Zara arranged them with methodical precision, organizing by subject matter. “We need to research the severance ritual. These will help.”
Ramona stared at the books. Just looking at them made her chest tight. “I already told you, I’ll look online. There are databases?—”
“Excellent. Then we can cross-reference what you find with these primary sources.” Zara pulled out her HellBerry, already opening some kind of note-taking app. “The new moon is in two weeks. We should start tonight.”
“Tonight?” Ramona’s voice came out higher than intended. “I just survived dinner with my parents. I just… I need a mental break.”
Zara gave her a long stare, then her expression softened slightly. “Tomorrow, then?”
The placating look on Zara’s face made a pang of guilt stab into Ramona’s chest. She grabbed her laptop from her bag. It had been so long since she’d done any kind of research, interacted with any magical texts. The donation-bin grimoire had been a curiosity, but this research? This research felt heavy. Felt too close to what she’d been doing an entire lifetime ago. She cleared her throat, clicking open her web browser. “I’ll start looking some stuff up now. Just… basic searches. To get a sense of what we’re working with.”
Zara straightened her posture, just slightly, but didn’t say anything further than, “That would be helpful. Thank you.”
Ramona settled on the bed, laptop balanced on her knees, very deliberately not looking at the stacks of books Zara had arranged on the floor. She opened a browser and typed:new moon severance ritual.
The first few results were exactly what she’d expected — neo-pagan websites with vague instructions about “releasing what no longer serves you” and lots of purple prose about lunar energy. Nothing useful. She bookmarked them anyway.
She clicked on another link. This one was more promising — an academic database article about lunar magic in medieval grimoires, but it required a login: her old university credentials.
Which she no longer had.
Ramona closed the tab.
“Finding anything?” Zara asked. She’d settled into the squeaking desk chair with one of the grimoires, reading with focused intensity.
“Just getting oriented,” Ramona said. “It’s a process.”
She opened a new tab. Typed:demonic binding severance
A forum thread popped up. She clicked it before she could stop herself.
Has anyone successfully broken a demonic tether? Need advice ASAP.
The comments were a disaster. Half of them were obvious jokes. The other half were people insisting demons weren’t real. One person had written a three-paragraph response about energy work and chakra cleansing that made Ramona want to throw her laptop across the room.
She kept scrolling anyway.
Twenty minutes later, she realized she’d somehow ended up on an article about Mercury retrograde and whether it was a good time to start new projects.
“How’s the research going?” Zara asked, not looking up from her grimoire.
“Great. Very productive.” Ramona shifted her mouse and quickly closed the tab.
