“This forest is really creepy,” Ramona said after about ten minutes of walking in silence, darting her flashlight toward every twig break, every dry leaf rustle.
“Mortal, I assure you, I’m the scariest thing in these woods,” Zara said, her voice so low it felt more like a growl.
Ramona carried the ritual bag. Moonstone dust. Blessed salt. Hawthorn branches, cut forty-seven hours ago, still wrapped in enchanted cloth. Yarrow flowers. A silver bowl. A candle that Posey had blessed for them without asking too many questions.
Zara walked beside her, close enough that their arms brushed with each step. She carried the donation-bin grimoire alongside the summoning severance grimoire — a thirteenth-century text they’d spent days translating together, opened to the marked page, the incantation bookmarked with a strip of red silk.
“What will you do?” Ramona asked. Her voice came out smaller than she intended, swallowed by the trees.
Zara glanced at her, her eyes reflecting the light like a wild animal in the dark. “What do you mean?”
“When you get back to Hell.” Ramona kept her eyes on the path ahead — the narrow trail winding deeper into the woods, toward the convergence point they’d mapped. “What’s the first thing you’ll do?”
Zara was quiet for a moment. Thinking about it, Ramona realized. Actually considering the question rather than deflecting it.
“Sleep,” Zara said finally. “In a real bed. For approximately fourteen hours.”
Ramona huffed something that was almost a laugh. “That’s it? Three weeks tethered to a disaster witch and the first thing you want is sleep?”
“It’s been a very long three weeks.” But Zara’s voice was soft. “And then… I don’t know. File my reports. Check my inbox. See what chaos my department has descended into in my absence.” A pause. “Probably quite a lot of chaos. I’ve been gone longer than I’ve been away in… ever.”
“They’ll survive.”
“We shall see.” Another pause, longer this time. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“After. What will you do first?”
Ramona considered it. The convergence point was close now — she could feel it, a subtle shift in the air, a magnetic pull that made the hair on her arms stand up beneath her jacket. The magic here was old. Older than Thornwood, older than covens, older than anyone alive could remember.
“I don’t know,” Ramona said honestly. “Sleep, probably. And then figure out how to live without—” She stopped herself.
Without feeling you.
She didn’t say it. But the tether hummed between them, and she knew Zara felt the shape of the unfinished sentence anyway.
They walked on in silence.
The convergence point was a clearing — roughly circular, maybe thirty feet across, ringed by ancient oaks that had grown in a perfect circle. The snow here was undisturbed, flat and glittering, and the air felt charged in a way that made Ramona’s skin prickle. Magic pooled here like water in a basin — deep, old, patient.
Ramona set down the ritual bag and knelt in the center of the clearing.
Her hands were steady. She was surprised by that. After everything — the fear, the resistance, the weeks of avoidance — her hands were steady as she unpacked the supplies with careful, methodical precision.
“Okay,” she said, more to herself than to Zara. “All right.”
The salt first. Blessed salt, poured in a perfect circle around the ritual space. Ramona moved slowly, letting the white crystals fall in an unbroken line, tracing the circle with the kind of care she used to bring to her most delicate research. The salt caughtthe glow of Ramona’s flashlight, glittering like a constellation mapped onto the ground.
Then the moonstone dust. Ramona opened the jar and felt the familiar tingle of convergence-sourced magic against her fingertips — warm, almost alive. She poured it into the silver bowl, watching the dust settle in a fine, luminous layer. It glowed faintly in the darkness, casting the clearing in a pale, ethereal light.
The hawthorn branches next. Ramona arranged them in a star pattern at five points of the circle, the enchanted cloth falling away to reveal the dark, smooth wood. Fresh-cut. Still alive with magic, the way hawthorn always was at convergence points. She could feel the energy in them — green and vital and ancient.
The yarrow flowers she scattered around the bowl, their dried petals catching the moonstone’s glow. And finally, the candle — black wax, unscented, blessed by Posey’s careful hands. Ramona turned off her flashlight and set the candle in the exact center of the bowl and lit it with a match. The flame burned steady and bright, casting sharp shadows across the snow.
Zara watched from the edge of the salt circle, the grimoire open in her hands. She hadn’t spoken since they’d entered the clearing. Her face was illuminated from below by the candle’s glow — all sharp angles and shadows, her expression unreadable.
“The circle is complete,” Ramona said, sitting back on her heels. She checked everything. Twice. The salt line was unbroken. The hawthorn branches were properly placed. The moonstone dust glowed steadily in the bowl. The candle burned without flickering.
