She sat cross-legged on the floor, a grimoire open in her lap, notebook beside her filled with translations. Another severance variation. This one from a fifteenth-century text that used different verb conjugations — subjunctive instead of imperative, which might make the magic more of a request than a command.
It probably wouldn’t make a difference. But she had to try.
Through grace, to dissolve. Interesting. The whole incantation was framed as asking permission rather than demanding action.
She made a note. Underlined it twice.
The tether hummed between her and Zara — warm, steady, present. Like it had been for weeks now. Like it might be forever if they couldn’t figure this out.
The thought didn’t terrify her quite as much as it used to.
The fox had been gone most of the day. Ramona could still feel him — a distant presence, like an echo of an echo. The connection they’d formed when she invited him inside wasn’t like the tether. It was quieter. More like knowing someone was in the next room rather than feeling their emotions directly.
But she knew he was okay. Knew he was out there somewhere, doing whatever mysterious fox things he did when he wasn’t sleeping at the foot of her bed.
As if summoned by the thought, he strolled down the hall from Ramona’s room, where she’d left the window cracked for him.
“Oh, there he is!” Posey said from her spot on the couch, looking up from the scarf she was knitting. “Hello, friend. Did you have a nice adventure?”
The fox didn’t settle in his usual spot near Ramona’s feet. He paced instead — back and forth, restless, his tail low and twitching. His amber eyes kept darting to Ramona, then away, then back.
“Hey,” Ramona said, looking up from her grimoire. “Where’ve you been?”
The fox made a sound — not quite a whine, not quite a bark. Insistent. Urgent.
“What?” Ramona asked, as though she expected the fox would just come right out and tell her.
On the TV, the contestant was about to make her choice. Zara leaned forward slightly, completely absorbed.
The fox moved closer, pushing his head against Ramona’s hand. Not affectionately — demandingly. Like he was trying to tell her something and getting frustrated that she wasn’t understanding.
“Okay, okay.” Ramona set down her pen and reached out to pet his head properly. “What’s?—”
The moment her hand touched his fur, the world dissolved.
She was standingin the clearing.
The convergence point. Two hours away, deep in the woods near Thornwood, where she and Zara had tried the severance ritual a week ago.
But it was wrong.
The snow that had been pristine and white was now stained — gray in some places, black in others, like ink had been spilled across the ground. The pristine circle of ancient oaks lookedsickly, their bark darker than it should be, their branches bare and reaching up like skeletal fingers.
And in the center, where they’d cast the ritual?—
The ground wasmoving.
Not physically. But magically. Ramona could see it the way she’d seen the tether that first night — a visible manifestation of something that shouldn’t be visible. Dark energy, pulsing outward from the center in slow waves. Like a heartbeat. Like something alive and growing.
The air smelled wrong. Sulfur and burnt sugar and something older, something that made her skin crawl with instinctive revulsion.
This was corruption.
Demonic corruption.
She tried to move, to get closer, but she couldn’t. She was seeing this through the fox’s eyes — his memory, replaying for her. Showing her what he’d found.
The clearing was empty. No witches. No investigators. Just the fox, standing at the edge of the corruption, watching it pulse and spread with that patient, knowing gaze.
