“You’re what?”
“Level 6.WasLevel 6.” Zara’s voice went flat. “Before the demotion, which means I’ll probably go down to 5, or maybe even 4.”
Ramona slumped back in her chair. “So, we’re stuck. We know the convergence point is corrupted, we know it’s spreading, we have two weeks — maybe less — to fix it, and we have absolutely no idea how.”
The door chimed. Another customer. Zara moved to help them — an older woman looking for a book on moon phases — while Ramona stared at her useless research notes.
Everything she’d found referenced the same handful of original texts. And those texts were either lost, destroyed, or?—
Or locked away in academic archives.
Ramona pulled up a new search in Wandle.Liber Purgationis Maleficae historical copies North America
Three results. Two on the other side of the country, and… of course. Thornwood Academy.
Of course.
Of course the definitive text on purification magic was in Thornwood’s restricted archives. The archives she couldn’t access anymore. The archives that required special authorization from inner circle coven or academy members.
Like her mother.
“Fuck,” Ramona muttered.
“Problem?” Zara had finished with the customer and was walking back toward the counter.
“I found something.” Ramona turned her laptop toward Zara. “It’s in a fifteenth-century grimoire calledLiberPurgationis Maleficae. Multiple scholars cite it as the definitive source on demonic corruption cleansing.”
“Where is it?”
“Three known copies in North America. Vexford has one, but it’s damaged — missing the critical sections. Found another, but it’s on loan to a private collector until next year.” Ramona paused. “And Thornwood has the complete, intact copy.”
“That’s great news,” Zara said. “How do we get it?”
“It’s in the restricted archives.”
They looked at each other. Through the tether, Ramona felt Zara’s mind already working through possibilities, calculating options, running scenarios.
“We’ll figure something out,” Zara said finally.
“How? I can’t access those archives. I was expelled.”
She pulled out her HellBerry again, started typing. “I’m going to keep searching. There has to be something in Hell’s public databases about corruption protocols. Maybe not the classified rituals, but methodology, theory, something we can work with.”
“And I’ll keep looking for alternative texts,” Ramona said, turning back to her laptop. “Maybe there’s something else. A different grimoire, a modern interpretation that actually works, something.”
They worked in parallel for the next hour. Customers came and went — Ramona handled most of them with efficient kindness, suggesting manifestation journals and pocket-size moon phase calendars. Zara even stepped in to find a box of red candles from the back room. For a moment, Ramona let herself fantasize that this was just a normal day without the black cloud of demonic corruption hanging over their heads.
Between customers, they both searched.
Ramona found more references to theLiber Purgationis Maleficae. All useless. All citing the same inaccessible text.
“This is pointless,” she said finally, closing her laptop with more force than necessary. “Every single source I find just leads back to that grimoire. And we can’t access it.”
“Not legally,” Zara corrected.
“Not ever.”
Zara was quiet for a moment. Then: “What if we did?”
