Page 159

“Now what?” Jess said.

“We wait. We sit here and wait.”

We pulled out the packable raincoats we’d stuffed into our bags and sat on them, reaching for our phones, which had no service under the rock. I scrolled my photos instead, chasing the dopamine of staring at the few photos I had of Damian.

We talked about nothing with focused discipline. Callie’s favorite wedding fonts, Priya’s unreasonable boss, whether Jess’s landlord counted as a demonic entity. But I felt what wasn’t said like a suffocating cloud around us: the what ifs. What if the timing’s off and we miss the whole thing? What if they figure out we’re here? What if it doesn’t work? What if our throats are slit in this rotting cave?

Callie looked over her shoulder twice.

“No one’s here, Callie,” I said. “So don’t give me a heart attack.”

Two hours passed, and then it was time.

“We need to find the northern point,” I said.

Priya’s compass still worked without service. “There,” she said, pointing to a seam of rock.

I unpacked the backpack, and we lit the candles first, placing them in a wide circle around us. The walls came alive, flickering amber. It would have been beautiful, if it wasn’t terrifying.

I laid out everything the way we had at the abandoned house: the sea thrift, the salt, the nails, the scrying mirror, lining it all up like I was setting the table for the worst dinner party ever. I placed Clemency’s journal on my raincoat, out of the filth. Finally, I added the shadow token.

I scattered a thin line of salt around us, then we took hands, Callie to my left, Priya to my right, and Jess opposite me.

I opened Clemency’s journal, and it cracked in protest. I read the summoning, my voice sounding heavy and wrought and wrong.

“Clemency Hart, daughter of no master, keeper of the severing…”

The candles burned bright. The sprig of sea thrift sat there, innocent. The mirror stayed dark.

“Not this again,” Callie said.

“It’s like she does it on purpose,” Priya said. “To make sure we mean it.”

“Then let’s mean it,” I said, then cleared my throat.

This time we meant every word of it, the leave of her blood and the consent of my will, and the temperature of my hands changed. The cave suddenly grew cold, a shiver snaking from the nape of my neck to my tailbone. The rumble of the ocean disappeared, and the candle flames thinned to needles. The mirror clouded, then, just as before, Clemency’s impression emerged from behind that cloud, from a smudge to a rendering. She returned to us in the same stern long dress, her two dogs beside her, and her face as formidable as ever.

“He will be summoned to feed soon. You are late. Begin,” she said in my head, in her usual clipped, impatient tone. I mumbled it into the circle.

“What do we—” Priya whispered.

“Verzeal believes the dead are silent. You are here to prove him wrong,” Clemency said. “The names first. All of them, in order, aloud. You are not reading a list, girl. You are taking attendance. They have waited a hundred years to be counted. Count them all.”

I spoke each name into the damp void. Somewhere on the fifth page, my voice began to shred and Priya took over mid-syllable. The candle flames leaned, altogether, toward the sea.

Priya read the last name, her voice hoarse and tired.

“Good,” Clemency said, her one and only compliment. “They’re listening. Now the blood, given not taken.”

I repeated her words.

Callie’s grip tightened. Priya closed her eyes, like she was bracing. Only Jess looked calm.

I released Callie’s hand to pick up the knife and the bowl. I looked at the three of them before I began. We looked filthy and feral and quietly unhinged. Exactly as I’d imagined we’d looked. The flames lit our faces in a horror-movie pallor, and the dark robes resolved to black at our feet.

I held the blade to a flame, then to the heel of my hand. Callie made an unhelpfully terrified noise. The blade hovered while I fought my own reflexes.

“Just do it,” Priya said.