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“They have this for every woman who signs up. They have your full network mapped before you ever drink the cacao. When I say you shouldn’t try to fight this on your own, I mean it.”

Chapter Twelve

Nausea swam up my insides. My forehead felt clammy.

Damian saw it in me. He stood up. “I’m going to do something now, to protect you.”

He opened a backpack by the stove and pulled out a white dress and floral crown, the ones I’d worn at the ceremony. He placed them both on the table, along with two jars from his backpack and a pair of scissors.

I didn’t ask how he had them. Another sticky note for the wall.

While I watched, he cut a circle out of the dress, then crumpled a few of the flowers on top of it. Then he opened the jars.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a shadow token. It’s a false tether to the coven. If they try to harm you through ritual, it will affect this thing, instead of you.”

“Okay,” I said, reluctantly. I was absolutely not okay.

He looked at me. “I need your consent to do this.”

I looked back at him with two questions in my mind: whether this was my last chance to run, and how on earth I believed any of it. I looked at the door, then at him, and then I nodded.

He unscrewed the jars.

“What’s in those?”

“Some of the ingredients from the cacao,” he said, then threw a dash of it onto the fabric. From the other jar, he scattered black salt, a few nails, and what looked like dirt.

“Soil from the fox burial,” he said, answering my unspoken question. “I went back there this morning to collect it.”

Then he pulled a small knife from his back pocket, and before I could protest, he made a small cut into his thumb. Blood seeped into the scattering of plants and salt and dirt and nails.

He pulled a Band-Aid from the backpack. I took it from his hands and opened it, then gingerly placed it over the cut.

“Thank you,” he said. My touch had made him go still. “I need to ask you for something.”

“What?”

“A small piece of your hair. Half an inch is enough.”

“Okay,” I said.

He cut a small lock from the nape of my neck, his fingers brushing my shirt and sending a little jolt right through me. He gathered all of it into a circle and twisted, so it looked like a shuttlecock. Then, with the scissors, he unraveled some of the stitching of his shirt hem, tore it off, and tied the fabric closed with it.

“It needs to be sealed. I have to say a few words. And I have to hold your hand while I do it.”

I stood up, and he took my hand. His palm was warm and dry. He held the pouch in his other hand and closed his eyes, head down.

Quietly, he said: “Made in salt and iron. Made in blood and given ground.”

The room fell into a heavy silence, as if the wind had suddenly dropped outside.

“What is hidden, safe. What is given, kept.” His grip on my hand tightened, briefly, then released. “Closed,” he said, then opened his eyes. He put the pouch in my hand, gently folding my fingers around it.

“Keep this with you, but hidden. Never show it to anyone, for your sake and for mine. This token is a door. It can keep things out, and it can let things in.”

I held the pouch. It was warm. Whether from his hand or from whatever he’d put into it, I would never know.