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“But there’s the other part.”
Branwen nodded slowly.
“You have another problem in the meantime. If the coven discovers you or your friends know too much, and if they smell the dissent among you, they will come after all of you, including Damian,” she said. “The only way to stay safe is to negotiate.”
The stemless peony flashed bright in my mind. So did Aurora’s chillingly sweet voice in my ear. And every doubt and fear we’d shared in the group chat.
“Negotiate?”
Branwen nodded. “You need a bargaining chip.”
I frowned.
Branwen looked at me directly. “Your friends may already be too close to their consorts. They are already watching you, Marlowe.”
Her words pressed against me, making it a little harder to breathe.
I didn’t understand at first. Then I did, and it landed somewhere underneath my ribs. “You want me to bring them new women.”
“It’s not what I want, dear, it’s what must be done. But if you destroy the coven’s bond with the Bridegroom at his next feed, their sacrifice will be minimal.”
I rubbed my finger over a knot in the wood of the table. “A double cross?”
“Yes. A double cross.”
I wish I could say I thought about it long and hard and that no one came to mind right away. But that part was easy. I looked at Damian.
“I know who I can recruit. But I’m going to need Damian to come to a pool party with me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
We left Branwen’s cottage with the mirror and the journal wrapped carefully inside a backpack. I watched the cottage in the rearview mirror until its windows were just a glimmer in the dark.
The night was unusually clear of fog, and stars blinked between the heavy canopy of redwoods. Rhododendron and ferns flanked the narrow drive, feathering the truck as we lumbered past. The pale flash of a deer slipped between trees.
“A pool party?” Damian said, without taking his eyes off the winding road.
“In Healdsburg. My boss is hosting it.”
“And you want me to go? Why?”
“Because you’re the proof that the retreat works.” I looked at him. The dashboard light loved him. It traced the bridge of his nose, pooled in the hollow of his throat, and turned his eyes dark and unreadable. “And I need compelling proof.”
He smiled wryly.
The road widened, and the trees thinned. The fogless sky was an explosion of stars, silver pepper hazing a wash of indigo.
“Oh my god, it’s never like this,” I said, craning my head to take in the lightshow.
“There’s a lookout not far from here.”
We drove for five miles, then Damian took a turn down a dirt road that led to a small gravel clearing. He cut the engine and grabbed two blankets from behind the passenger seat.
“No one knows we’re here,” he said, his voice laced with what sounded like gratitude.
We lay on our backs over the blankets on the truck bed, the vault of stars above us shimmering in the veins of nebula. The Milky Way was a strait of fire and watercolor.
The cool air carried the scent of wet earth, cedar, and the faint mineral smell of a nearby creek. Somewhere in the darkness, water moved over stone.
