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“Adrian’s been laying it on thick,” Damian said, his hands tightening on the wheel.

“Damian, I need to warn them. This can’t wait.”

He let out a sigh I barely heard.

“I know. But don’t tell them everything yet,” he said.

“Why? They’re going to have to know eventually.”

“They’re not scared enough. You need to plant the seed. Then, when the truth is staring them in the face, and they can’t run from it, that’s when you recruit them to help.”

“That’s…kind of genius. And terrifying.” I turned the thought over. “But that’s only going to work if they all actually dreamed about the Bridegroom. If they didn’t, it falls flat.”

Damian was quiet for a moment. “They did all dream about him.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I know it for a fact.”

“Why?”

He didn’t look at me. He looked straight ahead, his jaw tight. “Because I persuaded another woman to drink that tea once, much too late.”

I had questions about that. Many. But I could see what it did to him just to say that one sentence out loud, so I left it at that.

The road unspooled in the headlights. Neither of us said anything for a mile or two.

“They’ll be pushing your friends to book another retreat,” he said finally, his voice level again. “All of them.”

“Then that’s my confirmation question,” I said. “I’ll ask all of them if their men told them to sign up. When all three say yes, the penny will drop.”

“That could work, I guess.”

“And I’ll tell them to watch everything those men do, carefully. I’ve made the three of them swear a vault before. I can do it again.”

I hated the thought of hiding the truth from them, and it was somehow worse that the idea was mine. The plan we’d pulled together and the force we faced sat heavy between us. I’d committed to a plan I barely understood.

Damian pulled up two blocks from my house, one eye on the rearview mirror.

“If anything happens, call me right away,” he said.

“I will.”

We agreed to meet in two days’ time, after I’d met with Callie, Priya, and Jess. I grabbed the backpack, hesitated one long second, entirely unready to be apart from him, and got out of the truck. I walked to my apartment briskly, glancing over my shoulder.

Inside, I performed all the usual checks: every window, every surface. I moved the dresser in front of the door, pulled on pajamas, and grabbed the journal from the backpack.

Propped against the headboard, I opened at the beginning. The paper cracked with age and smelled like dust and the wooden compartment it had been stored in.

It took me three tries to read a page, until I learned the slanted, deep-pressed cursive. Some entries I couldn’t read at all. They were written in a code three times removed from comprehension. I may have been given the keys to this strange little house, but there were locked rooms I’d never find my way into. I paused on an entry I could read, dated March, 1890. She would have been thirty. The year she left the coven.

A young woman was brought to the fire this evening. I did not learn her name.

She was told she would receive a blessing and appeared pleased by the prospect. Several of the older women wept while watching her. At the time I took this for sentiment. I no longer believe that.

There was a coldness at the edge of the room which the fire could not reach.

I have remarked upon it before. Tonight it moved.