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If the candle extinguishes, do not attempt the working again that night.
If the glass clouds, wait.
If the flower blackens at the stem, leave the room at once.
If I answer, do not thank me.
There is one thing more that must be done before any of this, and I will not write it, for it is the surest proof that the woman before me has been properly taught and did not come to me by stealing a book. She will know it or she will not. If she does not, I will know she has no business calling me, and the glass will stay dark.
Ask what you came to ask.
I let the journal fall slack in my lap. Nothing I needed was documented. Clemency had refused to leave it on the page because the method was her, a dead woman, a hundred years into well-earned rest, and I’d have to reach into that dark void and ask her to come back and explain herself.
The last thing I read before I tried to sleep was near a page Branwen had marked with a thin strip of cloth.
The dead of this line do not come for the timid and they do not come for the curious. They come for those who have a thing to set right and the spine to stand while it is set. Be certain, before you call, which of these you are. They will know before you finish speaking.
Branwen had marked that page herself. Which meant she’d read the book. Which meant she’d sat in her warm kitchen with her hand around a mug and told me I had everything I needed, knowing exactly what wasn’t in it.
I closed the journal, flipped off the lamp on the nightstand, and stared at the ceiling, waiting for sleep. It came with dreams of a black mirror and two black dogs at the door, and a girl in a white dress, waiting for me to pick up Clemency’s journal.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ifound Sofia in the kitchen, nervously rummaging through the supplement cabinet.
“Where is the ashwagandha?” Sofia said, her arms full of bottles.
“Oh god, what happened now?”
I pulled an unopened bottle from the very top shelf and handed it to her. “It’s Rafael…something happened.”
“But she’s calm?”
“Yes, but it’s that kind of calm.”
“Ugh,” I said.
“Caspian is coming over to, um…”
“To coax the betrayal out of her sacral chakra with neroli oil and eye contact?”
“Exactly.” She crossed herself. “Can you please take it to her?” she said, like she was asking me to feed a small alligator.
“Of course,” I said, because Sofia wasn’t paid enough to navigate Vivienne when her abandonment wounds were triggered. Neither was I, but at least she paid for my health insurance. I also grabbed the Xanax for the moment when Vivienne would admit to herself that ashwagandha wasn’t strong enough to soothe the burning void inside her.
I found her standing by the window in her office with her phone in one hand, the other pressed against her collarbone, as if she was physically holding her soul in place. She was swaddled in her emotional support cashmere: a Brunello Cucinelli wrap in mushroom taupe.
“Where have you been?”
“It’s eight forty-five,” I said.
“Well, it feels like noon,” she said with accusation, because her temporal perception was my fault, too.
I placed the ashwagandha and Xanax on her desk.
“I’ve had a very difficult morning,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
