Page 96

The streets widened, then emptied. The storefronts thinned into storage lots, tire shops, chain-link fences, and low buildings with corrugated metal roofs. A few blocks away, the bay was hidden behind warehouses, but I could smell it through the vents. Tidewater, rust, diesel, and rotting algae. Fog blurred everything.

“I’m scared and we haven’t even arrived yet,” Callie said.

I turned onto a narrower street lined with abandoned businesses and stubborn weeds pushing up through cracked asphalt. On one side, an old warehouse leaned behind a fence bowed outward by ivy. On the other, three Victorians stood in a row, all of them dark, and still ornate despite their ruin. Their gingerbread trim had rotted into lace. Their windows were boarded, but not neatly. More like someone had tried to shut their eyes and failed.

Priya’s phone buzzed. The sound snapped through the car. My fingers tightened on the wheel. In the rearview mirror, I saw Priya look down. Her face fell.

“He’s texted me twice,” she said. “He’s asking when I’ll be done so he can call me and wish me goodnight.”

“Tell him we’re having a very emotional journaling session and connecting with the sacred feminine.”

“Undoing the burdens of the patriarchy,” Callie added, weakly.

“That’ll shut him up,” Jess said.

Priya gave a small, miserable laugh and typed with both thumbs.

I watched the road thinking of what Damian had taught me the night before. Feet first. Breath low.

I took a left onto Lessard Street.

“This is like a horror movie,” Callie whispered.

The street narrowed. The fog thickened until the headlights became two pale smears in gauze.

Priya sat with her phone clutched in both hands, the screen now black. “Marlowe, I know I’ve asked you this sixteen times, but are you sure—”

“Yes,” I said. “Damian scoped it out. He’s waiting for us. We go in together. We stay together. If anyone says stop, we stop. If anyone sees something they don’t understand, they say it out loud.”

Callie turned toward me. “You sound weirdly competent.”

“I’ve had one hell of a month.”

We were silent for a block. Then Jess spoke from the back seat.

“You know, I don’t mean to sound like a bitch, but it seems kind of unfair.”

My eyes flicked to her in the rearview mirror.

“What does?”

“You get the dream, and you get to keep it.” Her voice was very quiet. “The rest of us get our hearts broken.”

I wanted to hide under the seat. I was suddenly aware that I’d only known these women a month, and we were already trauma bonded like sisters from a broken home.

Callie looked out the window. Priya lowered her phone to her lap. Jess turned the silver cuff on her wrist, once, then again.

“But I don’t know if I do really get to keep him,” I said.

Jess looked up.

“Not unless this actually works. And even then, I get to keep a man whose mother is an evil Goop witch who wants to kill me slowly,” I said. “A man who spent years helping his family make money from ritual homicide.”

“So why stay?” Priya said.

I didn’t say the absolute truth, that I was staying because I knew what we had was real. Because in a month he’d absolutely ruined me for anyone else. That felt unfair.

“Because I know he’s good,” I said instead. “Despite all of it. He’s never made me doubt my own mind. He’s never stalked me or bought my mother flowers. I’m not scared of his texts.”