“You wanna get out of here, right?” Marta shrugged. “Why wait?”
“What about ingredients?” Wes continued, bringing us back to the rituals. “Some of this stuff is obscure.”
“We have most of it in the stores,” Marta said. “I’ll gather them, and then we need to cleanse the space and ourselves.”
“I’ll help,” Wes said, pushing to his feet.
“Great. Perfect.” I kept my gaze on the book, purposely ignoring them. “I’ll just…keep reading to make sure we don’t miss anything.”
Wes and Marta nodded before leaving the library, but I sat there for too long afterward, wondering what the hell I’d just agreed to.
CHAPTER 13
Wesson
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Marta said, glancing over the shelves in the closet where the Harlots kept their herbs and candles. It was practically an occult store by itself.
I grabbed the bottle of vervain and placed it in the basket, moving on to the next item on her list.
“I don’t want to be in the liminal any more than you do,” I said. “If this will help us get out, I’ll do anything.”
“It’s just…” Marta placed a bottle of cemetery dirt in the basket and leaned on the table, tilting her head as she looked at me. I ignored her scrutiny and kept going.
Five-finger grass. Five-finger grass.
Why the hell weren’t these bottles alphabetized?
“The blood bind is one thing. The flesh...” she said. “You and Atlas?—”
“I’m aware.” I cut her off, unwilling to think too much about it. Though now that she’d brought it up, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d always loved my brother, and even if we weren’t related by blood, we were raised together. It should have been weird. I should have refused the idea and insisted we find another way. Instead, I went along with it because…
Well, I didn’t have a good excuse. Saying I wanted to get out of the liminal seemed like too much pressure to put on the uncertain outcomes of Constance’s rituals, and saying I didn’t mind…er…joining flesh with my brother seemed too fucked up to put into words.
But one thing at a time. Blood came first. We had a little while before we had to worry about the rest.
“Have you and Atlas ever—” She raised an eyebrow, a mischievous glint dancing behind her gaze.
“No,” I answered. “Not together. Not like that.”
“But other things?”
I cleared my throat as memories pummeled me. “We’ve shared a room since we were kids. It’s…complicated.”
“Complicated. Right.” She crossed the room to stand in front of me, interrupting my search. “So then why did you agree?”
I took a deep breath, trying not to let my uneasiness show.
“It wasn’t just you we bonded that night in the woods,” I said. “We bonded each other, too. I could sense him. He could sense me. And for the first time in our whole lives, I felt…” I almost said peace but stopped myself before the words tripped over my lips. That was too small a vocabulary for it.
Whole. Complete. Soul-shattering wonderment.
She seemed to understand without my having to say it out loud.
“You know,” she continued. “Tita says the ancestors never do anything without cause. If they put us together, the three of us, there’s probably a good reason.”
I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re okay with this?” I gestured between us.
She shrugged. “Atlas isn’t as bad as I thought, and you…”
