By the time he finished grumbling, and the message cut off, I was actually laughing out loud. The sound took me by surprise—it’d been so long since I’d heard it—and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt those muscles in my stomach tighten.
Thank you, Darius. Truly.
Feeling lighter than I had in days, I headed into the kitchen to make tea, stealing myself to face the ritual alone for the first time since Sophie's murder.
The spell of bleach drifted around me, still lingering from when I’d cleaned up Ronan’s burnt toast. It was dark and dead silent, the only noise coming from the second hand ticking away on the fox clock.
“What time is it, Mr. Fox?”
I couldn’t look at the clock without hearing Sophie’s voice. How many times had she asked that?
“Time for you to come home for tea,” I whispered, touching the painted mugs we’d left in the dish drainer that morning. I hadn’t been able to put them away, and in that empty, silent moment, with no texts or voicemails to occupy my thoughts, I felt the absence of her like it was another person in the room.
A void, heavy and solid, a loss composed of a hundred tiny things: The smell of paint emanating from the spare bedroom. The click-clack of her platform heels in the hallway as she left for work. The kitchen trash overflowing with spinach stems from the green smoothies she loved.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, my senses reaching out for her even though my brain knew she was gone. The house was already starting to lose her scent—strawberries and cream, like the best kind of summer sweetness.
When I opened my eyes again, my gaze drifted to the kitchen table, where Sophie's tarot deck still sat.
“Don’t erect a shrine on my account!”
Her voice playfully scolded me in my head, and I smiled, flicking on the overhead light and taking a seat at the table.
After a quick shuffle, I fanned out the cards and pulled one from center, flipping it to reveal the Page of Cups, a young, vibrant girl with ebony skin walking along the beach, carrying a fish inside a golden cup. She was barefoot, but dressed in opulent robes the color of the sea, crowned with a fish headdress. She’d always reminded me of Sophie—her joy, her brilliance, the way she lit up the room with her laugh—and seeing the card now felt like a hello from my friend.
“Oh, Soph.” My eyes glazed with tears as I traced the image on the card. “What am I supposed to do without you?”
“Answer the door, girl.”
Her voice echoed in my head again, mere seconds before a knock rattled the front door, startling the hell out of me.
Great. Figures the demons would choose now to check in on me, while I sat here with damp, frizzy hair and no bra. At least I no longer stank.
I grabbed a sweatshirt from my bedroom, tugging it on as I peeked out the front window, wondering which demon I should prepare for.
But my visitor wasn’t a demon at all.
Haley Barnes stood on my front stoop, coat pulled tight around her neck, eyes red and glassy.
I opened the door, not bothering to hide my shock.
“Gray,” she said softly, a smaller, more frail version of the girl I’d tangled with at Norah’s the other day. “Hi. I was hoping we could talk? I brought a lasagna.”
She forced a smile and lifted her hands, showing off a glass pan covered in foil.
“Lasagna? Seriously?”
“I’m Italian,” she said, as if that explained everything. “When someone dies, we bring food.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just stood there, letting things get awkward.
“She was my friend too, Gray,” Haley finally blurted. “So was Delilah. And now one of them is dead and the other is missing, and none of us knows who’s next, and our coven leader is sitting on her ass and letting it all fall apart. And this is my Nona’s secret recipe and I spent all day chopping and simmering and baking and it’s really fucking awesome. So if we could set aside our differences for one night and focus on what’s important, like eating good food and not getting killed, that would besuper.”
I liked her more by the minute.
I leaned my head against the doorframe, considering her offer. “Did you say you chopped and baked? As in, from scratch? The old fashioned way?”
Haley held up three fingers, scout’s-honor style. “No spells were cast in the making of Nona’s lasagna. The woman would rise up from the grave and beat me with her meat tenderizer if I eventhoughtabout using magic on this.”
