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“I’m so sorry you guys have been dealing with this,” I say.
“Such a piece of shit,” Monroe mutters. “Didn’t you tell us his last partner was all weird about him when she asked for a reassignment and left?”
The image of Avery in the pool room resurfaces in my mind. The way her fingers were shaking around her cigarette, how she wouldn’t tell me what happened with Nathan, and that alone should’ve been the biggest red flag. She always loved to gossip.
“Such a piece of shit,” I repeat Monroe’s earlier words, shaking my head.
I’m willing to bet Avery wasn’t the first and Monroe won’t be the last. And he keeps getting away with it.
“Anyway.” Monroe forces a smile and squeezes my arm. “I know you have plenty more important things to worry about—”
“Thisisimportant, Roe,” I say quietly. “Thank you for telling me.”
She blinks away tears and nods a few too many times. “I’m so fucking angry, but I alsohatemyself right now.”
“What? Why? Roe, this isn’t your fault.”
She sniffles and crosses her arms. “Because it’s not just me in the videos,” she whispers. “And I feel like—I feel like I let her down, you know? She’s been the strong one through all of this—”
I throw my arms around her shoulders and pull her close, tightening my hold until she finally relaxes against me. “No part of this is your fault,” I insist. “Don’t you dare let that bastard make you feel guilty on top of everything else. He won’t get away with this, and we’re going to get you out of this partnership. No matter what it takes.”
She sniffles and nods against my shoulder. “It’s really good to have you back, Val.”
I hold her tight for another moment and revel in how a few weeks ago, I’d thought I would never have this again. That everything about this life had been stolen from me forever.
“It’s really good to be back,” I say as I pull away.
She offers a weak smile and quickly wipes the few stray tears from her cheeks. As she joins Beth in the middle of the yard, Adrienne heads toward me, every line of her face hard.
“I’ll go with you,” she says.
“I need you to stay here.”
She shakes her head. “This isn’t just about you. This is my family too. That note was left in my room.”
“I know this is about you too. And I’m not just asking you to stay to protect you”—even though that’s exactly what I’m doing; one look at the risks listed in this book and I knew there was no way in hell I was letting my barely-a-freshman baby sister try this—“I need you on this side because if anything goes wrong, the connection with you is what will call me back. Our magic. Our blood. I need that line.”
She searches my eyes for a moment as if trying to read if I’m telling the truth. “Let me go and you stay then.”
“I have no doubt in your abilities at all. But I have four years more experience than you do. Let me do this, Adrienne, please.”
I don’t bother telling her I know as little about this kind of spell as she does. I close the book in my hands for good measure. Doom-reading everything that could go wrong right beforehand probably isn’t going to help.
“All right, everybody. Are we good to go?” Daniel and Wes hurry into the yard with their arms full of supplies. Adrienne gives me a long look before nodding and going to join them.
“You sure about this, kid?” Kirby asks, throwing an arm over my shoulder.
“Not you too.”
“Hey, I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it. I’m just asking if you’re sure about this, because if you have a single doubt in your mind, we can come up with a plan B. Between the seven of us, we’re bound to come up with another idea.”
“Between the seven of us, we should be able to pull this off no problem, right? Other witches manage to do this with two. Should be a breeze.”
She makes a noise in the back of her throat at that but hooks her arm through mine and leads me forward.
“Have any of you done this before?” Adrienne asks as we fan out in a circle, stretching from one end of the grass to the other.
“Nope,” Daniel says as he situates a black tarp on the ground then wide black and white candles on top. Beth sprinkles herbs on them as Wes creates a line of ash and black sand by our feet. He pauses as he reaches me.
