AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Like a permanent glamour, giving someone the steering wheel instead of merely giving directions to the driver. It wouldn’t quite possess the target, but it would give you ultimate control over their words and actions.
The ingredients aren’t any less disturbing though.
A newborn’s tongue, twin bones—one broken, one whole, ground hummingbird wings.
But there’s also a folded piece of paper tucked between these two pages. It’s in the same handwriting as the note that directed me to this book, but this time it contains an address. Something on Main Street in York.
But if the real message had been this address, why not send that as the first note? Why make me go through the trouble of retrieving the book?
I close the book again, my stomach churning.
You couldn’t exactly walk into a shop to pick up those kind of ingredients. Where would you even…howwould you even…
“Hey, you’re awake.” Adrienne leans against the door jamb, a steaming mug of coffee in each hand.
“Please tell me that’s for me.”
She smirks and joins me on the bed. Her eyes flick to the book as I take the second cup.
“Have you looked at it yet?”
“I tried.” I nudge it toward her with my knee. “You might want to finish your coffee first.”
She’s silent as she flips through the pages, her expression stoic. She’s always had the best poker face of the three of us. I sip my coffee and wait as she reads, her eyebrows pulling together the only hint at her thoughts.
“We should destroy the note now,” she says, almost absentmindedly.
I’d nearly forgotten about that line of it. So no one could track the magic? Or so no one else would find this spell?
“Maybe we should do a tracing spell first,” I say. “To be sure it’s from—”
“I already did.”
“I—you what? When?”
She spares me a brief glance before going back to the book. “While you were asleep. After seeing the book, I thought I’d double-check.”
“And?”
Her nod is nearly imperceptible. “Calla.”
The confirmation doesn’t bring the kind of relief I’d been hoping for. It doesn’t make me feel much of anything at all, besides more confusion.
Why this spell? Why this book? Why now?
She closes the book with a thud. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I say, then wave off the unconvinced eyebrow raise she gives me. “I’m tired. I’ll take it easy.”
“You looked a lot more than tired before. We thought—”
“I’m fine.” I scratch at the skin below my ear, still itchy from the dried blood. “It was weird though. I felt perfectly fine the entire time in the shadow world. I never would’ve known something was wrong if I hadn’t come back and seen myself.”
“I guess that’s one of the dangers, isn’t it?” she says softly, leaving the book on the bed and pushing to her feet. “Why so many people get lost there. You lose track of time, you don’t realize the extent of the damage you’re causing, you think you can push it a little more. And that was withsevenof us.”
A shiver runs down my spine. I don’t even want to think about what state I would’ve been in if I’d tried it on my own.
“I’ve gotta get to class, but are you sure you’ll be okay?”
