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“Okay, so three victims,” Mina says carefully. “Canonically, Jack the Ripper killed five women, although experts debate this heavily. There are as many as two hundred additional deaths that might be attributed to his blade. Don’t ask me how I know this; when you’re an amateur sleuth and you’re dating literature’s greatest criminal mastermind, you listen to a lot of true crime podcasts.”
“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Edward says dryly.
“Hey, I heard him that time!” Mina says happily. “Edward, the only way you’ll get on my bad side is if you come into the bookshop and ask me to match a book to your outfit.”
I swallow hard, the panic rising so fast that I don’t even register Mina’s joke. “So the Rippercouldcome back without Father Bryne’s help.”
“According to the internet, which we all know is never wrong, he could.” Dani frowns. “We don’t know what they mean by this ‘weak Veil’ thing. A wedding?”
“I think it means a place that’s easy for things to go from the world of the dead to the world of the Living,” Ambrose says. “But maybe that’s miles away from here. We can research it.”
“And we should see if there are ways to protect against revenants,” Mina says excitedly. She reaches down beside her chair and picks up a stack of dusty tomes, which she drops on the table. “These are all our fancy occult books, including at least one that is actually magical. Maybe there’s something in there that can help ward off the Ripper or at least help Bree figure out how to control her Lazarus powers. Dani, I’ll take over internet-sleuthing, since I can use my screen reader.”
“Done.”
Dani and I grab books and start flicking through them, although I have no idea what I’m looking for. Ambrose hovers behind Mina, listening with one of her earbuds as she scrolls through occult websites. Pax feeds Quoth berries, giggling as the bird eats them off the ends of his fingers. Edward stares out the window and sighs dramatically.
Dani plonks down on the sofa beside me, a heavy book spread across her lap. She engrosses herself in the book, not even looking at me, and I can’t stand it anymore.
I swallow. “Dani, I…”
“I know.” Dani holds out her hand without even looking up from her book, and curls her pinkie finger around mine. “We’re have each others backs, and we bury the bodies.”
“We bury the bodies.” I wrap my pinkie around hers and we squeeze. My heart has never felt so full knowing that my best friend is back in my corner, even after I asked her to do an unspeakable thing.
“Hey,” Dani turns to me with a big smile that makes my heart soar. “You know who’d be really good at researching this stuff? Alice.”
My elation turns to alarm.
“What’s that look for? Alice loves spooky old stuff. That’s why she studied archaeology.”
“True, but if I want Alice’s help, I’d have to explain that I can commune with ghosts and that Vera was killed by Jack the Ripper and the guy who tore up her birthday party is really a Roman warrior back from the dead, and he helped her arrangehis own bonesfor display.”
“I think she’d believe you.”
“Dani,no.” Raw panic surges through me. I’ve only just started to trust Alice again after all the shit that went down in high school. “I accept that Alice is not the same mean girl from high school. She’s cool, and I’m happy that you two found each other. But I’m not ready to trust her with this secret. We’ll figure this out ourselves.”
“Okay.” Dani nods. “That’s fair. It’s your story to tell. But you know, there’s a simple solution here that you haven’t considered. Do you need these dusty old books when you happen to have three bonafide witches in your life who could teach you how to use magic?”
Of course, the three witches.
Dani’s right, they’d be a more direct source of knowledge. But do I really trust Agnes, Lottie, and Mary to help me learn about magic? They’re just as likely to force me to spend all my time transmuting doughnuts for them to sniff. “We don’t even know for a fact that theyarereal witches. Most of the women hanged for witchcraft were just ordinary civilians who fell foul of their neighbours and were the victims of horrible medieval smear campaigns—”
“Last week Lottie told you that she hexed a pig farmer who wouldn’t give her a cup of flour so that whenever he went to the market to sell his meat, all that would come out of his mouth was oinking sounds. They’rewitches.” Dani grins. “You should ask them. What harm can they do?”
I shudder.What harm can it do?
Why does that sound like a warning?
14
Bree
The next day, I find the witches hanging around the village green. A man and woman were having a romantic picnic beside the duck pond, so Mary is busy sniffing their Scotch eggs while Agnes and Lottie heckled the man’s kissing technique, which truth be told,coulduse a bit of work.
I hide in the foliage nearby and wave at them. “Pssst, over here.”
Of course, the couple look up from their canoodling and see me just as I’m waving in their direction with leaves all through my hair. My cheeks flush with heat, and I press my mobile phone to my ear and yell, “No, still no signal here in the bushes. I’ll try a little closer to the scout hall.”
