Page 144 of Every Shade of Shadow

I spot a grimoire on Ava’s bed, open. It’s about the same size as Gran’s, though bound in crimson leather.

Lily points to it. “Ava found some trippy spell in her family fuckbook and wants to try it out on us.”

“A spell?” I ask.

Ava turns towards me, her expression the closest to glee I’ve seen it, which is to say somewhere between a sad circus clown and axe murderer. “It’s old, seriously old, but it will let me comb through your memories, see if we missed anything about Mortis. After all, you were there right after that second murder, right?”

“Right,” I say carefully, “but I don’t know. Sounds a bit hardcore, and you think you can pull off this spell?”

Ava shrugs. “Either it works or, I don’t know, your brain explodes out of your ears.”

“Great,” Lily laughs.

I look at Lily. “I mean, I get it, but like Lily I’m not so sure I want someone going through the many skeletons in my closet.”

Ava sits on the bed, arms uncrossing and hands pressing down on the mattress. “If you’re talking about your kinky love life with the Professor, I couldn’t give a flying fuck, honestly. I just want to find Mortis before they decide to show up again and finish the job—if you know what I mean.”

And there, right there, is genuine fear scrawled all over her face.

I throw my hands up. “Fuck it, why not? We’ve shared enough already, haven’t we?”

Lily puts her hands on her hips, looking down and shaking her head. “Fine, fine, but I can’t believe I’m agreeing to this.”

“I was right there too,” Ava goes on, “but every time I try to picture what I saw under that hood, it’s scrambled. Maybe this will help.”

I nod. “Okay. Tell us what to do.”

There’s more preparation than I expected, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before—candles, sitting in a circle… Looking in, you’d think this was a séance, but the only ghosts about to be rattled here are the ones inside my head.

We sit in a circle holding hands, faces lit only by the collection of candles between us, the grimoire sitting open before Ava, who seems surprisingly nervous, which is not exactly what you want when someone is about to run through a spell like this.

Ava looks between us. “Everyone ready?”

“You said you’d be combing through our memories, right? It’s a pleasant thing, like a memory spa day?” Lily says.

“Mmm,” Ava starts, tilting her head and her lips twisting, “the spell kind of translates to ‘Scour through memories,’ so maybe not?”

Lily shakes her head again. “Fuck me. Seriously?”

I squeeze Lily’s hand. “Come on, we trust Ava, right?”

“Let’s just get it over with,” says Lily, breathing out and closing her eyes.

Ava speaks the incantation: “Memoriam Perscrutare.”

I don’t know what I expected, but I feel, well, nothing.

I open one eye, Lily doing exactly the same thing and the two of us looking at each other perplexed before we both look to Ava and find her decidedly unrelaxed. She’s shaking hard, eyes rolled into the back of her head so all that’s left is bone white. She lets go of our hands and falls onto her back, flopping on the floor, teeth chattering away and a low murmur of agony running between her lips. It’s like she’s having a seizure.

I look at Lily. “What do we do?”

Lily looks just as clueless as I am. She points to the grimoire. “What does it say in there?”

The moaning gets louder as I reach for the grimoire, almost dropping it into the candles before scanning over the spell as quick as I can but finding nothing useful about how to reverse or even stop it.

The moan becomes a broken scream, Lily moving over to where Ava is and pinning her down while she shakes and buckles. “Well?”

I keep reading. “I don’t know…”

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