Page 165 of The Glittering Edge

The second floor looks different. The floor panels aren’t sagging with age, and there’s a huge table of lush plants under the skylight. An armchair is in the far corner, and Giovanni De Luca sits in it, an animal-skin scroll in his lap. He writes slowly, his expression pained, and every time he finishes writing a word—or maybe a letter—he stops, gasping and shaking. When he runs out of ink, he opens his hand, revealing a long, bloody cut across his palm. He dips the quill into the dark red running down his wrist.

Giovanni is writing the blood oath.

Penny watches him struggle through the end. By the time he’s done signing his name, Giovanni has doubled over, the parchment rolling off his lap. Penny moves around the table to see him, and she wishes she could reach out, help him up. But everything she’s seeing has already happened, and she can’t change it.

There’s a sound below, and Giovanni sits up, his face panicked. As quickly as he can manage, he reaches for the parchment. He rolls it up, puts it in the envelope with his letter to Ellie, and seals it.

“Hollow,” he says.

There’s a rhythmic sound, like the beating of wings, and then a large crow lands on Giovanni’s shoulder.

“Take this to Ellie,” Giovanni says, holding up the envelope with all the strength he can muster.

Hollow takes the envelope and flies out of the open skylight. Giovanni looks after him, his face drawn.

There are footsteps on the stairs. Giovanni stands and quickly wraps his hand in a cloth bandage as the young Charles Barrion walks leisurely onto the second floor.

“There you are, Gio.” He looks around. “Why haven’t you shown me this room before?”

Giovanni cracks his neck once, and the gesture is so like Alonso that it makes Penny ache. “You don’t have an all-access pass to my entire life, Chuck.”

“Straight to the point then.” And from his jacket pocket, Charles pulls out a gun.

Penny gasps.

“What are you doing?” Giovanni asks.

“Letting you know that I’m serious,” Charles says.

Gio takes a step closer, a new desperation in his face. “I’ve given you every spell you’ve asked for. I’ve made your company profitable again. But I won’t go as far as you want me to.”

“Correction,” Charles says. “Imade my company profitable again.”

“Using my magic!”

“Using my ability to artfully deploy information about my enemies.”

Gio sneers. “I thought we weren’t enemies anymore.”

“I hoped that would be the case, but then you went back on your promise.” Charles considers the gun. “I’ve found a way to kill two birds with one stone. You told me once when we were young that mortals can use magic by—what was it again? I’m forgetting.”

Except Charles’s gleaming smile makes it clear that he isn’t forgetting. He just wants Giovanni to say it out loud.

“You can’t,” Gio says. “Without me, you have nothing.”

If a mortal kills a witch and drinks their blood, they can use their magic. That’s what Milton said.

Penny presses herself against the wall. “I don’t want to see this,”she says, but no sound comes out of her mouth. She asked for the truth, and Ellie is showing her.

But the timeline is off. Gio wrote the blood oath the day before Ellie Barrion died—the day beforehedied. But this is where Gio’s body was found. Did the police or the doctors get his date of death wrong?

Penny’s eyes find Charles Barrion, and all the disparate pieces of the story click into place. Everywhere you turn in Idlewood, the Barrions’ name is on buildings. They’re in photos of ribbon cuttings. They employ most of the town. Knowing how entrenched they are in Idlewood, how difficult would it be for Corey’s grandfather to falsify medical records to fit a story everyone already believed: that Giovanni De Luca was a violent man who would stop at nothing to enact revenge on his former girlfriend and former best friend?

Penny wants to look away, but she can’t. She has to see how this ends.

Charles grins. “I think I can manage without you. After all, you conveniently forgot to tell me how easy it is to create an exchange. A bargain with the spirit world.”

A bargain. Abargain.

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