Chapter 7
We sprinted down the alley, boots slapping pavement slick with condensation and fallen petals.
Somewhere behind us, a woman was shouting about stealing her sister’s boyfriend and her Tupperware, but I tuned it out.
My whole focus zeroed in on that flicker of a shadow.
Tall, wiry, with a lurch to his gait that didn’t quite match his usual self-importance. Ramsay O’Connor.
“You got eyes?” I called, dodging a rusted bin.
“He cut through the back lot!” Zelda’s voice rang ahead of me, her dress flaring behind her like a spell all its own. She vaulted over a low fence with the ease of someone who’d once hexed her way into the Olympics for ‘a laugh’.
We reached the edge of the funeral home grounds just as the side door slammed shut. A lock clicked.
“Damn,” I panted.
But Zelda didn’t stop. She slammed her palm against the old wood, calling power up through her bones, through the soles of her boots and into the grain. The enchantment flared, a hot pulse of static, and the door gave with a groan that sounded like it was personally offended.
We burst inside.
The temperature dropped like we’d stepped into a freezer. The air was too thick, layered with lavender oil, embalming fluid, and the telltale tang of paranormal activity. Lights flickered above us, casting long, swaying shadows through the corridor.
“Front parlour,” I whispered. “If he’s trying to hide something, it’ll be there!”
I darted through the embalming prep area that was full to the brim with cold steel, jars of chemicals, and a forgotten cup of coffee that had grown its own eco-system.
My wards itched under my skin. The dead were restless.
Watching. I reached the front parlour just as the doors creaked open on their own to reveal Ramsay reaching to swipe through the protective line of my salt circle.
“Don’t,” I said quietly, stepping forward.
He hesitated. Just a flicker. But it was enough to confirm everything I needed to know.
He fixed me with a sharp smile, and the moment his hand brushed the charm, I felt it.
The air snapped taut like a rubber band drawn to its limit.
My skin prickled, the fine hairs on my arms rising in warning as a wave of magic shimmered just beneath the surface of the world.
“You don’t want to do that,” I added, letting my voice thread with the kind of calm that usually preceded storms or executions. “It’s not going to go how you think.”
Ramsay’s smile faltered. Not fully. Just the slightest hairline fracture at the edge of his composure.
But I’d spent enough time around charming sociopaths to know that cracks always meant something was trying to break through.
He slowly straightened, pulling his hand back and dusting it against his vest like he’d simply been brushing lint off his ego.
“You’re very confident for someone living on borrowed time. ”
The hallway felt narrower now, the shadows stretching long and strange against the polished floor.
Wards hummed behind the wallpaper, the magic woven into the structure groaning like a restless sleeper sensing intrusion.
My fingertips itched, the protective charms in my jeans pockets vibrating against the thread of something dark coiled beneath the floorboards.
“You came here for answers,” Ramsay said smoothly. “Let’s not pretend otherwise.” His eyes flashed. Not surprise. Not fear. Resentment. Like a child denied their favorite toy.
“Be careful what you dig up, Miss Hearst,” he said, voice dropping an octave. “Assjacket’s soil is full of bones. And not all of them stay buried out of politeness.”
I leaned in, just slightly, letting my pendant catch the dim light as it pulsed faintly. “And you should be careful which ghosts you piss off. Because some of them talk. And at least one of them wants to burn your name into every wall in town.”
The hum of the wards shifted briefly, but I felt it.
A warning pulse. Like the building itself didn’t appreciate its occupant’s secrets spilling so freely.
Maybe it wanted to keep them. Maybe it just didn’t like me.
Either way, I had what I came for. I stepped back, slow and deliberate.
“You didn’t kill him with your own hands,” I said.
“That’s not your style. But you were part of it. ”
Ramsay didn’t move, but the temperature dropped another notch. Not from his magic. From Zelda’s, as she joined us in the parlour.
“Well?” she asked, voice low.
“He didn’t confess,” I said. “But he might as well have.”
“On a scale of one to ‘evil sorcerer mid-divorce,’ how cursed is he?”
I exhaled. “Cursed enough I’m going to need bourbon and a backup plan.”
“Same,” she said brightly. “I brought cupcakes. Not those ones,” she clarified.
Her green eyes flicked to Ramsay, and her expression shifted from theatrical delight to something sharper.
Colder. She dropped her satchel to the floor, and from it came the sound of clinking glass, the hum of containment charms, and one faint, angry meow—probably Fat Bastard, kept close for emergencies.
She ignored it, stepping further into the room.
“Nice locket,” she said coolly, eyeing the object around Ramsay’s neck. “Let me guess. Soul anchor? Little side hustle in death magic?”
He was sweating now, his perfect hair clinging to his forehead, the glamour around his face fraying like old silk. “Stay back,” he warned.
Zelda ignored him. “You know, it’s always the men with antique jewelry and unresolved daddy issues.”
I moved while he was distracted, darting to the side and flanking him. “You should’ve destroyed the locket,” I said. “You should’ve let Beau go.”
His gaze snapped to me, frantic now. “I needed him. You don’t understand. I was this close… I could feel the veil thinning. With Beau’s tether, I could’ve broken through.”
“To what?” I demanded. “What the hell were you trying to get to on the other side?”
He hesitated. Just long enough to look haunted.
“My wife,” he said, voice cracking like old paper. “She died last year. Sudden. Unfinished. Gigi promised if I could open a channel, if I had the right anchor—”
“You killed someone,” I said, stepping forward, fury burning hot under my ribs. “You used Beau like a key to the afterlife! Do you know what that does to a soul? What it costs?”
His expression twisted. “It was supposed to be temporary.”
Zelda scoffed behind me. “That’s what they always say. ‘It was just a little necromantic tethering, officer.’ ‘I only borrowed his soul.’”
I ignored her. My focus stayed locked on Ramsay as he sagged slightly, the magic in the locket dimming in his hand. The fight was leaking out of him. Not remorse. He didn’t have the guts for that. Just exhaustion. Maybe shame.
“Open the locket,” I said, lifting the obsidian shard. “Let him go.”
He looked between the two of us. For one strange, silent moment, I saw something real flicker behind his eyes. Not grief. Not madness. But something worse. Hope.
Then he flung the locket into the air and made a break for it.
“Oh hell no,” Zelda said, and launched a containment spell like a hand grenade. The room bloomed with pink light, and Ramsay went flying into the nearest bookshelf.
The locket hit the ground with a clatter, and I dove.
I could feel its pull, sharp and instinctive, like gravity gone feral.
It thrummed through the floorboards and up my boots, vibrating in my molars like a tuning fork held too close.
Something ancient lived inside that charm now, something that shouldn’t have been awakened.
The moment my fingers closed around it, the world tilted.
Heat surged through my chest, and a sound like tearing denim ripped through the air, echoing from every wall.
The sound of a soul unhooking. Untethering.
Beau.
And then silence.
I sat there, panting, the locket now cold in my palm, my obsidian shard cracked in half beside it.
Zelda walked over and crouched beside me. “You okay?”
I nodded slowly. “I think... I think he’s free.”
She looked at the locket, now dull and lifeless, then at the wreckage around us. “Well,” she said. “That’s one way to serve justice.”
Zelda stayed crouched on the floor, her fingers moving fast, smearing glowing runes across the wood in a language older than fire.
The glyphs bled gold, then violet, and then burned a hot white that made the edges of reality twitch.
Sweat beaded along her hairline. Her mouth moved faster than her hands, whispering incantations under her breath with the speed and sharpness of someone who couldn’t afford a single syllable out of place.
The room buckled with residual energy, the air charged and cracking like a summer storm held in a bell jar.
Static danced across my skin, a prickling warning that something foundational had shifted.
Everything smelled like scorched ozone and spellfire, undercut by the coppery tang of unraveling magic.
The wallpaper, already peeling in tragic floral motifs, began to blister at the edges, curling as if recoiling from the magic saturating the air.
And then Ramsay started to peel himself up off the floor.
“Ivy!” Zelda barked without looking up. “Don’t let him get away.”
I blinked and then pivoted into motion, my Converse slipping just slightly on a floor that was now humming like a live wire. But Ramsay wasn’t going to get very far.
He skidded on the warped wood floor, face pale and drawn, sweat freezing to his temples as the temperature dropped another ten degrees.
His breath fogged in the air, hands trembling like a compass needle with nowhere to point.
He wheeled around, breath coming in ragged puffs.
“You don’t understand,” he hissed, voice cracking.
“I was close. I could’ve breached the veil. She was there, I felt her. My wife…”
“Don’t,” I said flatly, my voice cutting sharper than I intended. “Don’t you dare pretend you did this for love.”
My blood was up now, heat rushing into my face even as the room turned to ice.
I stepped between them, talisman raised, palm sweating against the cool obsidian disk etched with binding wards.
Its weight grounded me. Its hum matched the pulse behind my eyes.
“You used Beau like a battery. You didn’t grieve, you gambled. And you lost.”
His gaze darted between us. He looked unmoored, like a man realizing the game had never been stacked in his favor to begin with.
His lips moved, maybe a curse, maybe a prayer.
He collapsed to his knees, suddenly hollow.
Whatever magic he’d leeched, whatever desperate fuel he’d been siphoning from Beau’s soul, had snapped back like a broken wire.
It left him looking empty, like a scarecrow after the storm. Deflated, disheveled, deeply human.
He looked smaller now. Diminished. Just a coward with another man’s death on his hands.
“She didn’t tell me he would die,” he confessed, his voice hoarse and broken. “She said he would just sleep, that the Belladonna would put him out for a week or so. Just long enough…” he cracked, sobbing. “Just long enough for me to say goodbye.”
So. Gigi and Meredith had been in on this together.
Zelda, it seemed, had heard enough. With one powerful jolt of magic, she had Ramsay gagged and hog-tied.
My gaze flicked to her, stunned. “You could just do that the whole time? What the hell, Zelda!”
She shrugged. “More fun this way.”
I reached down and picked up the now-dormant locket. It was cold again. Heavier somehow, like grief had sunk into the metal itself. Just a trinket. A kitsch accessory with a body count. “Bag this,” I told her, holding it out carefully.
She conjured a containment pouch from the folds of her jacket, black velvet embroidered with sigils that shimmered in the dim light. As she took the locket from me, the air hummed briefly and then stilled, like the room was finally exhaling.
“And Ramsay?” she asked.
I turned, gaze landing on him. “He’s going to make a full statement,” I said. “I’ll leave Gigi and Meredith to you.”
Zelda nodded, a satisfied gleam in her eyes at the thought of meting out her own justice. “Fine. But can I at least hex his eyebrows off? Just the outer edges. He won’t even miss them. He probably waxes anyway.”
I didn’t answer. But I didn’t say no, either.