Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
The apartment was quiet when they got back.
It seemed all of her roommates were either out or in their rooms. It was customary to leave the lights off, lighting only candles on Imbolc, so the apartment was dark save for one of Felix’s Autumnal Harvest pillars sitting on the stove, casting the apartment in a spooky glow.
Ramona dropped her bag by the door and immediately headed for her bedroom, desperate to change out of the nice clothes she’d worn to impress her parents.
Clothes that had done absolutely nothing to soften Eleanor’s passive-aggressive commentary or make Thomas acknowledge her existence beyond basic pleasantries.
She flipped on her overhead light with rebellious fervor and was halfway through pulling on sweatpants in the closet when she heard a thud.
Then another.
And another.
Ramona emerged from the closet to find Zara unpacking books from her pockets onto the floor. A lot of books. An alarming number of books, actually, considering Zara didn’t carry a purse.
“Where did those come from?” Ramona asked, approaching slowly.
“Your childhood bedroom.” Zara set down another stack — medieval grimoires, linguistic theory texts, a few worn paperbacks that Ramona recognized from her graduate seminars. “You left quite the collection.”
“I didn’t say you could take those.”
“You didn’t say I couldn’t.” Zara arranged them with methodical precision, organizing by subject matter. “We need to research the severance ritual. These will help.”
Ramona stared at the books. Just looking at them made her chest tight. “I already told you, I’ll look online. There are databases—”
“Excellent. Then we can cross-reference what you find with these primary sources.” Zara pulled out her HellBerry, already opening some kind of note-taking app. “The new moon is in two weeks. We should start tonight.”
“Tonight?” Ramona’s voice came out higher than intended. “I just survived dinner with my parents. I just… I need a mental break.”
Zara gave her a long stare, then her expression softened slightly. “Tomorrow, then?”
The placating look on Zara’s face made a pang of guilt stab into Ramona’s chest. She grabbed her laptop from her bag.
It had been so long since she’d done any kind of research, interacted with any magical texts.
The donation-bin grimoire had been a curiosity, but this research?
This research felt heavy. Felt too close to what she’d been doing an entire lifetime ago.
She cleared her throat, clicking open her web browser.
“I’ll start looking some stuff up now. Just…
basic searches. To get a sense of what we’re working with. ”
Zara straightened her posture, just slightly, but didn’t say anything further than, “That would be helpful. Thank you.”
Ramona settled on the bed, laptop balanced on her knees, very deliberately not looking at the stacks of books Zara had arranged on the floor. She opened a browser and typed: new moon severance ritual.
The first few results were exactly what she’d expected — neo-pagan websites with vague instructions about “releasing what no longer serves you” and lots of purple prose about lunar energy. Nothing useful. She bookmarked them anyway.
She clicked on another link. This one was more promising — an academic database article about lunar magic in medieval grimoires, but it required a login: her old university credentials.
Which she no longer had.
Ramona closed the tab.
“Finding anything?” Zara asked. She’d settled into the squeaking desk chair with one of the grimoires, reading with focused intensity.
“Just getting oriented,” Ramona said. “It’s a process.”
She opened a new tab. Typed: demonic binding severance
A forum thread popped up. She clicked it before she could stop herself.
Has anyone successfully broken a demonic tether? Need advice ASAP.
The comments were a disaster. Half of them were obvious jokes. The other half were people insisting demons weren’t real. One person had written a three-paragraph response about energy work and chakra cleansing that made Ramona want to throw her laptop across the room.
She kept scrolling anyway.
Twenty minutes later, she realized she’d somehow ended up on an article about Mercury retrograde and whether it was a good time to start new projects.
“How’s the research going?” Zara asked, not looking up from her grimoire.
“Great. Very productive.” Ramona shifted her mouse and quickly closed the tab.
“Mmm.” Zara’s tone suggested she knew exactly what Ramona had been doing. “Find anything useful?”
“Lots of things. Very useful things.” Ramona opened a new tab with renewed determination. “I’ll compile my findings tomorrow.”
“Of course.”
They sat in silence for another ten minutes. Ramona stared at her screen, trying not to get distracted. But the words kept blurring together. Her head was starting to hurt.
“I think I’m done for tonight,” Ramona announced, closing her laptop. “My brain is fried.”
“Understandable.” Zara finally looked up. “We can start fresh tomorrow.”
“Definitely. Tomorrow.”
Ramona woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of pages turning.
She turned to find Zara at the desk, surrounded by even more books than yesterday.
The grimoires were arranged in neat stacks, sticky notes protruding from various pages.
Zara’s notebook was filled with dense handwriting in what looked to be three different languages, two of which Ramona didn’t recognize.
Zara had pushed her sleeves up to her elbows at some point — probably hours ago, given the meticulous organization spread across the desk.
The morning light caught on her forearms, illuminating the fine dark hair there, the elegant bones of her wrists as she turned another page, the faint glow of red under her skin.
She was wearing her reading glasses, the thin silver frames that made her look like a scholar.
A brilliant researcher. Someone who belonged in a university library at three in the morning, lost in primary sources and terrible coffee.
Someone devastatingly attractive.
Ramona’s mouth went dry.
It was unfair, really. Zara had no right to look that attractive, completely absorbed in medieval grimoires, one hand absently pushing her hair back from her face, the other making precise notes in margins.
The glasses had slipped down slightly on her nose.
She pushed them back up without looking away from the text, a gesture so… human.
“Good morning,” Zara said without looking up, though she had to have felt Ramona awaken through the tether. “Coffee’s fresh. I made enough for both of us.”
She turned then, finally meeting Ramona’s eyes over the rim of those disconcertingly attractive glasses, and held out a steaming mug.
Ramona’s brain short-circuited somewhere between the glasses and the forearms and the casual domesticity of Zara making her coffee at whatever terrible hour she’d woken up to do research.
“Thanks.” Ramona took the warm mug and eyed the research setup warily. “You’ve been busy.”
“I told you, demons don’t need much sleep.” Zara made another note. “I’ve been cross-referencing binding magic across different time periods. The medieval approaches are fascinating, but the contemporary texts have more detail on severance rituals specifically.”
“That’s… great.” Ramona sat down across from her, wrapping her hands around the warm mug. “Very thorough.”
“I found three different versions of the ritual we need. They have slight variations in the incantation, but the core components are consistent.” Zara pushed a piece of paper across the table. “I made a list. Could you help me understand this? Some of these phrases are ambiguous.”
Ramona glanced at the list. Her chest tightened immediately.
Verra vincarae disruptara…
Sicrae erata principarum…
Lybrae nostara veris…
These weren’t just random Latincane phrases. These were complex grammatical constructions that required understanding of magical theory, historical context, subjunctive mood, ablative absolutes…
“I think those are pretty straightforward,” Ramona said, pushing the paper back. “Just standard incantation structure.”
“But this one here”—Zara pointed—“switches to Old Vallone mid-phrase. Doesn’t that suggest something significant? Like what you were explaining about power markers?”
“Maybe. Hard to say without more context.”
“The context is in this grimoire.” Zara tapped one of the books. “Pages forty-seven through fifty-two. I marked the relevant sections.”
Ramona did not reach for the grimoire. “I’m sure you’ve got it covered. I bet your Old Vallone is excellent.”
“I’m fluent, but I don’t understand the magical significance of the code-switching.” Zara’s gaze was steady. “That’s your expertise, not mine.”
Ramona sipped her coffee, grateful for its warmth and for a moment to pause in thought before speaking. “I’ll look at it later. After I do some more online research.”
“You haven’t opened your laptop yet.”
“I just woke up.”
Zara returned to her reading. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Ramona sat back on her bed. She did open her laptop eventually, around eleven, but somehow she ended up reading an article about the different personality traits of air signs versus fire signs, and then a quiz about which celestial body she was most aligned with (Jupiter, apparently, which felt wrong), and then…
“Lunch?” Zara appeared in the doorway. “Felix is making sandwiches.”
“Sure.” Ramona closed her laptop quickly. “That sounds good.”
After lunch, Zara tried again. “I’ve been thinking about the timing. The new moon is on the twenty-eighth. But we need to gather the materials before then — moonstone dust, blessed salt, hawthorn branches.”
“Right. We should make a shopping list.”
“I started one.” Zara pulled out her notebook. “But I’m not sure where to source some of these items. The moonstone needs to be charged at a convergence point. Do you know where we could find that? I know you said most of the shops have closed down, but…”