Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Marcus had left on Wednesday morning — some spiritual emergency that required his immediate attention — and wouldn’t be back until Friday evening. Which meant Ramona was running Mystic Moon solo for two days, and her days off shifted to Saturday and Sunday.
Normally, this would have filled her with low-grade dread. Two days of sole responsibility, of making decisions, of being the only person between the shop and complete chaos.
But Zara had volunteered to help.
“I don’t have anything else to do,” she’d said that morning over coffee, like it was obvious. “And I’ve already memorized your inventory system.”
“You memorized our inventory system?”
“It was poorly organized, and I optimized it.” Zara had taken a sip of coffee, completely unbothered. “You’ll notice the romance section is now alphabetized by subgenre and then by author.”
“When did you—”
“Last week. You were restocking the crystals.”
Now it was Thursday afternoon, and Ramona was behind the counter with her laptop open, supposedly doing work for Marcus but actually deep in research about convergence point cleansing.
Zara was efficiently helping customers with the kind of competence that suggested she’d been working retail for years instead of weeks.
“The amethyst or the rose quartz?” a customer was asking, holding up two crystals.
“What’s your intention?” Zara asked.
“Um. Clarity? Focus?”
“Amethyst. Rose quartz is better for emotional work.” Zara paused. “Though if you’re looking for focus specifically, fluorite would be more effective. We have some in the display case, including this gorgeous wand shape.”
The customer’s eyes lit up. “Oh, really?”
Five minutes later, she left with fluorite, a book on crystal meditation, and a manifestation journal. Zara rang her up with the efficiency of someone who’d spent three hundred years optimizing processes.
Ramona barely noticed. She was scrolling through yet another forum post about sacred site purification, growing increasingly frustrated.
To cleanse a convergence point, create a salt barrier around the perimeter and burn white sage while speaking words of intention…
Useless. She’d read a dozen variations of this same advice. Salt barriers. Sage smoke. Speaking intentions into the void. Nothing about demonic corruption specifically. Nothing about what happened when Hell magic infected a sacred space and started spreading like rot through living wood.
She opened another tab in Wandle, the search engine specifically for witches. She typed in: demonic corruption sacred sites medieval texts
More useless results. Academic papers about historical accounts of corruption, but no actual methodology. Forum posts talking about “negative energy” like it was something you could fix with good vibes and crystals.
“Any luck?” Zara appeared beside her, having dispatched the customer.
“No. Everything I’m finding is surface-level garbage.” Ramona gestured at her screen. “Look at this. ‘Cleanse the space with sage and positive intentions.’ That’s not going to fix demonic corruption. That’s not going to stop whatever’s happening at the convergence point.”
“What about the grimoires?” Zara nodded toward the back room, where Marcus kept his collection of “rare” magical texts that were mostly Victorian-era fakes.
“Already checked. Nothing useful.” Ramona pulled up her notes — a document she’d been compiling all morning between customers.
“I found three references to convergence point purification, but they’re all from the same source text that I can’t find.
And the modern interpretations are…” She scrolled through.
“Watered down. Simplified. Like someone took actual magical knowledge and dumbed it down for general consumption.”
“Which is exactly what Marcus does with this shop,” Zara observed.
“Yeah.” Ramona closed that tab, opened another. “What about Hell’s databases? You said you’d search?”
“I did. All morning, between helping customers and reorganizing the herb section.” Zara pulled out her HellBerry, scrolled through her notes. “There are references to corruption incidents. Procedures for containment. Guidelines for damage control.”
“But?”
“But the actual cleansing rituals are classified.” Zara’s expression was frustrated. “I don’t have clearance. Apparently, you need to be at least a Level 8 Administrator to access purification protocols, and I’m—” She stopped.
“You’re what?”
“Level 6. Was Level 6.” Zara’s voice went flat. “Before the demotion, which means I’ll probably go down to 5, or maybe even 4.”
Ramona slumped back in her chair. “So, we’re stuck. We know the convergence point is corrupted, we know it’s spreading, we have two weeks — maybe less — to fix it, and we have absolutely no idea how.”
The door chimed. Another customer. Zara moved to help them — an older woman looking for a book on moon phases — while Ramona stared at her useless research notes.
Everything she’d found referenced the same handful of original texts. And those texts were either lost, destroyed, or—
Or locked away in academic archives.
Ramona pulled up a new search in Wandle. Liber Purgationis Maleficae historical copies North America
Three results. Two on the other side of the country, and… of course. Thornwood Academy.
Of course.
Of course the definitive text on purification magic was in Thornwood’s restricted archives. The archives she couldn’t access anymore. The archives that required special authorization from inner circle coven or academy members.
Like her mother.
“Fuck,” Ramona muttered.
“Problem?” Zara had finished with the customer and was walking back toward the counter.
“I found something.” Ramona turned her laptop toward Zara. “It’s in a fifteenth-century grimoire called Liber Purgationis Maleficae. Multiple scholars cite it as the definitive source on demonic corruption cleansing.”
“Where is it?”
“Three known copies in North America. Vexford has one, but it’s damaged — missing the critical sections. Found another, but it’s on loan to a private collector until next year.” Ramona paused. “And Thornwood has the complete, intact copy.”
“That’s great news,” Zara said. “How do we get it?”
“It’s in the restricted archives.”
They looked at each other. Through the tether, Ramona felt Zara’s mind already working through possibilities, calculating options, running scenarios.
“We’ll figure something out,” Zara said finally.
“How? I can’t access those archives. I was expelled.”
She pulled out her HellBerry again, started typing. “I’m going to keep searching. There has to be something in Hell’s public databases about corruption protocols. Maybe not the classified rituals, but methodology, theory, something we can work with.”
“And I’ll keep looking for alternative texts,” Ramona said, turning back to her laptop. “Maybe there’s something else. A different grimoire, a modern interpretation that actually works, something.”
They worked in parallel for the next hour.
Customers came and went — Ramona handled most of them with efficient kindness, suggesting manifestation journals and pocket-size moon phase calendars.
Zara even stepped in to find a box of red candles from the back room.
For a moment, Ramona let herself fantasize that this was just a normal day without the black cloud of demonic corruption hanging over their heads.
Between customers, they both searched.
Ramona found more references to the Liber Purgationis Maleficae. All useless. All citing the same inaccessible text.
“This is pointless,” she said finally, closing her laptop with more force than necessary. “Every single source I find just leads back to that grimoire. And we can’t access it.”
“Not legally,” Zara corrected.
“Not ever.”
Zara was quiet for a moment. Then: “What if we did?”
“Did what?”
“Break into Thornwood. Get the grimoire. Or at least photograph the relevant sections.” Zara’s voice was calm, like she was suggesting they pick up groceries. “It’s not impossible.”
“I’d rather set myself on fire.”
Zara leveled her with a long look.
Ramona stared at her. “You’re not serious.”
“Very serious, Mortal.” Zara’s expression was focused. “We need that information. It exists. It’s accessible, just not to you specifically. So we find a way around that restriction.”
“We find another way. Any way that doesn’t involve Thornwood.”
“We have to do what’s necessary to fix a problem we created.” Zara pulled up a chair, sitting beside Ramona. “Look, we don’t have to decide anything right now. But we should at least consider it as an option. Talk to the others. See if Kashvi has any other leads. But if this is the only way—”
“No,” Ramona interrupted. She didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to imagine walking back into Thornwood, into the place that had expelled her, stealing from their archives like some kind of—
Like someone who was desperate enough to do whatever it took.
No. They were not there yet.
“Well,” Zara said. She stood, stretched. “Now. While we’re on the subject of things you should think about…” She gestured at Ramona’s laptop. “Pull up a new document.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to write something down.”
“What?”
“Everything you’d do if you had your own shop. Hypothetically. If money and credibility weren’t obstacles.”
“Zara—”
“Humor me. You’ve been researching convergence points all day. You need a break. And I’m curious.” Zara crossed her arms. “What would you do with a place like this if it were actually yours?”
Ramona looked at Mystic Moon — at the sanitized version of magic Marcus had created, at the customers who came in looking for aesthetic experiences instead of actual practice, at everything this place could be but wasn’t.
“I’d make it for witches,” she said quietly. “Actual witches. Not non-mages playing at magic.”
“What would that look like?”