Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Ramona had imagined a jail cell. Cold metal bars, a hard bench, the kind of stark institutional space reserved for actual criminals.
Instead, she was sitting in the saddest office she’d ever seen.
It wasn’t even a proper security office.
Just a converted storage room with a desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet that looked older than the building itself.
Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The room smelled damp, and the wallpaper was peeling in one corner.
Someone had taped a motivational poster to the wall — a doodled cat hanging awkwardly from a branch with the caption Hang In There, Dumbass!
The guard who’d brought her in — his name tag read Stevens — sat at the desk doing paperwork. Actual paper paperwork. With a pen that kept skipping.
He’d taken her bag. Her phone. Eleanor’s key.
“Someone will be here soon,” he’d said. “Just… sit tight.”
That had been twenty minutes ago.
Ramona sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair and tried not to think about what “someone” meant. Campus administration? The Council? The police?
Through the tether, she felt Zara nearby. Not in the building — that would be too risky. But close. Probably somewhere in the shadows just outside the window, staying within the sixty-six-foot range, keeping the connection stable.
Waiting.
Guard Stevens sighed, crossed something out on his form, started over.
The door opened.
Ramona looked up, expecting… she didn’t know. Campus security supervisor? Dean of Students? The Magical Council themselves?
Instead, Eleanor Greenbriar walked in. Perfectly composed despite the midnight hour, wearing slacks and a cashmere cardigan like she’d been expecting this call. Her face was carefully expressionless.
Behind her: Iris.
Ramona’s stomach dropped. She’d have rather faced the Council.
Iris looked tired. Worried. Her usual confidence replaced with something that looked almost like guilt.
“Thank you for your help.” Eleanor’s eyes flicked down to Stevens’s badge.
“Who the fuck are you?” Stevens asked, and Ramona couldn’t help but admire his bold ignorance in that moment.
“Eleanor Greenbriar,” her mother said, her eyes going glassy with anger. “We’ll be taking my daughter home now.”
“Mrs. Greenbriar.” Guard Stevens stood immediately.
“Of course.” Eleanor’s voice was crisp. “I understand my daughter was found trespassing.”
“Yes, ma’am. In the visitor parking lot. Around midnight.” Stevens glanced at Ramona. “She had a glamour active. Professor Kane identified her and contacted us.”
“I see.” Eleanor still hadn’t looked directly at Ramona. “Has she said anything about why she was here?”
“No, ma’am. She invoked her right to remain silent.”
Ramona hadn’t. She’d just refused to answer questions. But close enough.
“Well.” Eleanor finally met Ramona’s eyes. Her expression was unreadable. “The Council has agreed to release her into my custody. Provided she agrees not to return to Thornwood property.”
“And if there’s another incident?” Stevens asked.
“There won’t be.” Eleanor’s voice left no room for argument. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Stevens looked between them. “All right. I’ll need her to sign some paperwork. And we’re keeping her bag as evidence—”
Ramona’s heart sank. The grimoires. Eleanor’s key. Maybe her phone.
“That won’t be necessary,” Eleanor said, watching as Stevens turned a shade of red, handing Ramona’s bag back to her. “We’ll be leaving immediately.”
Stevens hesitated, then nodded. He produced paperwork, his hands shaking.
Eleanor Greenbriar didn’t have to shift into a demonic form to scare people — she was a natural.
Ramona signed where indicated, agreeing not to return to Thornwood property, agreeing to appear before the Council if summoned, agreeing to a bunch of other things she didn’t bother reading.
“The Council will meet tomorrow to discuss consequences,” Stevens said. “They’ll contact you.”
Ramona nodded.
He led them out of the building, the three Greenbriar women walking stiff-backed and wordless toward Eleanor’s sleek SUV.
Oppressive silence filled the space as Ramona sat in the back seat, feeling Zara’s energy nearby. Had her shadows slipped into the car beside Ramona, or was she somewhere in the air as they drove? Ramona didn’t dare reach to pat the seat beside her, drawing attention.
Ramona stared at the back of her mother’s head. At her sister. At the two people who’d known — who’d known about the curse and said nothing.
“I can’t believe that self-righteous bitch called security,” Eleanor said. “I never did like her. Her, or that Kate woman. I never trusted them.”
Ramona rolled her eyes from the back seat.
“What were you thinking, Ramona?” Iris said, exasperated. She turned in her seat, and Ramona noticed she had bags under her eyes and her shirt was wrinkled.
Ramona clenched her jaw, crossing her arms. “You didn’t need to come and get me.”
Rationally, she knew she was being a bit of a brat, but knowing everything, knowing about the curse and the completely unnecessary disdain for her ineptitude… it was everything she could do not to scream.
She felt a pulse of calming energy through the tether and took a deep breath through her nose.
“You knew.” Ramona’s voice came out flat. “About the curse. You both knew my entire life and you never told me.”
Eleanor’s eyes caught hers in the rearview mirror. “It’s more complicated than—”
“It’s really not.” Ramona balled her hands into fists, her fingernails biting into her palms to keep from screaming. “I’ve spent twenty-seven years thinking I was broken. Thinking my magic was fundamentally wrong. Thinking I was a failure. And you knew the whole time that someone had cursed me.”
“We didn’t know at first,” Iris said quietly. “Not for years—”
“But you figured it out eventually,” Ramona snapped. “When? When did you figure it out?”
Iris’s shoulders slumped, and she leaned her elbow on the center console, rubbing at her eyes. “Ramona—”
“When, Iris?”
“I suspected when you were fourteen. Confirmed it when I was seventeen.” Iris’s voice was barely above a whisper. “When I started studying curse-breaking.”
“Fourteen.” Ramona felt like she couldn’t breathe. “I was fourteen and you knew and you just… what? Decided not to mention it?”
“I wanted to fix it first,” Iris said desperately. “I wanted to have a solution before I told you. I didn’t want to tell you something that devastating without being able to break it—”
“That wasn’t your choice to make.” Ramona’s voice rose. “This is my life. My magic! My entire sense of self. And you just let me keep thinking I was the problem?”
“We tried to help,” Eleanor interjected. “The extra tutoring, the private lessons—”
“That made me feel worse!” Ramona was shouting now. “Every ‘extra lesson’ was a reminder that I needed more help than everyone else. That I was slower, weaker, more likely to fail.”
The only sound was the gravel drive under the car tires as they drove up toward Greenbriar Manor. “We were only trying to—”
“Save it.”
“Ramona,” her mother scolded.
“No, you don’t get to pretend like you’re my family anymore. Family doesn’t keep secrets like this from one another,” Ramona said, waiting for the car to stop moving before unbuckling her seat belt.
Iris turned in her seat. “I’ve spent my life trying to—”
“You were trying to manage the symptoms without telling me about the disease.” Ramona’s hands were shaking. “Do you have any idea what that did to me? A lifetime of thinking I was fundamentally flawed?”
“We wanted to protect you,” Eleanor said.
“From what? The truth?”
Iris sighed. The three women got out of the car. Ramona shivered in the darkness, then felt a warmth at her back, like Zara’s presence was directly behind her.
“So you just let me suffer instead?” Ramona almost wanted to laugh. “That’s not protection. That’s—”
“It wasn’t supposed to take this long,” Iris cut in.
Her voice cracked. “I thought I’d figure it out in a few years.
Find the right ritual, break the curse, and then I could tell you.
But the curse was more complex than I expected.
The anchor tree is old, powerful. Every time I thought I’d found the answer, it didn’t work. ”
“So you became a curse-breaker for the guilt trip?” Ramona asked. “Dedicated your whole career to it so you could blame even more things on me?”
“To help you,” Iris said. “Everything I’ve done — the specialization, the research, becoming an expert in curse identification and removal — it was all to find a way to break what was done to you.”
“And in the meantime, you just watched me struggle. Watched me get expelled from Thornwood. Watched my marriage fall apart. Watched me lose everything—”
“I convinced the Council not to strip your magic,” Iris said desperately. “After the incident, they wanted to permanently bind you. I’m the one who argued for leniency. I’m the one who’s been protecting you—”
“Protecting me from the consequences of a curse you knew about.” Ramona’s voice broke on a yell. “You want credit for damage control when you should have told me the truth years ago?”
“Ramona, please—”
“Why did you do it?” The question came out quiet. Deadly. “Why did you curse me?”
Iris went white. “What?”
“We were children,” Ramona continued, biting every word. “Why did you do this to me?”
“I didn’t know what was happening,” Iris said. Her voice was shaking. “I was a child, too, and we had just fought about something, and I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Ramona stared at her sister. Trying to see the truth in her face.
Through the tether: Zara’s presence. Steady. Waiting.
“I’ve found the spell to break it,” Iris said suddenly. “To break the curse fully. I’ve been working on it for years. I finally finished the translation last month.”
Ramona paused. Half anticipation, half dread. “And?”