59 Sophie
Sophie
The wipers are frantic, but they’re doing no good. Sophie can barely see out the windshield.
She has to find Joey. She has to at least warn her that someone else has access to the magic and they could be dangerous.
Sophie didn’t say what she was thinking—even though Barbara was most likely thinking the same horrible thought—that whoever this person is must have hurt Quinn to get the magic in the first place. Quinn was the blood sacrifice.
She leans forward, the seat belt cutting into her neck.
Is she at Second or Third Street? She can’t tell with all this rain, and she doesn’t recognize this town like she used to.
She rolls down the passenger window, but that doesn’t help either.
She puts the car in park, unbuckles, and jumps out of the car, running toward the street sign.
Third. She has two more blocks to go then.
The rain is relentless, and a jolt of lightning followed closely by a crack of thunder forces her back into the car.
She creeps along until she passes Second. There are no other cars out in this weather, and she’s glad she doesn’t have to navigate other vehicles.
Without warning, someone appears in the glow of her headlights. She smashes her foot onto the brake, and the car skids to a stop. The figure looks up, as startled as she is. Sophie’s heart is thundering, but she unbuckles and swings open her door.
“Are you alright? I couldn’t see—Joey?”
“Soph.” She looks like a deer, wild-eyed and terrified.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. I just…”
A chill moves through Sophie. “Come on, I’m getting soaked.” She points to the car. It takes Joey a minute to understand, but then they both climb in.
The car is instantly warm and dry. The windshield wipers still frantically flip from side to side, keeping Sophie on edge, but it doesn’t occur to her to turn them off. “What are you doing out here?”
Joey is wet to the bone. Her hair is plastered to her face, and that look of terror hasn’t gone away. She dries her hands on the dashboard vent as Sophie cranks up the heat.
“I know who did it,” Joey says. She is looking out the front window, searching through the dark and the rain.
It’s like she thinks whoever it is will just appear in front of the car.
She’s manic, Sophie realizes. She’s in shock.
Something has happened. Sophie turns in her seat.
She’s about to say something, but Joey sticks out her fist. When she uncurls her fingers, there’s a ring there, gold and black and familiar.
And then suddenly, Sophie knows what she’s looking at.
She hasn’t seen this ring for fifteen years.
“You know who killed Quinn.”
Joey doesn’t respond, but her face says it all.
Inside Sophie’s mind, gritty, rusted screws turn into place. “Listen,” she says, carefully. “I think whoever killed her is going to kill again.”
Joey blinks at her.
“I know what bloodspell is. It’s a hidden spell, buried in the book. It’s a blood sacrifice. It’s a way to steal the magic. Whoever killed her did it to steal the magic that was in her blood.”
This takes a second to sink in, Sophie can see. Joey leans slowly back into her seat, thinking. She spins the ring around in her hand. “You said they’re going to kill again. Why?”
“The journal I showed you. Quinn’s journal. It was hidden with an illusion spell.”
She pulls out the journal and puts it in Joey’s lap so Joey can see for herself all the pages that are full now that were blank before.
“The illusion spell has faded. I think whoever killed Quinn has done the spell every five years since then to keep the magic in their blood and to keep the sacrifices hidden. In fifteen years, that’s three murders.
” She pauses and tightens her hands on the steering wheel.
There have been others. Of course, why did this not occur to her before?
It wasn’t just Quinn. Three. It seems impossible.
“Who were they?”
“I don’t know,” says Sophie. “I guess they’d have to be witches from here, probably from other generations. But listen, I think we need to focus on right now. Because whoever it is, they’re going to kill again. Very soon.”
Joey rifles through the pages again, and Sophie can see realization blossoming.
“The sweatshirt,” she says. “He used an illusion spell to hide that too. That’s why we don’t remember seeing those stab wounds.
It wasn’t the raincoat covering them. They weren’t there.
It’s why the police never said anything about stabbing as the cause of death.
He used an illusion spell to hide the real cause of death and make it look like an accident instead. ”
“It’s Robbie, isn’t it?” Sophie turns back to the right page in Quinn’s diary and points at the words there. Quinn + Robbie. “She wrote about him. She was infatuated with him. But then, I think he turned on her.”
Joey nods, and Sophie feels the theories stringing together. “I found a note today,” Joey says. She takes the note out of her pocket and hands it to Sophie. It’s soaking wet, but the permanent marker is clearly visible in its all-caps handwriting.
“I told him,” Sophie reads. “Who does she mean? Robbie?”
“Yes and no.” Joey pulls a DVD case out of her coat pocket and hands it over. It’s slick with rain, and Sophie wipes it on her jeans. “The note was attached to this.”
Joey waits a beat as Sophie looks, skimming the all-black cover for words.
The inside of the windows are sweating from their body heat.
She reads the title. The Last Truth. Beneath that, it says Starring…
“Hang on,” she says. “Starring Nicola Bianco and Robbie Kallinski?” She’s about to ask for clarification when she looks at the faces on the cover.
There he is. At least fifteen years younger, and it’s a bit grainy, but Sophie has watched his movies. She follows celebrity gossip. It’s him.
Sudden nails of fear rake down her spine. “Oh my god,” she says. “Elena.”
“Elena?”
“She’s with him now.”
Joey doesn’t bother to hide her alarm. “Where? Where are they?”
Sophie points ahead, though she can’t see a thing beyond the streaks of rain. The sweat on her spine becomes a deluge of terror.