“Are we ready?” Hattie asked the others.
“I don’t know, are we?” Marie asked, motioning to the books peeking out of Hattie’s bag.
Hattie drew her lower lip between her teeth, hesitating only briefly before nodding. “I know what we need to do.”
“Why are you all wearing white?” Erielle asked as they walked up the sidewalk to the house.
“White reflects,” Allison said. “Black absorbs.”
“Should we change?” Erielle’s voice was a little high as she flipped a finger between her and Sam.
“If you have something. If not…” Allison reached to remove the wrap from her hair.
“Keep it,” Sam said, not wanting to be the reason Allison got possessed, or whatever the white was supposed to reflect.
Erielle opened the front door they had forgotten to lock when they bolted last night. This morning. Whenever. The group of them stood for a moment, before Erielle stepped inside first.
“We’re going to the workroom,” Hattie announced. “Safest place.”
“I’m—going to find something white,” Erielle said, resting her hand on the newel post, her gaze holding Sam’s.
His legs shook as he started toward the stairs to accompany her, but she put her hand out to stop him.
“I’ll be okay. I’ll be fast.”
He couldn’t be sure. She had the protection packet Allison had given her, and they hadn’t encountered Millicent during the day, at least as far as he knew. But the thought of her out of his sight set his nerves on edge.
“We need you, Sam,” Marie said, tucking her hand through the crook of his arm and drawing him toward the library. “There are some things you’ll need to get down for us. She’ll be fine.”
He looked over his shoulder, dread weighing in his chest as he watched Erielle go. But he let Marie guide him into the library.
Erielle returned in a white polo with the name of her restaurant stitched on the breast. Because she didn’t have anything big enough to fit Sam, she had bundled her bedsheet and carried it down in her arms.
He gave her a look when she shoved it at him, a small smile lifting the corner of his mouth, the first lightness she’d seen in him since he’d walked in on his mother at the church.
“Shall I just drape this over myself and make myself a ghost? Maybe as a disguise?” he asked, and she grinned in response.
“Just don’t trip over it when you reach up to get those candles on the top shelf,” Hattie chided, opening both books on the workbench. She selected a razor-tipped tool from the top shelf of the bench and bent over something on the desk.
Erielle stepped closer and realized it was the bayou painting that had taunted Erielle for the past few weeks.
Her stomach dipped. “What’s that doing in here?”
Hattie didn’t look up as she put one finger on a symbol in the book, and etched a rough copy onto the back of the painting. “We’re going to bind Millicent to it.”
“What?” Erielle’s voice echoed in the small space.
Hattie looked sideways at her. “We have to bind her to something. I thought this would be appropriate.”
“And then what? We burn it?”
Hattie snapped straight. “Absolutely not. Destroying it will set her free again. No. We can hide it in here, in the attic, but we have to keep it safe, or she’ll be loose again.”
“I’d write on there, in big bold letters,Do Not Destroy,” Sam said, sheet wrapped around him like he was going to trek through the desert. “But I thought you said we were in here because it’s safe. And yet you’re calling her in here to bind her?”
“It is safe,” Hattie murmured, turning back to the painting and etching another symbol. “Allison is making sure of that, as long as you don’t move from your spot.”
Allison was on her hands and knees, drawing symbols on the floor inside a pentacle. Erielle’s heart did a little skip of alarm when she realized what she was going to have to do. They were calling Millicent in here. With them.
