“Will that be enough?” Sam asked.
“We’ll stand inside it, one on each point, and hope that’s enough,” Allison said. “I worry her connection to Sam might make her stronger, but that’s why we have the packets and are wearing white. Come here, Erielle.”
Hattie set the painting up on the bench, the painting facing out. Erielle traced her fingers over the brushstrokes made by her grandmother.
“Are you sure this is going to work? I mean, it has the symbols painted into it. Won’t that protect it from her?”
“That’s not how the symbols work,” Hattie said. Once she was satisfied with the placement of the painting, she turned the journal toward Erielle. “Here. Read this.”
“I can’t,” Erielle said automatically. “That’s why we needed to find the red book.”
“Erielle. Look at it,” Hattie urged. “Can you read it?”
Erielle was still in the middle of denying when her gaze fell to the page in her grandmother’s hand. And the words jumped out at her. She took a step back. She wanted to look at Hattie, but didn’t want to look away, to lose this connection.
“Why…” Erielle’s brain was spinning. “Why am I able to?”
“You had contact with Angeline last night,” Hattie said. “I wasn’t sure if you could but the fact that you can means it’s for you to do.”
Behind her, Sam placed a candle at each point of the star inside the pentacle. Then each of them took their place in the symbol, except Marie, who walked around lighting the candles and murmuring words Erielle didn’t understand.
“This seems dangerous,” Sam said, bundling his sheet closer to him.
Hattie flashed him a chiding look. “This is all dangerous. But leaving her here only makes her more powerful.”
The bookcase rumbled closed when Marie pulled the lever, sealing them in. Claustrophobia clawed at her throat. No one else knew they were here, in here. What if they got locked in?
“Don’t panic,” Allison said calmly, as if she’d done this dozens of times.
Had she? Had she even done it once? Panic flared in Erielle’s head. They were closed in here, and were about to call on forces she had no experience with.
Marie flicked off the fluorescent lights, so the only illumination was the candles at their feet. Erielle cast a panicked look at Sam, thinking to see her own emotions reflected in his face, but he was strangely calm.
Okay. Okay. She could take something from that.
“Erielle,” Hattie said. “It’s time. Read.”
She realized she’d closed the book, but when she lifted it with shaking hands, it fell open to the exact page. She wouldn’t have thought she’d be able to read the words—written in pencil on yellowed pages—in the candlelit room, but the pages nearly glowed, so the words jumped off. She saw them, clearly, almost three-dimensional, and she read them.
Suddenly she smelled Gigi’s lavender vanilla scent, heard her voice, saying the words with her. Erielle stumbled to a halt, realizing if she completed this, she’d never hear her grandmother again, never smell her.
Behind her, the pictures on the wall rattled, at first slightly, then more violently. The room turned icy. Every hair on Erielle’s body stood at attention.
“Erielle, you have to finish,” Marie’s voice said sharply. “She’s awake, and she’s angry.”
But Erielle couldn’t make herself speak the words, even as she watched Allison crouch to draw the lines that were smudging as Millicent’s tantrum grew.
“Hattie, the herbs,” Allison ordered, and Hattie turned to drop some herbs in the flame of the candle behind her, then walked to each point to repeat it.
“Erielle! Read!” Marie pleaded.
Erielle watched the flames shoot upward, heating the whole room, then looked over at Sam, whose face was pale above his draped sheet. But he was calm, and she clung to that.
“Sweetheart,” Gigi said, either in her head or next to her ear. “You have to do this. You have to read. You can. You’re strong and beautiful, just who I always thought you would be.”
Tears burned her eyes, and Erielle squeezed them shut. And when she opened them, her voice came out strong and pure, reciting the incantation in words she’d never heard before, echoing in the room. Across the room, the painting slammed face down on the workbench, like a trap falling shut.
And then everything was silent.
