Page 28 of Filthy Little Witch
-Contact the woman in mental space?
2. Repair the bond
-Research Constance - Delusional or mastermind? (Is there a difference?)
-Figure out how the warrior bonds were created
-Research her rituals - any validity to them? Anything to back them up?
3. Get out of liminal
-Mirror scrying - attempt to contact the coven - Estate or Tita’s house?
-Smoke divination - Ancestors, please help.
-Find evidence of someone getting out
“Hey,” came a gruff voice as Wes sat down in the seat opposite me. I shut the book, glanced up, and smiled at the sight of him biting into a sandwich.
“I’m glad your appetite is back,” I said. “You probably should have started with applesauce and soup.”
“At least it’s not grass tea,” he teased with a wink.
“And look at you now.” I gestured to his massive body and healthy pallor. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Hmm.” He took another bite of the sandwich and nodded to the book. “Find anything good?”
I shifted Signs of Blood and Soul closer and shrugged. “Maybe.”
I wasn’t quite ready to share with the rest of the class, not if I didn’t even know whether it was credible myself.
“The way I see it, we have three places to start.” I ran down the list with him, skipping over the part about Constance and her warriors. Once I had a firmer grasp of who she was and what may have happened to her, I would let him in on the book.
“I don’t think there’s much I can do about getting your magic back or contacting your sisters, but I can dive into the warrior bond.” He glanced at the stack of books on the end of the table, pulling one closer to him. “Any running theories on why it stopped working?”
“Having two warrior bonds is strange,” I said. “Most witches only get one. I know it’s divine in nature. It manifests from the ancestors, and Lilith has to drop into trance to receive revelation. But I don’t understand the mechanics behind it.” I ran my hands over my face, trying to recall anything I might have learned growing up. “It would be easy to say it’s magical and leave it at that. We don’t understand magic, and we likely never will. But in order to know what went wrong, we need to know how the bond works.”
“Do you think the liminal is blocking it somehow?” he asked as he flipped open the pages of Soul Bonds: Theory and Practice, his deep brown eyes scanning the pages.
I shrugged. “Could be. Or maybe it was something in the ritual. I was connected to you both when things went wrong.”
“Do you feel us at all now?”
I grabbed another book on demons and religious theology, placing it on top of Constance’s ramblings before flipping open to browse the pages. “No. Which should be a blessing, seeing as none of us wanted this in the first place. But now…”
He glanced up at me and frowned, and I focused on the way his full pink lips thinned into a tiny line. I thought about asking what was going on behind those pretty chestnut eyes, but decided against it. We all had our secrets. I didn’t need to pry.
We worked like that for several hours until the sunlight faded into darkness, and my back creaked from leaning over the desk for so long. I found him to be a companionable research partner, his energy soothing rather than distracting. At least he didn’t live to get on my nerves like his brother. Occasionally, he’d stop to write down a note or place a piece of paper in the pages, marking something to come back to. I appreciated his quiet presence after spending a week wondering if I was about to lose him and find myself trapped here alone with Atlas.
The demon book didn’t yield many exciting details, only things I already knew about Asmodeus or demons related to him. He was a demon of lust and, in some mythologies, had given birth to the seven deadly sins. A slice of Hell had been specifically carved out just for him because of how powerful and overwhelming his energy could be. It made me wonder if the Bloody Femmes had summoned a child of Asmodeus or the being himself.
And if it was the Granddaddy of things that go bump in the night, was our ritual even powerful enough to have trapped him? Could we have been doomed from the start?
After that, I moved on to some theoretical texts about liminal spaces and magical interference. It was so dry and scientific, I could hardly keep up. I didn’t have a background in physics or energetic abundance, and I feared I’d need ten PhDs to understand half of it. But if three Harlots from North Carolina had managed to create a liminal without this in-depth knowledge, I figured it probably wouldn’t help us get out of it, either.
Hours passed, and eventually, Atlas came to find us to announce he’d made dinner if we were hungry. Deciding to take a break, Wes and I joined him in the kitchen, where he gave us a plate of sliced ham steaks and roasted vegetables. My stomach grumbled on cue, the delicious scents reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning.
“Thanks, Atlas,” Wes said, sitting down at the breakfast table off to the side. “This smells amazing.”
