“Tell us everything,” Simon said, his eyes bright. I felt another rush of gratitude that the two of them were there.
“Well, there’s another type of ghost,” I began, and launched into the whole thing.
“I can’t believe this,” Lily said a little later. “Sabrina the teenage bitch and her mean-girl club are making bombs out of Civil War ghosts?”
“More or less,” I said. “Except Odessa’s not actually a witch. She’s using tattoo magic.”
I told them about the ink on Odessa’s fingers, and Lily’s face grew thoughtful. “That’s . . . actually kind of genius,” she said. “She wouldn’t be able to pull in her own magic the way we can, but if the other witches pull it into Odessa’s circle, she’d be able to manipulate it. That never occurred to me.”
I nodded. “That’s just it. Odessa is rich and entitled and manipulative, but she’s also smart. She’s spent her whole life hanging around soldiers and being physically outclassed by vampires. She thinks strategically.”
“And she’s using human tricks,” Simon pointed out. I looked at him. “The honey, the guns . . . YouTube? That’s not how the Old World handles problems. I wouldn’t have thought of any of that.”
“Me neither,” Lily admitted. “It wouldn’t even have occurred to me.”
“How do we stop her?” Simon asked.
“I have a whole bunch of questions about the magic she’s using, and I’m hoping you can help me with that,” I said carefully.
Lily and Simon exchanged one of their sibling expressions, where they seemed to telepathically decide who would speak and what they’d say. It always made me miss Sam. “And then we’re going to come with you when you go after her,” Lily said to me.
I’d been afraid of that. I had made a promise to Becca, and I didn’t trust Beau to bring Odessa to justice if I wasn’t there to keep an eye on him. But there was no reason for Simon and Lily to get involved any further.
I opened my mouth, but Lily cut me off. “Don’t even try it.”
“What?”
“Your whole ‘this isn’t your fight’ speech. I can see it on your face. Of course this is our fight.”
Beside her on the couch, Simon nodded his support. “You’d do the same for us,” he said. “Also? You look like shit, and we’re worried.”
“Lil, you’re kind of a big deal now,” I argued. “Aside from the safety issue, this could have political ramifications.”
She snorted. “Maven called me the night you got here and said if I needed to come help at any point, she would clear it politically. And if Si and I can’t handle ourselves against baby witches and one human, we don’t deserve to be in power anyway.”
“Does that go for you too?” I asked Simon.
“Nope.” He gave me a thin smile. “Maven didn’t ask me to come. Quinn did.”
I suddenly found it difficult to swallow past the lump in my throat. “It’s killing him that he’s not allowed to come,” Simon added.
It was kind of killing me too . . . hopefully not literally. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to find a quiet corner and call him, but there wasn’t time. I regarded my friends. They looked so determined, so full of life and good intentions. But they’d already lost so much. “Whenever you guys help me, you pay for it,” I said. “Does it really surprise you that I don’t want you to have to pay any more?”
Hazel Pellar’s ghost might as well have walked across the space between us, from the look on Lily’s face. “I’m going to let that go,” she said coldly, “because you’ve had a head injury and you took hallucinogens. But you need to stop acting like you’re the only person alive who gives a shit about the greater good. If those bottles go out in the world, people are going to die.”
Helplessly, I looked at Simon. “If it’s your fight, it’s our fight,” he said quietly. “That’s not going to change because we’re in a different state.”
There was a moment of awkward silence. I had to swallow hard and wipe my eyes quickly with the back of my uninjured hand. “Right then. Okay. Assuming we’re right about the location, we’ve got”—I checked my watch—“three hours before we absolutely have to leave, but I want to go as soon as possible in case Odessa moves up her timetable. What can you guys tell me about covens?”
They exchanged another one of their sibling looks. Simon was silently chosen to talk this time,