Chapter 10

Two months after Briana Matthews disappears, Mariah visits Aunt Hazel and Aunt Lu’s house, where Alice Chen still lies asleep in the guest room. Alice does not deteriorate like an ordinary coma patient and breathes bright aether, leaving Mariah fearful that Alice is alive but changed in a dangerous or unknowable way. Mariah also worries about Bree’s fate in the Hunter’s custody and wonders whether Bree’s role as the chosen one has shortened her life.

Mariah finds Hazel in the kitchen surrounded by herbs, tinctures, poultices, mojo bags, and focal items. Hazel has spent weeks trying every herbalist and Magnifier method she knows to wake Alice, but nothing has worked. Hazel then reveals she has also been cleansing Lu’s Grand Dame talisman, the Heart, and lets Mariah hold it, reminding Mariah of Lu’s teachings about intuition as inherited blood knowledge.

Hazel starts to suggest that Mariah may be the one who can help Alice, despite Mariah insisting she is a Medium who works with the dead, not a healer. Before Hazel can explain, Valec arrives while taking a secretive phone call, and Emil Richardson soon pulls up angrily behind him. Emil has come for a mojo bag and blessing, but he immediately confronts Valec, accusing the cambion of bringing dangerous business near Hazel’s house during winter, when the veil between living and dead is thin.

The argument escalates as Emil claims Rootcrafter girls have gone missing: a Wyatt Shieldmaker, a Richardson Wayfinder around Mariah’s age, and a Wildcrafter from another state. Valec recognizes that the missing girls come from different branches and suspects the Hunter is either gaining power for something major or draining power on something even larger. Emil turns his suspicion on Valec, suggesting Valec could be responsible and then cruelly alluding to a time when Valec used to “indulge.”

Hazel furiously orders Emil off her property, declaring that his cruelty has poisoned a house meant for healing. After Emil leaves, Hazel comforts Valec with wordless affection. Mariah asks Valec what Emil meant, and Valec admits he has lived long enough to make serious mistakes and to spend a long time trying to make amends. When Mariah connects that to his work brokering deals at the Lounge, Valec says that after more than eighty years, it is only a start.