“How do you even know I’ll be any good at this?” I ask.
Peregrine shrugs. “We don’t.” She slips a bell on a long piece of twine around my neck. “But there’s only one way to find out.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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13
My heart hammers as Peregrine and Chloe grab each other’s hands and then mine, so that we’re standing in a circle of three.
“I can feel it already,” Peregrine says, a dangerous gleam in her eye. “Power.”
Chloe turns to me. “Just relax, Eveny, we’ll do all the work. Clear your mind and think of this as a two-way street back and forth from the spirit world. It’ll just be an easy little ceremony.”
Like I saw them do in the cemetery, Peregrine and Chloe call out three times to Eloi Oke to open the gate. Chloe stomps her right foot and the room suddenly goes still. The air feels thick and heavy, as if we’re underwater. It’s hard to breathe for a moment, but when Chloe and Peregrine release my hands and begin to dance slowly, the air thins out again. Their feet move in a steady right-left-right, left-right-left sashay, with their hips swaying gracefully. I try to follow, and although I feel clunky, I’m sort of getting the hang of it.
As the three of us move in time to Peregrine’s voice, I feel a breeze picking up. The candles are snuffed out, and we’re plunged into near darkness, the only light coming from a lone scarf-draped lamp in the corner.
“Dill, fern, and five-finger grass, we draw your power,” Peregrine chants. “Spirits, please open Carrefour’s gates to the outside world Saturday night until the hour just before dawn.”
Chloe takes over the chanting. “Dandelion and mojo beans, sandalwood and lemon balm, we draw your power. Spirits, please make all of our LSU visitors forget they were here after the gate has closed again.” She pauses and adds, almost as an afterthought, “And coriander and cumin, I draw your power. Spirits, please keep Justin faithful.”
Peregrine snorts in the darkness but joins Chloe in reciting, “Spirits, open our gates. Spirits, open our gates. Spirits, open our gates. Mesi, zanset, Mesi, zanset. Mesi, zanset.”
They stop abruptly, and I’m about to tell them it isn’t working when I feel a rush of icy coldness wrap around me. Something solid pushes on my skull from the inside out, and my head throbs. When I try to pull away, I find that my hands are frozen, as if my brain is no longer firing impulses to my limbs. I begin to tell the girls to let me go, to reverse whatever they’ve done, but my mouth isn’t working either. I’m getting colder and colder until my entire body is prickling with icy pain. The room begins to look blurry, and I wonder fleetingly if I’m dying.
Suddenly, something moves inside me, and my fear turns to flat-out terror. It’s like there’s another being fighting for room in my body. Before I can do anything about it, I hear myself whisper in a thick Southern accent, “My killer is among you.”
I’m a puppet, a shell; someone else is moving my jaw, speaking through my mouth. I scream, but no sound comes out. Through my blurred vision, I see Peregrine and Chloe staring at me. Get out! I cry in my head to whatever’s inside me.
“Glory, who did it?” I hear Peregrine ask, but she sounds muffled and far away. “Who killed you? Was it Main de Lumière?”
I feel the spirit inside me gathering its strength to reply. “Yessssss,” the voice hisses.
“Did you see your killer?” I hear Peregrine demand, a desperate edge to her voice. “Is it someone we already trust?”
The only thing that comes out of my mouth is, “In your midst.”
The coldness begins to fade, and I can once again feel the tips of my fingers and toes. Eveny, says an urgent voice in my head just before the icy chill is gone. I recognize Glory’s drawl immediately. I didn’t see my killer, but it was someone who knew exactly where I’d be. It must have been a friend.
And then she’s gone, and I can move again. I jerk away from Chloe and Peregrine. “What the hell just happened?” I demand. My tongue still feels thick and heavy, but at least I have control of it.
“You were possessed,” Chloe whispers. Her face has gone pale, and she’s looking at me with wide eyes. “Glory must still be in the nether.”
“How remarkable,” Peregrine says.
Chloe clears her throat. “It’s not the possession itself that’s so unusual . . .”
“It’s that we’ve never seen it happen so easily before,” Peregrine says. “And we’ve never seen it happen uninvited like that.”