“And what’s she doing here, anyway? I don’t want her near my house.”
“Jezebel wants to help you.”
“Help me? Why didn’t she help me when my mom was still alive? She didn’t seem too willing to help then.”
“Trust me, this is unusual for her. I’ve known Jez a long time and she’s never done something out of the kindness of her heart. I’m thinking it’s guilt, but she’d never admit it.”
“So let her feel guilty.” I ball my hands into fists, nails digging into my palms. “I don’t want that … that tramp’s help.”
Bishop waves a hand for me to continue. “Go on, get it all out of your system.”
“She didn’t care about helping me when Mom was tied to a goddamn chair! When a tiger was ready to eat her for a snack! I don’t want her help!”
“Done?” he asks.
I let out a hard breath. “God, you’re so infuriating. Why did you come here? Just to make me feel worse?”
“I told you, I came here to help you test out your magic. They’ve fallen off the radar—Leo, the rest of the Priory—we don’t know where they are. They’ve got the Bible, and for whatever reason, they think you’re the only one who can break the spell on it. An attack could happen at any moment. You need to be prepared.” He grips me by the forearms. “If you don’t practice, if we don’t fight back, you’re just telling the Priory that you give up, and then your mom’s death means nothing. But if you do something, make something positive come out of this”—he raises a hand to stay my objection to the word “positive”—“you won’t just be telling the Priory that they can’t kill at will, that there are consequences to pay, you’ll be telling them you'll be prepared if they come for you, so they don’t stick a knife in your head next time.”
I exhale, my heart pounding hard and fast in my chest.
“I’m sorry.” Bishop relaxes his grip. “But it’s true. That could be you, if you don’t do something.”
I can feel it coming. I try to push the memory to a corner of my mind, but it’s too strong to be brushed aside.
Mom is slumped against the ropes that hold her taut to the chair. Thick crimson blood drips from the hilt of the knife buried in her head, down onto the frayed ropes and over her blue-veined skin.
Something like a scream crossed with a whimper slips out of me. Bishop pulls me against his chest and shushes me, pressing down my curls with his big hand as I cry into his shirt. He feels warm against my cheek and smells like laundry left out to dry in the sun. I stay there against him, breathing in his scent, until I catch my breath again. When I’ve quieted, he pushes back to look at me.
“Look, I have a deal. I can’t give you your mom, but there is something I can do.”
“What? What is it?”
“It’s unhealthy, and I really think you need to start moving on, and I’d never suggest this if you’d given me any other choice—”
“Say it, Bishop.”
He sighs. “You give me a day to practice magic, and I can let you hear her voice again. And not just on voice mail.”
A spark starts low in my stomach. “How?”
“Through a complicated scientific theory proposed by Stephen Hawking, called the—”
“Bishop,” I warn.
“Magic, obviously. How else?”
I tilt my head to the side, challenging him to crack another joke.
“It doesn’t always work,” he continues. “And even if it does, she won’t speak to you directly, just on playback. Like with the voice-mail message, except with real conversations she had.”
Except it won’t be the same one line, over and over. The spark in my stomach shoots up into my chest like a firework.
“But I have to warn you: you may hear things you don’t like. People say things when no one else is around, things they don’t want others to hear. Maybe it’s best to leave the memory of your mother alone—”
“I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure? Because—”
“I said I’ll do it.”
Bishop nods once. “Okay, but remember the other half of the deal. I do this for you, you give me one day—one full day—of magic.”
I pretend to mull it over a minute before saying, “It’s a deal.”
He doesn’t have to know I was already going to agree.
24
Finding a parking spot on Melrose is a nightmare on a good day. It’s about a bazillion times worse when a huge chunk of the street just past the shop is closed off for filming of the latest A-list, crash-bang blockbuster.
Hordes of paparazzi and squealing, fainting fans hoping for a glimpse of a muscled-up celebrity clog the sidewalk and the cordoned-off area surrounding a prop ambulance. I’m not sure whether I want to hate them all, or envy them for having nothing more important to do than watch some guy doing his job. And I don’t care that it’s hypocritical, and that weeks ago I’d have been right there with them, elbowing my way to the front of the crowd.