Page 116 of Into the Dark, We Go

Nick didn’t rush. He first washed and dried his hands thoroughly, and only when they were spotless did he move to the book, approaching it as if it were a relic pulled from a tomb.

31

Chapter Thirty-One

September, 2020

All attention shiftedto the grimoire I’d carried with me this whole time. Nick pulled it closer, carefully flipping through its brittle pages. Without a word, we all deferred to him—he seemed to know more than the rest of us, or at least he acted like he did.

I didn’t know what I expected to happen. I hoped he’d find the sigil in the book with a note, "Reversal," and it’d all be done, easy as pressing buttons on a keyboard to undo a command.

My first instinct was to call Mathilda and ask about the grimoire—how to use it, what it meant. But Nick was firmly against it.

"We don’t even know if she can help," he said. "And we don’t have time for her bullshit."

I was slouched on the edge of the bed, head throbbing in my hands, watching him with a detached indifference. The book disgusted me. It had been from the moment we found it. It had been the root of all our misfortunes.My misfortunes.

Mitchell didn’t say it aloud, but I knew he still doubted the magic of the sigil. I didn’t. I felt it—seeping into my bones, coiling tighter around me with every hour.

Whatever Mitchell thought, he kept it to himself and went along with Nick’s search. There were dozens of missing people, and he didn’t want me to become one of them. If I hadn’t been the one mutilated by these people who had been sacrificing others for decades, I wouldn’t believe it either. But here we were, and there was the book.

I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that Lucas had it the entire time.

He was superstitious, sure, but so were most people. Everyone had their little beliefs—11:11 on the clock, manifestation nonsense, and all that. It didn’t mean any of it was real. But this—this was.

Now that I knew Lucas was gone, I didn’t want to hold onto the anger. But being blamed for the mess he’d created and knowing I might be next made my blood boil. He had never trusted me. Had lied to my face. Gaslighted me about where he’d gone on those strange trips. I had thought he might be cheating. For all I knew, he still could’ve been—like Mitchell said,cheaters, thieves, and liars. That had been our relationship in a nutshell.

It was still a mystery why he stole the grimoire from his father and how he intended to use it.

Eventually, Nick withdrew to the second room we’d rented, unable to focus with all the questions and scattered ideas flying around.

"Isn’t it weird that Robert never came for you?" Mitch asked.

I raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"If he thought Lucas gave you the grimoire, why hasn’t he come for you?"

I shrugged, exhaustion heavy on my bones. "I don’t know, Mitch."

I was so tired of people asking questions, rhetorical or not. I didn’t know why Robert hadn’t come for the grimoire if he wanted it back so badly. I didn’t even know what the grimoire could do, or whether it could do anything at all.

But apparently, Robert believed in the power of it so completely that he hadn’t hesitated to kill his own son for it. That explained the grave. They’d known Lucas wasn’t coming back. And yet Robert had played the grieving father so convincingly.

Nick’s mother, on the other hand, had once again been erased from the equation. Her murder remained a big question mark.

I’d always wondered how many versions of ourselves we carried. I only seemed to have one. Maybe that was my mistake. I was exposed, unprotected. I showed people every vulnerability from the start.

My father had been different. He had a face for work, one for my mother, another for me, and apparently one more for his mistress.

Did Mitch and June have sides of themselves I’d never seen? Did Nick?

The world might’ve been a better place if we were all just honest. If we couldn’t lie. If we didn’t know how.

June moved closer, her weight shifting the mattress.

"Do you think… if Nick figures it out, he could bring Amanda and Lucas back too?"

I turned my aching eyes toward her. "I. Don’t. Fucking. Know."