Page 121 of Into the Dark, We Go

The barn door hung crooked, its lock blasted open in the state we’d left it.

Nick’s grip tightened around my arm as he led me to the stone altar, the same slab where they’d burned a symbol into my skin only two nights ago. His face stayed calm, but the stiff precision of every measured step betrayed the pressure mounting beneath it.

Movement stirred at the edge of the clearing, where forest shadows bled into open space. Figures emerged slowly, one by one, lighting torches until the clearing glowed with flickering orange light. There were six of them. As before, all but one wore their grotesque stag skull masks.

Only Robert stood unmasked. The coven leader faced us, flame light dancing in the lenses of his glasses.

Nick didn’t flinch. He stepped forward, placing himself squarely between me and them.

"A little dramatic, don’t you think?" he said, nodding toward the torches.

Robert shook his head. "Feels more genuine to me. Fire’s a purifier, after all."

"I doubt it helps."

"Why did you come here?"

"You know why, Robert." Nick’s tone stayed even.

Robert tilted his head, smiling faintly as he adjusted his glasses. "Nick Boyd," he intoned the name, as if tasting it carefully on his tongue. "You seem to know me right well. But nobody’s rightly sure who you are."

"I like my privacy," Nick replied, eyes locked on his.

That part was true. Nick was the only person I knew with no digital footprint. No social media. No trace.

Robert remained calm. The figures beside him didn’t move an inch.

"I reckon you’ve got the grimoire, seein’ as you’re here. But I gotta wonder, what makes you think you can use it?"

His gaze shifted, like something had just occurred to him. He looked around slowly.

"Where are the other two? The boy and the girl?"

The masked men turned, checking the tree line as if expecting an ambush. They moved slowly, deliberately, silent figures with horned, skull-like faces, like ghosts caught in ritual. I wondered if they were even real.

Nick cut in. "What did their sister want? Amanda. She came to you willingly, didn’t she? You must remember her wish. What did you promise her?"

Robert sighed and held a deliberate pause, glaring at Nick, as though trying to read his mind. When he spoke again, his voice carried new confidence.

"Freedom from it all. From the ghosts in her head, from the hurt, from... her family."

"And you delivered," Nick said, his tone empty.

Robert stepped forward. His people mirrored the motion, closing in.

But Nick didn’t flinch. Slowly, he reached into his coat and pulled out the grimoire.

Robert’s eyes homed in on the leather-bound book with instant recognition. He stiffened. His followers paused, too, instinctively waiting for his next move.

"So you do have it," Lucas’s father breathed. His voice wavered, then steadied. "What’ll it take to get it off your hands?"

Nick didn’t respond right away. With the same deliberate calm, he handed me the book, then reached into his pocket and drew out a small blowtorch, the kind you’d find in a hardware store.

He guided my hand, still holding the grimoire, and lit the torch with a loud whoosh.

I hadn’t known this was his plan. It took everything I had not to recoil from the flame. But I held steady.

"Tell me how to reverse it," Nick said. "Or I’ll burn it."