Page 8 of Unholy Bond (The Corruption of Evelyn Adams #2)

They both watched as I knelt on the floor and drew the first glyph in chalk, a circle inside a triangle inside a diamond.

The penthouse had hosted more summoning rituals than birthday parties, but I still got a thrill from the way the old words rolled off my tongue.

I carved a slit in my palm and let the blood drip onto the center.

The glyphs pulsed, then flared an angry red.

Aziz and Levi joined hands on either side. We started the incantation, the syllables burning in my mouth. The air thickened, then folded inward. For a second, I saw the outline of the old passageway, the one we’d used a hundred times before. I reached for it and slammed into a wall of nothing.

The sigils snapped, the chalk line blackening as if struck by lightning. Levi swore and recoiled. Aziz howled, a deep, guttural sound, and punched the nearest wall, cracking the drywall and sending a shelf of books toppling to the floor.

I spat blood and wiped my mouth. “He’s blocking us.”

“Who?” Levi demanded.

“Lucifer,” I answered. “No one else could shut it down like that.”

Aziz glared at the ruined glyphs. “He knows. He’s scared.”

Levi gave a dry laugh. “Or he just wants us to dance. You ever think maybe we’re the entertainment?”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “We try again. Harder.”

The second attempt was messier. Aziz cut his own chest and let the blood drip down his abs, painting sigils directly on his skin. Levi stripped off his shirt and did the same, biting his lip until his mouth ran red. I drew a new glyph, this time in fire. We linked hands again and chanted.

The world buckled, and for a moment I tasted the sulfur sting of the first ring. I saw the black spires, the endless banks of fog, the rivers that glowed with the light of dying stars. I reached for it—

And it slipped away, the vision collapsing like a punctured lung. I fell backward, head cracking against the coffee table. The pain was real, and it cleared my thoughts.

Levi helped me up. “You okay?”

“No,” I said, and meant it.

Aziz paced again, this time faster. “He’s taunting us,” he said. “He wants us to come, but on his terms.”

Levi’s eyes glittered. “Then we cheat.”

I looked at him. “How?”

He grinned, all teeth. “There’s always a side door.”

Aziz stopped mid-stride. “You mean the Well?”

Levi nodded. “Nobody uses it because they always come out insane or dead. But we’re not nobody.”

I thought about it. The Well was a myth, even among our kind.

A hole in the world that led straight to the lowest circles, bypassing the bureaucracy and the wards.

But it took more than guts to get through.

It took a kind of madness, the willingness to let yourself be unmade and trust you’d come out the other side.

Like jumping into a black hole in space, and praying you ended up in a different galaxy rather than getting annihilated in the event horizon.

I’d done worse.

“Where?” I asked.

Levi glanced out the window. “Mount Auburn Cemetery. Midnight.”

For the first time all night, I smiled. Not the fake one, but the real thing.

“Lilith’s waiting,” I said. “Let’s not keep her.”

I took my case. Levi pocketed the key. Aziz didn’t speak. We moved.

Midnight pressed a bruise over Mount Auburn. The chapel roof was slick, cedar cold and black. I set the case down and opened the latches one-two-three. Angle, then power.

Levi’s jaw worked. “Tell me you brought a miracle.”

“Miracles are math with a better publicist.” I chalked a nine-point grid—three by three—tight squares. Silver pins went in at the corners until they sang. “We’re not forcing this gate tonight. We’re mapping it.”

Aziz scanned the grounds. Rain in his lashes. Fury under the skin. “You’re certain.”

“The Well predates the cemetery.” I pricked my thumb; a bead fell to center. The air went concave. “They paved a garden over a wound and called it holy.”

Wind stalled. Heat folded out of the world. Beneath us, the stone flexed—not in world, in idea. A hum came up through my bones, steady and low. In the static I caught her: apple blossom and ozone, sweetness sharpened to wire. Close. Not reachable. Not yet.

“Status,” Levi said, clipped.

“Open enough to trace. Not enough to eat us.” I unrolled lambskin, set a sliver of obsidian, matched the pins’ pulse, and spoke three syllables that cut clean. The sliver vanished without spectacle. Pressure etched a line along my palm—coordinates, if you’re fluent in cruelty.

Aziz: “Well?”

“Fifteen down, eight east, then a turn sane people don’t take.” I flexed numbness out of my fingers. “There’s gate work—old, industrial, insulted that we still exist. We won’t brute force it. We’ll need a key or a king’s temper.”

“We have a key,” Levi said. The word had edges.

“And a temper,” Aziz said. Calm like a drawn blade.

“They’ll taste something when we come,” Levi added.

“Not us,” I said. “I can foul the reading.”

Levi’s mouth thinned. “Do it.”

I breathed with the pins, shifted two degrees, bled a second mark. The roof buckled in theory and settled. The hum eased to a purr. The Well disliked restraint. Noted.

“What about her?” Levi asked. The name didn’t need saying.

“When we move, the calculus changes.” Iron on my tongue. “Lucifer talks in force. Lilith talks in want. If she draws on us to win, that isn’t theft. That’s strategy.”

Aziz held my gaze. “Then we make it easy.”

“Yes.” I packed the compass. Each click neat as stitches.

A tremor dusted grit from the eaves. The Well wanted us back. Good.

We crossed the roofline. The cemetery lay below in wet geometry. At the hatch, Aziz said, “Timing.”

“When the gate believes we’re inevitable,” I said. “Soon.”

Levi’s voice stayed low. “She’ll be small on purpose when we find her.”

“She isn’t small,” I said. “She’s patient.”

We dropped into the stairwell. The world remembered its temperature.

In the parking lane, under the oaks, the rain thinned to mist.

Aziz palmed the ring from his pocket and held it between us; rain ticked on the metal.

“We go as one,” he said. “We come back the same way,” I said.

“No splits. No heroics.” Levi’s eyes were knives.

“We don’t split her. We guard her.” “She’s ours,” I said.

“She doesn’t belong to him.” Aziz put the ring away.

The night stopped pretending to be gentle.

“You ever think we’re the wrong kind of monsters for her?” Levi asked. No smile.

“Constantly,” I said. “She doesn’t keep the wrong kind.”

Aziz exhaled, steady. “Then we’re done talking.”

“Agreed.” The grid sat solved behind my eyes. We had a path. We had a problem shaped like a door.

Back in the car, I checked the numbers again. They held.

Angle, then power. Three points define a plane. We are the plane. She is the fall.

The Well would learn the difference.