Page 27 of Postpartum Spells & Infant Hells

"Everyone keeps saying the same thing about her," I observed, catching Aidon's eye across the kitchen.

"Because everyone who has met her earned a reason to," Elena shared. "Because I’m curious, I’m coming to you. I might not have all of the steps memorized, but I’m going to guide you whether you like it or not. Put the good sheets on the bed and spare me the argument. We will find your method together. ¿Me entiendes?"

"I understand." My throat had tightened in a way I hadn't braced for. "Thank you, Elena."

"Don't thank me yet. Thank me when those three are old enough to be a proper nuisance." She clicked off before I could find anything to say after that.

I set the phone down and turned to Aidon, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth. "Do you actually believe there's no single book? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the method existing in pieces, because they had to have had the whole thing at some point just to do it in the first place." I dragged a hand through my hair, the thoughts spilling out faster than I could sort them. "I always knew Ava was hoarding the only real record."

Nana arched a single, unimpressed brow and tapped one manicured nail against the rim of her teacup. "Are you going to keep churning over everything we all just heard? Or are you going to dial Wilhelm?" she challenged, taking a slow sip. "I'm fairly certain that man can fill in the gap."

"Nana!" I recriminated, my cheeks going hot.

She waved me off without a shred of remorse, lifting her tea in a little toast. "Being a prude doesn't get the secrets out of a man, sweet girl. And it certainly never got anything else worth having out of one either."

Stella laughed while Nina and Jean-Marc took the babies into the living room. Mom took my phone and dialed Wilhelm to avoid more pontificating by Nana. Elena was right about him. I struggled to keep listening.

"Elena messaged a moment ago that you would be calling," he allowed, the words climbing up from somewhere deep. "She says you have decided to build a Wayfarer’s bridge. That is rare enough that I will give you what I have."

"I'll take anything you've got," I returned, snatching the pad off the island and waving Nina over with it. "Elena told me the method can only be found in pieces now and that Ava's sitting on the biggest one. What do you know?"

"I know about the anchoring." He said it as if he were setting something fragile on a table between us. "Margaret's record will give you the words and the price you must pay for saying them. But it will not tell you the order, and the order is everything. The death anchor must be set and sealed before the living end is ever opened. If you reverse them, if you take hold while the dead side still gapes, the gap pulls the price the moment you touch it. That will happen before the souls have anywhere to cross to. That is how Margaret nearly bled out."

My stomach dropped, and I gripped the counter. "Okay, the death anchor goes first. We need to lock it down tightly. And only then begin the life anchor," I repeated back, watching Nina scrawl it. "Ava never breathed a word of that to me."

"She would not. It is the part that frightens her most, because it is the part she got wrong as well." His breath rasped over the line. "One more thing, Phoebe, and then I will let you work. Seal the dead end first. Never let an untrained second anchor near the living end, because the gap takes from the weaker thread before the stronger. And do not build on a night when the veil is already thin. If you do, it will open faster than your god can close it."

"Understood," I told him in a voice rougher than I meant. "That's very helpful. Thank you, Wilhelm."

"Thank me by building it in the right order." The line clicked dead before I could promise him I would.

“Should we call Astrid?” I asked.

“Yep. We get a little more with each call,” Stella replied, gesturing for Mom to dial since she was still holding my phone.

Astrid picked up and dove right into the conversation as if she too had been expecting us when the phone rang. "You’re the Pleiades, right? Ava flagged your name, and Elena vouched for you. Now somebody tells me you've already got the order right, which means you've talked to Wilhelm," she rattled off, a hard wind howling raw behind her until a door slammed. "Good. That tells me you're not going to waste my afternoon being stupid. What did the German actually tell you?"

"He told me the death anchor has to be set and sealed before we ever open the living end," I returned, matching her clip, remembering how Elena told me you aimed Astrid and you got out of her way. "If we reverse it, the gap takes the full price the second I touch it. Elena is getting me Margaret's record on top of that. What can you tell me?"

Something scraped on her end. "Listen closely. I won’t say this twice. You don't choose where the bridge goes. You find where it wants to go. The veil only wears thin where the dead are already gathered, and they gather where children were lost. It’s never where grown people died. Old orphanages work well. A village that burned down, was drowned in a tsunami, or was crushed in an earthquake. If you try to build on top of grief surrounding adults, your road won't hold any weight at all."

I had Nina scrawling it down as fast as her hand would move. "We've got thin wards out on our back acreage that were here before the house was," Mom explained, making me glance at the fogged window and the tree line beyond it. "Hattie's grandmother picked this land for that very reason."

"That’s convenient, but you had better learn more before you cut a single line into the ground." Her voice came to a hard point. "Go walk that land. If there's a cold spot that just sits there and won't shift, no matter which way the wind comes through, that's your place. But if the cold drifts around on you, then the children are only passing over that ground, not held to it, and building there will hand them straight to the gap instead of carrying them across. Wilhelm gave you the order to do it in. I'm giving you the place to do it. Get either one of those wrong and you'll end up exactly where Margaret did. Believe me, Margaret got off easy compared to most of them."

"How bad off is Margaret? I’ve heard about her bleeding from the three of you now," I muttered.

"That's because the stakes don't get much higher. It’s important you understand that before you do this." A grim, tired, almost-laugh came down the line. "I'll come, and I'll clear out anything standing between your road and your fire. But don't go pinning your hopes on me for the warding, because I don't know it. There are only two women still living who know that. Ava, who's gone to ground. And the English one. Keep that English one well clear of my back while I'm under your roof." These people just assumed I’d be putting them up. I’d never experienced anything like them.

"You're talking about the Morrigan," I supplied, the name tasting like a warning.

"Yes, I am," Astrid acknowledged, and she was gone before I could squeeze in another question.

The doorbell cut through the kitchen, and every adult in the room flinched hard enough to rattle the chilled glasses. Stella and I hustled to the door, but no one was waiting when she opened the panel. There was only a flat parcel wrapped in oilcloth and tied off with a string that had gone green with age. My name scrawled across the front in a hand I'd never seen.

My magical senses extended out of me and scanned it automatically. When nothing alarming came back, I picked it up and carried it to the island. My stomach turned over before I'd worked the first knot loose.

"I think it's from Ava," I decided as the thread crumbled rather than untied. "Elena swore that if she meant for us to build, she'd send it without my asking. I think she just answered me."