Mitchell's shop looked the same as Abigail remembered from a few weeks earlier. From the first time that she'd even known Mitchell existed—something that both Frieda and Arthur had kept from her for her entire life.
A few weeks? Had no more time than that passed? It felt like a lifetime ago when she'd first set foot in this building. Then, she'd only begun to experience the changes within and remained blissfully unaware of the turn her life was about to take.
Everything that had happened to her made a sick kind of sense now, especially after speaking with Haatim during the flight. He had no idea about how close he had come to the truth, brushing up against it without ever actually seeing it. Everything he'd told her was true, except for one crucial detail, and one that clicked into place as she remembered the most horrible moment of her life, strapped to the table while The Ninth Circle performed their horrible ritual upon her.
Haatim glanced at her, and then pushed open the door. He went inside, and she followed him into the dark storefront. Frieda talked from over near the register on the far side of the shop, but she stopped when they entered. All three of them—Dominick, Frieda, and Mitchell—turned to face her.
"Abi," Dominick said, rushing over and wrapping her up in a huge hug. "Thank God you're all right."
Frieda nodded at her, and then turned back to the stack of papers set out in front of them on the counter. She never had seemed one for shows of affection, and Abigail could appreciate that. Abigail didn't like them either.
She extricated herself from Dominick's hug and walked to the counter. There, she turned, instead, to the papers they stood looking at to try and find out what they discussed. It looked like the copied documents she had pulled from Arthur's home before driving out here and confronting Mitchell. Pictures lay scattered in as well.
She studied the documents with a trained eye, scanning for patterns the others might have missed. One picture, in particular, caught her attention. Grainy, it looked like a still from a security camera and showed a tall and thin gray monster with talons at the ends of its arms. It stood in a richly decorated hallway.
"What is that?"
"No clue," Dominick said. "I ran across one in Pennsylvania. Barely made it out with my head still attached."
"I believe it's a demon," Frieda said.
"Here?" Abigail asked.
"Nida must have summoned it."
"Holy hell," Haatim said breathlessly, looking at the picture. "That thing is what nightmares are made of. I can't believe it's real."
Abigail could hardly believe it either, but she realized that it could certainly prove possible. She thought back to the train and the fire demon that had nearly killed her, and all at once, knew better than to underestimate Nida.
"What are the rest of these?" she asked.
"Rituals," Frieda said. "And spells. Anything we might be able to use to help us locate Nida."
"Actually," Haatim said, setting down his little travel bag and stepping up next to Abigail. "That won't be necessary. I know where the demon went. And my sister."
Frieda and Dominick exchanged a glance. "What?"
"Raven's Peak," Haatim said. "Nida—the real Nida—reached out to me, and I managed to pinpoint her location."
Everyone fell silent.
Then Frieda said in gentle tones, "Haatim, Nida has gone."
"You said the same thing about Abigail. You gave up on her, too. Remember?"
Frieda didn't have a good response, looking instead at the papers in front of her.
"I know you all think that," Haatim said. "But when I went to Cambodia, I created a connection to her and the demon. It could have killed me but didn't, and now I know its location, or at least, where it plans on going."
"Do you think it just baited you?" Dominick asked, his suspicion evident on his face.
"Yes." Abigail nodded at Haatim and put her hand on his shoulder. "We're certain it set a trap, but that doesn't change anything. You … we still have to deal with her."
Frieda stared at her, and Abigail met her gaze. A moment passed in silence, neither of them blinking, and then Frieda nodded. Her expression grew solemn, but her eyes glistened with sadness.
"You think she told Haatim about this intentionally so that we would know where to go?" Dominick shook his head. "Why would she bother? She has everything she needs to complete the ritual."
"Not quite," Frieda said. "She still needs one thing."
"What?"
"Not important. We don't have a lot of time, and we need to get moving. Dominick, get the car ready and fill up the tank. We'll go to Arthur's house to gather up any weapons he might have stashed there. Haatim, you'll come with us to help bring it all back. Abigail and Mitchell, you will stay here and get prepared for the trip. We need to be on the road in a half-hour at the latest."
***
Abigail waited until Dominick and Haatim had left the shop to go fill up the car's gas tank before confronting Frieda. She cornered her in the back room and closed the door. Mitchell had gone out front, where he puttered around and moved things nervously, so she made sure to lock the door.
"You knew," she said, turning to face Frieda.
"I did," Frieda said, frowning and with a guilty look on her face. "I knew when you were a little girl, the day Arthur first rescued you."
"All of this … my entire life built up to this, didn't it?"
"I always feared that this day might come, just not something like this. Arthur interrupted the ritual, and since that moment, The Ninth Circle has wanted, desperately, to complete it. We wanted to make you strong, to prepare you, in case."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"What would I have to tell?" Frieda asked. "We got a longer reprieve than I expected, but things have happened faster than anticipated. I never imagined Aram would be the weak link that they would exploit to get to you, and I hadn't prepared for this."
"What happens now?"
"I don't know," Frieda said, sitting on the ugly red couch. "I thought Arthur would be here when this happened. I thought we would face it together. These events got set into motion back in Raven's Peak. Arthur gave his life to buy us a little bit of time, but now we have our backs up against the wall."
"Did the Council know the truth about me?"
Frieda shook her head. "They built their version of events in their minds, but if the Council or the Catholic Church had known the truth, then no way could Arthur or I have kept you safe."
"I'm the key."
"Yes. You are the vessel."
Abigail stayed silent for a long moment. Her mind worked through the implications with cold precision—the same tactical thinking that had kept her alive for weeks on her own, tracking Nida across Southeast Asia. She hadn't survived by being passive. She'd survived by making hard decisions faster than her enemies.
This was another hard decision.
"You should have killed me," she said. Not with self-pity. With the flat certainty of a soldier identifying a strategic weakness.
"Never." Frieda shook her head, and then walked over to Abigail and put a hand on her shoulder, gently touching her cheek. "I swore to Arthur that I would do everything in my power to keep you alive and safe, and I will honor that to my last moments."
"So many people have died."
"None of that happened because of you. You might make the end game for the cult, but our failure and the greed of the Council members gave them the tools to do any of this. We failed, not you."
"If the vessel doesn't exist, the ritual can't complete. That's not guilt talking, Frieda—it's tactics. Remove the keystone, and the arch falls."
"This might not have happened, but something else would have. The only difference would be that you would have died, and the world would have become a worse place for it. My choice, as well as Arthur's, was to keep you safe, no matter the personal cost, and I would make that choice again a million times over."
Abigail sighed. "And yet, here we are. Nida wants me. Only me."
"Yes."
"If I eliminate the vessel now, there remains no ritual for her to finish. It's the cleanest tactical option we have."
"If we stop her, then it all ends."
"We tried that. Every time we've tried stopping Nida directly, people die. The Council. Jun. Matt. I won't gamble more lives on a plan that keeps failing. But denying her the one thing she can't replace—that's a move she can't counter."
"We will stop her together."
"I can't risk her becoming successful with unleashing Surgat."
"I know," Frieda said. "I created a backup plan."
"What?"
Frieda slid two vials out of her pocket. "Poison. The deadliest strains on the planet for both humans as well as demons. Enough to kill you and send Surgat back to hell twenty times over."
Abigail took one of the vials and held it up to the dim light. The greenish-blue liquid looked thick and syrupy. A weapon. Her weapon. Not a surrender—a contingency that put the final decision in her hands rather than Nida's.
"Injected?" she asked.
Frieda nodded. "This will solve all of our problems if it comes to that. Not before. Arthur sacrificed too much to keep you safe to let you end this without a fight. Promise me that you won't use it unless it proves necessary."
Abigail weighed the vial in her palm. She had tracked Nida alone across three countries. She had fought Church assassins in Cambodia. She had made it back to her team under her own power. If it came down to it, she would make this call too—not because she was helpless, but because she refused to be the weapon that destroyed everything she loved.
"I promise," she lied.
Frieda handed her one of the vials. "I'll hang onto the other one, just in case."
Abigail took it gently.
Frieda turned to walk away, hesitated, and then glanced back. "I love you, Abigail," she said, stepping in and giving her a quick hug. Then she turned and rushed outside. Dominick and Haatim had returned, and Frieda went out to meet them and go to Arthur's home. They would be gone for a short while before preparing for the final showdown in Raven's Peak.
Abigail waited a few minutes until they'd left, and then found a syringe and drew the poison out of the vial. She'd run the calculations a dozen different ways since Cambodia. Every scenario where she walked into Raven's Peak alive ended with Surgat having a chance to complete the integration. Every scenario where she didn't ended with certainty.
She preferred certainty.
***
Abigail sat on Mitchell's couch, the syringe in her hand, running through her plan one final time. Not building courage—she'd made the decision already. She verified the logic: Surgat needed a living vessel. No vessel, no ritual. No ritual, no demon army. Clean. Decisive. The kind of tactical solution Arthur had taught her to find.
When Mitchell came into the back room, she tucked the syringe under her leg and leaned back, pretending to bandage her side where the assassin had stabbed her.
He had a look of sadness on his face while he surveyed her from the doorway. The same as Haatim, and she hated that she'd let both of them down. She had wanted to reach out to both of them once she got safe, but the risk had been too great. Every passing day made it harder to maintain control against Surgat's onslaught, and if she lost control, anyone nearby would pay the price. Surgat could track emotional connections—she'd learned that in Cambodia when a moment of weakness thinking about Haatim had nearly led assassins straight to her safehouse.
That was why she'd stayed silent. Not helplessness. Self-discipline. The hardest kind.
Abigail wrapped the clean bandage tight around her midsection. Should she even bother bandaging it at all anymore? It had healed at a prodigious rate and would barely leave a scar within just hours.
Only yesterday it had made for a long and bloody gash with torn internal organs, and yet today had become nothing more than a minor scar that seeped small amounts of blood.
She might have considered it a gift had she not known from whence the healing came. This proved a side effect of the horrible ritual that they had performed over her as a little girl. Something she had wanted to escape, but now, never would.
"How is it?" Mitchell paused in the doorway and stared at her, awaiting her permission to enter the room. "How does the pain feel?"
"Fine." Abigail nodded toward the beanbag chair opposite. "Almost healed. It probably won't even leave a scar."
"Hard to believe," he said, taking the offered seat. "Truly a miracle."
"Not the word I would use to describe it."
"Dominick told me you'd died."
"I might as well have done."
"You know I'll always be here for you, should you ever need anything."
She sighed, pulling her shirt down again. "Do we need to talk about this? I get it; everyone's upset with me, but I had my reasons for keeping it a secret."
"We all just care about you."
"I know. Is that what you came to say?"
He frowned. "No. I mean, yes, but that isn't all: you asked me to look into those texts before you left."
"Dominick told me what you found," she said. "About the Council and the cult. Frieda filled me in on the rest. I know, now, that we got founded out of The Ninth Circle and that the Church wants us hunted down because they think we betrayed them."
"A sordid history, to be sure. But that's not what I meant."
She scrunched up her nose. "Huh?"
"You asked me to look for ways to help you," he said. "To deal with your situation … condition. Whatever."
That wouldn't do her any good now. Her "condition" had become much worse than Mitchell could ever imagine, and she had no way of fixing it aside from injecting the poison into her veins.
"Did you find anything to help?" she asked, regardless.
"No."
She sighed. "I didn't expect you would. It's all right, though, because I've come to terms with—"
"But I found something else," Mitchell said. "I didn't find anything that can reverse or fix your situation, but I found something even more important."
"What?"
"I think I found a way to save Arthur."
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