22

A copy of the police report?" Miles's mom's frustrated voice filled the kitchen as he came downstairs. "He shouldn't be liable anyway. A deer jumped in front of him—I know that's considered an unavoidable accident."

When she saw Miles hesitating in the doorway, she waved him over and pointed her spatula at a pan of scrambled eggs on the stove.

"Yes, I understand that," she said to the person on the phone as Miles loaded up a plate and snagged a piece of toast. "I don't care if he hit a fence or a tree, he only did that to avoid hitting the deer ."

He ate his breakfast, guilt making his appetite shrivel up. Clearly, the insurance company was giving her trouble. But, even if he'd been honest with her about what happened, it wasn't like they could say it'd been a ghost.

"Okay, yes. I'll be calling you back as soon as I can get a copy." She hung up with an annoyed look, all but tossing her phone back on the counter.

"Everything okay?" Miles asked tentatively.

Sarah waved him off. "The insurance company is being difficult. I'll handle it." She brought over the pan and scooped more eggs onto his plate despite his protests. "This really should have been dealt with already."

Miles ducked. "Sorry, I didn't think about it."

"Oh, no, not you!" She gave him a hug from behind. "I wish when we left you guys with your aunt, we could count on her to be involved."

"I didn't want to bother her."

"That's not the point." She set the pan back down on the stove with a clang . "You were in an accident, a serious accident, and she had no idea. She can't pull herself out of her room long enough to know what's going on. What if you'd been hurt or needed help, or you'd died?"

She was working herself up. "Mom, I'm seriously fine. If anything was wrong, I would have bothered Aunt Robin. And I'm sure she would have helped."

"Still not the point." But her expression softened. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to talk bad about her in front of you, I'm just… frustrated. I need to talk to her about all this and it's going to be tough."

"It's fine." Miles knew she was worried. Scarfing down his last bite of toast, he put his plate in the sink and grabbed his backpack from the floor. "I've gotta get going or I'll miss the bus."

Ugh, the bus. He hadn't ridden it in over a year.

"When you get home later, we can talk about you using Robin's car, or I can borrow hers and you can use mine…"

Getting a new car wasn't even on the table. Miles had a grand total of two hundred dollars of emergency cash in the bank and a jar of change in his bedroom. And with the holidays coming up, money would be tighter than usual for his parents.

"We'll figure it out. I'm not that worried about it." It was true. He wasn't worried about it because there was nothing to worry about. Blanche was destroyed, and he was going to have to get used to riding the bus again and bumming rides from Charlee. "See you later."

"Have a good day!"

The bus ride was quicker than he remembered. No one sat with him or tried to talk to him, though that could have been because he deliberately kept his headphones in and his gaze averted. It still smelled the same, too—rubber, stinky shoes, and window cleaner.

Some things never changed.

The bus dumped him at the front of the school. He was the last person off, the door closing squeakily behind him. He could see Gabriel sitting in the courtyard at their usual table.

Butterflies started moshing in his gut as he walked over. Were they going to talk about the kinda-handholding incident from yesterday? Was Gabriel mad at him for hanging up earlier after suggesting they destroy the grimoire?

To be fair, he felt bad about it. After he'd ended the call and locked the grimoire away in an iron box, he'd given himself a grand total of twenty minutes to be angry and frustrated and wallow in self-pity. He'd punched his pillow, sniffled a bit, and considered waking up Charlee. Once his twenty minutes were up, he made himself a mug of tea, pulled out Jocelyn's journal and gotten back to work.

"So…" Miles didn't give Gabriel a chance to talk first as he slid into the damp seat next to him, "I might have a plan, and a compromise, but—" He noticed a package on the table. "What's that?"

Gabriel's shoulders inched up towards his ears. "It's for you."

"For me?" Miles echoed in disbelief. "What for? Is this because I gave you the protection charms? Because I took those from my mom's stash—"

"Just open it." Gabriel pushed it towards him and crossed his arms, his expression unreadable.

It was flat and rectangular, wrapped in thick brown paper. It had been done neatly, the tape smooth and the paper wrinkle-free. Each crease was deliberate and precise.

Flustered, Miles peeled back the paper, trying to be gentle when it had obviously been wrapped so carefully. Underneath was a white cardboard box, and inside that, a new jacket.

It was nearly identical to his old one. This morning, he'd gone to put it on before he'd remembered, and the pang of sorrow snatched the air from his lungs. It was undeniably silly, mourning the loss of a coat, but he felt like he'd lost an old friend and a sense of security.

As he pulled this new coat out of the box, he could immediately tell it was nicer. The jean was thicker, sturdier, the sheepskin collar luxuriously soft under his fingers. The tag showed a brand he'd never heard of and that it was his size.

When had Gabriel even found time to go buy it?

"I had it overnight shipped so it arrived early this morning," Gabriel said, reading his mind—or perhaps it was a lucky guess. "I calculated your approximate size, so it should fit. I kept the receipt if it doesn't. For some reason, you preferred your jacket—despite how impractical it is in the cold and the rain—and it was partially my fault that it got destroyed, so it only seemed right that I—"

"Gabriel," Miles interrupted. His smile was wide and goofy, but he didn't try to hide it. "Thank you."

It had probably cost an obscene amount of money and under normal circumstances, he'd say he couldn't accept, that it was too much, but this was a gift from Gabriel.

"It's nothing." Gabriel wouldn't quite meet his eyes. "I'm sorry about… Blanche, too. She seemed like a reliable car."

"She was." Miles couldn't wait until the day talking about her didn't make him feel on the brink of tears. "At least she had a hell of a last ride."

"I suppose that's one way to describe it."

Miles unzipped his thin hoodie and stuffed it into his backpack, pulling the new jacket on. It fit perfectly, the sheepskin collar warm around his neck, the silver buttons slipping into their holes easily. Even the arms were long enough.

"Seriously, thank you." He didn't know what else to say.

Gabriel waved off his appreciation. "It wasn't intended to distract you—you said something about a plan?"

He could act as dismissive as he wanted. Miles now had irrefutable proof that Gabriel Hawthorne was capable of considerate, unexpected kindness.

Teasing him felt wrong, so Miles allowed the change of topic. "A plan and a compromise. I said last night—this morning, I mean—that I didn't want to jump to conclusions about Florence, but then I realized three things." He held up a finger. "Your death is the essential ingredient in a resurrection spell and she's the only dead person we know aside from Jocelyn. Definitely the only dead person we know who's down to sacrifice family members." Another finger up. "In my dream, Jocelyn mentioned the corruption being too strong. I was rereading her journal this morning and it said almost the exact same thing about Florence when she first found the grimoire. Another arrow towards her. And finally," he put his third finger up, "Florence has to be the only person who even knows about the grimoire. You said it yourself; no one had been in the house in years, and that thing was locked away. And no one, aside from you and me, has been in contact with it since we took it."

Gabriel seemed impressed, a rarity for him. "These are all fair points. It does seem safe to assume Florence is the killer. This is more evidence than we had on Jocelyn."

"Definitely. So, here's what I was thinking… we were going to do a ritual tonight to banish Jocelyn anyway. Let's switch to Florence instead. It's the same ingredients—all of which I can get from my parents' office—and we know where her body is. There's no way it can fail."

He'd already started writing down the steps for the banishing ritual. While he wasn't oozing confidence—however much he might try to convince Gabriel otherwise—it was straightforward enough. He'd seen his dad do it at least a dozen times.

"I need to speak to her," Gabriel said. "It could be my only chance of finding out what she did and if it can be reversed."

"I still think it would be stupid and risky." Gabriel opened his mouth to protest, but Miles talked over him. "So, here's the compromise—it wouldn't be hard to work in a summoning ritual tonight before we banish her. We'd already have the protection circles up and her ring, which we know she's attached to. We could summon her, ask our questions while she's contained, and if she's not going to answer or she's pissing me off too much, we banish her." Miles grinned, enjoying the thought more than he should. "Wham, bam, your killer is gone, the day is saved, and we'll still have the grimoire. What's in there is everything she had when she did the ritual, so if there's a way to break it, we'll find it."

Gabriel was quiet, considering his words.

"I can't say that I see any flaws with this plan," he admitted. "I'll agree to your compromise."

Miles bumped his shoulder. "You okay? Agreeable isn't really your thing."

"I can be perfectly agreeable. You just rarely make good suggestions."

"Say what you want," Miles teased, "but you never would have made it this far without me and my bad suggestions."

Gabriel didn't respond. A moment later, the bell rang. Miles stood, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and waited for Gabriel to do the same. "Ms. Padilla is going to kill me—I didn't finish my chapter summary or do the weekend reading. I swear she can always tell. Wait and see, I'll be the first person she calls on to answer a question."

They walked up the entrance stairs, shoulder to shoulder. "It's so painfully boring, you know? And it's not like US History is a cheerful topic. All it does is make me depressed and mortified to live here."

They made it through the front doors before Gabriel paused mid-step.

"What?"

"We don't… normally walk to class together."

Oh.

He was right—the ringing of the first period bell was usually when their unspoken rule of ignoring each other during classes kicked in. Gabriel would leave the table with his usual goodbye—which was to say nothing—and Miles would take the long way round so they didn't have to awkwardly not-walk together. He'd get to class after Gabriel and take whatever seat was farthest away and then begin the ever-difficult task of not looking at him.

Out of habit, Miles checked around, but no one was paying them any attention. He must not have noticed when the novelty of Gabriel Hawthorne joining Thistle High had worn off.

He shrugged. "I think the whole school's seen us talking by now. Besides, I'm tired of having to walk all the way around to the gym-side entrance. My shoes always get wet." He gestured with a tilt of his chin. "C'mon, I don't want to be late. Ms. Padilla's ruthless about marking tardies."

Gabriel joined him as they started down the crowded hallway. There was still a confused tilt to his eyebrows, but he didn't say anything else about it.

And when they got to class—Gabriel going straight to his usual desk—Miles sat at the one right next to him.