Back at her apartment, Miriam all but flew into her room and to the book. Though she couldn’t quite shake her distrust for the thing, she tried to page through it with fresh eyes. So, the psalm is wrong. Hard to imagine someone can botch that and still know what they’re talking about. She flipped to the summoning circle and forced herself to reconsider every line and glyph. And even assuming I wrote this out with the correct one, it’s still missing something. Once again her curiosity drew her back to Gremory’s page and it’s unusual script. This is here for a reason. But what does Gremory have to do with Poiel?

Something tingled at the back of her mind, but before she could get carried away, she hurried back into the apartment’s living room for the phone, book still in hand. She scanned the unfamiliar glyphs over and over until finally being connected to Naomi.

“Hello!” Naomi answered quickly, brightly. “Um, who is this?”

“Naomi! It’s Miriam.” Miriam had been so caught up that she’d forgotten for a moment Naomi’s strange retreat the last time they’d been together, and all that uncertainty it had caused her. She swallowed it back and barreled forward, as always. “Did you really send Mr. Fairchild to talk to me?”

“I...um, what?” Naomi cleared her throat. “What did he tell you?”

“He said you’re trying to convince me the book is for real. Do you know something I don’t?”

“N-No!” Naomi said quickly, sounding so flustered that Miriam immediately felt bad for putting her so squarely on the spot. “Not, it just seemed like such a shame. He’s the one who gave it to you, after all, he should know better than anyone.”

Miriam hummed thoughtfully. She was tempted to ask Naomi right then if she already knew that Darby was much more than he seemed, but she resisted. I already put her in danger by bringing her to Tripepi’s. What if Mr. Fairchild doesn’t take kindly to me spreading his secret? If he’s already cursed people… 

“He gave me his number,” Miriam said instead, testing. “I’m going to meet him tomorrow.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Naomi volunteered, and Miriam was surprised by how relieved she felt from the offer—it wasn’t as if brunch with Darby Fairchild was that much more dangerous than facing off against Boston’s leading mafia head, but her heart swelled all the same. 

“If you want,” said Miriam. “I’ll only be able to get off of work for so long, but there’s a café across the street from Quigley’s that’s close to my work. Can you meet us there at noon?”

“Of course! I know it.” Naomi hesitated a moment and then added, “I’m really glad you called.”

Miriam felt her cheeks redden. Still keyed up from the confrontation and the show, the affirmation bubbled in her stomach giddily. She immediately forgot any lingering disappointment for how their last meeting had ended. “Oh, um, well you’re a part of this too now, right? We’ll figure it out together.”

“Yes, I’m glad.” Miriam could so perfectly imagine that sweet smile of hers through the phone. “I’ll see you tomorrow then? Noon?”

“Yes! Noon. Until then...goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Miriam.”

Miriam hung up the phone and flopped back in her chair for a moment, catching her breath. She’d made the call and already she started to wonder if it was the right choice. She’s blessed by an angel, and he’s...he must be a demon. Is it wrong to bring them together? She grumbled and rubbed her face. No, wait, they already know each other! What if Naomi isn’t blessed, she’s...cursed? By him? But then why would he be eager to earn a favor from her? What is really going on here anyway?

Miriam vaulted to her feet and dragged the book along with her again back to her bedroom. First, Poiel and Gremory, she thought, reminding herself of the tiny spark of inspiration she’d had only moments ago. She tossed Sefer Poyel onto the bed and began rummaging through her many stacks of books. She seemed to remember a diagram from one of them that she had similarly discounted years ago for depending too much on coincidence and conjecture, and she was eager to restudy it with more forgiving eyes—if only she could remember which stuffy old European had written the thing.

She was coming to the bottom of her current stack when there came a heavy knock on her front door.

Miriam jumped—it sure sounded like the heavy fist of a policeman looking to fill a warrant, and without thinking she slid the book in her hand under the bed as if that was any help at all. As she straightened up, the knock came again, louder, but without anyone on the other side volunteering their name or business. All her girlish excitement evaporated as she realized who was probably behind the door, and with cold and manic hands she snatched Sefer Poyel off the bed and threw it out her bedroom window.

She closed the sil just as her door gave way with a sharp crack of the frame splintering. By the time she moved back into the apartment’s main room, heavy footsteps heralded the entrance of her intruders: Slate Street’s Abigail, followed by two very large men and Joey Tripepi himself.

Miriam stood frozen. All of Georgie’s and Naomi’s warnings rang back and forth between her ears but she could only stare, shocked, as the two men fanned out and began opening drawers and turning over sofa cushions. Abigail headed straight for her. For one terrified instant Miriam thought her life ought to be flashing before her eyes, but Abigail only offered a hard glare before shoving past her into the bedroom.

“Hey—” Miriam turned after, gulping at the sight of Abigail rifling through her stacks of personal items, but she had no hope of standing up to her. With a deep breath she struggled her composure into place and instead faced Joey. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Joey approached slowly. He was wearing an overcoat over his tweed suit from the club and somehow looked even more enormous in her and Odelia’s modest apartment. He scanned the room, and when his attention finally settled on Miriam herself, she got goosebumps.

“You know I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I just want what’s mine.”

It’s outside—he’s not going to find it. Miriam forced herself to keep her breath calm and steady, even though it was probably in her favor that she couldn’t keep the anxiety out of her face. He literally can’t prove you lied to him right now, so don’t give yourself away! “I don’t have it,” she said.

Joey took a step forward; involuntarily she retreated a step, her back hitting the doorframe to the bedroom. “You were in my home,” he said, his great, bushy eyebrows drawing in. “The book is gone. I know you have it.”

“I don’t have it,” Miriam insisted, and she gestured to the room behind her, where Abigail was still pawing through all her things. “You’re already tearing the place apart—see for yourself.” When Joey continued to stare back at her, unconvinced, she folded her arms. “Would I have been dumb enough to come to the theater tonight if I had stolen it from you? I’m not an idiot—I know who you are.”

“You know who I am,” Joey repeated, and Miriam’s courage shrank. Had Georgie been too right all along—had she completely misjudged him? Could any of her neighbors be counted on to call the cops if they heard anything, or even after the fact? Any more than misfits in an underground club hoping to glimpse a demon? 

Miriam squirmed, but before she could take a full breath to answer, Abigail returned from the bedroom with a book in hand: not a supposedly ancient Hebrew tome, but the old European mysticism book she had impulsively cast aside.

“This was under the bed,” Abigail sneered as she handed it to Joey, but her triumph over finding the wrong book only helped Miriam’s confidence. Both women looked to The Brick expectantly.

Joey’s disappointment was immediately clear, but he tugged his spectacles out of his coat anyway. He flipped through the pages, and Miriam glimpsed the diagram she had been looking for, but he didn’t pause or seem to notice her reaction to it. He then returned to the cover. “Dr. Hightower’s Goetia,” he said, and he offered the book to Miriam. “I have this one, too.”

Miriam cautiously accepted the book. “She was considered a hack in her time,” Miriam recalled aloud. “I’ve never cared for her work.” Though uncertain of whether she was playing the right card, she gambled for once on honesty. “But I remembered spotting the sigil of Gremory in that book you had, and Hightower was one of the first to suggest that choirs of angels could be matched to demonic legions, so I wondered if...maybe she wasn’t such an amateur after all.”

Joey frowned, and Abigail continued to glare at her spitefully as the other two men stopped their searching to watch. Miriam was starting to think she’d won him over until he said, “Miriam, it’s the summoning circle I want.”

“Well...of course.” Miriam flipped idly through the book some more to keep from having to meet his gaze. “It’s what I want, too. But if you’ve tried as many as I have, you should know it’s not that easy. It might not even be possible.”

She didn’t believe that, not really—she’d never believed that. Magic was real, that much was indisputable, which meant so were the creatures that gave it. And if they could give it to anyone, it might as well be her. She’d grown up believing that, and when she raised her eyes, she knew for certain that Joey could read as much off her face.

Joey took off his spectacles and asked, “Have you ever met a witch?”

“I...no,” Miriam admitted. She shrugged. “Not that I know of. Met one or two that might have been blessed, though.”

“I have,” said Joey, and Miriam straightened up immediately, as if her excitement canceled out the mortal danger somehow. Though his subordinates looked on in low-key amazement, he went on. “When the boss...the old boss...was still with us, he took me with him to New York for a meeting with some of our ‘peers.’” 

Miriam’s imagination lit up with the images from the newspaper she had read on her way to Darby’s signing. What had felt like ages ago was suddenly flashing before her eyes. “You’ve met the Manhattan witch that blew up Harlem?” she asked breathlessly.

“He’s from Brooklyn, actually,” Joey replied, and Miriam could barely contain herself. “We played poker. I didn’t know at the time that he was a witch, but yes, I’ve met Cheshire Bloom.”

Miriam had just enough presence of mind not to latch onto his arm, which was her first instinct. “And did he—”

“I didn’t see his magic; I only heard about the aftermath.” Joey’s expression darkened with a seriousness that quickly sobered Miriam’s very keen interest. “The man who held that meeting is dead,” he said. “So are most of the others that were there...including my boss. He was like a father to me.”

 Miriam’s heart sank at the word. Despite the circumstances, sympathy drew her stomach up tight against her ribs. “Things are changing in our world,” Joey carried on. “Bloom’s not the first and won’t be the last. I need to be able to protect my people.” Abigail took a step closer to him, radiating steely admiration. “I think that book can help me do that, so I’m only going to ask you one more time, Miss Vance.” He held her gaze with eyes like bear traps. “Where is it?”

Miriam gulped, the doorframe digging into her shoulder blade as she tried to lean further away from him. Maybe admitting at last that she’d stolen from her would punch her ticket, or maybe lying to him yet again would, but either way, she could only bring herself to reply, “I don’t have it.”

Joey waited for a long moment, staring, testing her. There was no chance that he would believe she meant it, but at last he took a step back, resigned. “Abigail,” he said, “give her some money for the door.”

Abigail glanced between the two of them, furious and flabbergasted. “But she did take it!”

“Please, Abby.” Joey nodded to her and then motioned to his two men, who made a passable effort to close the drawers they’d opened and nudge sofa cushions back into place. Though she scowled the whole time, Abigail tugged a twenty dollar bill out of a pocket of her blouse and shoved it at Miriam. The entire procession then moved toward the door; Miriam didn’t unwind just yet, and sure enough, Joey turned back just before leaving.

“If you’re doing this for your father, too, good luck,” he said. 

Miriam tensed but didn’t reply as Joey and his cohorts left. It took some time before she could even admit to herself that her hands were shaking, let alone push away from the door frame. “I’m not,” she said to the empty room, refusing to let that accusation settle too deeply on her shoulders. She shook herself and moved to the apartment’s only street-facing window. “Like hell I am.”

She watched Joey and his entourage get into their cars, and only after they had disappeared down the street did she dash downstairs and into the adjoining alley. Her heart was in her throat by then, but she didn’t have so much to fear after all: the Sefer Poyel had landed on the roof of a parked car in the alley. Though the cover was scuffed, the pages appeared to be intact. Miriam gave it only a quick lookover to make sure nothing had fallen loose and then clutched it to her chest as she hurried back to her apartment.

You had better be real, after everything I’ve gone through for you, she thought, digging her nails into the cover.