Blaise
The compass pulled harder the further I drove from the coven.
It sat on the passenger seat, a small brass thing no bigger than my palm, its glass face fogged with the faint warmth of old magic. The needle didn't care about north. It swung and shivered with an insistence that had nothing to do with magnetic fields and everything to do with whatever force was tugging it toward Celeste, trembling at the end of its spindle like a hound straining at a leash. Every few miles it jerked sideways at an intersection, and I'd follow, without question, without thought, the way a drowning man follows a rope.
Three days.
Three days of dead ends and false turns and nights spent in the car with the heater ticking and the seat tipped back, staring at the roof and listening to my own pulse. Three
