The yellowed paper was removed, and Bethan turned it over to reveal words written on its back cover.

They sat back in amazement.

‘You’re exceptional,’ he said, awestruck.

Bethan gave him an exasperated look, but he could tell there was a ghost of a smile trying to escape the tight lines her lips were snapped into.

‘Read it.’

Bethan leant forward, inspecting the loose page first. It was the same scrawl as the Antiphonus.

Kurai’s handwriting.

This book is my gasoline for the fire I aim to set upon my family. I need to be heard. But I write this passage in secret. For the safety of the Original Family. For I have told only them of this passage’s existence. But here I write. My fate now sealed for death.

The Devil is within my family. They are the cause of the wretched plague. As I told you before in my other entries. The Grimoire of the Kore Family was used in the fight against the Devil that torments them. They created creatures for their plight, but in the hands of my family, the power within it was used to concoct evil. The vampires, the creatures made by the Kore, could fight the Unseen’s army. And they were almost successful. Another set of humans were ready to use the successful spell when the betrayal began.

My father stole their family’s grimoire and took a willing human with him. For my father was a Blood Witch, and I a Green Witch. Together we used a spell from the grimoire one, which Evelyn Kore was still perfecting. It created something ghastly. Something that belonged to the Devil. The human now with vampiric qualities. Turned into a monstrous being. My father seemed to know what we’d done. I had not. He sent the human back to his home. And what the media called the Blood Plague truly began. The human bit another human. All humanity left them, whereas the Kores created vampires who had all their humanity.

I took it upon myself to steal the book. I returned it to their rightful owners.

They have hidden the grimoire in one of their private homes in the First Quarter of Malia. It was the safest with the family. My family cannot open it, even in their possession, unless they use the Amulet of Pele and the blood of Kore.

‘Hells,’ Bethan finished.

‘That means—’

‘It can’t be. We can’t be the Original Family, wouldn’t we know.’

Kellan could feel Bethan’s mind reeling, and he could do nothing to make it stop. The paper rustled; he reached for it as Bethan’s hand shook.

Bethan whispered something under her breath.

‘The grimoire is in the ancestral house. I don’t understand how it could be my family. We don’t have a house in the First Quarter.’

‘Maybe you did.’ He looked around the home.