Involved. The word blazed in Hendricks’s mind, a match that had just been lit. “What is it?” she asked. “I’ll do it.”
“You can manually extract his spirit from the void.” This Ileana said with a bit of a shrug, as though it were the only logical next step. “This unites him with whatever is left here, in our world. But it can be a lot of work. You need to be committed to the process.”
“The void?” Portia asked, sniffing. “What void?”
“The other side. The beyond. The only way to summon a spirit that has already moved on is to perform a séance.” Ileana hopped off her stool and started walking around the store, gathering candles, bundles of sage, a few crystals. “You’ll need a circle. Three people, at least. Five is better.” She picked up a black stone, lifted it to her nose and then, frowning, set it down again. “And a conduit. That’s the most important part.”
“What’s a conduit?” Hendricks asked.
“A conduit is someone who exists on both planes.” Ileana paused now, and for the first time, she seemed unable to meet Hendricks’s eye. Instead, she just pulled her wild hair into a messy bun on the top of her head. Hendricks noticed that she had a Legend of Zelda tattoo on the nape of her neck. “Someone who exists in the physical world of the living as well as beyond, in the world of spirits.”
Hendricks felt a chill work its way through her body. “I don’t understand.”
“You and I exist here, in the living world. But Eddie may no longer be on this plane or, at least, not all of him is. That’s why you can’t see him, can’t speak to him. Because whatever he left behind isn’t strong enough to form contact. In order for the séance to work the way you want it to you need someone who can bridge that gap. Someone who is still alive but can throw their conscious into the void, into the world beyond.”
“How are we supposed to find someone like that?” Portia asked, blunt.
“There are a few mediums capable of throwing their consciousness into the void, but they’re difficult to find,” Ileana said. “Do you know anyone practiced in lucid dreaming or transcendental meditation?”
Hendricks and Portia both shook their heads.
“Well then.” Ileana opened her mouth and closed it again, appearing to turn something over in her head. After a moment she continued, “I heard about a girl who was just released from the hospital. Someone in a coma?”
Hendricks felt a touch of nerves. Beside her, Portia stiffened.
“What do you mean you heard about her?” Hendricks asked.
Ileana didn’t immediately answer the question.
“She’s your friend, right?” she asked, aiming her flat, black eyes at Hendricks. “The girl in the coma?”
“She’s my best friend,” Portia said. For the first time since they’d entered the shop, Portia didn’t sound freaked or weirded out. Her voice was edged in steel.
“People in comas naturally exist on both planes,” Ileana explained. She started rummaging around the shop. “Their bodies act as an anchor, pulling them back to the world of the living, while their spirits are able to cross over. It is a very unusual state, very valuable. If you’re really desperate to make contact—”
“No,” Hendricks said, shaking her head. At the same time, Portia said, “Are you kidding me? Raven needs oxygen to breathe. Her parents can’t even take her to the bathroom right now. We’re not using her as some kind of . . . of antennae.”
Ileana paused for a moment and looked at Portia. “Look, you feel so strongly about that, I won’t push you. You can try the séance without a conduit. It won’t be as powerful, though, so I suggest gathering a circle of seven. Seven is the most powerful number in all of magic.”
She handed Hendricks the things she’d been gathering, already placed in a neat black bag. Hendricks reached for it, but Ileana didn’t let go right away. She fixed her black eyes on Hendricks’s.
“Summoning a spirit has its risks,” she said, in a lower voice. “People change once they reach the other side. It’s magic that even I don’t fully understand. You may not actually contact the Eddie that you knew.”
The look Ileana gave Hendricks left her feeling cold all over. “What do you mean?”
“Just be sure that you’re willing to deal with . . . whatever comes back.”
Whatever, not whoever. Hendricks took the bag, feeling something twist deep in her gut.
“How much?” she asked.
Ileana shook her head. “No charge.” And then, with a small smile, she added, “I liked Eddie.”
* * *
• • •
Hendricks and Portia didn’t speak as they made their way back to Hendricks’s car. Hendricks got the feeling that Portia was avoiding her. She hung back a few steps, and she hadn’t looked up from her phone since they’d left the shop.
Hendricks hunched farther down in her coat, annoyed. Obviously, she had no intention of using Raven as a conduit, but something about the way Portia had said, “She’s my best friend,” left Hendricks feeling strange.
It wasn’t quite that she felt left out. It was more like she was the consolation prize, like Portia was only hanging out with her in the first place because Raven wasn’t an option.
For the most part, Hendricks thought jealousy was stupid, so she tried to brush it aside now. But she couldn’t help wondering if Portia would’ve agreed to use her as a conduit if Hendricks were the one who was unconscious. A rush of shame coursed through her. It was such a dumb thing to obsess over. They had bigger things to worry about just now.
Like the séance. Hendricks wanted to do it. She felt like she had to. She was done with flipping tarot cards and looking for secret meanings in the flame of Eddie’s lighter. Done with vague messages whispered into her ear and freaking fingers reaching out to touch her.
She wanted answers. Real ones.
But without a conduit Hendricks didn’t see how she was going to make it work. She didn’t have seven friends here. She had Portia and she had Connor, which barely met the three-person minimum Ileana had said they needed.
And that was assuming Connor even agreed to be part of a séance to help Hendricks get in touch with her ex.
Hendricks chewed on her lower lip. She had a feeling that wasn’t what he’d meant when he said they could still be friends.
“Hey, where are we doing this thing?” Portia still hadn’t looked up from her phone.
Hendricks opened the passenger door of her car and tossed the bag of supplies into the back seat. “What thing?”
“The séance or whatever. Your place?” Portia looked up. “I guess we could use mine. I have the rec room. Or is that not spooky enough?”
Hendricks motioned between the two of them. “We only have two people. Ileana said we needed seven.”
“No, she said we needed at least three, five is better.” Portia’s eyes were on her phone again. “I have four confirmed, but they need to know where to meet.”
Hendricks felt a lift of hope. Four?
“With you and me that’s six,” Portia continued. Then, frowning, she added, “Do you think it has to be odd numbers? Ileana said three, then five, then seven. Maybe six is bad for some reason?” She glanced back at Magik & Tarot. “Well, we should probably ask Ileana to help us, anyway. We don’t know what we’re doing. And that would bring us to seven.”
“How did you find four other people?”
“I just promised we’d bring a case of Rolling Rock.” Portia shrugged, like this was obvious. “Where there’s beer, there’s boys. So? Where should I send them?”
She had one thumb poised above her phone’s keypad, waiting.
Hendricks’s mouth felt suddenly dry. This wasn’t playing with tarot cards and crystals in her room, watching the flame of Eddie’s lighter for some sign that he might be listening.
This was a real séance. A real chance to spea
k to Eddie again, to get some answers. She needed to make it count.
“Hendricks? I need to know where,” Portia said again, impatient. Hendricks felt something cold move up her arms and pulled the sleeves of her jean jacket down over her hands. She realized, a moment later, that the chill had nothing to do with the cool air. There was only one place she could think of to do this thing.
Portia, frowning at her, seemed to suddenly understand. She lowered her phone and said, “Oh. Shit. Really?”
Hendricks was already nodding. “Tell them to meet us there in an hour.”
CHAPTER
7
Steele House didn’t look like Steele House anymore.
The last time Hendricks walked down this street was a few months ago. There had still been rubble left on the lot, blackened bricks and splintered wood and broken glass. But a lot had changed since then. As of tonight, the rubble had all been removed, the remains of the house leveled, the yard torn up, leaving flat, packed earth in its place. In the middle of this was a slab of freshly poured concrete foundation.
Her skin crawled as she stepped onto the property.
It was the foundation that caught Hendricks’s attention and made her breath stick in her throat. It looked like Steele House—or, at least, it looked like the outline of Steele House, which was more than Hendricks had expected to see when she got here. If she walked around the edges of the fresh concrete, she could point out where the living room would go, and the kitchen, and the staircase that would lead to the second floor.
Hendricks swallowed and looked up. She could see the Ruiz house through the spindly trees at the edge of the lot. The last time she’d run through those trees, it was to bang on Eddie’s back door and beg him to help her.
Hendricks felt her chest tighten and tears welled in her eyes.
Portia bumped her shoulder into Hendricks’s. “Hey, you cool?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Hendricks said. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision, but Portia didn’t seem to notice.
“Help me with these,” Portia said, unloading a few cases of beer from the back of Hendricks’s car.
They’d picked the beer up at an auto service and gas station off the highway leading into Drearford. Hendricks had never been there before, and there hadn’t been a sign hanging out front, but she’d felt a strange prick of familiarity the second she’d walked through the front door.
“Is this Connor’s dad’s shop?” she’d asked.
“Be cool,” Portia said, through a clenched smile.
Hendricks’s suspicions were confirmed when she saw a shorter, more muscled version of Connor standing behind the cash register. This must be his brother, Hendricks thought. He’d rolled his eyes when Portia walked in and said, “Make it quick. If my dad gets back before you’re done, you’re stuck drinking ginger ale.”
Portia had just winked at him and chirped, “Love you, too, Donnie.”
They’d gotten away with three cases of Rolling Rock before Donnie whistled at them, nodding at a tall, heavyset man approaching from the parking lot. Portia pulled a couple of twenties out of her wallet and slid them across the counter to him, whispering her thanks before tugging Hendricks out a side door.
Now Hendricks grabbed a case of beer and helped Portia haul it over to the site. The others were already there. There was Connor’s other older brother, Finn, who—like Donnie—was like a strangely proportioned version of Connor himself. But Finn was taller and ganglier than them both. He also had a mop of dark blond hair that flopped lazily over his eyes and a cruel twist to his smile that neither of the other brothers seemed to possess. He was playing hacky sack with a guy from the track team named Blake. Vi and Connor sat cross-legged a few feet away, talking about cars.
“Parts for European sports cars can be really hard to find,” Connor was saying. He paused to scratch the back of his head. “I don’t know . . . I think you’d be better off getting something secondhand, the maintenance on that one is going to be rough.”
“Yeah, but it’s a Jag,” Vi said. Hendricks hadn’t spent a ton of time with Vi in the past, and if she was being totally honest, she didn’t really understand Portia’s infatuation. Portia and Vi seemed like total opposites. Portia was always incredibly put together, almost glamorous. Vi, on the other hand, was small and . . . well, a little mousy. She had shoulder-length black hair and brownish-gold skin. She never wore makeup or jewelry, and she seemed to have made it her personal mission to dress in the exact same outfit every day. Black T-shirt, skinny jeans, chunky black loafers.
Granted, her T-shirts always fit perfectly. It was the type of fabric that seemed to hang in a very specific way, like it was expensive and hard to find. Hendricks made a mental note to ask Vi where she bought them.
“Hey, guys,” she said, and Vi and Connor stood up, dusting their pants off.
“Hey,” Vi said, not smiling. Hendricks wondered whether she really wanted to be here or if Portia had pulled the girlfriend card.
“Let me help with that,” Connor said, taking a case of beer from Hendricks.
“Do you honestly think she can’t handle that single case of beer on her own?” Vi asked.
Connor groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re too much of a feminist to accept help with a case of beer.” To Portia, he added, “Where do we want this?”
“Over there,” Portia said, and pointed across the foundation slab to a bit of earth that would’ve been part of Steele House’s backyard before everything had been leveled.
Hendricks realized, with a start, that it was the exact place where Eddie had died. A rush of emotions rose up inside her at once and she stood frozen, trying to sort them out.
I’m going to talk to him again, she thought. Eddie wasn’t gone, not yet. She was going to find him.
She followed Connor, Vi, and Portia across the foundation and over to the place where Eddie had died.
Portia set the case of beer she’d been carrying on the dirt. Finn and Blake dropped the hacky sack they were playing with and drifted over to join the circle.
Finn nodded at her but didn’t smile. Hendricks got the feeling that he didn’t like her very much, though she couldn’t figure out why.
“Beer!” Blake grabbed a can and popped it open, taking a long, deep swig. When he finished, he nodded at Hendricks and said, almost like an afterthought, “Hey, O’Malley.”
“My last name is Becker-O’Malley,” Hendricks said, smiling thinly. “It’s hyphenated.”
Blake shrugged and took another drink of beer. Watching him, Hendricks realized she didn’t know Blake all that well, either. They’d been at a few parties together, but they’d never really talked to each other. She knew he was on the track team with Connor and . . . yeah, that was all she knew about Blake. He was very tall, with good, thick black hair and dark skin. His teeth were perfect.
He was tall. It seemed important to mention that detail twice.
Portia clapped her hands together, exactly like she’d done to call the prom committee to order. “Are we all here?” she asked, scanning the gathered people. Her lips moved as she counted. “One short.”
“Ileana said she was going to head over as soon as she closed the store,” Hendricks reminded her.
“Right,” said Portia, nodding. “Well, I can get the rest of you caught up. Like I said in my text, we’re going to do a séance to try and get in touch with Eddie Ruiz.”
Hendricks pressed her lips together, bracing herself for the comments, the teasing. Before he’d died, Eddie had been an outcast in Drearford. Hendricks was well aware that none of the people currently gathered around her had actually liked him. Or, for that matter, known him at all.
Finn stuck his hands into his jacket pocket, and though the corner of his mouth curled, out loud all he said was “Cool.”
Blake burped.
Hendricks cut her eyes at P
ortia, wondering what she’d told them. Did they all know that she and Eddie were . . . whatever they were?
Portia seemed to intentionally avoid her gaze. “In order to make contact with the other side, we’re supposed to gather a circle of seven people, which we did. Yay us!” Portia clapped at them, grinning. “Okay, so, next step—”
A low rumble interrupted them. Hendricks turned and looked over her shoulder as a car pulled up to the curb. Hendricks didn’t know anything about cars, but this one was red and vintage-looking and . . . well, cool.
“Nice,” Vi murmured, and Connor nodded approvingly.
The engine cut, and Ileana climbed out. Next to the car, her bushy black hair and band T-shirt looked less crazy, and more like an intentional fashion statement. Witch chic.
“Oh good, she made it,” Portia announced. Hendricks suspected she heard a dip in her friend’s voice. Disappointment?
Portia glanced at Vi, who was still staring at Ileana’s car, a look of awe on her face.
Ileana didn’t bother introducing herself as she joined their circle. “We should get started before the energy shifts,” she said instead. She added, “I’m not crazy about the air right now. Does it feel heavy to you?”
This she directed at Hendricks, who shrugged, unsure of how to answer. Ileana seemed younger than she did at the shop, less like an otherworldly priestess and more like a very cool college chick, or possibly someone in a band.
“I’m not usually one for group projects, but seven is good,” Ileana continued. “Now participants are supposed to divide by gender. Can we have the guys move to that side, and the girls over here?”
Connor, Blake, and Finn shuffled to one side of the circle. Vi stayed where she was.
“Are you gender nonconforming?” Ileana asked.
Vi seemed taken aback by the bluntness of this question. “No,” she blurted. Then, “I mean, I don’t know. I just think gender is sort of stupid.”
Ileana said, “Yeah, well, luckily magic isn’t as close-minded as the rest of the world, and it holds the genderless in high esteem. Move to the head of the circle and I’ll stand opposite you, for balance.”
The Unleashed Page 6
