I opened my purse and Eve clamped it shut.
“Maggie. Wait. It…it might have been my fault. The reason he assaulted me.”
“We were trying to hustle him, I know. But we didn’t take his money. And that still didn’t give that asshole any right to attack you. No man has that––”
Eve cut me off. “No, Maggie. That perfume we made a few weeks ago, the one I was experimenting with. Remember? I put some on, to try it out. I put a lot of it on, in fact.” She pressed her lips together, wringing her hands. “I thought we’d be going to see Paul afterwards. He’s been so distant lately. I heard him tell Shane that he would be going to Seattle soon. I thought…Oh, God, I thought…”
“You thought you’d use your perfume to make sure that didn’t happen.”
Eve buried her face in her hands again and sobbed. “Oh, God, Maggie. I’m so embarrassed.”
“And sorry,” I said, looking at the guy by our feet. “I hope to hell you’re sorry.”
“Yes.”
She wiped away her tears, streaking mascara across her cheeks.
“You could have told me,” I said, shock replaced by a bolt of anger. “You could have fucking told me that you had Man Attack all over you, before we went out. What the hell, Eve?”
“I forgot, okay? I just wanted us to get the money and go see Paul. That was all that was on my mind. And how can I tell you anything? You make fun of everything I do. You think you would have let that one slide? That I’m so insecure about losing my boyfriend that I have to resort to magick? Could you have held your tongue for that?”
I stared at Eve. She stared back.
The corpse lay quietly between us. It was madness, every bit of it.
“Okay,” I said, wiping my forehead. “We are in this together, right?” I held up the finger that I had lanced during Mother’s ritual. We were bound together as sisters and as witches. We had each other’s backs.
“Let’s get him in his car. I’ll drive and you follow. We’ll head back to Sister House and wake Merry and Ruth Anne. They’re smart. One of them will know what to do.”
Eve pressed her lips together, bobbing her head in agreement.
I reached into his jeans pockets, trying not to look at him as I remembered the corpse in the church whose eyes snapped open. But his were already open. I resisted every instinct I had to run through the parking lot, screaming. Finally, I found a set of keys. I clicked the little button on the keychain and the lights on a silver Cadillac went off and on. I drove it to where Eve waited, leaving the passenger door open and the engine running.
“You shouldn't be lifting,” Eve said.
“I shouldn't be doing a lot of things,” I said. “You take his legs. I’ll get his shoulders.”
He didn’t move the entire drive to Sister House.
Not that he should have. He was, after all, dead.
Still, I kept one eye on the road, and the other on my passenger’s stiffening body buckled in beside me, half expecting him to pop up at any time and say, “Hey, that was a great nap! Can you drive me back to my hotel?"
But he didn’t.
He sat still as a mannequin, his eyes staring straight ahead, his mouth slightly open, the rivulet of blood drying on his cheek. There was absolutely no sign that he was alive, or had ever been alive.
His absence of life was even more obvious as I exhaled the cold night air, steam coming from my mouth like a locomotive, while my passenger sat breathless.
All my life, I’d feared death, been paralyzed by the thought that someday I, and everyone I knew, would wind up six feet underground, as if we had never existed at all. Yet, here I was, driving calmly down the deserted back roads of Dark Root like it was any other night, with the man I killed beside me.
I still couldn't wrap my brain around all that had happened, but on one thing I was clear: I was going to do something about it. For every spell there was an anti-spell. For every power, an opposing power. If I had the deathtouch, then someone out there had the lifetouch.
And if anyone possessed such a power, it was my sister Merry.
I pulled into the driveway, surprised to see the light in the nursery still on. Ruth Anne must be awake, pecking away at her keyboard or reading a book.
The thought comforted me. If Merry did have the lifetouch, Ruth Anne might know how to activate it.
Eve pulled in behind me. Without saying a word she scrambled out of the car, her face glistening under the pale moon.
“Here,” she said, sheepishly handing over Mother’s spell book. It had been in my room and she must have pilfered it. “I’ve been studying spells.”
Love spells, no doubt.
I took the book and texted Ruth and Merry. “Come outside. Now. Don’t wake June Bug or Mother.”
The curtains flickered in the nursery and the light went off. A minute later Ruth Anne and Merry joined us on the porch steps, their faces heavy with worry.
“What’s wrong?” Merry asked, putting a hand to her chest. “Is it Aunt Dora?”
“No.” I shook my head, trying to figure out how to tell them what had happened. The horror of the event began to creep up again, and I pushed it down.
There’d be plenty of time to process it all. I had to keep my head, at least for now.
Luckily, I didn’t have to be the one to tell the story. Eve told them, in fits of hysteria intermixed with woeful sobs, about how we had ignored Merry’s warning and were out hustling pool, and about the man who had come on too strongly.
“It was my fault,” she said, gasping for breath. “I wore my perfume. Maggie was trying to save me.”
“What do you mean your fault?” Merry asked.
I pointed to the car, and the passenger inside that neither Ruth Anne nor Merry had noticed.
“I have father’s deathtouch,” I said simply, showing them my offending hands. “I killed him.”
“What?” Merry bounded down the steps towards the vehicle with Ruth Anne following. “Maggie, what did you do?”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
Seeing the man through Merry’s eyes, I envisioned him––not as the creepy stranger who wouldn’t leave Eve alone––but as a person with family and friends who were probably waiting for him somewhere.
“I didn’t mean to,” I repeated, as Merry cradled the man’s head in her arms.
We wept. We all wept.
Except for Ruth Anne, who stared curiously at the moon.
“Can you do anything Merry? Anything at all?”
Merry had been working over the man for the last twenty minutes, the color draining from her small frame as she tried to pump her energy into his.
At last, worn and tired, she withdrew from the car.
“It’s not enough,” she said, falling back against the side of his Cadillac. “If you had gotten him here when he was almost dead, maybe. But he’s dead, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
She held out something to show us. “I got his driver’s license. His name was Leo. Leonard actually, but I think he went by Leo. He was forty-three years old and an organ donor.”
“We’re going to jail,” Eve cried. “And then to hell.”
“Did you try your wand?” I asked, desperately. “Maybe if you use your wand…”
Merry shook her head. “I tried everything.”
Eve snatched the license away from Merry, reading his stats aloud repeatedly.
“We’re not going to jail or hell, and this man is not staying dead!” I turned to my sisters, fixing them with a resolved stare. “If I have to violate every law in The Universe, we are fixing this. We were given powers for a reason. There has to be something we can do.”
My voice cracked as I spoke, panic settling over me. I had counted on Merry being able to fix this. I hadn't allowed myself to think about what would happen if she couldn’t.
“You heard Merry,” Eve said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“No.” Ruth Anne startled us. She had been quiet unt
il now. “If you’re really willing to violate every law of The Universe, there may be something we can do. But I’m not sure it will work, and I’m not sure we are up for it.”
Ruth Anne regarded me blankly, academically, sending a chill down my spine.
“Anything,” I said. “I will do anything.”
“You might have to.”
Seventeen
BACK TO GOOD
“In the days when it was The Council of Thirteen, I overheard a discussion––an argument really. Dark Magick, Miss Sasha called it, though some didn’t agree.”
Ruth Anne took a deep breath, sending soft plumes of smoke into the night as we gathered around her.
“There were certain spells our mother didn’t believe anyone should have access to. Claimed they were unnatural, and went against everything Dark Root stood for. Banishment. Summoning…”
“Necromancy,” I said, remembering my conversation with Aunt Dora.
“You mean?” Eve asked.
“Yes. Bringing back the dead,” Merry confirmed solemnly.
Ruth Anne’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Miss Sasha sealed those spells off. Forbade their use. Of course, some of the others, especially Armand, were furious about her decision. ‘Who are you to determine what we should have access to and what should be sealed?’ he demanded. But Miss Sasha was firm and stubborn, as usual. Too much power in the wrong hands, she insisted, could be dangerous.”
I regarded my sister. Ruth Anne was older than us and remembered things from the old days. “So, you think the spell…the necromancy spell…exists?”
She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but it sure caused problems in The Council once she made the decree. If it didn’t exist, why did it cause so much turmoil?”
Eve opened Mother’s spell book and flipped through pages. “I’m not seeing it,” she said.
“She may have gotten rid of those spells altogether,” I said.
“Doubtful,” Ruth Anne said. “Our mother may not have been a fan of such magick, but she hated ignorance more. She’d never destroy arcane information like that.”
“Look! The last page is thicker than the rest!” Eve showed us a page four times as thick as the others in the book. “And it’s blank!”
I ran my fingers over the last page, looking for bumps or incriminating marks, something that would indicate a spell.
“Some spells can only be read by the light of the moon,” Ruth Anne said.
Eve lifted the book. We squinted at the blank page, trying to squeeze out words where there were none.
“Maybe it needs to be a certain phase of the moon? Like a full moon?” Eve suggested.
Merry put a finger to her chin, her wide eyes darting around. “If Mama was serious about hiding these spells, she’d put them where no one could look.”
A thought clawed at my mind. “Her room! C’mon.”
“Quiet now,” I said, holding my fingers to my lips as we crept across the floorboards of the living room and up the stairs.
The staircase protested our combined weight with creaks and moans. As I went to turn the doorknob, Eve clamped her hand over mine.
“Let me,” she said.
Eve had always been the sneakiest and the stealthiest among us, as quiet as a cat when she wanted to be. We watched, not daring to move, as she twisted the brass knob to the right, soundlessly opening the door.
The bedroom was dark, save for the sliver of a moon that shone through the window, casting its crescent beam directly onto Mother’s face. Her eyes were half-opened, in the same manner as Leo’s, staring into the canopy above her. She looked doll-like in her large bed.
I kept an eye on her as Eve tiptoed across the floor, rolled up the carpet, and revealed the chalky outline of the pentagram.
We then scoured the room, pulling open drawers, looking under knick knacks and behind frames, searching for hidden alcoves, quietly and desperately seeking out the lost spells. I tripped over the furled carpet and fell headlong into Mother’s bed. We all froze in place but Mother kept sleeping, her eyes not even blinking.
After several minutes we all shrugged at one another.
We’d searched every spot, and had come up empty. Perhaps we’d been wrong to think the missing spells were in here. I sighed, motioning for the others to follow me out. As I stepped forward I heard a creaking in the floorboards where the carpet had been. I touched my foot to the spot again, and once again the floorboard groaned.
I removed my phone from my pocket and aimed the light at the wooden plank. It looked exactly like the rest of the floorboards, except newer. My sisters gathered near me and we lowered ourselves to our hands and knees to for closer inspection.
“A knot!” I pressed my fingers into the pine knoll, expecting it to move. Nothing.
“Try again,” Ruth Anne whispered, the room so cold I could see her breath. I pushed my entire palm into the knot and the side of the board suddenly gave way, dropping into a small, open pit.
We turned towards the bed, but Mother slept.
I reached inside, feeling around inside the small, dark hole. I crawled my fingers along the insides, looking for…
“Scrolls!” I said in a booming voice, then quieted myself as I removed a dozen or so from the chamber. One by one, I handed them all to Merry.
Ruth Anne glanced out the window. The moon was high, illuminating her thoughtful face. “How long has it been since the, um, incident?”
“About an hour, I think. Maybe a little more.”
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t think we have much time. According to some legends, the soul completely leaves the body within three hours. If you can’t bring him back before then, you never will.”
“Oh.” I opened one of the scrolls. It was blank. “Invisible ink?” I asked, reaching for the nearest candle.
Ruth Anne stopped me. “Most likely. But if our mother went to such lengths to hide these, she wouldn’t use ordinary candle magick to read them.”
“We have to try.” I lit a red candle and ran the flame across the parchment. No words appeared.
“Now what?” Merry asked, worry all over her face.
“Moon magick?” I asked.
Ruth Anne took the scrolls and crossed the bedroom, positioning herself in front of the window. She squinted through her glasses as she attempted to read one, then another. “No dice,” she said. “But these could require the light of a full moon. If so, we’re screwed.”
“Mirror magick?” I asked tentatively, checking Mother’s book.
“It’s worth a shot,” Ruth Anne said. “Eve, I know you have a mirror somewhere in that purse of yours.”
Eve rummaged through her handbag and produced a large compact. Ruth Anne held a scroll to the mirror as Merry and I crowded behind her, but the parchment wasn’t giving up its secrets.
“Maybe there’s nothing on these scrolls,” I said, slumping against one of the bedposts.
Merry waved her hands over them. “Oh, there’s something on them, alright. Dark things. Spells that should have been destroyed a long time ago.”
“I think we should just turn ourselves in,” I said.
Merry raised her chin. “No, Maggie. It’s not just about you and Eve. It’s about that man in the car out there. We have to try and fix this.” She passed her hands over the scrolls again, stopping at each one as she sensed its energy.
“This one,” she said, removing one and handing it to me. Her hands trembled, a sign that she had depleted too much of her energy with the task.
“But how?” I asked. “We still don’t know how to read it.”
Merry closed her eyes and a soft glow enveloped her. “We try it all.”
“Of course!” Ruth Anne said, as Eve relit the candle.
I unfurled the scroll and stood before the window, facing away. Ruth Anne held up the mirror so that the moon cast its glow onto it and it bounced back onto the parchment. Eve ran the flame of the candle along it.
“
Holy Hell,” Ruth Anne said, shaking her head. “It worked.”
Sure enough, black letters in archaic script began to appear.
At the top of the scroll were the words: Recipe for Raising the Dead.
We scoured the house, collecting the list of ingredients imbedded on the scroll: the wax from three black candles, an assortment of herbs, a lock of hair from an innocent.
The last was achieved by snipping a strand of June Bug’s hair while she slept, all the while trying to keep Merry calm as she watched a golden lock from her daughter’s head fall into a silver bowl. We even managed to find a box large enough to “entomb the subject”––the box from Paul’s metallic tree.
All that was left was a wand of life.
“Mama said she lost it,” Merry sighed as we stood in the living room. “This may be the end of the line.”
A memory trickled into my brain.
I raced towards the door that guarded Mother’s sitting room,––a room filled with treasures hoarded across the decades and the one room in the house we had never gotten around to cleaning out because the job seemed insurmountable.
My sisters caught on and were by my side.
“Door of steel, door that’s locked, let us in with just a knock.”
I was surprised that I remembered the spell. Eve gave the door a quick rap. A click on the lock let us know the incantation had worked.
“Impressive,” Ruth Anne said. “Good work, Maggie.”
I flipped on the light. The space was the size of a small bedroom, and packed from wall to wall with an assortment of boxes, bins, knick-knacks and, no doubt, secrets.
“Where shall we start?” Eve kicked at a box as she headed in.
“Help me clear a path,” I said, wading through a waist-deep collection of Mother’s belongings towards the far back corner of the room.
Around me, my sisters pushed and piled crates to the side, allowing me squeeze through. The musty smell was suffocating, and I had to cover my nose with the back of my arm to keep from retching.
The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root) Page 17
