Dead Magic

by Kara Jorgensen

  “Your plans. I’m not sure if I want to be a part of this scheme anymore.”

  “Oh, don’t start that with me. You’re as deep in this as I am, perhaps even more.”

  “I did what you told me. I got the book, didn’t I?”

  “It’s bonded to her!” she yelled, flinging the book at him. “It’s practically useless.”

  Clutching the grimoire to his chest, he stormed after her as she descended into the crypt behind the altar. “It isn’t useless. She can still do exactly what you wanted, and she will. If I ask, I know she’ll do it. You’re just cross because you didn’t get the power you wanted. Now, you have to ask Emmeline.”

  “Cecil, I have been working to find that book since I left that godawful asylum, and someone else got to it before I could. She doesn’t even know the power she holds!” Lady Rose gritted her teeth, her hand lingering on the old loop of metal that served as a latch for the catacomb. If her stupid husband hadn’t gotten himself killed— Whipping around, she seized Lord Hale by the shoulders and pushed him against the damp stone wall. “Awakening the god is the only way for me to get my due. Do you understand what it feels like to have something ripped from you the moment you think you have it? Of course you don’t, my sister made certain of that.”

  He sneered at her, resisting the urge to shove her back. His hand itched to move, but he would pay dearly for his transgression and so would Emmeline. “Emmeline is in love with me. With a little coaxing, she will do anything I say.”

  Leaning close, a wicked smile darkened her features. “I could kill her, you know. Slit her pretty little throat right now and be done with it. Then, the book would need a new master. Shall I? She wouldn’t even know.”

  Lord Hale flung out his arm, throwing his aunt back against the narrow hall. A throaty chuckle escaped her lips. Before he could strike again, his body locked. Claudia stared into his eyes, her green gaze unrelenting. The air squeezed from his lungs as if they were being filled with concrete as she stared him down. His vision spotted and his heart stumbled out of rhythm. The world died away, the light faltering until his mind sputtered, Was this the end? With a wave of her hand, he stumbled back into the wall and slid to the floor. His head reeled as he drew in a lung-full of dank air. He coughed, reaching for his aching throat but found no fingerprints or bruises to tell of the ordeal. As he stood panting, Lady Rose shook her head, watching him with a triumphant smile.

  “You need to learn to control your temper, Cecil, before you tamper with the wrong practioner. You wouldn’t want Emmeline to have an accident on her way home.”

  “Don’t you or your blasted revenant dare touch her. She’s innocent in all of this,” he hissed, pointing an accusatory finger at her. “You know she has nothing to do with this.”

  Swatting his hand away, Lady Rose drew so close he could taste the wine on her breath. “Not any more. You had better be right about her. If she isn’t the compliant little maiden you claim her to be, I’ll take matters into my own hands. I’m done with ineffectual men ruining my plans.”

  Cecil opened his mouth to speak but froze. Emmeline’s voice echoed faintly through the chamber followed by the hesitant shuffle of feet. Lady Rose straightened, planting an unnervingly pleasant smile on her face.

  “We’re coming, Emmeline!” she called sweetly. “Smile, Cecil, your Sleeping Beauty is awake.” When he didn’t move to follow her up the steps, she turned and added, “If you would prefer to stay down here, you could always prep the body for Alastair’s next outing. I had been meaning to ask you for another tincture. I’ll need it by tonight.”

  “Already? Can his soul handle that sort of—”

  “Leave him to me. Make the tincture or I’ll be using your friend as his next host.”

  With a knowing look, Lady Rose disappeared into the ritual chamber. Cecil drew in a tight breath, his heart hammering in his throat. What had he gotten them into?

  Chapter Twenty

  Oil and Blood

  Peeking at Adam from the edge of his pillow, Immanuel watched his chest rise and fall in a sleepy rhythm. He smiled, gently massaging Adam’s arm as he laid his head on his shoulder. He didn’t stir, but that was all right. It was late, and after the evening they had, Adam deserved the rest. Squinting at the clock ticking on the nightstand, Immanuel sighed. Despite being thoroughly satisfied with their time together and his limbs heavy with fatigue, sleep still eluded him. Thunder crashed throughout the night, rattling the windows in their frames and breaking the fragile veil of his dreams. Lying there would do nothing. With a silent sigh, he slowly slid from beneath the tangled covers, careful not to wake his companion. Words nagged at the back of his mind, words that no matter how hard he tried didn’t dare come out between kisses or stifled moans.

  Standing at the foot of the bed, he said softly, “My ancestors could do magic. They were alchemists, just like my mother said. The potion was real. Everything was real. Can you believe it?”

  No, he wouldn’t, and that’s why he hadn’t been able to say it aloud.

  “I was right. Lord Rose is alive, and he wants to hurt me.”

  Immanuel’s face fell at the realization of what he said.

  “I’m scared, Adam. I feel so alone in all of this. I know you won’t believe me, and that makes me feel like a freak… again. I don’t know what to do.”

  Drawing close to Adam, he planted a kiss on his forehead before kissing his lax lips. He closed his eyes to relish the perfume of earl grey and the lingering sweetness of berries. When his companion still didn’t stir, Immanuel slipped on his dressing gown. He paused with his hand on the threshold. A night bird cried beyond the rumble of cabs passing the house, alone in its mourning.

  Watching Adam sleep, he whispered, “I wish you believed me.”

  Immanuel padded down the steps. His troubled mind tumbled over itself until it spiraled into hazy visions of Lord Rose in a devil mask. No, he was home. He was safe. As he confirmed that the front door was locked and chained, he flipped over Adam’s upturned shoe, hiding the symbol incised into the sole. He lingered at the parlor door, his eyes fixed on the cushion where he had stashed his ancestor’s journal. Only hours before Judith Elliot had sat there and pried into his mind. Had she known it was there? Plucking the journal from beneath the fabric, Immanuel disappeared into the workroom and flipped on the lamps. It all seemed so arcane, so strange, yet he couldn’t push it from his mind. Science had been his whole life until now. He had grown away from his mother’s superstitious runes and charms made of bound twigs and flowers, finally severing any remaining ties when he reached Oxford. The university was no place for fancy. His mind rejected the notion that it could be real. It had all been a coincidence. Maybe Adam was right and Emmeline Jardine had woken up after giving her the potion because she wasn’t truly dead, but he had seen it with his own eyes. He hadn’t made up the visions when he touched skeletons or dead bodies. He was anxious and fearful, but he wasn’t crazy. That much he was sure of.

  Sitting at Hadley’s old workbench, he opened the journal. He read the lines of tight script, but little made sense. It had been written by someone who already knew why and how it worked. His gut gurgled with academic anxiety. Could he teach it to himself as he did science? But what if he never understood? The sinking feeling had consumed him during his first weeks at Oxford when English scarcely made sense and every stumbled syllable made him keenly aware of his tongue and teeth and lips. He grabbed his discarded sketchbook and flipped back to the page with the symbol for protection. In the predawn stillness, he struggled to copy the lines and make sense of how they related to one another. No matter how close he traced it, it didn’t feel right. It looked the same as his ancestor’s drawing, but it felt hollow.

  What was it that Peregrine had said? Symbolic ingredients, a catalyst, focus, and intention. That’s what was needed for a spell. He thumbed through the pages again. Ingredients were few and far between yet medium seemed important with circles and lines. The more permanent the
medium, the stronger the spell. That was why he had carved the protection symbol into Adam’s shoe. Immanuel stared down at the sigils scrawled on different colored patches of paper within the notebook. No matter their meaning, their structure seemed nearly identical with a series of concentric circles crisscrossed with symbols and lines. At first he had assumed the similarities were due to a repetition of words or meaning, but what if the spells used the same visual medium but varied with the practioner? Then, the symbolic ingredients were nothing more than characters with significance to the caster.

  Ripping the page from his sketchpad, Immanuel inhaled and exhaled slowly, clearing his mind until all he heard was the distant tattoo of rain. He needed to focus, he needed intention, but most of all, he needed a symbol. With the pen loosely in his grasp, he closed his eyes and let his hand move. The pen lazily circled, following the cardinal directions. Walls rose in his mind, locking where the lines crossed. Tight arms closed around him. Doors shut with bolts slamming home. Adam whispered in his ear that everything would be all right.

  When Immanuel opened his eyes, he found the workroom empty and a strange symbol in the center of the paper. What had begun as merely a spiral bloomed into something between a four-leaved flower bud and a haloed cross. He ran his finger along the edge of its cruciform arms where the nib had left behind a scratch in the paper. Energy hummed sleepily within. A small smile crossed his lips. It felt right. It felt his.

  A thrill lanced through him as he stared at his pictograph of protection, keenly aware of how he longed to draw it everywhere. But where could he put it that Adam wouldn’t notice and become cross with him? He had been lucky thus far that Adam hadn’t discovered the graffiti on his favorite shoes, but carving a twisting rose and cross into the workroom door would have been much more obvious. And that was a conversation he wasn’t ready to have yet. Tapping his pen against the nicked table, Immanuel’s eyes trailed to the glass and metal pendent hanging around his neck. He turned it over, watching the sprig of forget-me-nots shift within. Cruor. Blood. Life-giving blood. If it had brought back Emmeline Jardine when mixed with his ancestor’s potion and its remnants had been powerful enough to sustain rootless flowers, then maybe blood could be as powerful as a carving.

  Picking through Hadley’s tools and cabinets for leftover supplies, he found a bottle of mineral oil, a seemingly untouched letter-opener, and a painting palette. Immanuel sat on the stool and steeled himself as he dug the tip of the knife into his finger. Hesitant beads of blood bubbled out, dripping onto the palette with a squeeze of his hand. With the tip of his pinky, he carefully mixed the oil and blood together until the latter was nearly invisible. Standing at the backdoor, he pictured all he hoped to protect and everything that made him feel protected as his finger worked to trace the symbol from memory. When the last line connected, he stood back to admire its form. Something was missing… A catalyst.

  “Now,” he said softly as he dotted the center of the pictograph.

  Energy hummed faintly through the door like the vibration of a tuning fork. Carrying the palette into the kitchen, he set about marking every window and door. Like specimens on slides, the blood and oil symbols were only visible when seen by those who knew they were there. In the right light, they vanished completely; while at other times, they stood out as starkly as if they were engraved. With each new mark, Immanuel’s body grew heavier and fatigue slowed the trajectory of his finger. By the time he reached the front door, he could scarcely keep his eyes open. His nicked finger lazily traced his mental image, dragging at the corners until the ends connected in a circuit. Immanuel dotted the figure and smiled.

  In the faint, flickering glow of the streetlamps, the mark was nearly invisible. Maybe Adam wouldn’t notice, but if he did, it was for a good cause. Even if Adam didn’t believe, Immanuel did. How could he not when he could feel the house’s hum in his veins? It pulsed in time with the beating of his heart, and with the final mark on the door, the circuit closed, knitting together the sigils in a ring around their Baker Street flat that would hopefully keep Lord Rose out. Laying his hand against the door, he closed his eyes. Visions of what life could be like with these new abilities flooded his mind. It all seemed so strange and new. Yawning, he wondered how different things would have been if he hadn’t believed Judith, Cassandra, and Peregrine. They had feared he would ignore his abilities, but what would have happened? Was it really possible to beat the magic from someone?

  Immanuel jolted awake as his face slid against the door’s smooth grain. Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, he padded up the stairs and into their bedroom. Adam mumbled under his breath as Immanuel slipped beneath the covers and laid his head on his chest. Adam’s arms wrapped around him and drew him closer until their bodies were flush. Immanuel smiled, his finger tracing the protective symbol across Adam’s skin as he lapsed into sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Kingdom of Eidolon

  Emmeline walked down Baker Street, her head pounding in her temples and forehead with each step. The brew Claudia had given her wore off long ago but the images remained burned in her mind. Nightmare landscapes of a madman’s mind lurked just beyond the thin veil of London. As she passed familiar houses, she pictured the twisted spires of Eidolon. Half wood and half steel, they towered into the heavens with thorns and flowering vines choking them black with rot. What lay beyond their field of vision? Was it all deformed creatures with horns and stony skin or was that merely one layer? Under the potion’s spell, she had walked through the city, following her strange daemon guide past Kensington Palace and its gardens until they reached a soaring castle preceded by a massive wasteland of arboreal stone outcroppings and a twisting lake of lava. The palace’s walls gleamed like ragged obsidian, dwarfing her by proportions her mind couldn’t fathom. Her guide’s unnerving grin and pointed features sent her heart pounding with fear, but in the moment as they floated through the otherworldly palace, it had been impossible to think or speak. Ghouls of every size and form moved past her, paying her little heed. The occasional languid predator’s eye fell upon her, sending a pulse of panic through her that threatened to spit her back into the inner sanctum of the Eidolon Club, but none of the creatures thought her a worthy meal.

  “What did you see?” Claudia asked as she helped her off the chalk-dusted floor.

  Her mind had been shredded, torn from what she ever believed to be true, yet she couldn’t be sure if it was truly real or if what she had seen came from the strange herbs mixed into the wine she had been offered. She had seen a massive creature on a throne of cold fire. The image was blurred and in constant motion, but she knew it was the same creature she had encountered during her reading at the Spiritualist Society. Fear rang through her. The monster glared down at her with hollow sockets, its stag horns swishing in agitation as it eyed her at the base of its throne.

  “Speak to it,” her blackened guide commanded as he disappeared into the shadows.

  Emmeline froze. The skeletal stag seemed to stretch above her until it stood as tall as a cathedral, ready to consume her the moment she erred. She opened her mouth to speak but found her soul or whatever vessel she traveled in had no jaw or tongue to articulate. Focusing her energy as she did during readings, she found the words she needed.

  “What is it you want from us?” echoed through her mind, filling the vast hall.

  Entry. A body. It paused, scrutinizing her in its hollow gaze. A new world to conquer. But where is the other?

  Claudia smiled at her, patting her arm as she helped her walk back to the surface. “I knew it. I knew he would want to be part of our world. Emmeline, you have been such a help. Mediums have the easiest time traversing worlds, after all, so you were the obvious choice for the task.”

  “That wasn’t part of the initiation?” she asked, her stomach churning as her head swam.

  “Oh, it was. It was. Communing with the resident god is the polite thing to do when you join a society such as this, but you seem to have
had a much clearer vision than Cecil or I would have had.”

  It felt as if her soul hadn’t settled properly back into her body, and it made her sick. For several hours she had lain on a chaise in Claudia’s private rooms, unable to convince her legs to move. Bile threatened to gurgle up from her gut at the thought of motion, yet it seemed even her stomach refused to act. Shutting her eyes against the harsh glow of the gas lamps, the next thing she remembered was Cecil asking her if he could take her home. Surely, she had agreed, but how did she get all the way to Baker Street?

  He had driven her to Wimpole Street, stopping a few houses away from her aunt and uncle’s flat. His russet brows furrowed with worry as he watched her rub her forehead and eyes. A gloved hand slid over hers, lingering until she finally met his hazel gaze.

  “Would you like me to walk you to the door? You look ill. I could tell your relatives that you fainted at the club, and that’s why you’re late. We didn’t want to let you leave until you recovered.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Forcing a smile, she opened the door and staggered into the foggy night. Before she could step away, a hand lightly closed on her arm.

  “Emmeline, I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about the initiation,” he said softly, reaching through the passenger door.

  “Most rites are secret for a reason. Good night, Lord Hale.”

  With a pensive frown, he closed the door. As she watched the steamer pull away and disappear into the midnight gloom, she swallowed hard. The lights were still on in the parlor, which meant Aunt Eliza was waiting for her. Without looking back, she began to walk in the other direction. Through the heaviness of her vision and the pain jangling her brain, she knew she couldn’t face her aunt. There would be a myriad of questions about where she went and it would spiral into an argument and her head would ache from whatever she drank. Aunt Eliza would assume she was drunk. If she could get to someone’s house, she could hide out until morning when her head clear enough to string together a convincing lie.