"I should’ve digitized it all ages ago--I keep everything for my classes in the cloud," Harry was saying, looking up at Thackeray but completely unaware of how funny the height difference was. Harry was my size, but Thackeray, yeah. Huge.
"Matt did mine, or it never would’ve happened. It’s made things much quicker," Thackeray replied.
Harry nodded. "So the demon used to lead you to other demons, but now you have to go on actual data crunching?"
"That’s right--it’s not so hard if you know what to look for, though. We’ve been working on our system all year."
Harry’s eyes sparkled. "I’d love to help if I can. Do you guys need a researcher or something?"
I chuckled. Man, I loved that nerd.
Thackeray glanced at Matt.
Matt looked impressed. "Actually… maybe. Let’s talk about it once we get you sorted out?"
"We travel a lot. It might help to have a constant," Thackeray said thoughtfully.
"Well, I’m glad you two bonded," I said.
Thackeray frowned as if confused, but Harry just smiled. "Did you know he’s not a witch?"
I shook my head. I knew precisely nothing about Thackeray, except that the dude had once been haunted--not possessed, but haunted--by a demon, he hunted demons down for a living, and Matt was head over heels for him.
"But he can combat demons without actual spells." Harry was dead-ass fanboying at that point.
"Speaking of which…" Thackeray’s glance was significant this time.
Matt looked to Harry. "We have to make sure you’re not actually dealing with demonic infestation."
Harry lost some of his color. "Wh--what?"
"Demons can get inside your heart and see what you want most. What you wanted most was your husband back," Thackeray explained, his low voice gentle, almost soothing. Radio-announcer style.
Okay, yeah, that was pretty sexy. Nice one, Matt.
"But--the incantation was for catching a spirit with moonlight," Harry pointed out. He had the look of someone who knew he was trying to convince himself more than us. We’d all seen the incantation, the whole medieval book of spells it’d come from. "There was nothing demonic in it."
"And perhaps the incantation failed, but the force of your will combined with the magic allowed a demon to manifest." Thackeray reached into his coat and pulled out a small bottle.
"Tar water?" I asked.
His lips twitched in what might almost have been a smile. "No, that’s in the other pocket. This is something a little lighter. When the spirit first appears, I’ll anoint it with fennel oil."
"Oh!" Harry nodded. "Oh, sure, yeah, give it a try. I’ve heard about using it on the doorway at Midsummer, or even in keyholes, but this is new to me."
"It’s a mild test; it won’t hurt the demon, but it’ll make it flinch away, which is all we need," Thackeray replied.
I said, "Of course, Darren can hear you now. If he’s around." Which, where the hell else would he be?
"Doesn’t matter, even if he is a demon." Thackeray shrugged one large shoulder, causing his leather trench coat to creak, and slipped the bottle back into his pocket. "The reaction is irrepressible."
"How often have you used this method?" Harry asked.
Thackeray replied, "Regularly, this year, and we’ve gotten good results."
"So what convinced you…?" Harry started back in on the million questions, and Thackeray seemed happy enough to talk demons.
Matt and I exchanged amused glances and kept getting the gear set up. It was midnight by the time we were ready to roll all the cameras. We were so exhausted from the work and the still-heavy dinner in our bellies that Harry offered for us all to stay, and we accepted. It was easier to keep an eye on the video feeds in person, anyhow.
While Harry and I made up the spare room for Matt and Thackeray, Matt walked the perimeter of the property with incense, muttering under his breath in Gullah like Mama did sometimes when she wanted some extra power on a spell. Thackeray followed him silently as a stalking cat, gaze sharp. Then they did the indoors, and they paused outside the study, then followed a wisp of smoke in.
Harry and I shared a look, then turned as one to see what the hell they were doing. We poked our heads into the study to find them standing over Darren’s office chair, staring up at the ceiling as the incense rose toward it… and then through it?
"What the hell?" I asked.
"There’s a weak spot in the veil here," Matt said, gaze still fixed to the ceiling. "We’ll have to shore it back up after we use it to get him to the other side."
"That’s where Harry cast the spell," Thackeray said.
"Should’ve known," Matt replied.
"I… tore the veil between the living and dead planes?" Harry almost whispered.
"Frayed it slightly, more like. We can fix it," Matt said.
Harry looked nauseous. He clung to the door jamb.
I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. I wanted to tell him it’d be all right, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be lying. Sure, these dudes knew their stuff, sounded like… but it was overwhelming. Too many variables to look for, to wonder at, to test and try and prod and poke.
"I’ll get the couch ready," I said, to break the tension more than anything else.
"I can take the couch," Harry protested. "I usually leave the TV on in the living room. In case Darren gets bored."
"We’re cool," I assured him. "You need to sleep. It’s gonna be a long week."
Behind his glasses, his eyes seemed to swim with unshed tears. Of frustration? Of fear? Of exhaustion? Of guilt and shame? Hard to say, right then, and I got the feeling if I asked him about it, they’d overflow. I got the feeling he didn’t want to cry.
So I took my hand from off his shoulder, and he gave it a regretful look. "Thanks for being here, Lucas," he said quietly. "You’re a good friend."
I smiled, trying to keep it from looking too sad, and went to make up my bed on the couch.
***
It sucked, lying on Harry’s couch with his TV on, thinking of him back in that dark bedroom by himself, wondering if he was thinking of me, wondering if his husband was watching me. Or him. Or us. Matt and Thackeray ate dinner with me at Mama’s every night, better believe it, but they spent every night at Harry’s taking their moonlight readings to determine just how much power the waxing moon was pouring into Darren’s binding. They kept the video running, too, reviewing it in fast forward every morning. After two days, they started catching glimpses of a full-body apparition in the IR footage. After four days, Darren’s wavering, transparent form was visible a few times a night.
After six days, it was the full moon.
I asked Mama to lock up the store. Before I got into my car, she pressed my hand tightly between both of her smaller, thin-skinned, delicate ones. "Use your eyes, baby," she said.
I was so distracted, I barely heard her. More fool me.
The very air around Harry’s house felt charged, like a lightning rod that had been recently struck. I’d felt it last month, too, that silvery presence of magic, but I’d thought it was just my own nerves that left me feeling jittery on his porch. Now I knew better, even as the sky darkened behind me and the moon started its shine.
I didn’t knock. Thackeray was in the living room, making some last-minute adjustments to various cameras.
"I thought we’d have to do it in the study," I said, shrugging off my jacket.
Thackeray grunted something affirmative. "But just in case, best to keep an eye on the whole house."
"In case it doesn’t work?"
"Or goes wrong."
My heart beat harder. "But it won’t, right?"
"It might. You know it might." Thackeray stood up straight, his gaze arresting mine.
Of course, I knew it might. I knew we might sever the moon ties and cause Darren to fade out into nothingness. I knew we might fail and trap him here for eternity, a lost soul in torment. I knew the original spell might be released and b
ackfire, or the full moon might be too powerful, or, or, or…
I nodded and swallowed hard.
Thackeray cocked his head slightly. "But we’ll do all we can. I swear it to you."
He was not a man often forsworn, I imagined. "Thank you," I said.
"He’s here!" Harry’s voice rang down the hall.
After one last look, Thackeray’s almost apologetic, mine no doubt scared shitless, we headed up the hall to find the others. Sure enough, surrounded by academic detritus and Harry’s antique mirrors, there sat the translucent Darren on his desk chair. "You guys have been working hard. I appreciate it. Darren McLeod."
Thackeray walked right up to Darren, reached in his pocket, and produced the little bottle of fennel oil.
Darren cocked an eyebrow at it but otherwise didn’t react.
Thackeray unstoppered it and flicked some of the contents at him. They went right through Darren and splattered the chair. The room suddenly smelled like a country French dinner.
Darren sighed. "Still not a demon."
Thackeray nodded and put his bottle away.
"I’m Matt Antonin, and this is Thackeray, but you know that already." Matt grinned and stepped up beside Darren. "Damn, you look good for a dead guy."
"So I’ve been told." Darren gave a silent chuckle.
"You guys need a minute?" Matt looked from Darren to Harry. "Before we start?"
Darren nodded.
Harry smiled at him. "Yeah, that’d be good."
The rest of us closed the door behind us, then shuffled back into the living room to wait. I wasn’t sure if it was the silvery moon magic touching my skin or if I was just too het up, but I wanted to take off running and never stop.
Matt must’ve felt it. He settled a hand on my shoulder. "We got this."
"Probably," Thackeray added.
Matt rolled his eyes and squeezed my shoulder.
"I can see why he needs you," I muttered under my breath.
"And I’m even more annoyingly upbeat without him," Matt added. "Can’t hardly stand myself."
I cracked a smile, at that, and Thackeray politely ignored us in favor of fiddling with the equipment some more.
"Okay!" Harry called down the hall after a few minutes.
I frowned. "That was fast."
"They’ve had three years to say goodbye." Matt gave me one last squeeze before he returned to the study.
Thackeray went next, and I followed, trying to play it cool and confident. Darren was standing, as if he had his hands in his pockets, leaning against his roll-top desk. For a flash of a second, he seemed so natural, so real, I was shocked to realize again that I could see through him. I shook it off.
"He’s ready." Harry still smiled, but it looked sad--and so it should.
Matt nodded, looked to Darren.
Darren nodded. "I died ready."
I snorted an involuntary laugh. Darren shot me an appreciative look, then a wink that made me squirm. I cleared my throat.
Harry turned off all the lights but a small salt lamp on his desk, the better to see the moonlight.
I shivered, imagining the light from the window as tendrils curling around Darren. I made Mama’s witchy sign and said a silent prayer for his soul to find its way tonight.
Matt produced a handful of incense sticks that smelled sharp when he lit them--not dissimilar from the fennel oil, clear and bright despite the smokiness. He stood between the single window and Darren’s chair, muttering incantations in Gullah.
I never did learn the language myself, but Matt had been raised with our mothers’ people in South Carolina. The words tugged at me, half-familiar and half-alien, as if there was a thread connected to my navel that went taut when he spoke, playing me like a guitar. I watched in silence, back to Harry’s desk, just trying to keep out of the way.
The smoke from Matt’s incense behaved oddly, as it had the other day when they’d found the frayed patch in the veil just above the study. It started up from his incense as a giant clump, rising in a column, then it split into five, six, seven parts, as if it needed to go around something invisible.
But it was, wasn’t it? The moonlight bonds that kept Darren’s spirit trapped here were bright and strong enough to see tonight. As I watched the incense curl around them, I could almost envision the bonds themselves, hard beams of silvery light drenched in magic, cold and awesome. How Harry had summoned the will to bind this much power…
Love was funny like that, though. And even if it was twisted up and wrongheaded, intention was everything, with magic.
Harry stood beside me, his face pale in the dark, eyes wide and otherworldly. I wondered if he was thinking about the same things. I wondered if he could see the bonds, or if it was just my "good eyes". I wondered if he’d need to cry for a few days when this was done, no matter the outcome.
When Matt finished his incantation, he held out his free hand to Thackeray. Thackeray fished something out of his voluminous coat--a knife, glinting silver, curved like a crescent moon. Harry drew in a sharp breath beside me.
Thackeray stepped back into the shadows, and Matt sliced at the first bond with a single word I didn’t recognize, or maybe just a sound, like, "Ssssssssth!"
Moonlight flicked back toward him like he’d just cut a tightly drawn rubber band, and Matt stepped back just in time to avoid getting a slap from it--if it would’ve hit him, even.
Darren seemed to flicker. "It worked! I felt that!"
Harry nodded encouragingly, still silent and wide-eyed, as if afraid to speak. I sure as hell was. I couldn’t see the snipped moonlight bond anymore; maybe it didn’t exist, maybe it was just moonlight now? That was probably a good thing, right?
Matt kept his incense burning and completed the same incantation and slicing ritual with each bond. As he did, the smoke filled in the air where it’d previously parted to make way for the cord of moon-magic, proving it’d worked.
When he got to what looked like the next-to-last one, Harry cleared his throat. Then, quietly, he asked, "How you feeling, Darren? Not, like, fading?"
Darren shook his head. "I feel… looser? And like I can make myself more or less here, on your plane, than I could before. But that’s it."
Harry sighed with relief. "Okay. Yeah. Okay, good."
"It’s gonna be okay." Darren’s smile said he believed it, even.
I was beginning to, myself. When Matt made the last snipping motion and sound, the final cord snapped and recoiled, then dissipated. He stepped back, watching Darren. "Try going straight up."
Darren looked up. Frowned. Frowned even harder. "I can’t."
Thackeray stepped back out of the shadows to examine him. He picked up the full spectrum camera that had been recording on the desk and aimed it at Darren, then began circling him.
Matt looked at the half-burned incense in his hand. "I don’t know. Something’s still holding him."
"Is it--is it me?" Harry asked. "I swear, I didn’t--if it’s--"
"It’s not you." Matt watched him for a moment. "No. But there’s something over there…"
I moved to let him come around the other side of Darren, who stood forlornly in the center of the room.
Matt made a slow circle, watching the smoke from his incense rise in an even, unbroken column. He paused once. Twice. His incense wavered in spots.
Use your eyes, baby, I heard, as if Mama stood right beside me.
I glanced between Matt’s incense and the wall. Just above Harry’s desk was a medieval map of Florence. Above that, one of his old mirrors, this one slightly convex but untarnished. As I stared at it, it seemed to glow.
"Harry." I grabbed for his arm and indicated the mirror. "You sure that was a scrying mirror?"
He followed my gaze. "Uhh… no. That one, I got from an estate sale near Pisa. There was a lot of apocryphal stuff about the lady of the house back in the mid-16th century being a prophet, but if anything she was more of a hedge-witch--"
"Harry," I said.
"Sorry, sorry, no. I mean, there’s no proof of it. And none of them really work anyhow--I tried them all. Why?"
"Can a magic mirror reflecting the moonlight make bonds?" I asked Matt.
"Hooo, shit." Matt gave a low whistle. The incense swirled in his breath, then settled again. "But because it’s doubly reflected, first by the moon then by a damn magic mirror, it’s like threads instead of chains. Can’t barely see ‘em, but they’re there."
"Brilliant." Thackeray zoomed in the camera and showed it to Matt. "I thought it was just some interference or visual corruption. Look at the energy. So thin it’s almost see-through."
Harry was unnaturally pale all the way to his lips. "So he’ll be okay? It’s just that there are extra bonds?"
"This mirror was in here when you cast the spell?" Matt asked.
Harry nodded.
Matt said, "Then yeah, that’s my guess."
Harry swallowed hard.
"I hate those mirrors," Darren said with a laugh that echoed up and down my spine as if from down a long tunnel.
"I know. I’m sorry, Darren."
"I forgive you. Never be sorry again, Harry."
Matt started his incantation again, and we all held our breath. Then, finally, he sliced downward. "Sssssth!"
Darren flickered. Faded. The incense suddenly sucked upward, as if by a vacuum in the ceiling.
Darren smiled. His feet rose off the ground.
And he was gone.
***
Harry and I sat on the couch in the living room while Matt and Thackeray made sure they’d sealed off the veil. Harry was still too pale, even with the light on, looking what Mama would call a little green around the gills. He stared at the blank TV, or maybe through it.
"You need a drink?" I asked, uncertain what else I could do for him.
Harry nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. We all probably could."
I poured him a bourbon on the rocks--and one for each of the rest of us, too. Matt and Thackeray seemed sure everything had come off okay, though a little chagrined they hadn’t thought to check the room for magic objects. With the whole house pulsing with moonlight, how could anyone have known? Everything felt magical, almost sickeningly so.
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