“I can feel that,” he whispered.
“I didn’t think they could hurt me any more than using me as a human sacrifice. But they could.” Sarah stopped there, unable to talk about the police coming to the door. She didn’t want to remember the ride in their patrol car to the mill pond. Blinded by a sudden onslaught of tears, Sarah jammed the spoon into her mouth.
Paul moved his hand so it was close to where her leg lay beneath the blanket and left it there, not quite touching.
Regaining control, Sarah pulled the spoon out. “I looked for the picture. Spells are really weird. They can make you walk past something you see every single day, and not be able to see it. I thought maybe Lily—my aunt—had destroyed it. I hoped. Where was it?”
“It was on the dresser next to the jewelry box.”
She had looked on the dresser countless times and never been able to see it. “I wouldn’t have known how to get rid of it anyway. I think I could have burned it as long as it had the frame on it. Maybe.”
“We’ll make a new frame.”
“I can’t without using dark matter.”
“Could we just bury it in the attic?”
“No. The spell’s got you now. It’s not as strong as when you have the picture on you, but it’s there. I can see it in your eyes.”
“I hate when you say you can see dark matter in me. I feel like I’m being invaded.”
“That’s because you are.”
“Can you touch my eyeballs and chase it away?”
Sarah smiled briefly. “It’d only go deeper.” She studied Paul’s eyes. There was very little dark matter in them, only a few grains dotting the golden sparks in his brown irises. Her scrutiny seemed to make him nervous and he moved his hand to toy with the pendant on his necklace. The dark matter shrunk so small she couldn’t see it. She moved closer. “Let go of your necklace a minute.”
Paul obeyed.
It came back.
“Now hold it.”
It vanished.
“That pendant chases away dark matter too. I wonder why.”
“What if I make a frame for your picture out of this?” He tugged the pendant out and fingered the heavy pewter chain.
“I’m not sure what good that would do.”
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it? Come on, Sarah. We can’t do nothing.”
“Nothing might be the smartest thing to do.” She didn’t want to tell him it was only a matter of time. Without the protection of Aunt Lily’s frame it was inevitable that type of spell would get her. Somehow she’d gone from furious at him, to the reality of what she faced. There was no anger in her, not even for her family.
At least when it does get me my soul won’t be consumed by dark matter in the end.
“Do you want me to leave, Sarah? Is that what you’re not saying? If I go, will you be safe?”
“It’ll just follow you, or rebound. It could even go after Henry. The love spell did. I told you before that dark matter is smart. It’s found a way back into my life, and yours. It’s not going to give up easily.”
Paul frowned. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“We’re fixing this. We’re not letting it win. Get out of bed. Come on. Now, Sarah.”
SARAH TUGGED ON the ends of her long t-shirt as she entered the dining room for the first time in years. Dust coated the surface of the dining room table, and thick cobwebs hung from the chandelier. Even Paul had avoided cleaning the room. This room held echoes of generations of Archers. If they were going to battle dark Archer magic, it was best done right here.
The picture lay on a corner of the table, inches away from a long tapestry embroidered by her grandmother’s grandmother, Susannah Archer. A thick candle, handmade by Aunt Lily, sat in the middle of the table. A hand blown glass hurricane lamp covered it. Sarah’s mother had been the glassblower, Lisha Celeste, known as “Sissy” to both Lily and their mother. Sarah had no pleasant memories of her grandmother, Blair Nisha, and she doubted that her mother or Lily had either.
Sarah darted her eyes around the room. Hand painted wallpaper—Kalonice Archer. Paintings—Ruby Archer. Thrown pottery—Sarah and Daisy Archer. Sarah quickly turned her eyes from the exquisitely decorated bowls. She knew who had made every item in the room and didn’t want to remember a single one of the witches.
Paul leaned across the table to reach into the glass lamp and light the candle inside. The flame burned low and dark. Sarah averted her eyes. Paul glanced around the room and picked a shallow bowl. It was painted yellow and black with white calla lilies decorating the rim.
“This?” he asked, and tossed it onto the table without waiting for a reply. The faint dark specks in his eyes answered the question for him. He took the photograph of Sarah and dropped it into the wide bowl, pausing only to swipe a gentle finger across the face in the photo. Sarah could swear she felt it and shivered.
“Do you think you could invoke your new skills and cast with light to do this?”
Another shiver rippled through Sarah’s body. “I don’t see how. I don’t even know how to use it really.” She glanced at the chandelier casting a faint, shadowy light around the room.
“Sit down.” Paul gestured toward a chair.
Sarah hesitated. It was her chair. She knew the stains on the cushion: berry cobbler from one summer when she was nine, and red wine spilled the night she’d lost her virginity in that very chair. She knew why the right front leg of that chair wobbled a bit.
Paul waited until she sat. The right front leg wobbled slightly.
Sarah crossed her arms and squeezed them.
Paul nodded approval and slowly unclasped his necklace, leaning his head over the bowl as he did. Dangling the chain over the bowl, he closed the clasp on it and slowly lowered it in, taking care to center the photograph inside the chain. “You’re my friend, Sarah. Of all my friends living on this earth I would call you my best next to Henry.” He glanced at her. “And only next because tradition demands I put him first.”
A lump formed in her throat and she wondered if he had any idea how much those words meant to her.
Paul poked a finger into the bowl and moved the pendant over her face in the photograph. “I would give everything to protect my family and friends.”
Sarah watched as he picked up the bowl and balanced it on top of the hurricane lamp. He walked around the table, tugged the chair out beside hers—Sarah tried not to think of whose it had been—and sat down in it. He laid his hand in her lap, palm up, and Sarah relaxed the death grip on her arms and put her hand in his.
Paul leaned back in his chair, stretching his long legs under the table, and waited.
For a moment Sarah thought that the flame would go out on the candle. Surely the bowl covering the lamp kept oxygen out of it. Universal laws had to be obeyed, even by dark matter. A wisp of color drifted through her mind, a wordless rainbow thought. Sarah squeezed Paul’s hand, inhaling and exhaling slowly out her mouth.
The flame inside the glass shot up to touch the bottom of the bowl.
Sarah felt a flash of heat on her neck. She squeezed Paul’s hand tighter.
Fire spread along the bottom of the bowl, and Sarah knew she wasn’t imaging the heat against her back. She leaned forward. Paul tightened his grip on her hand and elbowed her to sit back against the hot chair. She looked into his eyes.
They were black with dark matter.
Sarah tried to let go of his hand but he held hers in a death grip.
“Trust me,” he said, and turned his attention back to the candle.
I trust Paul. I trust Paul. I trust Paul. Sarah repeated the mantra to herself.
Inside the hurricane glass the flame burned hot and soot blackened her view.
Beneath her the chair grew warm, as if the back legs rested inside a campfire. The backs of her calves were too hot and she moved her legs further under the table. The heat followed.
Smoke curled out of the bowl, and Sarah could taste the acrid smell in her mou
th.
“I’m afraid,” she said.
“You should be,” Paul answered, not looking at her.
Within seconds the glass of the lamp turned lava red, like it had been scooped from the glory hole by a gaffer. The table runner around it caught fire and ran the length of the fabric. In the kitchen the smoke detector, the one Paul had bought and installed a couple months ago, went off. Sarah felt the back of her arms burn.
I trust Paul. I trust Paul. I trust Paul.
Bravely she looked down, certain it was in her head. It wasn’t. Her too-white arms looked sunburned and small blisters dotted her skin.
“Fuck that!” she shouted, attempting to wrest her hand from Paul’s.
He responded as though he’d been waiting for it. He threw a long leg over her and grabbed her other hand, partially sitting on her chair to hold her down. Sarah struggled and swore, but it wasn’t until she smelled and felt her hair burning that she panicked.
Kicking and screaming she swore at Paul. She bit his shoulder and arm and head-butted him until she saw stars. The table in front of them flamed like a bonfire and Sarah sobbed and thrashed under his iron grip. Like a wild animal trapped and terrified she couldn’t even think to try and summon a spell with light to help.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.
Seconds later she could no longer draw breath. The smoke in the room clogged her lungs and the fire ate her oxygen. The wisps of colors in her mind bloomed into a rainbow that grew bright, filling her with light. Sarah slumped forward in her chair.
LIGHT FILLED SARAH’S mind, but she couldn’t locate a colored strand to make sense of it or to cast with. It reminded her of looking into the sun. Help me. She sensed the power, yet the ability to use it escaped her.
“Help them.” The words reverberated inside her head like thoughts, but they weren’t her own. “Help the ones you can, the ones you’ve harmed. The ones they harmed.”
The light slid out of her head, cooling her body as it escaped.
“Sarah. Hey, Sarah. Sarah? Let go of me.”
She opened her eyes. They burned from smoke, but there was none in the room. The middle of the dining room table now resembled a charred log. The far side leaned toward them as though it would collapse in half. The bowl and candle and hurricane shade were gone, along with the old family tapestry. Paul’s necklace—the one that belonged to Henry—dangled partially down a hole burned through the middle of the table. But all Sarah could smell was stale bacon from Paul’s uneaten breakfast.
“Let go of my arm, please,” said Paul.
Sarah looked down. The fingernails of both hands were digging into Paul’s flesh, and trickles of blood dripped down his arm and hand. She was impressed considering the hospital had kept her nails trimmed painfully short. It took her a moment to unclench her fingers and let go. Her arms were sunburned and blistered. The skin on her face hurt, so she knew it had burned too.
Sarah turned almost fearfully to face Paul, uncertain what she would find.
The skin on his sharp nose was peeling on the end. The rest of his face looked more tanned than burned, although his eyebrows were scorched. The front of his hair had shriveled in places and dropped off, leaving his bedhead style looking a bit homeless. The spots where she’d bitten him left bloody marks on his shirt and bruises ran up and down his right arm. But Sarah smiled when she looked into his eyes. Not a hint of dark matter remained in them.
“I think it worked,” he said, “but we need to work on your interpretation of the word trust.” He stretched across the table and picked up his necklace, tossing it from hand to hand for a moment before setting it back down to cool on the table. “Who knew it’d be hot?”
Sarah shook her head. “You scared me. How’d you know what to do?”
“My best friend is a witch. I picked up a couple of things.”
Sarah eyed the pendant on the table. “I think that’s how the love spell transferred from you to Henry. It’s really his, and the night I touched it as penance it bound the three of us into a love spell together.”
Paul’s crunchy-looking brows drew together. “But it broke for us. Why?”
“I have no idea.”
Paul stared at the icon, running a finger back and forth in the air over it as though attempting to tug answers out of the object.
Sarah shivered. “You might not have any witch in you, but you’ve definitely graduated to dabbler.”
“Dabbler? Where I come from that’s a duck.”
“Not where I come from, but I’d suggest retiring today. Nothing good can come of it.”
“Only if you call me a retired warlock. That sounds way cooler than dabbler.”
You know sometimes I don’t know quite what to make of you. You waffle from being mean as a snake to hiding in the closet next to the vacuum cleaner, crying your heart out like a little kid.” Paul leaned into the broom closet, smiling at her. “Which are you, Sarah?”
“The mean one.” Sarah couldn’t quite meet his eyes, embarrassed at being caught.
“Hon.” Paul crouched down to brush a hand over the top of her head. He tenderly smoothed the crunchy, dried up strands that no amount of conditioner could repair. “I’m not going to argue that. I know you.”
Sarah’s chin wobbled.
“Hey, come out of here. I was teasing.” Paul grasped her hands and tugged her out. “I bought all the groceries for your favorite meal, including chocolate lasagna. I’ve got to put some weight on you before I go. I couldn’t live with myself knowing you were wasting away on Popsicles and take-out this winter.” He headed down the hallway to the kitchen.
Sarah followed. “I tried all morning to summon the light to fix my burns, but it’s like it didn’t even hear me.”
“Well, it worked good on me,” said Paul, displaying his perfectly healed arms. He’d slept like a baby last night while she tossed and turned, covered in the sap from an Aloe Vera plant. “Thanks for that. Too bad I’m a retired warlock. Maybe I could have fixed you up if I hadn’t given it up after—what was it? Forty-five minutes? I was good, too.”
Sarah was learning when to tune him out. Glaring at his arms, which weren’t pink or peeling but nicely tanned for October, she said, “I think I can only help other people when casting with light. With dark matter I could only really help myself.”
“Hey, seems like you’re figuring it out fast,” Paul said as he began unloading groceries from the dozen bags on the counter.
“That totally sucks! Even some of the places where tubes were jammed into me in the hospital haven’t healed all the way, and I look like hell!”
Grinning, Paul shot a look back at her. “Poor baby, you actually look worse than hell.” He paused and turned to her, his smile gone. “Please don’t tell me that’s why you were crying. You never struck me as vain.”
“Well, I don’t want to look like shit! That’s not vanity! I can’t go back to work looking like Night of the Living Dead!” It wasn’t why she’d been crying, but she’d rather he thought that.
“You do realize you only have to go back to work if you want to, right?”
Sarah walked around the kitchen island and took a seat. That hadn’t occurred to her. She no longer had to occupy her mind with the mundane. “But I have to work. I need income.”
Paul walked around the kitchen as he put groceries away. “You have plenty of time to think about it while you recover. That Jackie Hamilton lady got you on company disability. You have a pile of checks in your mail, which you should open because I’m pretty sure you have bills due too.” His phone buzzed on the far counter and he picked it up. “Hey. What’s up?” He glanced at Sarah. “I’m fine. I forgot. I will.” Paul clicked the phone off and set it down.
“Was that Henry?”
“Yep.”
“How is he?”
“No idea.”
“How’s Kathleen?”
“Not a clue.”
“Did they get back to Oklahoma?”<
br />
“Probably not, since they were heading for Dallas.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t ask him how they were!”
Paul narrowed his eyes at her. “Why do you care how Henry is?”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Because I’m madly in love with your slightly misogynistic, narcissistic, asshat brother.”
Paul laughed. “Now I believe the spell is broken! Sounds like you finally met the real Henry.”
“You know when you two came howling at me yesterday, I was actually trying to help Kathleen.”
Paul leaned across the counter. “Now how was I supposed to know that?”
“I don’t know, maybe you could listen when I tell you stuff,” Sarah suggested. “How many times did I have to tell you that the spell with Henry was broken?”
“You still wanted him after you got out of the hospital.”
“Only because I couldn’t believe the attraction had been all love spell. When we did the logic spell, it told me something. So I thought there was something real there, but then I met him.”
Paul laughed, but it sounded forced. He moved to the cupboard to get two glasses. “What were you trying to help Kathleen with?”
“I cast trying to help with her medical condition.”
“I knew you cast on her.”
“With light! Because it’s probably my fault she’d had a recurrence with her eating disorder, so I was trying to help. But then I said if Henry doesn’t like the way she is, she should find someone who does.”
“Why would you say that? Henry adores her.”
“She said she has to watch her weight because Henry doesn’t like fat chicks.”
Paul sighed, sliding a glass of water across the counter to her. “Wow. Man, if she leaves him he’s going to sue you blind. Henry doesn’t fight fair.”
“Did you know I’m a witch? Same thing.”
“You’re a reformed, good-ish witch.”
“Is that a thing? And did I mention I once got accepted into law school? I didn’t go, but still,” Sarah said, feeling the need to defend herself.
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