by Hilary Duff
That’s better. Now I can sleep.
“Rayna!”
Did a giant cat just pounce on my bed? No, I don’t have a cat. What is that?
“Rayna, wake up!”
I open my eyes and scream before I realize it’s Ben, plopped on the side of my bead, leaning over me with a wild grin on his face. I smack him with a pillow.
“What are you doing?! Who said you could come into my room?”
“Your dad let me in. I figured it out!”
“You figured out why my dad let you in?”
“The way to release Sage’s soul. To get him out of Nico’s body for good.”
A chill races over me, and I hug the pillow tight.
“How?”
But Ben’s eyes have drifted to the Nico portion of my wall. “Is that a sugar cube?”
“Ben! I’m asking you about the exorcism!”
“The exorcism?”
“Yes! Blasting a bad spirit out of someone else’s body. That’s an exorcism, right?”
“Okay . . . sure. But an exorcism is usually connected to Christianity. Magda told us to seek the Greeks, remember? Those are the gods whose help we need.”
“So . . . we just call up Mount Olympus and ask Zeus and the gang for a solid?”
Ben raises his eyebrows.
“What? I know mythology. I saw Clash of the Titans. Even the old cheesy one.”
“No. ‘Zeus and the gang’ won’t help us. We need specific gods. Magda also said, ‘Appease the ancient healers.’ ” He leans down, picks up a satchel he’d dropped next to the bed, and pulls out five small geodes—rocks bursting with colorful spiked crystals. He lays them out on the bedspread, one by one: blue, lavender, orange, pink, and green. “Agate, fluorite, wulfenite, calcite, and malachite,” he says, “the gem representatives of Panacea, Hygeia, Iaso, Aceso, and Aglaea, the sister goddesses of healing. Invoked properly, these goddesses will stop the soul rejection and secure Sage in Nico’s body.”
“Wait—I thought we were kicking Sage out of Nico’s body.”
“Tell me: In your dedicated study of Greek mythology on the IMAX screen, did you learn anything about Eris?”
“Was he played by Ralph Fiennes?”
“No. She is the goddess of discord. She’s not in the top pantheon, but she’s very strong—much stronger than the healing sisters.” He reaches into the satchel and pulls out one more geode. The crystals inside this one are jet-black and jut out like blades. “Magnetite. Symbol of Eris. Bring her into the mix and she’ll make sure the ritual fails.”
“Then Nico’s soul can move on and find peace?”
“I believe it can. Yes.”
I stare at the geodes, their crystals winking back the light in the room. The Eris crystal is sharpest, and I picture its daggers slicing into Nico’s body and tearing Sage’s soul away.
“Will it hurt?” I ask.
“Will it hurt Sage? I don’t know . . . but I don’t think so.”
I can’t take my eyes off the black crystal.
“Promise me we’re doing this for the right reasons. We’re doing it because it’s the only way Nico’s soul can rest, not because it hurts too much to see Clea with her soulmate . . . when neither one of us can be with ours.”
I feel Ben stiffen next to me, but when I meet his eyes, he relaxes and runs his hands through his hair. He even laughs a little. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ben, you’ve always been in love with Clea.”
“I’m over it.” His voice is cold and flat, then he takes a deep breath and lets it out in a tortured sigh. “I’m doing this for Nico. I killed him, Rayna. I think about it all the time, every day. I pushed him to the ground, and he landed on a knife that cut him open.”
“Don’t . . .”
“I have to. You need to understand. His blood is on my hands. The least I can do is free his soul. I can’t live with the alternative.”
I’m nodding, agreeing before I’m even aware of it.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
sixteen
CLEA
For the first several hours after he takes the drugs, Sage is deathly still. I stay at his side and watch him sleep. I want to check his pulse and breath constantly, but I force myself to watch the clock and wait. Every fifteen minutes I let myself check. Every time he’s alive, but I have no idea if underneath the haze he’s still himself or some soulless monster.
As the heavy dose of Vicodin wears off, Sage starts thrashing in bed. Just spasms at first—a leg or arm springing out for just a second. They’re like missiles, and I step away from the bed so I don’t get hit.
“It’s okay, Sage,” I tell him. “You can relax. It’s okay.”
If he hears me, it doesn’t show. The thrashing gets worse until his whole body twists and turns so violently I worry he’ll dislocate his hip or shoulder. He moans, too, a horrible, agonized wail that I can’t bear to hear.
“It’s okay!” I say, shouting so he can hear me over his own cries. I feel so helpless, I’m crying too. I can’t even get near him, the thrashing is so bad. “Please be okay. Please!”
He bolts upright, eyes wide open, and we both scream.
He’s still for a moment, and I see his flecked eyes are more green than brown now. I’m in his sight line, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. I don’t know if his eyes even see.
Suddenly he bends his legs and grabs around his calves. He rocks back and forth, his voice keening a high-pitched note that doesn’t stop.
Oh my God, what is happening?
The note gets higher and higher pitched, like a teakettle ready to burst. He’s going to explode if I don’t do something. What can I do?
I lunge for the Vicodin bottle and shake it to get his attention.
“Sage? Sage, please, this will help you. Take these. It’ll calm you down. You can rest. It’ll be okay.”
I have the water I brought in before, the water he didn’t use when he spilled the pills into his mouth. I tiptoe carefully to his side, on alert in case he lashes out with an arm or leg, but it doesn’t happen. I perch on the bed right next to him and hold out the pills and water. For the first time he acknowledges me, his eyes shifting to the side to take me in.
“Take these,” I say. I force myself not to cry anymore—not right now—but I can feel the tears behind my eyes. Maybe the pills will help, or maybe they’ll put him over the edge into a coma. Or kill him. But the torture in his body is killing him too; I don’t have any other options. “Go ahead. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
Sage’s nose flares and every muscle tightens, like he’s fighting to gain control. In a rapid swoop, he grabs the pills and water, downs the rest of the bottle, then throws the pill bottle and cup to the floor. He goes back to hugging himself and rocking . . . but then he settles back into that sleep that looks like death. I collapse on top of him and cry until I have no more tears. I feel so out of control and sick. I’m so spent I almost fall asleep, but I remember his flailing limbs and drag myself onto the rug, where I curl up and close my eyes.
The knock on my door makes me scream.
“It’s us. Ben and Rayna,” Ben says.
I stagger to the door and open it. The two of them wear matching blank expressions, and Ben has a satchel slung over one shoulder.
“I know what to do,” Ben says. “We can go right now.”
“Go? Where?”
“Boston Common.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ll explain in the car.”
I look at Sage, and they follow my gaze. There’s no way he’s getting up to go anywhere.
“We have to carry him,” Ben says.
It takes all three of us, and we have to stop several times, but we get Sage to Ben’s car and wrangle him into the backseat. I slip in too and rest his head on my lap.
“Why Boston Common?” I ask when Ben starts driving.
“Magda’s message: Seek the Greeks, appease the ancient healers. We�
�re going to invoke the ancient Greek goddesses of healing, and we have to do it in a place that’s sacred to them.”
“Boston Common is sacred to Greek gods?”
“You’d be surprised. There was an oak tree there. It’s gone now, but in the 1600s and 1700s, it was a big spot for public hangings, many of them for blasphemy. Specifically, they hung people dedicated to the pagan gods, like the Greek pantheon. Even now, the area around that tree is supposed to be filled with the energy of souls ripped away before their time. Souls who gave their lives for the ancient gods. We need that energy to make the ceremony work.”
“But you said the tree isn’t there anymore,” I remind him. “Boston Common’s big. How do we know exactly where to go?”
“Your dad knew,” Ben says. “It’s the kind of thing that fascinated him. He and I talked about it a long time ago. He even took me there a couple times, so I know it. What I didn’t know was how to invoke the healing goddesses, but I figured out today. It wasn’t easy. Their mythology isn’t usually tied to spiritual healing. I never would have known to even look at them if you hadn’t found Magda.”
So Magda did come through for Sage in the end. Hopefully we won’t run out of time before what she told us can help.
We don’t talk a lot for the rest of the ride. I concentrate on Sage, cradling his head, wiping the hair off his brow. He stirs every now and then, but there’s none of the wild flailing like before. I choose to believe that’s because the drugs are helping him rest, not because he’s slipped beyond our reach. I run my hands over his face and imagine him waking up with his soul intact and untroubled, a normal human being. I hold tight to that thought and don’t let my mind wander.
It’s dark by the time we get to Boston Common. Ben parks close to the park and shoulders his satchel, and he and Rayna help me drag Sage out of the car. I feel better once we get past the streetlights and into the unlit Common. The three of us dragging Sage’s unconscious bulk isn’t exactly inconspicuous. Ben and I are under his shoulders, while Rayna holds his legs. We either look like the casualties of a college kegger, or the most harebrained Mafia body dump ever. We bob and weave as Ben directs us across the park, and it only gets harder when Sage starts to stir. The first flail of his forearm smacks Ben in the cheek, and he almost drops him.
“That’s it over there,” Ben finally says as we climb onto a low rise. “Let’s put him down.”
We do it just in time. A wild tremor sends Sage’s whole body into spasm, and we all jump away. It settles as fast as it began, but I know we’re running out of time before he wakes up completely. And I don’t have any more pills.
I look around, but in the moonlight I can’t make out anything special about the spot. A stretch of field, the rise of grass, a copse of trees.
“So none of these trees is the oak?”
“No. It was torn down a long time ago. But right here, where Sage is . . . This is where it used to be. Now I just need a couple minutes.”
I want to sit with Sage and hold him, but he’s not in control of himself. If this goes well—when this goes well—there will be plenty of time to hold him. Instead I move next to Rayna, her curls whipping her face in the light wind. She’s pale in the moonlight. When she looks at Sage as he is now, who does she see?
I take her hand. “It’ll be okay,” I assure her. She doesn’t respond at all for a minute, but then she squeezes my hand, never taking her eyes off Sage and Ben.
Ben pulls five colorful geodes from his bag. He says they’re agate, fluorite, wulfenite, calcite, and malachite. Each one represents a different healing goddess: Panacea, Hygeia, Iaso, Aceso, and Aglaea. He arranges the geodes in a pentagram around Sage. Then he takes out a notebook . . . and something else. A ring. A gold ring.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“A token to appease the host body,” Ben says. “I got it from Rayna.”
Tears run down Rayna’s face. I step closer to her, my arm pressing against hers.
Sage moans, a low, deep groan.
Hold on, Sage. I close my eyes and try to send him my strength. Just a little bit longer.
“Okay,” Ben says. “Let’s try this.”
He stands as close to Sage’s head as he can without being in the line of fire and starts reading from the notebook, chanting words I don’t understand. Is it ancient Greek? It must be. It goes on for what feels like several minutes. Then he raises his voice, holds the ring over his head, and shouts out the names of the ancient healing goddesses.
Their geodes begin to glow.
Ben grins. He walks to the blue stone—the agate—at the head of the pentagram and touches the ring to it.
I gasp as slowly, ever so slowly, a thin blue tendril of light reaches out and stretches toward the lavender-crystalline geode. It’s beautiful, but I can’t believe it’s happening.
Ben reaches into his satchel and pulls out one more geode. It’s jet-black, with wicked spikes inside. Ben touches the ring to the black crystals, then raises them both in one hand while he chants more Greek from the notebook.
The thin blue light laces with inky blackness. The beam meets the fluorite on one side, and emerges out the other, lavender stained with black, slowly moving toward the next gem, the orange wulfenite. Lavender to orange, orange to pink, pink to green . . . The laser-light path moves faster and faster as it travels, each thin stream of colored light stained with swirling black. It’s mesmerizing . . . but it makes me uneasy. It reminds me of an oil spill. Or the colors flecking in Sage’s eyes.
I don’t like it.
I want to stop the ceremony. Now. Magda lied to us. She didn’t want to save Sage at all. She wanted to torture him, just like before.
I open my mouth to scream . . . but I catch myself before I make a sound. I’m being irrational. Sage was already being tortured; he was already being destroyed. Magda didn’t have to do anything to make that happen, and she knew it.
Right now Sage’s soul is barely hanging on, and this ceremony is the only thing standing between him and oblivion. If I second-guess it and stop it now, there’s no way he can survive long enough to try again.
I force myself to watch Sage and not the lights. He rests peacefully. He looks calm, not tortured. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing him to heal with every ounce of my being.
Out of the corner of my eye I see the beam of green and black has almost reached the head of the pentagram, completing the circuit.
Sage’s body goes rigid. He screams, then folds into the fetal position.
“SAGE!” I shriek. “Ben, what’s happening? You’re hurting him!”
But when I see Ben’s face I know. He’s smiling—a wide, soulless smile I know from other lifetimes, when Ben’s soul destroyed us again and again.
No. God, no. The Elixir is gone. The cycle is supposed to be broken. This can’t be happening.
“It’s almost over!” Ben says in a high, shrill voice. “A couple more seconds and everything will be all ov—”
He doesn’t finish. Rayna’s red hair flies behind her as she leaps into the pentagram and slams into Ben, tackling him to the ground.
seventeen
RAYNA
I wish I hadn’t read his notebook.
I saw it when Ben was in the bathroom, before we went to get Clea. It had fallen out of his satchel. I didn’t plan to flip through it. I was just going to put it back.
But something told me I had to check it out.
I knew what it was. Clea had told me Ben was keeping notes on all his research, adding her own observations, using it all to try to find a way to stop the soul rejection and save Sage.
That’s not what was there at all. There were notes, yes. And all kinds of research. But everything Ben wrote was about finding ways to get Sage’s soul out of Nico’s body, not to help Nico, but to get rid of Sage forever. The worst part was the words scrawled in huge dark pen strokes and underlined three times: “Convince Rayna Nico’s soul is in danger to get personal item!!!”
I was livid.
Right after I read that, I heard Ben coming back, so I quickly slipped the notebook back in the satchel and acted like I’d never seen it, but it was all I could think about as we went to Clea’s and drove to Boston Common.
Ben only told me the story of Nico’s soul being trapped inside his body so he could get the ring. Did Ben even realize it was true? Maybe . . . but maybe not.
And yet it is true. I connected with Nico’s soul in Sedona. Part of it is trapped in Sage’s body and deserves to be set free.
But is this ceremony the way to free him? What if it destroys Sage’s and Nico’s souls? Or what if I stop the ceremony, and that destroys the last chance for Nico’s soul to move on?
I don’t know anymore. I have no idea what’s the right thing to do. I feel all alone.
I look at Ben.
He’s smiling.
Smiling.
Ben might have Nico’s blood on his hands. He might even know Nico’s soul is in torment. But that’s not why he’s doing this. He’s doing it because he’s still in love with Clea, and he can’t have her as long as Sage is alive.
And me? Am I really trying to do the right thing? Or is it just too painful to see Nico’s body with someone else, when I can never have his soul?
Oh God. Sage is going to die, and he’s going to die because of me.
“You’re hurting him!” Clea screams.
That’s when I run, as fast as I can.
Ben says something, but I don’t hear it. I just run. I jump over the blue-and-black light and into the pentagram, diving for his legs. He’s not expecting it, and he tumbles to the ground. The impact knocks the black geode out of his hands, but it’s still inside the pentagram, and the final ray of light is still racing to complete the circuit. When the green/black light hits the blue agate, it will be over. Sage will be gone, and I’ll have killed him as surely as if I’d stabbed him in the heart.
“What are you doing?” Ben says. The geode is only a few feet away, and he crawls on all fours to get it. I have to stop him, fast, and I only know one way.