“Then I should go alone,” I say. “It’s me they want. Perhaps if I offer myself in trade—”
“The Hunters aren’t going to negotiate,” Ander says. “If you go, they’ll take you, alright, but they’re not going to let Emmie go.”
“And we will have lost both of you,” Cicely says. “We can’t risk it. We have to go in as a united front, all of us.”
“Cicely’s right.” Five smiles like she’s relishing every minute of this. “It’s gonna take a big group-hug of an effort if we want to get Emmie out alive.”
“Then we have to try to work together.” The alternative is unthinkable. Yes, Emmie has annoyed me in the past, but already the house seems colder and quieter without her. “But Ander, will you even be able to fight side by side with the enluzantes without turning on them now? Perhaps you are the one we should leave behind.”
Ander and Naomi exchange a glance.
“Ander and I discussed it,” Naomi says, “and I will be going with him to charm him so he doesn’t hurt anyone.”
Ander cracks his knuckles. “So I won’t hurt anyone we don’t want to hurt, you mean.”
“Wait, whoa,” Cicely says. “How come Naomi gets to go and I don’t?”
“Trust me,” says Ander, “I’m not a fan of Naomi being in the middle of this either, but there’s no choice. The only potions we have left are the few that were in the saferoom, and that won’t be enough to keep me under control. You guys are going to need me there if you want home-court advantage. I know my way around the place, and I know the Hunters—their strengths and weaknesses. We just don’t have a choice.”
“But Naomi is human,” Cicely says. “It’s too dangerous for—”
“Naomi is a witch, Cissa, and she also isn’t injured. That’s the point.”
“If that’s the point, then why can’t we just get me uninjured?” Cicely says. “We haven’t even tried to take the shard out of my heart.”
Naomi shakes her head. “I got a good look at it, Cicely, and it’s in deep. If we try to pull it out, we’re likely to drive it in even deeper. It could kill you. Again, I mean.”
“But what if we used healing magic? Maybe if we healed the wound around it—”
“You might just seal in the shard of cross,” I say, “which could make the problem worse.”
“Or it could be walking around with an open heart-wound is my problem,” Cicely says quickly. “Maybe closing it up would make me feel stronger.”
“Maybe,” Naomi says doubtfully, “but it doesn’t matter because we can’t heal it anyhow. I can do ordinary healing spells on living flesh with the ability to heal itself, but not on dead flesh. It won’t work.”
“There are spells to heal the dead,” I say. “I saw our family’s witches use them when I was a child. Sometimes they would repair the enluzantes when there wasn’t time to make more.”
Cicely rolls her eyes. “How thrifty of them.”
“But those spells are necromancy.” Naomi corrals her agitated raven and presses him onto her shoulder. “It’s a completely different branch of magic, one I don’t know much about.”
“Your grandmother knew it,” Cicely says. “You told us that the day we met. You said she was a necromancer and an animal charmer both. That’s why she could charm lycanthropes so well.”
“Yes,” Naomi looks nervous, “but she never taught me to heal the dead. That’s way out of my league.”
“But she taught you to contact the dead, right?” Cicely won’t let it drop. “Didn’t you say you used to help her with séances when you were a little girl?”
“Sure, but talking with ghosts and healing undead vampires are two different…” Naomi’s eyes widen as she understands Cicely’s drift. “Wait. You want me to contact my grandmother?”
“And find out how to heal me,” Cicely says. “Yes.”
“Oh, Cicely, I don’t know…” Naomi chews her lip nervously. “Speaking with the dead isn’t something to be done lightly. My grandmother used to say placing yourself at the crossroads between the worlds is like standing in the crosshairs of a rifle. You set yourself up as a target, make yourself vulnerable to all sorts of darkness.”
“But we wouldn’t be doing it lightly,” Cicely says. “We have every reason to do it. Emmie’s life depends on it. Maybe mine does, too.”
“But even if I wanted to do it, I’m not sure I’d know how. I never conducted a séance without my grandmother’s help. I don’t know if I could do it alone.”
“You wouldn’t be alone!” Cicely’s voice sounds stronger at the thought. “I mean, I know I’m not trained, but I am technically a witch, and I am dead. That has to count for something at a séance, right?”
Naomi laughs uncertainly. “Strangely enough, it actually could help. If you could act as a sort of bridge, a link…” She shakes her head. “But it would still be risky.”
“We don’t have time for this.” Ander is up out of his chair and pacing. “We have to get to Emmie now.”
For once, I completely agree with him. I can feel each passing second like a pinprick.
Cicely catches my eye. I can see the plea in her expression. She wants me to take her side.
I look away, torn. If Cicely does go, it will only put her in danger. It’s safer for her to stay here. But she’ll never let the enluzantes go without her, and we’ll have no chance of rescuing Emmie. It’s a horrible choice to make.
But it is Cicely’s choice, not mine, and she has clearly already made it.
“It’s late,” I say, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “There isn’t enough time for the enluzantes to get to the Hunter’s before dawn. Why not give Naomi and Cicely today to try to heal Cicely’s wounds. When the sun sets again, we leave.”
Cicely gives me a grateful little smile, but I’m not sure she should thank me. I may have just helped her take a step closer to her downfall.
And I may have cost us the time we need to save Emmie.
Ander sighs wearily. “Fine,” he says. “One try. But if this doesn’t work, then Cicely agrees to stay home and send the enluzantes without her.”
“Agreed,” Cicely says, “but if it does work, I go with you. Deal?” She holds out her hand.
Ander takes it, his big hand swallowing hers completely. He looks at her with eyes full of worry. “Okay,” he says. “Deal.”
Chapter 23: Ander
There never seems to be enough night for all we have to do. Naomi hurries to gather up the stuff she needs for the séance while I take another dose of potion—one of our last.
Thankfully the sky is still black when we leave the house. Naomi leads the way with Grimm perched on her shoulder. Luke and I walk on either side of Cicely, propping her up between us. I would rather just carry her, but Cicely insists on walking, which may be for the best. Although I’ve taken all the potion I can handle—and although Naomi is right here to charm me if she needs to—I still don’t trust myself to be that close.
Naomi leads us down the silent beach, to where the abandoned lighthouse rises up as if it’s part of the cold gray rocks. As we get closer, Grimm deserts us, rising into the sky with a scolding screech and flapping back towards the house. I wonder if he knows something we don’t know.
The lighthouse is dark as a tomb. The door is padlocked. Naomi holds out her hand to Cicely. “I need the skeleton key.”
“Crap,” Cicely says. “I gave it to Emmie.”
Wait, how did Cicely get the key? I give her a questioning look, but she looks away.
“Well,” Naomi sighs, “we can always get a new lock I guess. Ander?”
I reach out and grab the padlock and give it a tug. The rusted metal crumples in my hand.
Cicely smiles at me. “That oughta do it.”
“Now, before we go in,” Naomi says, “I want you to have these. My grandmother used to make each of the guests at her séances hold one.” She reaches into her box of supplies, pulls out three silver charms, and hands one to each of us. I tur
n mine over in my hand. It’s a simple five-pointed star inside a circle, a witch’s pentagram. “They’re spelled to ward off any hostile spirits. Simply touch the spirit with the pentagram and it should be compelled to return to wherever it came from.”
Cicely looks nervous. “Are we likely to encounter hostile spirits? I thought we were just calling your grandmother.”
“We are, and we should be safe inside the circle, but there’s always an element of uncertainty when you visit the crossroads between the worlds. When we open the door to the spirits we seek, we may let something else slip in as well. That’s just the risk we take.” She studies Cicely’s worried face. “Unless you’d rather not try it. We can always just—”
“No,” Cicely says swiftly. “We want to do it.”
Personally, I think want is a strong word, but there’s no turning back now. Naomi opens the door and we step in single file. Cicely hesitates at the threshold, but Naomi quickly invites her in and she follows me into the small, round room at the base of the lighthouse. It’s even colder inside than it is outside. The thick concrete walls must keep out the sun. I can see my breath as it rises. The center of the room is dominated by a spiral staircase that coils up into the dark. It’s made of concrete, too, and I can tell it once had an iron railing, although most of that has rusted away or been scavenged. Only a few black stumps of iron remain, sticking up at random like the last teeth in an old lady’s mouth. Otherwise the staircase is open and exposed and we press towards the center of the spiral as we climb, each step like the vertebrae of an uncoiling snake.
I watch my sneakers as I walk, to keep from misjudging a step, and notice there is writing on each stair. It’s too regular to be graffiti, and as Naomi’s flashlight plays across the steps, I can see the words are names. I see Naomi’s last name, Faire, written a few times over. “Witch names?” I ask.
Naomi nods in the dark ahead of me. “The names of my ancestors,” she says.
I shiver. It makes me feel like I’m walking over graves. There’s a sound coming from above us, a faint musical tinkling that I can’t place, but it reminds me of the laughter of ghosts.
We reach the top of the stairs and Naomi pushes open a trap door. One by one, we climb through. I have to wedge my shoulders sideways to fit through the small square opening, then reach back to pull Cicely up behind me. Her face is ashen in the dim light and her hand trembles in mine. The cross in her heart is clearly taking its toll; even climbing the stairs is enough to exhaust her. I give her hand a gentle squeeze before I let it go, and she smiles at me weakly.
This better help, I think, for Cicely’s sake as much as Emmie’s.
Cicely looks up, her face shadowed by her black hoodie, her hand over the wound in her heart. “My God,” she says. “It’s beautiful up here.”
I tear my eyes away from her and look around. She’s right, of course, it is beautiful. The whole center of the circular room is taken up by the ancient lighthouse light. The bulb is misty now, like a single cataract eye, its surface spider-webbed with tiny cracks, but it’s still strangely pretty. It reminds me of a crystal ball full of a murky, uncertain future. The outer walls around us are made of glass, giant windows that must flood the place with sun in the day, like a fishbowl full of light.
Thankfully, however, it’s still dark now. Everywhere you turn there are miles of gray ocean, sparking with bits of moonlight, like mica in a granite rock. The sky mirrors the sparkles, a dark ocean of stars.
“Watch your head,” Naomi says.
I look up and see where the chiming sound was coming from: the entire ceiling is hung with wind chimes. A few are fancy, made of stained glass, but most are improvised: strings of forks and spoons, crystals that look salvaged from an old chandelier, rocks and feathers and sticks and bells and the clapper of a grandfather clock—even a few made of sun-bleached bones, whispering against each other in the dark. They sway slowly in the breeze that breathes through a hole in the center of the roof like a portal to another world.
“The birds had really moved in when we found this place.” Naomi kneels and busies herself, taking candles from her box. “And having a couple of animal charmers using it only made them want to be here more. It took a whole lot of work to clean this room, so we enchanted the wind chimes to keep the birds away.”
“So that’s why Grimm ditched us,” I say.
“Unfortunately, it works on all birds, even raven familiars. The bats still come in the summer, though. They swoop down through the hole in the roof.”
Cicely eyes the hole uneasily. “Being a vampire doesn’t mean I have to like bats, does it?”
Naomi’s laugh blends with the tinkling of the chimes. “They’re harmless, just curious. They want to see what we’re doing.”
“And what do you do up here?” Luke is standing stiffly by the trap door, wary eyes on Naomi. He still doesn’t trust witches.
“Ritual,” Naomi says. “Bigger acts of magic, spells that take more than one person to cast. Witches cast circles to protect us as we work, to keep negative influences out and to keep our own energy in—to concentrate it and contain it—until we’re ready to direct it and let it go. This place is more or less a permanent circle. To activate it, we only have to light the candles on the directional altars. Then the circle will be cast.” She points out the directional altars, four simple wooden boxes set at the cardinal points of the circle and draped with colored cloth. “I used to come up here with my grandmother pretty often, until she got too old to take those stairs, and even after that, I’d sometimes come up here with… a friend.”
She doesn’t say it, but I know she means Jonah. Maybe she’s afraid to say his name so close to a ritual to call the dead. After all, he isn’t the ghost we’re looking for.
“I bet your grandmother will be happy to come back here.”
Naomi smiles and I know I’ve said the right thing. “I hope so.” She twists her thick red braid nervously between her hands. “We should get started.”
“Yeah.” Cicely is looking at the wall of glass. “Time isn’t on our side.”
“Please,” Naomi says, “have a seat in a circle around the light.”
We sit, the three of us, in a circle on the warped wooden floor. The dead glass eye of the light distorts my view of the others, stretching and warping them into phantoms. Naomi nods approvingly. “Three is a good number.”
I scowl at Luke through the glass. “Really, because I always heard three was a crowd.”
Naomi shakes her head. “Three is powerful. Less stable than two, but with more energy. Do you know what the triangle means in alchemy?”
“Change,” I say. I’m surprised I know that, but I do. I remember the little triangles Michael used to draw on his potion notes. That’s what we were fighting: change.
Naomi nods like a pleased teacher. “That’s right. Change. Transformation.”
“Same as in physics or chemistry,” Cicely says. “Delta. The Greek letter looks like a triangle. You use it in an equation when something goes from one state to another.” Leave it to Cicely to have actually paid attention in science class.
“And that’s what we’re talking about here, right?” Naomi says. “Spirits. Beings that have gone from one state to another with the change of death.”
I peer at Cicely around the edge of the light. Her mouth is set in a determined line, and I can tell, even though coming here was her idea, she would be a hundred percent happier back in the science lab at school. I remember a time not so long ago when Cicely didn’t believe in magic. But what choice does she have now?
“I’ll cast the circle,” Naomi says, “and then I’ll join you. Four is a powerful number, too—one for each of the directions: East for air and intellect—” she nods at Cicely, “South for fire and passion—” she turns to Luke, “North for earth and strength—” she smiles at me, “and I will sit in the West, for water and emotion. Traditionally, the land of the spirits was across the water, through the gateway to the West.”
She looks out over the dark ocean, shifting restlessly below us like a kid having a fever dream. From here, the whole world looks like the realm of water and emotion. “With any luck,” Naomi says, “my grandmother will come and bring the fifth direction, the center of the circle where the four directions intersect: the element of spirit.”
A breeze moves through the open patch of roof, stirring the wind chimes until they mumble. I take a swig of potion—the last sip in the bottle. D.J. left us so little, and I’ve been trying to conserve, but this whole situation isn’t exactly stress free. I try to push the worry out of my mind. Naomi begins to chant, wordlessly at first, her voice mingling with the sound of the chimes. She moves first to the altar nearest Cicely, where she passes her hand over the white candle. It lights, the flame flickering in the breeze from above. I can barely make out what Naomi is saying—something about the dead returning to us, the way the sun rises again in the East. The words leave a bitter taste in my mouth. There are plenty of dead who won’t come back, people I’ll never see again.
Naomi moves slowly towards the altar of the South, by Luke. It is draped with a red silk scarf and holds a single red candle and a bundle of herbs. She passes her hand over the wick to light it, then uses the candle to light a little bundle beside it. Immediately, the smoke coils upwards and the room is filled with the smell of sage.
Michael. The smell makes me think of him instantly. He used to burn sage on his little Buddhist altar when he meditated. Danny always loved the smell. He would stand near it just to breathe it in and the sweet smell would linger in his dreadlocks for days.
I blink hard, hoping no one will notice the wetness in my eyes, but of course Cicely does. She gives me a questioning look around the curve of the light.
“Smoke,” I mouth at her, pointing to my eyes, and it’s not a total lie.
She nods, although I’m sure she doesn’t believe me, then turns to watch Naomi light the blue candle on the altar to the West, which is draped is sea-blue silk with a nautilus shell at its center. I hear her murmur something about the voices of our ancestors staying in our hearts like the voice of the sea stays in a shell. Then she steps behind me.
Crossfire (Book Two of the Darkride Chronicles) Page 19