by Amie Gibbons
All of us girls smiled.
“How dangerous is this?” AB asked.
Carvi closed his eyes for a moment. “On a scale of one to ten, we’re somewhere around base jumping off a skyscraper territory in doing the spell alone. If we alter anything, affect anything, we’re around skydiving without a parachute.”
AB flinched.
“We good to try this then?” I asked.
Carvi gave me his blank face. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I know that. Why don’t you explain it to me? What will this take?”
“We did the spell to bring the threads here,” Quil said.
I looked behind him like it was magically gonna be right there.
Pyro flew in with the box I kept his threads in on his back and tilted to the floor so it slid off with a light thump.
“How is your dad still asleep after all this?” AB asked.
Mama and I chuckled as one.
“Military training,” Mama said. “He woke up when you two were hollerin’, assessed the situation, and went straight back to sleep. A skill I’ve envied for the last thirty years. Once I’m awake, I’m awake.”
AB looked down, shame painted all over her face. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
“You were freaking out,” Mama said. “I get it. I’m a writer, a Leo, and I raised three girls. That was not the first fit to be thrown in my house, and it certainly won’t be the last. I am a holy terror when I’m in the middle of a book and I’m interrupted, or I have writer’s block.”
“Ah, so that’s where Ariana gets the dramatics.” Carvi winked at me.
I curled up my lip and shot him a glare.
He winked again.
He was covering by acting up his teasing, playboy side.
He was not okay right now.
“Carvi,” I said, “how do we do this?”
The mask of arrogant smirking jerk didn’t slip.
“We don’t,” he said.
“Then how else do we find this person?” I asked, keeping my voice even. “Because you said nothing is showing up as off since whatever was changed is now what happened, so in the plane we were in, it didn’t show up as wrong, even though it technically is. Is there another plane we can look in?”
He stared at me.
“I didn’t think so. How do we go back? We don’t have to touch anything. We don’t have to affect anything. We can stay invisible and only go to where it’s nighttime so we can float on Pyro and not even touch the grass and risk squishing a bug or something.”
Carvi stared me in the eyes and I quickly looked away.
“I can do the spell,” Quil said. “Using you as a catalyst. We can do this.”
“I won’t be a part of it,” Carvi said.
My mouth fell open and I looked at him then. “You’re kidding? You’re going to bail on us?”
“I’m going to call Karma and tell her to do her own fucking job.”
“What about my dad?” I asked.
“It’ll be a hell of a lot easier to save him than it will be to time travel, trust me.”
“She said it was fated.”
“She says a ton of shit. You were stupid enough to believe her.”
My head snapped back and I stood, propping my hands on my hips as I stared him in the eyes.
It was a lot easier when I was mad.
“Carvi, I don’t know what exactly is goin’ on here, but you’re lashing out, and I’m not gonna put up with it. Cut it out. You don’t want to do this cuz you don’t think you can go back without giving into temptation to save Milo, then I get it, but don’t you dare take it out on me.”
We stared each other down.
And I wasn’t backing down this time.
“We can do this without him,” Quil said, giving me an excuse to look away. “We can do it with Pyro and the threads you’ve saved. I know the spells and I know you can act as the catalyst after you were able to tear open dimensions. Carvi is going to stay here and talk to Karma. See if he can get some answers.”
“Ummmm,” AB said, flinching as Carvi turned his look on her. “Are we sure that’s the best idea? I mean, if there’s one person she’s not going to answer, it’s Carvi.”
“She has a point,” I said.
“But she may answer me,” Mama said.
We all looked at her.
She shrugged. “I can talk to her, woman to woman. We are talking about my husband’s life, after all. Carvi can be the one to call her since I don’t know the first thing about that, but I can talk to her. See what she knows. What she’s seen. This is so complicated, y’all should be communicating anyway. You will go back and find out what happened, and we will talk to Karma, and hopefully have a fuller picture by the time you are back.”
“They can’t,” Carvi said. “Quil has never done a spell like this. It won’t work.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” Quil said, calm as ever.
“There are calculations involved, and you don’t know when you’re going.”
“I can guess it’s under ten years ago,” I said. “Just based on the sense I got in there. I… I don’t know about the calculations though.” I looked between the men. “Math isn’t my thing.”
AB raised her hand. “Doctor over here. Got As in math classes up through linear algebra. I don’t know what calculations he’s talking about, but they are probably in the spells Quil is talking about.”
“They are,” Quil said.
Carvi’s face stayed smirking but his eyes flashed green.
Or maybe that was just the light?
My heart rate picked up, and Carvi turned that look on me.
The weight of all that power pushed on me.
I growled under my breath and stared him down, crossing my arms for strength.
“We’re doin’ this with or without you,” I said. “Get onboard or get off the tracks.”
Carvi walked up and leaned over me and my breath caught as I dug my heels in, refusing to budge.
How long could I keep this up?
Cuz I was about to crumble under that gaze.
After about two seconds.
I stared into his eyes.
Falling into them.
Only not literally.
But his fear shone through.
Just for a second.
He was terrified this was gonna do something terrible. Not just that he was not gonna resist temptation if we went back in time, but that we would screw things up.
And he was worried about us.
My heart twinged and I reached forward, hugging him tight around his middle and resting my head over his heart.
He froze and finally wrapped his arms around me.
“Lea,” he said softly, “do you have any clue what happens when you go back in time and change something that affects your life without the proper spells first, meaning you wouldn't have gone back in the first place? Do you?
“It's called a time loop. You are literally removed from reality and stuck in an infinite bubble where you go back in time, then don't, then do. Forever.”
I didn’t let him go. “Okay, it's like in Doctor Strange. I got it. I won't touch anything, I swear.”
“The fact that your only concept of time travel is from a fucking superhero movie is the exact reason we shouldn't be doing this.”
“We?” I asked.
“I can’t let you do this alone.”
I released him but held his arms as I backed up to stare up at him. “Thank you. We can talk to Karma after this. After we figure this out. After we have something to tell her. And we can all make sure none of us do anything to screw anything up.”
Carvi shook his head with a sigh. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. We’re going to need to hit the store for ingredients first.”
Chapter thirteen
I held up my temp phone, turning slowly till the compass app was pointing north.
“Candle one goes there.” I pointed right in front
of me to where the line of the compass said north was.
“Does it matter which candle?” AB asked.
“Yes,” Quil said. “The candles line up with the elements. Depending on the spell, different directions line up with different elements. North is wind, east water, south earth, and west fire.”
“Shouldn’t west be earth? Cuz green?” I asked, grinning.
AB smiled back.
Carvi squinted at both of us, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Oh come on,” I said. “Wicked witch of the west? She was green?”
“I understood the reference; I just don’t find you funny,” Carvi said, voice sourer than an unripe persimmon.
“Oh dear,” Mama said, walking in from the kitchen with an armful of spices.
We’d decided on the living room because it was the easiest to orient all the candles in there with enough room for all four of us to be in the circle.
We’d pushed all the furniture back and put a giant square of wooden floor, that’d apparently been placed in the basement as a small dance floor, on top of the carpet as our working surface.
AB lined up the candles with me pointing the way, and Quil double checked our distances.
Everything in magic was so specific.
We had to have the candles lined up exactly on the different orientations, and separated an exact distance based on how far back we wanted to go, down to the exact millimeter.
Otherwise, we could end up off in time.
And the further back you went, the more precise you had to be.
We were going for ten years since I was sure it wasn’t further back than that.
But other than that, we didn’t really have anything to go off of.
Mama put down the spice rack and turned, looking at Carvi.
She’d done little spells over the years, but nothing like this.
Like when I was kidnapped, the first time, she’d tried spells to find me. She hadn’t been successful cuz she was an amateur, but the FBI had saved me.
Specifically Grant.
My heart twinged and I clutched my fist and put it to my heart.
A gesture Carvi didn’t miss.
He raised his eyebrow at me.
“Thinking about Grant?” he asked mentally.
“Thinking of the first spell Mama ever did,” I said. “She was trying to find me when those crazies kidnapped me and the FBI’s consultants found me. And Grant came bustin’ in… well, you know the story. Carvi…”
I bit my lip.
“You expect him to show up, don’t you?”
I blinked quickly, looking around.
Quil and Mama were going over the spices and AB was checking the measurements between the candles.
All too busy to notice.
Thank goodness.
I nodded. “He’s always just busted in when I needed him. And now? Now he wouldn’t even if he knew where I was, cuz he just stopped caring. Carvi, I don’t know how to deal with this. So far I’ve avoided thinking about it, but that only works for so long.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But you keep going on. You put one foot in front of the other. You work through your pain on your own time. You don’t have time right now, which is why you’re ignoring it, but you will later, and you will deal with it.”
“You sure? I don’t feel like I will right now. I feel like I’m going to feel like this forever. That I’ll be perfectly fine and doin’ my job, and then something will remind me of him and he’ll take over my mind. And it’ll be all Grant, all the time, on and off for the rest of my life.”
He shook his head. “It won’t be.”
AB made a humming sound and squinted, leaning over the west candle, and snapped the measuring tape back up. She started at the edge of the candle and pulled it across the floor, ending at the very edge of the next candle and kneeling down, squinting at her work again.
Carvi chuckled mentally and I looked back at him.
“If there’s one person you want doing the measurements for a spell like this, it’s an OCD one,” he said. “At least we won’t get lost with her on it.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. You two have similar backgrounds, but very different issues. You did have the good little girl southern upbringing, and that clashes with your desires, but AB grew up in a small town in Montana.
“She had no concept outside of TV and movies of what a normal high school experience was. People didn’t sleep around and get in fights and do drugs, at least not the ones she knew. She didn’t do ‘high school’ until med school, and I don’t think she ever learned how to deal with the world as an adult, because by then, nobody was around to explain to her how to grow up when faced with these problems.”
He paused, staring at her.
She was too busy measuring the next candle to notice.
“She never grew up,” Carvi said. “She’s a good and giving person, but she doesn’t know how to manage emotions like an adult. And she has PTSD, which makes it harder. But she tries. She tries so hard.”
Where was he going with this?
“Ariana,” he said after a moment, “she doesn’t know who she is. That’s why I misread her earlier. Because she doesn’t know. I’m afraid what will happen if we put her in danger. It could break her.”
“It could teach her,” I said, shaking my head. “Carvi, you didn’t see her last week. She faced down that tulpa. She might still be learning how to adult, but aren’t we all? That’s the curse of the millennial, right?
“She was brave, and she was steady in the face of danger. She was a huge help. I think letting, making, whatever, her help us, will help her find herself. I think she wants to prove to herself how brave she is, and how much she can handle.”
“And if she can’t? It’s on us.”
“I’m willing to take that risk for her. Hell, I take that risk with myself all the time. I don’t know how I’m gonna react. I know I freeze sometimes. But that’s not gonna stop me from tryin’.”
Quil took one canister from Mama and walked to the book propped open on the couch.
His eyes flew over the words and he nodded, checking inside the canister, probably to make sure there was enough.
He walked over to us and wrapped an arm around me.
I leaned into him and we watched AB work.
Carvi was right.
Couldn’t beat the OCD person at making sure every angle and measurement was just so.
We watched her until she finally stood and backed up, hands propped on hips.
She looked up and jerked, eyes flying wide.
“How long have you all been watching me?” she asked, voice high.
I giggled. “For a while. We didn’t want to interrupt. Can’t beat you for making sure everything’s perfect. The OCD is definitely good for something.”
AB grinned.
Quil squeezed my arm then let me go, walking to the first candle.
He chanted, voice strong and sweet.
And completely unintelligible.
He finished something and sprinkled the spice.
I took a whiff and sneezed.
Cinnamon.
Huh.
You never really thought of cinnamon when you thought of spells, did ya?
At least, I didn’t.
I always thought it was more like eye of newt and smelly things like sulfur.
Quil sprinkled, walking clockwise, keeping a constant tiny stream going.
And paused at each candle to chant something.
“What language is that?” I asked.
“Latin,” Carvi said. “Don’t they teach you anything in schools these days?”
“Uh yeah, but my modern dance class clashed with useless dead languages like nobody ever uses outside of a few words in a courtroom.”
“And Mass,” Quil said.
Carvi rolled his eyes at me and I smiled sweetly.
Quil finished his walk, gave Mama the cinnamon, and took the sal
t canister.
He walked the circle again, chanting, drawing a solid line of salt around the candles, making sure it was unbroken and engulfed the candles, unlike the cinnamon, which was just kinda sprinkled between them.
“Can you see it yet, lea?” Carvi asked.
I didn’t bother asking what.
I knew.
Somehow I knew what he was asking me to look for.
I stared at the lines as Quil finished the salt and went back for a third spice.
The lines glowed soon as I focused on them and I strained my mind, squinting to help myself focus.
The candles and cinnamon flared up, a light red that came from the west candle and flowed around.
Fire for the inner.
The salt was next and flashed from the south. Earth as the main, to ground us to this plane and bring us home.
Quil poured the third, something else that smelled sweet but I couldn’t place.
And I could see the magic pouring from his hand as he sprinkled it around the salt circle.
Wind to guide us to the time we needed.
He went back for the fourth and somehow I wasn’t surprised.
Water was the outer layer.
Because water was my element.
He took a bottle of actual water and poured it far outside the other lines, probably to make sure it didn’t splash and smear the spices.
It glowed the brightest in my mind, a beautiful blue-green that washed up off the carpet and beckoned to me.
This spell was made for me.
I was the catalyst.
Of course the furthest out was water.
I took a deep breath, feeling the power pull at me.
“Not yet, lea,” Carvi whispered.
I nodded.
“Can I do this?” I asked him, eyes staying glued to the pulsating lines of magic.
Would we even be able to cross those lines?
The walls of light stretching outta them were looking more and more solid.
“You mean act as a catalyst?” Carvi asked.
I nodded.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried this with a person playing that role.”
“Everyone in the circle,” Quil said. “We’re almost ready.”
AB went first, walking through those walls like they weren’t even there.