Chapter 23
Analise snatched some bread from the kitchen and hurried back to her room, wondering if she’d made a terrible mistake.
Samira’s face flashed before her eyes, and if it wasn’t her, it was Ezra, and the way he looked at her.
It was his lips, the feel of them, and the shape they made when he told her he liked her.
And she’d sent him away, unable to face it.
Because if she did, if she gave in to what her body wanted and let herself forget what he used to be, what did that make her?
Maddog came to fetch her, halting the chaotic swirl of her thoughts. Ezra’s door was closed, and they saw no one else. Everyone was probably sleeping off the night before. Analise’s stomach turned over.
‘There is someone you need to talk to,’ Maddog told her, leading her down stairs to the Order’s headquarters. They stopped outside a door, the gangster turning to her, voice low. ‘You’re going to meet Charles, our alchemist.’
Analise’s heart leapt.
‘Now, he’s a little jumpy about certain things. Most things really. He studied at the Academy of Science, and they kicked him out for his views, so probably best not to ask about that period in his life.’
Morgan had mentioned an alchemist friend of his from time to time, but Analise never got to meet him.
Alchemy was the meeting point between science and magic, a place where Analise sometimes felt she lived.
Her job at the morgue had been about science really, about biology, and she’d learnt a lot about the inside of the human body.
Her magic was connected to the body, to the science of it in ways she didn’t understand.
‘Charles is the best person here who can teach you more about the body. He’s been dissecting and dicing things up for years,’ Maddog said. ‘Studying the way it all works.’
Analise paused. ‘Do I need to know more about the body?’
Maddog’s eyes were soft. ‘I’m not going to pretend I haven’t noticed you’re crawling out of your skin, Analise. You had a job before this. A life. And we’ve taken you from it. This might make up for some of that.’
Analise wasn’t sure what to say. Heat kissed her cheeks, but if Maddog noticed, he didn’t comment on it and they resumed walking. He stopped in front of a nondescript door, giving her a glance over his shoulder, as if he was offering her a chance to change her mind.
‘Where do the bodies come from?’
‘Best you don’t know.’ Maddog pushed open the door.
The room beyond was brightly lit, a dozen gas lamps planted along the walls like tiny suns.
Charles was perched on a stool at a bench, peering into a microscope.
Compared to the gangster who stood beside her, the alchemist was a small man.
Mousy brown hair threaded with grey at his temples, and he was wearing a battered suit and spectacles.
Behind him on another bench were glass jars filled with liquid and human organs.
Analise was instantly swept up in something other than Ezra.
She wandered into the room after Maddog.
Charles didn’t acknowledge them at all. ‘Phrenology, physiognomy—rubbish, if you ask me,’ he muttered. Analise and Maddog exchanged a glance. She had no idea what the alchemist was talking about.
Maddog chuckled. ‘Analise doesn’t care about your thoughts on the pseudo-sciences, old man. She’s here to learn about the body.’
‘I thought she was a mortician,’ Charles commented, looking up from his microscope. ‘Any brains in your head, girl? Or are you all magic and death and nothing else?’
She raised her eyebrows, grateful for the opportunity, and the distraction that Maddog provided her with.
‘I could dissect you and scatter your remains around the city for the dogs,’ she said casually.
‘I’d break open your rib cage, but only after running a blade from your throat to your stomach.
Take out your lungs first, then your heart.
After cutting it free of the pericardium, of course. ’
Charles blinked, then burst out laughing.
‘Of course.’ He patted the vacant stool next to him.
Analise sat, silently thanking Morgan for all the times he droned on when they would perform an autopsy on an unidentified corpse.
Morgan was deeply curious about the body and how it worked.
He’d shown her a textbook once, filled with incredible colour illustrations and diagrams. She’d been fascinated by the drawing of the circulatory system.
‘Why do you study the body?’ she asked Charles.
He looked at her like she was mad. ‘It’s not all about turning copper into gold, or experimenting with aether and the elements,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m an alchemist, yes, but I am also a scientist who believes that God has a purpose for us all.’
The nuns believed the same thing, and Analise had been taught there was a plan, but not what the plan was. That was only known by God. ‘You made the spells on the door at the safe house?’ she guessed.
‘Not spells—chemistry.’
‘The door was moving.’
‘Due to a secret combination of substances that created a mild hallucinogenic experience to anyone who looked at it, making it seem like it wasn't there at all,’ Charles explained. ‘Only those with magic or those who are clairaudient can see it.’
Analise frowned. ‘But—’
‘You’re a death witch—clairaudience is part of who you are,’ Charles said. ‘The Unseen, Ezra, is similar to you. He can’t use magic, but he can see it, like the way you see the spirit world.’
‘You’ve talked to Ezra?’
Charles nodded. ‘He had a lot of questions, but not ones that I could answer. Our generous benefactor brought him to me,’ he added, gesturing to Maddog, who was peering into one of the glass specimen jars. ‘That’s an ear, in case you’re wondering,’ Charles told him.
Maddog made a noise and stepped back.
Analise’s head was spinning. What could Ezra have possibly asked an alchemist? ‘You said I’m clairaudient. What does that mean?’
‘It means you can see and hear the other side. The world we call the paranormal, the world most ordinary people sense, but never truly experience. Now, we are going to learn about the body.’
‘I know about the body.’
‘A dead body, yes, but death is different to life. In death, everything is arrested. Blood has stopped moving through the veins. The heart has ceased its rhythm. The vital organs have cooled. The skin has lost its heat. But in life,’ Charles paused, adjusting his spectacles.
‘A current of energy moves through the body. The brain is sending a thousand messages all at once, telling us to breathe, to blink … to live.’
Analise considered his words. ‘You’re right,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t know what it means to live, not on a mechanical level, anyway.’
‘If you’re going to use your magic to help us, you need to understand the workings of the living body, Analise.
’ Charles got up and went to stand by a strange contraption Analise had never seen before.
‘We call this the Pile.’ He flicked a switch and the whole thing started humming. Analise drew closer, curious.
‘It generates electrical current,’ Charles told her, going on to explain that the Pile was a series of alternative discs of copper and zinc, with pieces of brine-soaked cloth between them.
‘The human body is not dissimilar. The brain sends messages to the body through the nervous system, generating its own form of electricity.’
He turned the machine off and returned to his bench, gesturing for Analise to follow him. ‘When I left the Royal Society, they were beginning to stimulate human organs with electrical current.’
Analise’s eyebrows rose. ‘Is that … ethical?’
‘What do you mean ethical?’
‘Did the dead consent? Or did a bunch of scientists chop them up and start poking around at their insides?’
Charles snorted, turning to Maddog. ‘You’ve brought me one of those.’
‘One of what?’ Analise demanded.
‘One of those who believe science and magic have no correlation to one another.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Analise said. ‘But I do believe in respecting the dead.’
‘Are they respected when they’re thrown into those incinerators?’ the alchemist challenged.
‘If they come to me before, then yes, they are.’ She glanced at the Pile again. ‘It’s a battery, isn’t it? And you believe the body is a battery?’
‘Yes, and yes, to an extent,’ Charles said.
‘Both create energy in different ways. Electricity allows us to manipulate the body—studies are only new, of course, but it’s being used in medical treatments now.
Your magic should be able to do something similar,’ he added, giving her a curious look.
‘Have you ever brought something back from the dead?’
‘Things that are dead should stay dead,’ Analise said firmly. In her mind, a hand clawed its way free of the earth.
‘But you’ve taken life with it.’
Analise hesitated. Maddog was watching her carefully.
‘Yes. I have. I killed a bird when I was a child—pulled the life from its body and helped it die. It was injured and dying anyway. More recently, I killed a man who was going to kill me, or worse.’ She sat up straighter on the stool.
‘I don’t want to kill anyone else by accident. ’
The alchemist raised his eyebrows, a knowing smile tugging at his mouth. ‘What about on purpose? I heard through the grapevine that you’re a little unhappy with a certain someone. I don’t blame you, of course. If someone lied to me that way, death might be the preferred option.’
Analise glared. ‘The grapevine has a big mouth.’
He chuckled. ‘Alright, no personal questions.’
‘What did you mean about giving life?’ she asked. ‘A death witch can take it, can guide a soul to the next world, but we cannot give life.’
Charles looked at her. ‘Are you sure about that?’
Analise pulled the book Blackwood had given her from beneath her bed. She stared at it, wondering whether this was the right thing to do, then crawled onto the bed with it. Sitting cross-legged, she took a deep breath and opened it.
She had questions that alchemy and science could not answer. Perhaps the Church could.
Charles hinted that death magic was also about life, that life and death were two sides of the same coin.
Analise had never heard anyone else refer to her magic like that.
She’d always known death witches were not the only ones to see spirits; Charles said she was clairaudient, which meant so were the mediums and seers and anyone who dabbled in the other side, the soothsayers and druids of a time long gone.
Being able to take life was unique to a Daughter of Lilith.
According to Charles, if someone had enough understanding of how the body worked, they would know the way the body acted in those moments before death. The stopping of the heart, either slowly or abruptly. The cooling of the blood and, eventually, flesh and organs.
If someone knew how to cause death, could they not reverse it?
But even if someone could bring a soul back from the other side and somehow guide it back into its body, should they?
She’d learnt more about her magic after one conversation with an alchemist—who she was certain was not entirely sane—than she had over the last twenty-five years of her life.
All Analise had was rumour and conjecture, things she picked up on the streets and things the nuns told her.
She’d never spoken to another death witch.
She flicked the book to a random page and began to read. ‘Death magic is a gift from Lilith, she who guards the world of the dead. A woman with the power of death in her hands can take life.’
Analise turned the page, then another, realising that the book had been scribed, not printed, and written in more than one hand.
She wondered if Father Blackwood had written it, but the Head of the Church probably didn’t have time to sit around and write a book on death magic.
The book wasn’t organised into topics, but was a random assortment of thoughts and theories.
She continued reading about ghosts and spirits, Lilith, God, all things she already knew.
Impatient, she flipped to the back.
There was one single sentence on the last page.
‘And she who can take life can also give it …’
The words trailed off, but Analise stared at them until her eyes blurred.