Chapter 25
Without a Familiar to practise on, Analise found herself in Charles’ lab. The alchemist thought that since she already knew how to kill things, she should focus on reviving them.
‘Familiars hover on the border of life and death, Analise,’ he said, critically examining the body of a rat.
Beside it was a pigeon. She hadn’t asked where the animals came from, but they were freshly dead.
‘Chances are there is not enough lingering life in these poor creatures for you to work with, but it was the best I could do on such short notice.’
Analise was sceptical about this, but Charles was right. If she was going to do what Blackwood thought she could and save the human within the Familiar, she needed to understand both life and death.
‘This may help as well.’ The alchemist brought her a cage with a living rat inside.
Analise decided to start with the dead rat.
She rested her hand on it—the body was pliable, the fur soft and silken.
She took a deep breath and let her magic flow through her fingertips.
If this were a human, she would see their final moments.
It would be an emotionally charged experience, but this was a rat.
Analise wasn’t expecting anything, so when she was suddenly swamped with emotions, it startled her enough to lift her hand and break contact.
This rat had been terrified in the moments before its death.
Heart racing, Analise licked her lips. Human emotions were strong, but often tempered by awareness, an understanding of what was happening or about to happen, even when a situation couldn’t be controlled.
The rat hadn’t known it was about to die and its emotional response was a frantic survival instinct in full flight.
The rat wasn’t aware of its mortality. The finality of death was, therefore, a human construct.
The idea of Heaven was just a way of holding on to those who passed, a way to dampen the pain of loss.
She spent the next hour travelling the paths inside the rat's body, fascinated in how it was similar to a human body. The circulatory system operated in the same way and the heart, now an atrophied muscle, performed the same function.
Charles brought her paper and a pencil, and Analise began to draw what she could see with her magic.
She laboured over it, tracing the paths that led her to the rat’s heart, and by the end, she’d drawn what looked like a series of complicated roadmaps, each winding street leading to a central point—the heart.
She stared at the map, startling when Charles tapped her on the shoulder and told her it was dinner time. She’d been sitting there most of the day, completely absorbed in her task.
The alchemist peered at her drawing. ‘Fascinating,’ he murmured, glancing at her. ‘There isn’t much difference, on a biological level at least, between humans and other mammals.’
He made her leave, promising she could return the next day. At the door, Analise paused, smothering a yawn. ‘Charles, do you live here?’
He nodded, telling her he had a room down the hall. ‘It’s a little chilly, but I’m happy here. I’ve got my work, my lab, a roof over my head. It could be a worse life for an old man.’
Analise smiled. ‘You’re not that old.’
He shooed her away.
There was soup on the stove in the kitchen, so she filled a bowl and took it to her room. Analise contemplated going downstairs and having a drink after dinner, being sociable, human, but once she’d eaten, she fell asleep, returning to Charles’ lab early the next morning.
There was no sign of the alchemist, but the pigeon was waiting for her.
She repeated what she’d done the previous day, discovering the inner workings of a bird were not that different to the rat, and therefore, to a person.
This pigeon had flown into the side of a carriage and broke its neck, but again, like with the rat, there was no awareness of the finality of death.
The following day, Analise pulled the cover off the cage, the live rat scuttling away from her. ‘I won’t hurt you,’ she told it. ‘I want to see inside you.’
The rat sat trembling at the back of the cage, watching her with terrified liquid eyes. She realised she was going to have a problem.
She wasn’t going to be able to touch it—it was likely to bite her if she tried and she wasted an hour staring at the rat, with it staring back at her, before she covered the cage, defeated.
She found Ezra at a table in the front bar, reading a newspaper.
A carriage trundled down the street and he looked up to watch it pass.
Dusty light streamed through the window.
His hair shone, lips fixed into a slight smile.
His shirt was dark grey today. As Analise watched, he casually rolled his sleeves to the elbow, one at a time, then turned back to his paper, face soft.
She let her eyes linger on the line of his shoulders, his arms, the sharpness of his jaw.
He was more than handsome—he was striking, especially in moments like these, when he was still and quiet, and hadn’t noticed her watching him.
Analise wondered how different things might have been for them, if they weren’t facing the end of the world. If she wasn’t a death witch and he hadn’t been the one responsible for …
She cleared her throat. Ezra glanced at her and smiled. Her cheeks heated but she found herself smiling back. ‘Anything interesting?’ she asked, joining him and nodding at the paper.
‘The usual—murder and death, violence, arguing politicians, broken down trains, anti-unionists getting the shits, a factory fire.’ He looked out the window again, watching a group of men in dark coats walk past. Some factory workers followed them.
Despite their dirty faces and the tiredness in their eyes, they smiled as they talked with one another.
It was strange, she thought, and it reminded her of being in the convent, knowing there was a world out there that she was separate from.
She wondered if Ezra felt the same way—trapped, like the rat downstairs in its cage. What would happen if he went outside? Would his Familiar be waiting to pounce on him and drag him away to Asmael?
He needed something to do.
‘Ezra, you like walking on the wild side of life, don’t you?’
Wary green-blue eyes met hers. ‘It depends.’
‘Could you hold something for me?’
He smirked. ‘Only if you hold something for me in return.’
Analise rolled her eyes. ‘Come with me.’
He followed her to the lab, where there was still no sign of Charles. Analise led Ezra to the cage and pulled the cover off. He took a hasty step back.
‘I hate rats.’
‘Really? I thought you’d be kindred spirits.’ Analise laughed at the look he gave her. She opened the cage. ‘Grab him for me, will you?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘I need to work out how it’s alive, how what’s going on inside it keeps its heart beating.’ She showed him her roadmap of the dead rat.
‘Won’t it be the same inside that one?’ he asked, pointing at the live rat.
‘Yes, but I want to know what its life feels like,’ Analise said, frowning. ‘That’s not exactly right. If I’m going to try and save a Familiar, I need to know the difference between life and death as a feeling.’
Ezra looked at her for a long moment, then sighed. ‘If I get bit—’
When he shoved his hand into the cage, the rat went feral, squealing and flinging itself against the bars. He closed his fingers around it finally, managing not to get bitten. ‘Now what?’
‘Out of the cage—I need you to hold it so I can touch it.’
Grumbling, Ezra lifted the squirming rat free and held it with both hands, one wrapped around the rat’s throat, the other around its back legs. He looked like he was going to be sick. ‘Did I mention I hate these things? It’s probably got the plague, Analise.’
She looked at the terrified animal. ‘You won’t catch the plague.’
The rat looked so small and helpless in Ezra’s large hands that Analise felt sorry for it.
‘Here goes,’ she muttered, and placed the tips of her fingers on the rat’s exposed belly.
Her magic moved through its body, death colliding with life in a shower of sparks.
Analise followed its internal systems towards the furious beating of its tiny heart.
It was like her magic was drawn there. She could feel the life inside the rat, like she had with the bird that day in the courtyard at the convent.
Life was warm, like sunshine. As her magic moved closer to the rat’s heart, death reached out and swiftly swallowed that raging rhythm.
‘Shit,’ Analise said, withdrawing her magic.
‘It’s dead,’ Ezra whispered. The rat was limp in his hands.
She sighed.
‘But it’s only just dead,’ he reminded her. ‘Bring it back.’
‘Ezra, I don’t know how. I took its life—’
‘Where did you put it?’
Analise looked at her hands. Her fingertips were tingling. ‘On the bench,’ she whispered.
Once Ezra set the rat down, Analise placed both hands over it. Life and death were in her fingers, hovering there, waiting. The rat was already dead, so the death magic in her veins … stepped aside. It had nothing to hold on to so Analise focused on returning what she’d stolen.
Nothing happened at first, but then her hands were filled with squirming animal. She could feel its heartbeat surging, feel the blood pumping through that tiny, furry body. Quickly, she scooped it up and sat the stunned rat back in the cage, then stepped back.
Ezra was staring at her. ‘You’re scary as fuck, you know that?’
Analise swallowed. Her heart was racing, blood pounding in her ears. She shook her head, shocked at what she’d managed to do. She scrawled a note to Charles, fingers trembling, and left it on the rat’s cage. The animal blinked at her.
‘Thank you,’ she told it. Then to Ezra, ‘Are you scared of me?’
‘I’ve always been scared of you.’ A faint blush spread across his cheeks as he cleared his throat. ‘I need to go and wash my hands.’