Chapter 8
EIGHT
PHOENIX
Sabra came over first thing the next day, and Layden was just as quick at picking up the principles of mage-craft as he was at computer languages.
We’re standing in a large circle Sabra has chalked in the center of the courtyard, explaining the arcane symbols she’s writing on the ground.
“The interlocking circles represent the different planes we’re attempting to breach. If this curse was placed by a dybbuk—”
“What’s a dybbuk?” Layden asks.
Sabra looks surprised he doesn’t know. “A person possessed by a spirit from another plane. So if your curse was placed by a dybbuk, it will have an inter-plane dimension that we’ll need to crack. Do you remember anything from when they laid the curse?”
Layden’s excellent at keeping a straight face as he lies. “No. It happened when I was very young.” I told him I didn’t want to tell Sabra more than was necessary. “I don’t remember anything. But I can do this… I don’t know how I know how to do it, but I can.”
He lays down some glowing runes beside her arcane symbols.
Sabra’s eyes go wide. “Oh my god, that’s amazing!” She claps with excitement. “Phoenix, are you seeing this?”
I nod. Oh, I’m seeing it all right.
“I’ve never seen symbols like this before,” she says, eyes glowing as she bends down to look at the shining runes. She looks back up at Layden. “What do they do?”
His forehead scrunches. “I’m not sure how I know, but they’re interpretations of your arcane symbols, just in another language.”
Sabra all but squeals. “It has to be from the plane the dybbuk who cursed you came from. This is a clue! And it should help us get it off you or at least manage it because wow…” She closes her eyes as she hovers her hands over his glowing runes. “Man, I can feel the power humming off these babies.”
When she looks back up at Layden, she’s beaming. “We’re going to make magic together!”
Oh dear. I’ve only seen Sabra like this a few times before.
And it’s always when she’s cracked some new magical secret or attained some new level.
I always wanted to close myself up in the lab and play computer games, but apart from normal teenage girl shit, Sabra was always chasing the next magical high.
I get it. It was her escape. Her mom was locked away in a mental institution that Vlad held the keys to, so she was essentially living in a prison, and all she had was me.
Yeah. I was about as friendly as a jar of snakes most days, so she had to find her own way.
And she did through magic. Vlad was happy to give her all her family’s books and grimoires about magic and lore.
He’d used them for centuries and no doubt expected to use Sabra just like he had her mother before her, her mother before her, and so on.
Vlad stopped allowing her to visit her mother last month, only finally admitting it was because she’d died after we both started boycotting our duties.
Sabra fell into a deep depression before I suggested running away.
Depression gave way to a spark of anger, then finally fury.
It gave me hope for her. I hoped our leaving might be the start of the rest of her life, free of the connection to Vlad and the misery and death he’d brought to her family.
I thought for sure she’d never come back. But looking at her now, you’d never know it.
She seems light and bouncy as she and Layden lay out more symbols and runes, working their way around the circle.
I haven’t seen her like this in years. It’s not just now.
At the cabin and on the car ride home, she was like this, too.
Happy and lively, like the last nine years since her mom was first locked up never happened.
Is it just an act because Layden’s here?
I’m startled out of my thoughts by her voice calling to me from the center of the circle. “Come on, Phoenix, let’s try it.”
When I look up, I see that the three circles they’ve drawn are lit up with runes and humming with power that even I can feel.
I’m careful to step between the runes as I join Sabra and Layden in the smallest of the concentric circles at the very core.
It’s a tight squeeze, but we all manage it.
I’m very conscious of the press of Layden’s chest against my back, especially considering the fantasizing I did about him last night in the shower.
I’m glad I’m facing away from him because I can feel my cheeks heating up.
Sabra holds up a knife carved from stone, and I lift my palm toward her. I’m familiar with this part, but I hear Layden’s sharp, surprised inhale as she slices the knife across my skin.
“Right on that symbol there,” Sabra says, pointing to a symbol she’s chalked in front of me, overlaid with one of Layden’s glowing runes.
“Why does she have to be part of this?” Layden asks. I hear the concern for me in his question.
“She’s a blood goddess,” Sabra says as if it’s obvious, and I try not to wince. I haven’t told Layden everything, and it feels like she’s outing me. “Her blood amplifies any spell we weave and calls to the other planes since—”
I jab her in the ribs, and she looks at me, seeming surprised at my glare. But she does stop talking. Thank fuck.
“Since?” Layden queries.
“Since her blood and Vlad’s line are so powerful,” Sabra covers smoothly. “Her blood is the jet fuel to our spell.”
I can feel Layden’s eyes boring a hole in the back of my head but ignore it as I clench my hand over the rune Sabra indicated so that blood drips down from it. I know there need to be at least three drops. Magic comes in threes and sevens. Don’t ask me why. I’m just the blood bank here.
As I stand back up, the circles begin to spin around us.
“It’s working!” Sabra says excitedly.
“Did you think it wouldn’t?” I ask.
“What happens now?” Layden asks.
Sabra grins. “We wait and see.”
“Wait and see what?” Layden asks. An excellent question.
The spinning circles start humming, and the ground under our feet starts to rumble. I’ve been in conjuring circles with Sabra before, and this doesn’t usually happen.
“Sabra—” I start warily.
“Just wait and see!” Sabra repeats, her eyes glowing with excitement.
I reach back and grab hold of Layden’s shirt. “What the hell are we waiting to see?”
The ground rumbles even more, and beyond the circle, I see Vlad and several of my uncles pour out of the compound. Sabra starts laughing with delight.
“What the fuck, Sab?” I say, my hands gripping onto Layden’s torso. His arms wrap around my waist, holding me tight as blinding white light leaps upward from the ground where his runes were placed.
And then, just like that, it all disappears. The circles stop spinning, and the light dissipates in the blink of an eye, the ground returning to normal as if it wasn’t just shaking underneath our feet like an earthquake.
Sabra starts jumping up and down. “Did you see that?”
“We all saw that, Sabra,” I say furiously, letting go of Layden and trying to step up to her as she dances around the circle. Only problem is, Layden hasn’t let me go. His arms are still firmly locked around my waist.
“Are you all right?” he whispers in my ear.
I turn around in his arms, my belly flipping over at how near his face is to mine. How near his lips are and the concern in his eyes by the time I’m facing him.
“Y-y-yes,” I stutter out. “You can let me go now.”
Reluctantly, his eyes search mine for another long moment, and then his arms slide away from around my waist. I struggle not to reach for him the moment I lose contact. But then I remember I’m pissed at Sabra and spin on her where she stands, still looking absolutely delighted with herself.
“What the hell, Sab?”
“Oh, it was marvelous, did you see?”
“Yeah, Sabra, I saw. And so did Vlad and everyone else in the compound. It felt like you were about to blast us to kingdom come. What was that?”
“He’s supercharged,” she says, eyes so bright. “His runes finetuned my arcane symbols to breach the in-between. We’ll be able to discover and make contact with so many new realms together; I can feel it!”
“Are you high?” I grab her and shake her a little.
She seems to come back down to earth, but not much, the grin still stretching her face so wide. “I’m not going to let you ruin this for me, Phoenix,” she says fiercely. “Not this time.”
I let go of her and step back. “What does that mean? What even was this? I thought we were trying to fix Layden’s curse.”
“We were!” She seems a little more grounded as she looks back at me.
“Then what happened?”
“We made contact with the other side!” She can’t help herself. She starts bouncing up and down again. “Real contact!”
“The other side?” Layden asks.
Sabra waves a hand. “One of the other sides, anyway. Your runes are powerful.”
“Wait,” Layden says. “Are you saying you made contact with where I—” He breaks off. “With where the person who cursed me came from? And what does contact mean?”
“Contact means access. And access means powerful magic.”
“How?” I ask, frustrated with how vague she’s being.
“It’s hard to explain to a non-mage.” She shakes her head.
“Try,” I demand, glowering at her. “Considering you’re using my blood to power your engine and his runes as navigation.”
Sabra just barrels ahead. “And once we get there, we can gaze into what’s on the other plane. Even dip into their resources and gain special knowledge.” She smiles at Layden. “Like how to break your curse.”
“How?” Layden asks, sounding just as confused as me.
“By asking,” Sabra says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
I feel my eyebrows hit my hairline. “Asking? As in, asking the spirits who exist in that plane? Holy shit, Sab, have you gone insane?”
All her happy vibes disappear at my question, and I immediately want to eat my words.
“I’m sorry, Sab, I didn’t mean to say it that way.”
“I’m not crazy,” she bites out.
I wince. “I know you’re not. It’s just… What you’re talking about sounds really dangerous. All the spellwork and circles we’ve done in the past… I thought we always agreed we’d never take it as far as talking to spirits from other realms.”
She glares at me. “As if you’re one to talk.”
Ouch. Shots fired. Still, I’m not ready to back down on this.
“You know what happened to your mom.”
“I’m not going to accidentally get myself possessed. We’ve learned so much more since then. She taught me better. She taught me how to be safe.”
I just stare at her. Then why did she end up in the insane asylum? I want to ask but don’t. Yes, Vlad had her locked away there, but Sabra visited her every week. She saw what her mother’s attempts to push the limits of the arcane had done to her. She barely even recognized Sabra most weeks.
“Look, if this isn’t safe, we don’t have to try again,” Layden says, hands up as if wanting to temper the sudden tension between Sabra and me. “After all, there’s the Internet. I can be happy here.”
“It’s fine,” Sabra says at the same time I say, “Maybe that’s a good idea.”
Sabra glares at me. “Why would you say that? You can’t just keep him here as a toy. People aren’t supposed to be trapped here for you to play with because you’re lonely and bored.”
My mouth drops open. Is that why she thought Vlad kept her here with me all those years?
Then I look to the ground. Was it why Vlad kept her here?
I always assumed it was because of her magic.
Because he enslaved everyone in her family.
But he’d never made any of the others live in his compound. They’d had lives outside.
It was only Sabra he kept locked under his roof. Controlled and never allowed to know anything else besides these walls. Never allowed to have any other friends besides me.
Sabra looks at Layden. “We’ll try again. Let me do some studying, but I think I might have an idea of what was off with my calculations. I need to look at some star charts and go back to Mom’s grimoires.”
It starts to rain, big fat drops washing away all the chalk-work Sabra did. I reach out and pull her into a hug. “We haven’t really talked since I got back. Maybe we can go out for coffee soon.”
She nods as she pulls away, some of the bounce coming back into her voice. “I’d like that.”
My tight chest loosens a little.
“Okay, I’m getting really hungry.” Sabra looks apologetically at Layden. He immediately backs away from her.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. Just time to call it for the day,” Sabra says. “I’ll call you soon when I know more.”
“Of course, whatever you need, please don’t make yourself uncomfortable on my account,” Layden backs away even further. “I appreciate you trying to help me. I can’t express how much. I didn’t know strangers could want to help one another until I met Phoenix.”
Sabra looks at him, then at me, then glances back and forth at us again. “Uh-huh,” is all she says, then smiles and turns away. “Bye,” she calls over her shoulder with a perky wave before bouncing away toward where she’s parked in the large garage in the left corner of the compound.
“I like her,” Layden says.
It’s stupid to feel jealous at his simple statement. But I can’t help feeling the sting of Sabra’s words, too. Is that what I’m doing? Keeping him here so I can fantasize about him and have him nearby because of how safe he makes me feel? Like I would a comforting blanket or a toy?
Are you going to be a selfish little girl?
I always have been, though, haven’t I? Freeing my parents from me was the one unselfish act of my life.
Layden might be so much older than me, but he’s brand new to this modern world. He seems not to know how drop-dead gorgeous he is. If he wasn’t literally a curse on any woman he spent more than an hour with, they’d all be drooling over him.
Of course he’d like someone sunshiny and bright like Sabra more than a gloomy person like me.
It only matters if she manages to free him from his curse. I’m ashamed that the thought makes me feel like stabbing my best friend.