Chapter 10
Marta
I sat at a table in the massive library, surrounded by three stories of bookshelves lined with ancient tomes.
It was something out of a Disney movie, and I pitied my rotten luck that I’d been stuck here with the worst beast of them all.
But like I told Wes, as long as Atlas and I stayed out of each other’s way, we could keep the peace.
At least until he saw the book in front of me. I found it in my room at the estate on the first day we came here. I’d never seen it before, and I certainly hadn’t pulled it before we left Asheville. So that pegged the question—how did it get there? And why did it reset to that same spot every day?
The uncertainty was enough to make me leave it alone, but when I read the title, my curiosity got the better of me.
Signa sanguinis et animae.
Signs of Blood and Soul.
It looked like any other book in the library: black leather cover, dusty faded pages, ornate swirling script. But when I picked it off my bed, a wave of magic coasted through my veins so powerfully, I nearly wilted. That should have been my second clue to leave it alone.
It was written by a witch named Constance in the late sixteenth century, which was legendary, seeing as most women couldn’t read or write at the time. She’d been bonded to two warriors. Immediately intrigued, I’d spent the last week devouring it, only to pick it back up and read it again.
Most of it was her diary, detailing the days of someone spent trying to survive in the throes of a witch-craze.
Challenging enough in itself, but being bonded to two warriors had presented its own struggles.
They struggled to find a homeostasis between them, each person connected in their own ways with their own bond, to the point where magic ricocheted through them with reckless abandon, creating “chaos and unmanageable emotions.” Finally, the tether snapped, cutting her off from the two people meant to protect her.
Rather than go to her coven, she started experimenting.
The first half of the book seemed like her journal, detailing the daily tribulations of working with two warriors.
When the bond was severed, she concocted three rituals meant to create something similar, but more powerful.
They were dark spells that scared me to contemplate — things like bloodletting and magical coitus and sensation pairing.
The three rituals built on one another, creating greater magical resonance with each step.
First, a blood sacrifice to connect their energy.
Then, a flesh-bind to demonstrate their commitment to each other.
All three had to participate in the sexual exchange, even her warriors.
Finally, a soul-bond to seal their emotions and share their combined essence amongst all three.
After the instructions for the third ritual, the rest of the pages were blank.
“Must not have gone that well if there’s nothing else,” I muttered to myself.
Because she didn’t want her sisters to know the bond had dissipated, she’d done it all by herself. I didn’t know if that spoke to how powerful she was or to how deeply she’d fallen into a mental health crisis.
Still, her words intrigued me, and the similarities between Constance and me couldn’t be ignored. Like her, I’d been bonded to two warriors, and the bond had seemingly disappeared once we got trapped in the liminal.
I’d been at the Harlot estate for a week, and I already felt my magic starting to return, which boded well if we wanted to attempt any sort of reconciliation to the bond between us.
I didn’t know if Constance’s spells would work, but we wouldn’t be able to get out of the liminal without our combined power.
I shifted to the notepad at my left and began a list.
1. Get my magic back
-R&R at Harlot estate
-Attempt grounding in Sacred Forest
-Contact the woman in mental space?
2. Repair the bond
-Research Constance - Delusional or mastermind? (Is there a difference?)
-Figure out how the warrior bonds were created
-Research her rituals - any validity to them? Anything to back them up?
3. Get out of liminal
-Mirror scrying - attempt to contact the coven - Estate or Tita’s house?
-Smoke divination - Ancestors, please help.
-Find evidence of someone getting out
“Hey,” came a gruff voice as Wes sat down in the seat opposite me. I shut the book, glanced up, and smiled at the sight of him biting into a sandwich.
“I’m glad your appetite is back,” I said. “You probably should have started with applesauce and soup.”
“At least it’s not grass tea,” he teased with a wink.
“And look at you now.” I gestured to his massive body and healthy pallor. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Hmm.” He took another bite of the sandwich and nodded to the book. “Find anything good?”
I shifted Signs of Blood and Soul closer and shrugged. “Maybe.”
I wasn’t quite ready to share with the rest of the class, not if I didn’t even know whether it was credible myself.
“The way I see it, we have three places to start.” I ran down the list with him, skipping over the part about Constance and her warriors. Once I had a firmer grasp of who she was and what may have happened to her, I would let him in on the book.
“I don’t think there’s much I can do about getting your magic back or contacting your sisters, but I can dive into the warrior bond.” He glanced at the stack of books on the end of the table, pulling one closer to him. “Any running theories on why it stopped working?”
“Having two warrior bonds is strange,” I said.
“Most witches only get one. I know it’s divine in nature.
It manifests from the ancestors, and Lilith has to drop into trance to receive revelation.
But I don’t understand the mechanics behind it.
” I ran my hands over my face, trying to recall anything I might have learned growing up.
“It would be easy to say it’s magical and leave it at that.
We don’t understand magic, and we likely never will.
But in order to know what went wrong, we need to know how the bond works. ”
“Do you think the liminal is blocking it somehow?” he asked as he flipped open the pages of Soul Bonds: Theory and Practice, his deep brown eyes scanning the pages.
I shrugged. “Could be. Or maybe it was something in the ritual. I was connected to you both when things went wrong.”
“Do you feel us at all now?”
I grabbed another book on demons and religious theology, placing it on top of Constance’s ramblings before flipping open to browse the pages. “No. Which should be a blessing, seeing as none of us wanted this in the first place. But now…”
He glanced up at me and frowned, and I focused on the way his full pink lips thinned into a tiny line. I thought about asking what was going on behind those pretty chestnut eyes, but decided against it. We all had our secrets. I didn’t need to pry.
We worked like that for several hours until the sunlight faded into darkness, and my back creaked from leaning over the desk for so long.
I found him to be a companionable research partner, his energy soothing rather than distracting.
At least he didn’t live to get on my nerves like his brother.
Occasionally, he’d stop to write down a note or place a piece of paper in the pages, marking something to come back to.
I appreciated his quiet presence after spending a week wondering if I was about to lose him and find myself trapped here alone with Atlas.
The demon book didn’t yield many exciting details, only things I already knew about Asmodeus or demons related to him.
He was a demon of lust and, in some mythologies, had given birth to the seven deadly sins.
A slice of Hell had been specifically carved out just for him because of how powerful and overwhelming his energy could be.
It made me wonder if the Bloody Femmes had summoned a child of Asmodeus or the being himself.
And if it was the Granddaddy of things that go bump in the night, was our ritual even powerful enough to have trapped him? Could we have been doomed from the start?
After that, I moved on to some theoretical texts about liminal spaces and magical interference.
It was so dry and scientific, I could hardly keep up.
I didn’t have a background in physics or energetic abundance, and I feared I’d need ten PhDs to understand half of it.
But if three Harlots from North Carolina had managed to create a liminal without this in-depth knowledge, I figured it probably wouldn’t help us get out of it, either.
Hours passed, and eventually, Atlas came to find us to announce he’d made dinner if we were hungry.
Deciding to take a break, Wes and I joined him in the kitchen, where he gave us a plate of sliced ham steaks and roasted vegetables.
My stomach grumbled on cue, the delicious scents reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast that morning.
“Thanks, Atlas,” Wes said, sitting down at the breakfast table off to the side. “This smells amazing.”
I sniffed it again and sat down opposite Wes, debating whether I should actually consume it.
Over the last week, we’d eaten separately, and everything I ate had been made by my own hands.
Atlas and I weren’t friends, barely acquaintances.
The last conversation we’d had ended with us snarling in each other’s faces.
With my magic still damaged and the bond absent, now would be the perfect opportunity to—
“It’s not poisoned,” Atlas said, plucking a broccoli off my plate and shoving it into his mouth with a despicable wink.
I raised an eyebrow but didn’t answer as I picked up my fork and knife to dive in.
“I didn’t think so,” I said. “I was just wondering where a warrior learned to cook.”
“Ugh, you wound me,” he said, clutching his chest in fake offense.
“It doesn’t take much to find food in the fridge and put it in the microwave,” Wes teased, causing Atlas to reach over and slug him in the shoulder.
“Cunt,” Atlas said with a grimace.
“Asshole,” Wes replied, rubbing at his chest.
“Hey, knock that off,” I cut in. “He’s still healing up.”
“He deserved it,” Atlas grumbled, diving into his dinner.
“Good thing everything resets at midnight.” Wes stuck a piece of ham into his mouth and chewed. “At least we won’t run out of food.”
“If everything is as it was when we created the liminal, then the grocery stores should still be stocked,” I said. “We can make a run later this week, if there’s anything you want that we don’t already have.”
Atlas raised his eyebrows. “You think it’s going to take that long to get out of here?”
“We didn’t find anything helpful today,” Wes said. “Lots of theory and conjecture, but nothing solid.”
“I’d like to go out to the sacred forest tomorrow,” I said. “I can feel my magic returning, and a trip to hallowed earth will help.”
“If your magic is returning, shouldn’t the bond come back with it?” Wes asked.
I thought about Constance’s book, about how the feedback loop exhausted itself between three people until it shut off. I didn’t know if that was happening to us or if it was something about the liminal itself.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “But it’s a start.”
“Atlas, you’ll need to go with her,” Wes said. “I’m still too injured to be any help if the demon shows up.”
Atlas sighed and reluctantly nodded.
“I can go by myself,” I said. “This is ancient ground, even in the liminal. The demon can’t get me here.”
“Yeah, and we thought that about the salt ward, too. Didn’t we?” Atlas smirked, and I hated that he had a point. “Until we know more about where we are and why, no one goes outside alone.”
As much as I didn’t like it, I had to admit it was reasonable. We ate the rest of our dinner in silence, and when it got late, we went back to our separate rooms to sleep.