Chapter 11
The afternoon dragged like molasses. Every minute felt like an hour as we waited for night to fall.
I tried to maintain normalcy for the babies.
To an extent, it wasn’t difficult. Their feeding schedules, playtime, and baths were demanding.
My hands shook through every diaper change.
And I caught myself staring at them, memorizing details I already knew by heart.
The curve of Melaina's smile. The exact shade of Thaniel's eyes. The way Nyssa's shadows played when she was content. As if I could ever forget. Nothing was going to steal these memories from me.
"Phoebe?" Mythia appeared in the living room with a gentle expression. "I can take over if you want to go help Mollie."
I looked down at Thaniel, who I'd been holding for the past twenty minutes even though he'd fallen asleep fifteen minutes ago. My arms were starting to ache, but I couldn't seem to make myself put him down.
"Yeah," I replied, liking that idea. "Yeah, okay."
I transferred him carefully to his crib, and the pixie positioned the blanket over him. She'd been helping with the babies since they were born, despite being a fraction of their size. They knew her almost as well as they knew Aidon and me.
"They'll be safe with me," she said softly. "I promise."
“I know they will. Thank you.” I crossed to where Melaina and Nyssa were sleeping in their cribs and pressed a kiss to each of their foreheads. Their skin was warm beneath my lips. Melaina was almost too warm. Nyssa was slightly cool. They were perfect.
I found Nina in the kitchen, hunched over her laptop with an energy drink can and a biology textbook beside her. She looked up when I entered. "Gammy's about to start making the primordial fire," I said. "I'm going down to watch. Want to come?"
Nina's eyes widened. "Really? I figured you wouldn’t want me anywhere near it."
"Knowledge is power. And right now, we need all the power we can get." I held out my hand. "Come on."
She closed her laptop and took my hand. “Whoa,” Nina muttered as we descended the stairs.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
The basement had been transformed. What was usually our magical workspace now looked like something out of an alchemist's fever dream. Mom had set up a working circle in the center of the large wooden worktable. She’d marked it with runes that glowed faintly in the dim light.
The air hummed with barely contained power.
Tseki stood near the circle, holding a crystal vial filled with what looked like liquid rubies.
Dragon's blood resin. Clio was holding a silver bowl filled with ash that had to have come from a piece of charred oak.
And Nana was scraping her tiki totem, making the volcanic obsidian flake off into another bowl.
"You two here to watch the show?" Nana asked, her tone light despite the tension in her shoulders.
"Wouldn't miss it," I said.
Mom looked up from where she was arranging her tools. Her hands were steady, but I could see the nerves from what she was about to attempt in her eyes. She gestured to the grimoire.
"Hattie had a section on primordial forces," she explained.
"Recipes that were passed down through her family.
I've been adapting one of their formulas.
I had to change the old measurements and techniques into something I can actually work with.
" She laughed nervously. "I've never attempted anything like this before, so we're about to find out if my kitchen witchery can scale up to actual magic. "
"You’re selling yourself short. Your magic is just as real and powerful. You can do it," Stella said from where she leaned against the wall. I hadn’t seen her when we entered.
"You're right." Mom took a deep breath, then began.
She began by igniting the burner fire beneath the cauldron.
The fire cast shadows across the basement walls.
"The fire is the catalyst," Mom said. Her voice took on that focused quality she got when she was working complex magic.
"It has to burn hot enough to break down the barriers between what is and what was. "
She added some purified water, then tossed several herbs into the cauldron.
Then she picked up the dish of obsidian shavings and held it over the cauldron.
"Born from fire and earth. From creation and destruction.
According to Hattie's notes, it remembers what it was before it became stone.
" She tipped the shavings into the cauldron, and the moment they hit the heated iron, the flames beneath became a deep, volcanic orange.
Nina's hand found mine, squeezing tight.
I squeezed back as we remained transfixed.
Mom added the ash next, sprinkling it in while reading carefully from the grimoire.
Her lips moved as she whispered the ancient chant.
The ash didn't just fall into the cauldron.
It danced. The way it swirled through the air was graceful, evoking the Nutcracker ballet.
When it finally settled into the mixture, the flames turned green.
"The lightning-struck oak represents transformation," Mom continued, making notes in the new grimoire we had begun for our family before returning to her work. "The moment when ordinary wood becomes something more. When destruction creates potential."
Tseki stepped forward, uncorking the vial of dragon's blood resin. It shimmered more than he did when he got ready for a night out. "How much do you need?" he asked.
Mom consulted the grimoire and then pursed her lips as she considered. "Let’s start with three drops. There’s power in the number, and it feels right.” Nana took over making notes for her in our family grimoire.
“Dragon's blood is life," Mom continued. “Even more powerful because the pure essence was freely given. It binds the elements together, but too much and the mixture will consume itself."
Tseki held the vial over the cauldron and added three drops. Each one fell into the mixture with a sound like a bell tolling. When the final one hit, the cauldron exploded into flame.
Nina and I both jumped back, but Mom stood her ground.
She began chanting as she tried to contain the reaction.
The flames shot up ten feet, licking the ceiling, but they didn't spread.
They were confined to the cauldron. And they roared like a living thing, cycling through every color of the rainbow.
The temperature in the room spiked so high that sweat broke out across my forehead. The flames turned black, making Nina and me exchange a what-the-hell look.
Mom began adding more herbs to the mixture. She tossed them into the cauldron one at a time. Wolfsbane. Belladonna. Things that would kill a person if ingested. It fit that they would be used for something that would destroy what it touched.
Each herb made the flames coming from the cauldron shift and change. The black fire turned silver, then gold, then a mixture of purple and green.
"This is the dangerous part," Clio murmured. "She's going to make the materials remember what they were before they became what they are."
Okay, that seemed an odd thing to do, but I trusted Mom’s skills. I wouldn’t have known where to begin. Nina's grip on my hand tightened until it almost hurt.
Mom's chanting grew louder, more insistent, her eyes flicking between the flames rising above the cauldron and the ceiling.
The flames were condensing now and getting further away from the plaster above us.
The cauldron itself began to glow. The iron was heating to a temperature that should have melted it. But it held.
The mixture inside began to change. It was liquid, but not liquid. It moved like mercury, shimmered like starlight, and shifted colors. It was every color and no color at once. It was potential. Pure, terrible, and beautiful.
Mom reached for a glass vial sitting beside the cauldron.
It was one of the plain glass containers we usually used for potions.
It was nothing special and not likely to contain these flames.
She held it in both hands and began another incantation, this one different from the first. Her magic wrapped around the glass.
Visible as threads of golden light that wove themselves into the very structure of the vial.
"Containment," she breathed, sweat pouring down her face from the effort and the heat. "The glass has to be strong enough to hold what cannot be held. It has to remember being sand and stone."
The golden threads sank into the glass until it glowed from within. When Mom was satisfied with the enchantment, she carefully—so carefully—used a silver ladle to scoop the liquid from the cauldron and pour it into two vials.
The moment the primordial fire touched the enchanted glass, the flames beneath the cauldron extinguished with a sound like a gasp. The liquid in the vial swirled and settled, looking almost peaceful now. It appeared deceptively ordinary.
But I could feel the power radiating from it. The liquid inside would burn hot enough to destroy anything. Mom stoppered the vials with corks that she'd also enchanted, then wrapped them in a cloth marked with protective runes. Her hands shook as she held one out to me.
"There it is." Her voice was hoarse from exhaustion. "That was easier than it should have been for something so destructive." Tseki steadied her when she swayed.
I took the wrapped vial carefully, feeling the weight of it. Both physical and metaphysical. Even through the protective cloth, it thrummed with barely contained power.
"The enchantment on the glass should hold for twelve hours according to the grimoire," Mom continued. "After that, the binding begins to degrade. You need to use it well before then, or I need to do another enchantment."
"Thank you," I said, meeting Mom's eyes. "For doing this. For taking this risk."
"For my grandchildren?" Mom smiled tiredly. "I'd unmake the world."