Chapter Sixteen #2
Issac grabbed the bowl of cemetery dirt and moved around the altar, sprinkling half of the bowl generously over Dev’s grave.
“Reverte, Reverte,” he commanded, pouring the other half into the cauldron.
The reaction was violent, forcing the current within to increase until the water became cloudy and grey, resembling a darkening storm.
The black salt and skull powder followed the same instruction: half to the grave and half into the cauldron. Schuyler watched the potion react with each new ingredient, and on the grave itself, which had begun to sizzle and burn, white smoke rising.
Issac grabbed the mortar and pestle and placed the petals of the Devil’s Midnight Flower inside. They had to be freshly prepared according to the spell, and he took his time, ensuring the petals were as ground up as possible before adding them.
“Indietro, indietro.”
Schuyler nearly pulled him back once the petals hit the water.
Fiery purple sparks shot off each tiny, ground up piece, sending them flying out of the cauldron.
Some struck the grave. “It’s okay,” Schuyler assured Issac, speaking over the winds that had kicked up.
“It’s very volatile, but I believe it’s supposed to be. You’re doing everything right.”
They waited a moment for the petal pieces to stop their fireworks and sink beneath the choppy potion. Issac scowled in disgust as he held up the preserved bladder. With his other hand, he gripped the coffin nail.
“Modoru, modoru.”
He pierced the bladder. The contents poured out into the potion, greenish-yellow smoke rising as it did. Moving to the grave, Issac stabbed the empty organ to the smokey ground with the coffin nail. The ground began to shift under him, threatening his balance.
Schuyler watched the storm brew in the cauldron, the cloudy mixture with pops of purple and red churned and bubbled. He checked the timer: seven minutes. He summoned the journal to him, checking the progress. Next was the final potion ingredient, then the liquid needed to be poured onto the grave.
The potion was angry, the churning growing choppier with every new addition. It flashed under the grey surface as if a storm brewed beneath. Schuyler looked at the final ingredient again.
“Blood of a loved one,” Issac announced, returning to the altar and grabbing the small, bejeweled ritual Athame.
Was he though?
In the room, Issac had confirmed for him the blood part was covered but never elaborated on whose blood exactly. Schuyler watched as he slid the blade down his palm, opening a small wound.
He never even met Dev.
The potion raged, demanding to be free of the cauldron.
If an incorrect ingredient gets added—
Issac flipped his hand over, ready to give the potion what it required.
Sky proved quicker. He waved his hand, freezing the blood, which then hung from Issac’s palm like an icicle.
Schuyler took Issac’s hand, flipped it around, and quickly directed the blood back into the palm before he rubbed his own over it, healing the wound.
Schuyler had to holler to fight the growing winds. “Do you really love him?”
“What do you mean? He’s my uncle, so I’m a loved one, right?”
“Um, wrong, cutie. The spell wants blood because blood carries the emotion of our memories. If you love someone, it’s literally there, in your blood.
“If you have no memories of Dev, if you didn’t truly love him—that feisty bitch of a potion is going to know instantly and she will backfire.”
“But I’m family, that should be enough, right?” Issac insisted.
“Family doesn’t always equal love.” Schuyler took the knife from Issac’s hand. “We can’t risk it.” Sky held his hand out and slid the blade across his palm, wincing as he did. “Why does this always look so painless in movies,” he griped. “Rücklings, rücklings.”
His blood dive-bombed the water below, causing the potion to hurl itself against the bowl until it went alarmingly calm, and turned a hideous shade of chartreuse exactly as the journal stated would happen when the potion was ready.
The timer signaled the moon had risen to the correct point in the sky. Schuyler quickly healed his palm. He and Issac swung the cauldron around on the arm, tipping it and pouring the potion on the prepared grave at the exact moment the first rays of visible moonlight touched the ground.
There was silence which Schuyler recognized—the bated breath of the spell—the pause after a ritual was completed, before the forces of magic rolled on.
This spell moved forward by shooting lightning up from the grave. Sharp, crackling bolts haphazardly shot off in all directions in a frenzied show of force, some reaching toward the sky. The ground around the grave rolled and moved up and down in deep breaths.
“The incantation.” Schuyler nudged Issac to begin.
Issac nodded and summoned the floating journal closer to him as white smoke billowed off the ground. The grass and dirt crumbled and fell apart, caving in on itself, leaving behind a black hole from which the lightning erupted.
“Mors bis remota,” Issac yelled above the winds. “Through stars and shadows, we evoke the soul. Deep within darkness, beyond time’s toll.”
Schuyler spotted the thick, messy black hair atop Dev’s head rising from the opening the potion created. As the vessel rose, levitating upward, Sky’s heart quickened, his emotions lurching forward, despite his attempt to contain them in the surreal moment unfolding before him.
“With ash and wax, with flower and bone, return the one who’s been alone.”
Their pictures together, all the ones he’d taken of Dev, were in albums within boxes stored away in closets with the promise they’d be revisited again on a rainy day.
Diving into the analog past was more a task when the memories did not live easily in a phone’s gallery or were stored away on a drive.
The image of Dev, kept only in Schuyler’s head, never faded, however.
His handsome strong profile remained as vivid as if Sky had seen him the day before.
His full lips, his dark complexion, slender fingers, the smoothness of his skin, and the fullness of his body hair.
There was his firm chest, dark nipples, and soft stomach, which Schuyler always loved to lay his head upon.
There he was now, Dev’s body anyway, floating two feet above the grave in the tailored suit and cloak he’d been lovingly buried in, like the last time Schuyler had seen him.
“By blood remembered, by blood unbound, I summon thee to sacred ground.”
Around the vessel an aura grew stronger, wavering from the body in a bright borealis. The blue aura spread out over the vessel unleashing a flurry of crackling energy which shot off.
“Through veil and void, let soul retrace. Unbind these chains death did lace”
Behind the vessel, a spectral figure began to emerge from the intensifying light of the aura, entangling with the body—portions dipped into the vessel, other parts not.
“Find the vessel summoned above, not in wrath, but with love. By ancient vow, by moon’s pale face. Let spirit remember time and place!”
Issac stumbled back once done, feeling the toll of the magic he’d expended.
Schuyler’s focus remained on the vessel, who spasmed and twitched, as the spectral form slid completely in and opened Devion’s eyes.