Chapter 27 #2
He put his hands on my shoulders and met my gaze. “What if you can? What if it does? What if you just believe?”
Believe. And just like that, my anxiety spiral stopped.
“Try to remember the day your grandmother taught you the words to go with those symbols. Allow yourself to be there fully and completely. I’ll watch out for you.”
Reassured, I closed my eyes and placed my hand on the page of the book right on top of the symbols.
In my mind, I pictured that day at the beach.
Mamie’s thick, dark hair streaked with silver was in a loose knot on the crown of her head.
She wore her usual long, flowing skirt with a formfitting top that complimented her lithe figure.
Her eyes crinkled when she laughed as I showed her a cartwheel I was trying to perfect.
She kissed my head, hugged me, and said, You must believe, mon chaton .
Warmth bloomed in my chest and I felt a smile curve my lips.
Mamie lifted me up in the air, making me laugh, and then we crouched in the sand and she began to draw her magic symbols.
I could hear her voice in my head as if she were right here beside me, teaching me the words.
“Come on, Ziakas!” Olive cried. “Hurry.”
“I am,” I snapped.
“Easy, Olive. Give her a chance,” Jasper said.
It was then that I heard the noise. The same unearthly cries and wails and the clacking of bones that I’d heard in the labyrinth. They were almost upon us.
“Okay, here goes,” I said. I could feel the hum of the connection between me and the book. The whispers I had never understood before became clear and I repeated them. “Matris mater reditus ad me…no, wait…mater matris…” I shook my head. In my panic, the words were getting mixed-up and fuzzy.
“Zoe, I don’t wish to rush you, but they are he—” The barn door boomed with the sound of bodies slamming against it, drowning Miles’s voice out.
We all jumped back and I closed my eyes, put myself back in the moment on the beach, let the magic unfurl inside me, and bellowed, “ Mater matris ad me reditus! ”
There was a crack as if some celestial being had snapped open the sky and a blue light so bright it forced me to squint lit up the entire barn.
As it faded, I blinked to find Mamie standing in front of us.
She looked exactly as she had on that day on the beach, right down to her usual flowing skirt and formfitting top.
I didn’t hesitate but dropped the book and ran straight to her.
“Mamie!” I half expected her to disappear in my arms, but she didn’t. Instead, she hugged me back just as tight.
“Mon chaton.” She leaned back and cupped my face, studying it. “Look at you. You’re all grown up, my brave girl.”
“Toni!” Miles appeared at my side. “Sorry to interrupt your reunion but Ariana is just outside and we need you.”
“Of course,” Mamie said. She shoved me behind her as if I were still that nine-year-old girl. “I have a score to settle with that one.”
“She murdered you.” My voice cracked when I added, “And Mom, too.”
Mamie turned back to me and grabbed my hands with hers. She felt so real. It was hard for me to accept that she was undead like the horde now banging incessantly on the barn doors.
“She did.” An expression of devastation crossed over her face. “I took her power and the alliance exiled her. I thought that was the end of it, but she’s a…”
Mamie paused and I said, “A revenant.”
“Yes, we didn’t know that Eloise Tate had been sent to heal the land, that she would die and give Ariana an escape.
Nor did we consider that she would harness the power of vengeance to become the one who was dead but returns.
It was a grave mistake.” She glanced at Miles and he nodded.
“I think she wants to wipe out the Donadieu lineage for revenge upon me.”
“She does,” I agreed with Mamie. “She plans to finish us by murdering me and bringing me back to be her undead Donadieu minion using the spells in the grimoire for her nefarious purposes.”
Mamie was already ghostly pale but still she blanched. Her grip on my hands tightened. “Your mother did not risk everything, hiding in time with the grimoire for all those years, only for me to let Ariana win now.”
“How did the grimoire come to me? Was it…Mom?” I asked. “Did she deliver it to me?”
“No, mon chaton.” Mamie cupped my cheek as if she knew the devastation I felt at the possibility that I could have seen my mother again.
“The grimoire is spelled to appear to the next Donadieu in line one full lunar cycle after the last Donadieu has passed. That’s why it showed up a month after your mother died. ”
“But the handwriting on the envelope was hers,” I protested.
“And the envelope disappeared in green witch fire?” Mamie asked. “That’s part of the spell. When you die, the grimoire will appear to the next Donadieu in an envelope with your handwriting and it will disappear in red witch fire—which is your magical color, yes?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “Did Mom know that would happen? She made me promise to never use magic. Why would she ask that of me if she knew the grimoire would come to me one day?”
“She believed she could find a way to break the grimoire’s succession spell,” Mamie said.
“When it arrived in your mother’s life a month after you two left me, she knew I had passed on.
Ariana, disguised as Eloise, found you immediately, which was why your mother took you on the run.
She knew Ariana had murdered me and that she was next.
She used those years to perfect the spell in the grimoire that allows a witch to slip through time.
“Once she mastered it, your mother left you in Agatha’s care, thinking you would be safe so long as she kept the grimoire and herself away from you.
She’d hoped to find a way to defeat Ariana and be free of her, but Ariana managed to catch your mother coming to see you and cast the Waning Curse upon Juliet. ”
“That’s why she ended up at Mystwood and never told us,” I said. The thought of my mother choosing to die alone broke me.
As if reading my thoughts, Mamie said, “She didn’t choose to die alone any more than I did.
The Waning Curse takes away a witch’s ability to communicate in any way.
Trapped in her body as she wasted away, your mother had no way to reach out to you or warn you about Ariana, just as I’d had no way to warn her before I died. ”
That only made me feel worse.
“Your mother was afraid that Ariana would murder you and bring you back before you even had the grimoire in your possession. She realized she’d been wrong to ask you not to use magic and hoped you’d reconsider once the grimoire appeared.
She trusted that Agatha would assist you in finding the help you needed.
” She glanced past me at the others. “And she did.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“Because your mother and I have talked about it.”
I blinked at her. I had so many questions, not the least of which was what did she mean they had talked?
Recently? I was about to barrage her with questions when one of the boards on the barn door was smashed and an arm appeared.
The fingers on the bony hand twitched as it tried to grab for anything on the other side.
I felt as if I were an expendable side character in every terrifying zombie movie ever created.
“What do we do, Toni?” Miles asked. “How do we stop her?”
“ We don’t,” Toni said. “ I do. The rest of you must protect Zoe and the grimoire. No matter what happens, she can’t have that book. The spells in it would make her invincible.”
I turned to retrieve the grimoire, but Jasper already had.
He handed it to me and I clutched it to my chest. I felt the book press itself more firmly against me as if it knew I would do anything I could to protect it.
When I glanced up, Olive, Miles, Tariq, and Jasper formed a circle around me.
They were facing out and I knew without being told that they would sacrifice their lives to keep the book from Ariana.
A horrific crash sounded and I jumped. I peered over Miles’s shoulder to see Ariana’s undead horde in various states of decay spill into the barn like a ripped bag of beans.
Surprisingly, they didn’t attack. Instead, they moved into formation, creating an aisle, which Ariana strode down like a queen inspecting her troops.
“Darkwood.” Mamie stood facing the door with her chin tipped up and not a bit of fear in her eyes. I was in awe.
At the sight of Mamie, Ariana faltered but caught herself.
She glanced from Mamie to where I stood within the circle of the BODO staff.
Then a terrifying smile spread across her lips.
It was without mirth and full of malice.
“I see your granddaughter finally managed to work a decent spell. Excellent.” She practically purred the last word and it made goose bumps rise on my arms.
She flicked her wrist in the direction of Mamie, and her horde of undead attacked. Mamie stood no chance against so many. I tried to push out of the circle, but Jasper locked his arm around me, keeping me in place.
“No, Zoe, don’t,” he said. “Remember what your grandmother said. We have to protect the book.”
Mamie held up her hand in a stop gesture but the undead ran right over whatever shield she was trying to contain them with. The smack of their bones colliding as they covered Mamie in a thrashing pile of limbs was a sound I knew I would never forget.
I strained against Jasper’s hold and shouted at Miles, “Do something!”
He held up a finger, indicating that I should wait. I tried to twist my way out of the circle.
“Relax, Ziakas!” Olive ordered. “She’s already dead. What do you think they can do to her?”
“Rip her apart?” I said as an arm—not Mamie’s—was flung out of the mass of bodies.
“Toni can handle this,” Miles said with complete confidence.