Chapter 19
XIX.
Where Have You Gone?
At midsummer, I determined I would attempt to conjure Rochelle.
Both my masters had warned me about such efforts and done their best to hide the rituals from me. When I asked questions, they evaded them. But this was my sister, and even though Death still insisted I had only conjured an illusion of her that day in the chapel, I didn’t fully believe him.
Denial was a powerful magic in its own right.
The more I worked and learned, despite their warnings, the more I nurtured the private belief that I could reach her.
I knew it would be difficult, but I felt my biggest hurdles were finding all the ingredients and space to do the spell without Death finding out.
Death was frequently gone, often for many days at a time. He was still Death, after all, and he had his mandate to fulfill. But when he left, he never told me how long until his return, so I started making notes of his patterns.
On the swollen summer evening of the solstice, he left, his stallion’s hooves ringing in the setting sun.
When he left in the evening, I knew it was rare for him to return before at least a full day had passed.
I gazed at the darkening forest and decided.
It was now or never. As soon as the courtyard fell silent, I ran down the corridors to his chambers, racing the falling evening light.
Of course, the cupboard with all his ingredients was locked. So too was the door to his inner chamber. Death had not given me back the ring of keys he carried. I took a cursory look around for a spare of the twisted black key but was not surprised when I couldn’t find one.
With no other choice, I gathered chalk, some ink, parchment, a few sheets of work I thought might be helpful for reference, and tucked some candles under my arm.
Dumping the items in my room, along with the sapphire I dug out of my coals, I raced down to my little garden.
I picked some henbane and thyme just as the last of the sun slipped behind the mountains.
I had not been caught outside my room past sunset since the spell calling the old god, and I didn’t intend to be now.
I dashed back to my room with the herbs clutched in my hand, falling against the door once it was safely shut behind me, my heart thundering.
As I stood there, panting, looking at my pile of hastily gathered objects, I felt something akin to despair. It seemed so juvenile. Like I was playing at magic. I was desperate for the spell to work, but terrified of the disappointment if it didn’t.
I decided to wait until midnight. The hour was a liminal space, a moment neither here nor there.
What better time could there be to reach something else neither here nor there?
I took my time eating and lounging about the room with some books, keeping track of the hours with a nervous diligence.
In the heat, I let my fire die and moved the furniture and rug to give me a clear spot on the floor in the light of the giant’s lantern.
As a midsummer crescent moon rose high beyond my window, I lit the candles and fastidiously drew the circles and symbols on the floor.
The clock ticked the hour, and I stepped inside.
I ought to have had something of Rochelle’s—something intimately hers that would tie me to her presence.
In my naivety, I didn’t realize this. But I was lucky.
With Rochelle, it didn’t matter, I had her memory, as clear and as strong in my mind as any item could have been.
And with her memory, I raised my hands and began the spell.
“I, a servant of God, desire and call upon Rochelle Margarite Durand, and call thee through water, fire, air, and earth and everything that lives and moves therein, and by the most holy names of God and his angels.” I recited the list of names from Death’s manuscripts as the candles flickered in the warm, dark room.
“Conjured by spirits, and by whatever else thou mayest be conquered, that you will yield obedience to me, and appear before me, Salomé, this instant.”
I wanted her to appear the way she had before—out of the ether, in the flesh, standing before me even if she was unable to be fully reached. I felt the spell opening, but the feeling was so subtle I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t merely my own longing. I waited, breath held, watching the shadows.
Nothing changed. No spirit or sister appeared.
I stared blankly into the middle distance, trying to decide if I should try recasting or if I was going about this all the wrong way.
I longed for the reassuring complexity of Death’s spells, rather than casting about in the unknown.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my unfocused eye, I saw movement in the great, silver mirror.
At first, I thought I had only imagined it. But I still stood within my casting circle and so I shifted toward the mirror.
Only a moment later, she appeared again. Not as she had been in the chapel. And not as a spirit, those cold, silent things. But something in between, trapped inside the mirror’s uncanny silver plane. Hazy and unfocused, but undeniably my sister.
“Rochelle,” I cried, fighting the urge to rush to her, to somehow break through to touch her. Her image rippled with my cry, clearer, more real. Her hair was long and loose, falling in waves to her waist, and she wore a dress of a deep umber and green and a finely wrought golden crown.
She looked like a queen.
“Rochelle,” I said quietly. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
She moved her mouth, as if responding, but I could not hear her. She shook her head. Her eyes darted nervously around the inside of the frame.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I let them take you. I don’t know how to get you out,” I cried. “I don’t know how to reach you.”
She shook her head again and turned away.
“No! Stay!” I needed more from her. I needed my sister. I needed to know she was real.
For a moment she hesitated.
I couldn’t help myself. I broke the barrier of the circles and seals and ran to the mirror. My open palms pushed against the surface as I fell onto it, a shudder moving through the silver from the force, but it did not break. “I need you,” I wept. “I am so lost.”
Rochelle tried to speak again, but I heard nothing.
“What are you trying to say? What do you need?”
She repeated herself, slowly, and I watched the shape of her mouth. She repeated it again. And again. I mouthed it along with her.
Run.
A woman’s scream split the night.
I jumped, turning toward my closed door automatically. When I quickly turned back, Rochelle had disappeared.
“No!” I cried. “No!”
This wretched house. I cursed it and myself. I pressed my hands to the glass, repeating the words of the spell in desperation. But the only thing the mirror showed was the reflection of my wild-eyed face and unruly hair. Rochelle was gone.
Only her word remained. Run.
Why would she tell me that? I looked to the mirror again, bracing for a scream.
None came.
Even in the dark the mirror had that too-clear quality that struck me as uncanny. The pour of the silver must have been so refined. I touched the surface with my fingertips, and it did not move. Already her presence felt like a dream. I waited a long time, staring into that mirror.
That night, something changed. I’d seen my sister. I’d called her by name, and she’d come forth. Somewhere, she still lived.
I eased a breath and began to clean up the remnants of the spell.
Despite my success, I did not want Death knowing I had tried such a thing.
Within moments, the chalk had been wiped clean from the stones, the candles put out, and the carpet rolled back into its proper place.
I stood before the mirror again, and it looked back at me, empty and silent.
I had conjured Rochelle. I felt confident now that it was she who had appeared in the chapel.
He’d told me she was only an illusion of my longing, but longing alone could not bring forth such a thing—only magic could.
I thought about telling him of my success.
But I knew he would only call me a little fool. He would say I had been deceived.
I had then a foreign thought, one I feared making sense of, and so I just let it sit there, floating on the surface of my mind. The god Death had been wrong.
HE WAS GONE FOR OVER TWO WEEKS, LONGER THAN HE’D EVER been gone from the chateau since I’d arrived.
I grew nearly wild from waiting for him, straining to hear his stallion’s hooves clatter into the courtyard that I stopped being able to do any work and instead wandered the labyrinth of halls, checking for any rooms that would open to me. None did.
One night, while working in his chambers, I fell asleep at my desk. I woke up, bleary-eyed and exhausted, with a long day endlessly stretching before me, and only a moment later he walked into the room. He looked tired, and a thick, reddish mud was spattered all over his cloak.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
I leapt up, legs still asleep. “My lord!”
Stern expression fixed as ever, he looked me over with those fathomless black eyes—taking in my ink-stained fingers, bleary eyes, and rumpled hair. “Have you been here all night?”
“Well, yes,” I said, about to explain I’d fallen asleep at the desk waiting.
His expression softened. “Oh, ma petite chou.” Without even removing his travel-stained cloak, he grabbed my hands and pulled me, blushing, up to him. “I have something special for you today. A reward for all your hard work.”
“A reward?” I swayed in his hands. He was the sun and his attention, fully directed toward me, was blinding, burning away the phantoms of my fears.
“Go.” He ordered and spun me toward the door.
“Go, get dressed. I’ll come collect you as soon as I am cleaned up from my …
travels.” He smiled, that too-white smile of a predator chasing down his prey astride his shadowed stallion, and pushed me toward the door, closing himself in his private quarters.
In my room, a filled tub was already waiting for me.
The doubts and fears I’d harbored since seeing Rochelle were like wisps of clouds, lifting off the mountains and burning away in the sun.
I washed and wrung out my hair quickly in the warming sun.
The dress that had been laid out for me was fit for a goddess.
It was a tunic made of soft white silk, long and gathered tightly at the waist with a braided belt of gold.
There was no underdress, and my arms and legs both were bared to the warm air.
I combed and braided my hair carefully until it shone, for there had been no veil laid out.
Finally, I faced myself in the silver mirror.
I had not looked into the mirror since that night, afraid to see something shifted within me marked on my expression that I did not want.
But in the bright morning light, I only saw myself as Death intended.
Beautiful. My chin proudly lifted. My limbs sleek and soft, the silk falling erotic and liquid across the planes of my body.
My failures and struggles and the long road ahead of me under his tutelage all seemed insignificant in this light.
For I would not even be alive without Death’s protection and wisdom.
He had made a mistake with Rochelle, and it was my privilege, my power then, to overlook it.
He waited for me in the hall, his dark tunic refreshed, the cold angles of his beautifully carved face at odds with the light in his expression when he caught sight of me.
He bowed shortly, but I glowed with the show of respect as he offered his arm.
“Come, my pupil, today we take your lessons en plein air.”