Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Mateo sits at the center of the same uncomfortable gray couch where he’d eaten Christopher’s finger a lifetime ago. Topher, of the recently concussed, isn’t allowed to help, so he’s beside Mateo, buzzing.
“She’s fairly confident,” Topher says, watching Linnéa and Ophelia move about the room, setting up a large magical circle around Mateo.
Probably hoping for a response but the last time someone prepared a ritual around him, Mateo had eaten them.
Ophelia’s dutifully sprinkling a mix of rue, basil, and rosemary around so there’s obviously a level of trust here between Ophelia and Linnéa.
Mateo hadn’t been witness to it—busy lying on his face in a bedroom realizing he’s maybe not actually a human being—but it’s intensely uncharacteristic of Ophelia to info-dump his backstory.
She must really think Linnéa can help him.
Not a single one of the symbols she’s drawn are familiar to him, but that just means whatever her magic is, it’s not extremely evil, like everything he gleaned off his mother.
A lot of pleasant-looking leaves and even some peaches are in play around the ring.
Not a single drop of blood involved. He’s rating it loads higher than Ethan’s work.
“I’m not entirely human either,” Topher whispers, dragging Mateo’s attention back to his suddenly way too close face, which is leaning in and up to deliver this earnest message. With way too much clarity Mateo remembers that he fully licked his face.
Linnéa straightens and draws both of their attention—thank fuck—her features alight with excitement, edges of pale lips tipped up in the more confident version of Topher’s baby deer smile.
It’s like she’s just been told she’s going to hang out with a bunch of puppies for an hour, not that she’s about to start a ritual to find Mateo’s mom’s evil-ass spell book. “We will begin now, Mateo.”
She beckons Topher from the circle, and he joins Ophelia a few yards away, clear of the herbs and chalks. The pair stands with arms linked as Linnéa moves in front of Mateo and kneels.
Mateo catches Ophelia’s gaze briefly. Her lips quirk and she mouths “relax.”
So, he does, attention flicking back to Linnéa.
“Ophelia has explained your attempt to contact me with the charm I left Topher. That you had the Blood Witch’s spell book, and that something went wrong with your casting.
But that isn’t what happened. It did not go wrong.
You did contact me, Mateo. A shout in the dark, but because I was pursued, I resisted this call, assuming you were an enemy.
It was a powerful call. A powerful magic that you performed.
I am an ancient being. That it could pierce what I protect myself with is no small thing. ”
Mateo blinks hard, remembering the charred little figure that had been Linnéa and how angry and scared she’d felt. She’d left that statue with Topher so it had probably looked extra bad when he’d used it to call her.
“Intentions and emotions. These are the most powerful things,” she says, watching him steadily. “Where is the book?”
“I don’t—” he tries, but she puts a finger on his lips, silencing him.
“You do,” she interrupts, and despite the physical shushing happening, she’s still smiling, still pleasant about it, like she’s trying to coax a toddler into counting properly.
Mateo chances a look at Ophelia and Topher, but they’re just watching, Topher’s lips parted in wonder, Ophelia’s gaze hard and attentive.
When it’s clear Mateo doesn’t know what to say, Linnéa tries a different question. “Why don’t you have the book?”
Is this a trick question? Ophelia had to have told her it disappeared, meaning he doesn’t know where it is or why he doesn’t have it. Maybe Linnéa wants a more hippie-dippy answer? When he tries to speak, the pressure of her fingers lessens some, so he manages, “It’s not mine?”
“Is that a question?” Linnéa asks sweetly, and he gets the sense that he’s done something right but has no idea what.
“It’s not mine,” he repeats more concretely.
“Why isn’t it yours?”
“It’s my mother’s.”
“The Blood Witch?”
“The Blood Witch.”
“And whose blood is in your veins?” Linnéa asks.
He hesitates because, again, it feels like a trick question.
His blood is literally black. His mom did something really fucked here and it’s not what he’d always thought.
But she’s looking at him with her placid eyes, waiting for him to answer her what color is the sky baby question, so he must know the answer she wants.
“The Blood Witch?” he tries.
“Statement,” she corrects softly.
“The Blood Witch’s blood is in my veins,” he says and is greeted with that radiant smile.
“Then the book is yours, by blood,” she says, and the world turns to ice.
For a moment Mateo’s terrified he’s on fire again.
Then he leans forward like he’s going to spew but from his heart.
With a shudder, the book drops out of his chest with a lot of black stuff and a solid splish.
It feels like he’s finally coughed out something that’s been lodged in his throat for a month and he’s left panting.
Linnéa, somehow sensing this absolute nonsense thing was going to happen, had taken a few steps back and miraculously avoided all splatter. “Very good,” she says with the pure delight of someone watching their toddler do a little dance just for them.
“I ruined your couch,” Mateo says weakly, lightheaded and disoriented from the magical vomit.
“It’s okay,” Topher offers from across the room. “We don’t like it. Or need it. We’re selling the house.”
Mateo is still staring at his mom’s spell book.
No. His spell book. He reaches a hand down and tentatively taps the cover.
It doesn’t do anything—like light him on fire or disappear—so he picks it up.
He tries to shake it clean, but then realizes the black stuff is sliding back up the simple cover and into him.
Spreading the spell book open on his lap, he runs fingers over the bright white pages and the small black script.
When he’d found the book in his mom’s office, there’d been a steady pull, a thread of connection trying to get him to use the book.
And when he had used the book to try to talk to who he later found out was Linnéa—for at least a few moments—everything had felt right.
Then he’d gotten freaked out, the spell had gone to shit, the book had gone inside him, and he’d partially transformed. But why did the spell book go inside him, and why did he transform?
Studying the cover of the book, he focuses on how touching it makes him feel. Content. And angry. While transformed, he’d been furious and confused about everything, but one of the clearest thoughts had been about not fitting together correctly anymore.
He’d assumed his mother had always had this spell book, but what if she hadn’t?
What if she’d made it after he was born—or summoned or whatever the fuck.
Because the cover looks like him, the pages are written in his blood, holding it feels correct, she definitely did something to him when he was young with that ass-smelling yellow smoke Ethan had also used, and nothing she told him about himself was true.
It really isn’t his mother’s spell book at all. It’s his. It’s the pieces of him she carved away.
But just having the book isn’t why he transformed. Between the first partial transformation and the second cannibal time transformation, the book had been inside him.
Linnéa keeps telling him intentions matter.
Topher was in jail and then Ophelia and Topher were both in danger.
He’d been desperate. He’d wanted to use the demon’s—his—powers.
Before the first transformation he’d gotten scared and it had half messed up, but before the second one, he hadn’t given a single fuck.
Having the book and wanting to use his powers is why he transformed.
Ophelia drops down beside him as he carefully closes the book on his lap.
“Looks like the magic was inside you all along,” she says with a completely serious face.
She is the absolute worst person on the entire planet.
Two days later and he hasn’t eaten anyone else—or anything at all—so it’s determined that Ophelia and he should go home.
Topher and Linnéa have a funeral to prepare for and an entire life to re-figure out.
They decide to rent a car to drive back to Seattle.
It just doesn’t seem prudent to trap Mateo in a tube in the air with a bunch of people right now.
Mateo spends way too long folding and refolding the mismatched assortment of clothing he’s borrowed over the past week.
He runs fingers appreciatively over a gray V-neck t-shirt that’s unreasonably soft yet bears no tag to tell him the material.
There’s a metaphor for Topher in there somewhere, a smile curving his lips because he’d made such a stupid yet apt comparison.
Still doesn’t finish folding, moving to fuss with a pair of sweatpants he belatedly realizes must have been the late Christopher’s because they’re way too big to be Topher’s.
It’s not that the folding is hard or anything, it’s just that, once he finishes, he has to hand the pile to Topher and say goodbye. Topher’s been an exceptional host, possibly playing the same avoidance except when absolutely necessary game Mateo is.
Or he’s just, like, grieving.
Or remembering that time Mateo ate a guy a foot from him and feels rightfully spooked.
Or it’s the reality of finding out he’s not entirely human and his powers killed a lot of people.
Or maybe he’s uncomfortable about how much demon tongue Mateo put all over him.
That last one makes Mateo stare unmoving into the middle distance for a really long time. It’s cosmically unfair that he’s the singular being able to unlock a whole new level of mortification based on things he did while dead and transformed into another state of being or whatever.