Chapter 5 Delia #2
"No chance," I reply, pulling Jasper's wedding ring from my pocket. I slip it back onto his stiff finger where it belongs, then take a deep breath, centering myself. “But I won’t blame you if you want to go back home, curl up by the fire and pretend that you never knew anything about any of this. You don’t have to go down with me.”
His look shoots daggers at me, “You really think I’d let you bungle a resurrection solo? Please. If you go, I go. As always.”
That’s my guy.
The incantation slithers past my lips, each syllable of the old language like a snake emerging from darkness.
My copper hair lifts from my shoulders as static electricity builds in the air.
The candle flames stretch taller, their light taking on an unnatural amber hue.
Shadows dance across the walls, not all of them matching the movements in the room.
"Anima revertere, cor novum accipe," I chant, my voice growing stronger with each syllable. "Sanguinem animatio, spiritus liga, vita redde."
The air in the room crackles and boils. The jar that held the pig's heart cracks with a sharp snap, the glass splitting in perfect halves.
My palms hover over Jasper’s body before I place my palms on either side of the pig's heart, feeling it cold and unyielding beneath my touch.
Power surges through me, drawing from someplace deep and dangerous, a well I've never dared tap before.
It burns through my veins, scorching a path from my core to my fingertips.
"Cor ad cor loquitur," I gasp, the magic nearly stealing my breath. "Vita ex morte, lux ex tenebris!"
The pig's heart begins to pulse.
At first, I think I'm imagining it. Maybe it’s a trick of the candlelight or my own desperate hope. But then it happens again. A contraction. A beat. A rhythm that shouldn't be possible outside a living body.
It begins to sink into Jasper's chest cavity, melting into him as if the flesh is absorbing it. There's no blood, no gore, only the uncanny sight of one thing becoming part of another.
The lights overhead flicker wildly, bulbs popping in rapid succession until only the candles remain, their flames now nearly a foot tall and burning blue-white. Glass windows rattle in their panes, and a high-pitched whine fills the air, like the world itself is straining against what I'm doing.
It’s working.
The final words of the spell tear themselves from my throat in a voice that doesn't sound entirely my own, "REDITUS ANIMAE, REDITUS VITAE, REDITUS AMORIS!"
A shockwave of energy explodes outward. I'm thrown back against the wall, the air punched from my lungs. The candles gutter, then flare brighter than ever. A supernatural wind whips through the room, scattering my ritual tools and sending papers flying.
In the sudden, terrible silence that follows, Jasper's body arches off the table, his back bowing at an impossible angle. A gasping breath fills his lungs like a harsh, desperate, sound of someone pulled from drowning, and his eyes snap open.
"Jasper," I sob, pushing myself off the floor and rushing to him. Tears stream down my face, relief making me light-headed. "Jasper, it worked. You're back!"
He sits up abruptly, looking down at his chest where new skin has formed over the pig's heart, leaving only a circular scar. His eyes. His warm brown eyes I've loved for so long survey the room with clinical detachment before landing on me.
There's no warmth there.
No recognition.
No happiness.
No…love.
I reach for his hand, but he pulls away, swinging his legs over the side of the drawer.
"What did you do?" he demands, his voice cold and unfamiliar.
"I brought you back," I explain, confused by his reaction. "You were dead, Jas. Someone took your heart, and I—I found a way to bring you back to me."
He looks at me like I'm something stuck to the bottom of his shoe. "Why would you do that?"
The question hits me like a slap. I stare at him, disbelieving.
This can't be right.
This can't be my Jasper.
"Because I love you," I say, my voice small. "Because you're my husband."
His gaze drops to the gold band circling his finger. He twists it slowly, testing its weight and fit like an unfamiliar shackle. "Husband?" The word falls from his lips like something rotten. "Death was more preferable to this."
The room spins, his words chilling me quicker than a winter breeze. My heart plummets into my stomach, the reality sharper than the ritual blade. For a moment, all I can do is stare at him, lungs refusing to inflate, vision tunneling to the raw edge of his sneer.
"Jasper, stop. This isn't you. You're confused. The spell—sometimes it takes a minute to—" I'm grasping at straws, at fragments of hope torn loose by the violence of his resurrection.
Whiskers approaches cautiously, sniffing the air around Jasper, which in return, makes his hackles rise. "No, Delia," he whispers. "Something's not right.
He’s right. I see it now…the subtle wrongness. It’s not enough that I broke every oath a witch can make and risked the wrath of the council. Now I have to face the living nightmare of what I’ve done. What I created.
Jasper breathes, but something vital is missing.
The man I loved has been replaced by a mechanical facsimile.
His gaze sweeps over me with the clinical precision of a scientist examining a specimen.
Behind those familiar brown irises lurks a stranger.
One who processes information but feels nothing.
The warmth that once made him mine has been hollowed out, leaving only the shell of the man who used to look at me like I hung the moon.
But why?
I already know the answer to my own question.
The universe demands balance. I thought I was clever, substituting pig for person, thinking death wouldn't notice the difference.
But the magic knows. It always knows when you're trying to slip a counterfeit coin into its palm.
Now, I fear that I have conjured something even worse than an empty house and a cold bed.
I have conjured a future where love is a one-sided ghost, haunting what remains.
I should have known better. I should have known that by changing out his heart for another’s that I would lose the part of him that made him Jasper. His heart was more than just an organ, it was the foundation of his soul, the essence of the love we shared.
"We need to get him home," Whiskers says, breaking my spiral of self-recrimination. "The spell's complete, but we're still in a morgue with unconscious guards who won't be out forever.”
He glances meaningfully at the slumped forms outside the door. "Also, the longer we stay here, the more likely it is you’ll end up in a holding cell, and I’ll have to eat my way through the evidence locker to rescue you."
I nod, scrubbing the last of my tears from my face, “Here.” I reach into my bag and grab the clothes I brought shoving them at a naked Jasper.
He snatches them without a word, his movements jerky, the muscle memory functioning even if the man beneath it is absent.
I gather my supplies with trembling hands, candle wax hot against my skin.
I barely feel it. All I can focus on is the stranger wearing my husband's face, the cold calculation in eyes that once looked at me with such warmth.
I got what I wanted.
Jasper is alive.
But as he turns to look at me, impatient and cold, I realize with sickening clarity that maybe, just maybe, I've made a terrible mistake.