Chapter Forty-Nine Nature must obey necessity
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Nature must obey necessity
ANGELICA AND VIVIAN WERE WAITING at the dock when I arrived.
Kasem and Honey were with them too. Kasem had dressed in jeans and a hoodie with colorful patterns splattered across it, while Honey was in all black again, from her moth mourning veil to the red-bottom ankle boots she wore over leather pants and a long-sleeved turtleneck.
I glanced at the shovel Kasem carried. The thought of us coming across a body or having to dig through Westfield’s swampy grounds to find remains made my stomach reel.
“Why is Sianna here?” Kasem asked, not looking at me. “I thought we agreed she’s too inexperienced for this.”
I hated that he was being like this. After the night in the shed, when he’d held me in his arms and we’d kissed over and over again, this coldness felt like having my heart shoved through a meat grinder.
If we’d gone any further that night, I don’t think I’d be able to put the pieces back together like I was forcing myself to do now.
“At least she has an affinity that’s awakened,” Honey said. “You’re practically useless.”
“Sianna is our trainee,” Angelica added. “This will be a lesson for her.”
“A dangerous one,” Kasem said.
Angelica laughed, a bitter tinge in her voice. “Aren’t they all?”
Kasem looked annoyed, but he didn’t argue further. I caught him watching me from the corner of his eye. He looked drained since the night in the shed, from his dull gaze to the way his hands trembled slightly, like he was the one recovering from a cold and not me.
Seeing the signs that his body was breaking down because of his wraith form was like witnessing a moth lose its wings.
“What?” Kasem said. “You’re staring at me.”
“I’m not,” I lied.
I pushed past him, following Vivian’s lead through the swamp.
Our plan was to return to the site of the deadly hazing—with all the horror that the slain students had experienced in their final moments, it was the likeliest place to commune with spirits.
It had rained the night before, and walking was like trudging through quicksand, even as winter hardened the earth.
Kasem walked slower than he probably needed to, playing the heroic knight.
But really he was a dark sorcerer—charming until you realized you could never truly trust him.
“Do you want to try this one?” Vivian said, stopping in front of a tree. It looked familiar. But then again, all of the trees here looked identical.
“Sure,” I said.
I placed my hand against the trunk, channeling my powers. Images flashed, from day to night and back again. There hadn’t been much human presence here. But then I caught a glimpse of a masked figure rushing by, their shoulder brushing past the tree.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going the right way.”
It was like that for a few hours, us silent, stopping every few minutes for me to channel my powers. My head throbbed. But, to my relief, the nosebleeds didn’t start.
Eventually, we made it to a small thicket of trees. Here, the cold air was slicing, our breaths visible, as if a cold front had found shelter in this crevice. It was somber too.
I swallowed, recognition taking hold; my body thrust against the tree, the masked figures circling Luke, approaching me. Swaying, a force caught me before I could stumble.
Kasem. He pressed his hand to the small of my back, wrapping an arm around me, his free hand tracing circles in my gloved palm.
“Does that help?” he asked. “You looked like you were going to pass out.”
“I’m all right,” I said, but I didn’t move away from him, let the steady rhythm of his finger tracing doodles on my palm relax me. He was tense too, though. This place, after that night during rush, now held bad memories for the both of us.
A little farther off, police tape encircled the trees, along with a DO NOT ENTER sign.
“Can you perform the summoning yourself?” Angelica asked Honey.
“I’ll need some help with the incantation,” Honey said. “But if you can channel your affinities with me, it should be a little easier.”
They nodded and the three women formed a circle near the police tape. Whispering under her breath, Honey clasped her hands together, forming a circle with her palms. Reams of gold and silver light swirled within it as she channeled her affinity and chanted.
I’d seen a glimpse of it at Theta House, but not like this, not so concentrated.
“She has an affinity for currents,” Kasem said, leaning close to whisper. His mouth grazed the top of my ear, and I bit my lip, my heart pounding.
“So does this mean you’re not ignoring me anymore?”
“I wasn’t ignoring—”
“What kind of currents?” I said, cutting off his flimsy excuses. “Current of sound? Of electricity? Of water?”
He looked flustered. “All of it. But primarily dead currents. Currents that move away from nature when a living current moves forward. Currents that repel, electric fields, that kind of thing.”
The electricity churning in Honey’s palms sent sparks through the air. The hairs on the backs of my arms raised, and the moisture in the air thinned.
Vivian and Angelica started chanting too, channeling their own affinities for the invocation. All around us, insects and bugs retreated from their perches. Even the birds did too, until there were only moths, their gray wings fluttering along the lines of police tape.
With her telekinesis, Angelica drew the switchblade from my satchel, levitating it at the center of the circle.
“Oh, spirit,” Honey said. “Whoever here remains, speak to us. We are looking to send a message between the realms of the living and the dead. We search for the owner of this weapon. Tell us, spirit, do you know who it once belonged to? Answer this question, and in exchange, we will leave your loved one with a message from you.”
Angelica lowered her palm, and the switchblade returned to my satchel.
Again, she and Vivian began to chant, this time with Honey.
“Answer this question. Tell us who the owner of this weapon is. In return, we will leave a message on your behalf.”
At first, I didn’t think it worked. Sparks charged through the air and the moths hovered at the grassy underpass beneath the police tape. Yet still, nothing.
But then I saw him. In the distance, kneeling at the foot of one of the trees. Streaks of sunlight radiated around his form, and except for the boxer briefs he’d died in, he wore nothing. Nothing but the silver rope tying his hands behind his back and his legs together.
“Luke,” I whispered. I moved forward but Angelica stopped me.
“Wait,” she said. “Something’s wrong. See how the sunlight touches him? It does not pass through him like a ghost, nor does it warm his flesh like a living person.”
I looked back, following her gaze to the rays of light framing Luke. Just like Angelica said, there was something eerie in how it shimmered, how even though the sunlight was bleeding onto him, Luke’s body seemed to reflect the light back, almost like a mirror.
“A wraith,” Angelica said. She turned to Kasem. “Do you see now?”
“I do,” he answered, no emotion in his voice.
Wraith Luke glanced around at us, fear rippling through his body.
“Hello,” he said. “Please. I can’t find my glasses. I can’t see.”
They’d left him like that. Tied in the dark, without his glasses, without any way to know where he was, or who was around, or how the creatures were coming upon him.
I turned to Kasem and Honey.
“This is your fault. Luke is dead because of you.”
“The creatures we saw that night were nothing like any wraiths we’ve banished before,” Honey said. “They’ve always had human forms. We couldn’t have known they’d possess the nearby wildlife. We did our best. But we failed.”
“And you used initiates as bait,” I said. “Great plan.”
I spun, facing Kasem.
“What about you? What’s your excuse?”
For the first time since I’d met him, Kasem seemed lost for words.
“I—I was trying to help.”
“You didn’t lift a finger until it was too late.”
“It’s like Honey said. They’ve been banishing wraiths from campus for decades. Every other year survived. We were fine. Luke would have been too, if it wasn’t for the curse.”
“Vivian didn’t make it,” I challenged. “And will I just be some collateral damage if anything happens to me?”
Hurt crossed his expression. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“But you don’t act that way. We’re all doing our best to stop the hauntings on campus and break this curse, and you have the nerve to act like a petulant child.”
The more I spoke, the angrier I became. He was being so flippant about all of this, and ever since our night in the shed, he’d been cold and standoffish. If he only knew how much we were all sacrificing, not just to break my bond to him, but for him.
“The curse follows you, doesn’t it?” I said. “That means people around you will die. Why would you get close to people? Why would you let them risk their lives being around you? And why won’t you just give up your inheritance like Jojo did?”
A gust of wind churned through the clearing.
“Hello,” Luke said. “Please, I just need my glasses!” The more frantic he seemed to get, the more violent the wind currents became.
I screamed as one knocked me off my feet, slinging me into the muddy earth.
Rot oozed from the soil, toiling, bubbling, bleeding red with blood.
Luke’s blood, and perhaps the others’ too.
“It’s his glasses,” Vivian said. “That’s his relic. We need to find them and return them to his remains.” She pointed to the corner where Luke was crouched. There, nearly hidden by underbrush, a bloody finger lay. It’d been overlooked in the police recovery attempt.
Honey began chanting and drawing the golden shapes of her banishing circle. But Angelica stopped her.
“We are not to banish him. Luke’s death was on your hands. You have no right to destroy his soul.”
“Banishment is the only way to excavate a wraith from the earth.”
“That is your way. Not ours,” Angelica said. “If you won’t help, then stay out of our way.”
Wind whipped in the air, and the sky roared as clouds began to form.