Chapter Eight The Nova
Chapter Eight
The Nova
There was an evil within me, a rage I could no longer hold the reins to. This was what madness was made from, born in the dark and rising as the sun cleansed the earth in the purity of dawn.
My face was wet, head throbbing like a horse’s hooves on the track.
I slammed the door, the sound not even registering as I stumbled up the stairs.
Red light from the sunrise trickled through the windows, reflecting off mirrors in the house to bathe it in crimson.
Even the whistle between my fingers was silent.
There was nothing between me and my vindication.
Not my body, not my morals, not even my higher judgment.
The library study doors slapped against the walls when I heaved them open.
I grabbed the grimoire, falling to my knees in the middle of the floor.
“Tell me!” I screamed, my nose touching the cover as I prostrated myself. “Tell me what to do!” My plea devolved into an angry sob.
It was not a prayer, it was supplication. A desperate, awful thing for someone to perform. To be stripped of everything. Vulnerable.
There was nowhere to go but up.
“Whatever is out there, listen to my call.” The words were barely audible, possibly only mimed. “Florescentia.”
My eyes were sealed shut so hard I began to see colors behind my lids.
All was quiet, not even the shuffling of a cat or a shadow, just my breathing. My pulse. And the coo of a pigeon loitering in the flower box outside the window.
I looked up, the bleary image of my library as plain and usual as I’d left it. The warm wood only set afire by the sun revealed above the neighboring tenements.
The books were all in their places, abandoned experiments beginning to collect dust, and the grimoire was still . . . like some average book.
“What is the point of you,” I muttered. “You can’t even—”
The cover snapped open against the floor.
This time, all pages were filled with black.
With rabid, restless fingers, I tore at the paper.
“Useless!” I shouted at it.
One by one, I ripped them from the bindings, yet the book never got thinner. Tearing and tossing until the paper cuts began to sting between my fingers.
Even when I stopped, with pages covering the floor . . .
It looked as if I’d done nothing to it at all.
The only thing worse than my luck right now was my posture.
My back ached from vulturing over my notes.
The phone blared again. It was like a train spike shoved straight through my eye, with the way my migraine was progressing.
It had been going off nonstop. No doubt it was Maxim or Clara, maybe even my mother or my in-laws.
My nail dragged across the text of a book. A shaky line drawn under anything important, accompanied by a dog-ear. Books were piled up beside me, behind me, all over the desk, and in my lap—no surface was safe. I’d pulled most of my books from the shelves and organized them by topic.
There had to be something. Anything.
The sun was just starting to pass overhead, the light from the window slipping away as my research went on. From ancient incantations to theories of physics, nothing would help my highly specific problem. I was hoping for some crossover.
A shimmer caught my eye.
I forced my eyes off the pages and to the corner. On the other windowsill, my box of Everie cards.
Maybe there was a path among the brush that hadn’t revealed itself to me. There was no better tool for deliberation than the promise from mystic cards. I supposed it was fitting for desperate measures.
My lungs felt heavy, my body was lead. A stretch of my back, and I counted three pops of my spine.
Leaning back in my chair, I tilted on the back legs.
Back and forth. As I looked up at the ceiling, I allowed myself meditative breaths.
It was white, the molding looked nice from far away, so it was hard to see any imperfections.
Dust collected on the chandelier, the tops of the bookshelves too.
There had to be an answer as to why now, of all times, I would fail to summon an entity from the depths, why my luck was quickly decomposing. In a book, in a card, in myself—I wasn’t sure. But I would find it.
“What do you want from me?” I whispered, chewing the side of my lip as if to pinch myself awake.
Something was interfering. That part was clear. I might be able to blame most things on a lack of luck, but something was blocking the new entity from coming to me.
All four legs of my chair slapped flat on the floor as I stopped my rocking. I snatched the Everie cards from the windowsill and brought them to the table.
When I lifted the wooden lid, the back side of the deck shimmered. Gold and silver foiling against dark blue cards. There was a slight deboss in the design that could be felt under the fingertips.
I stared for a minute, wondering if the sentience of the grimoire was common to other items like Everie cards.
The implications were frightening if so.
The Everie contained the four major constellations and eighteen minor stars.
The other fifty-six cards were represented by four seasonal categories, each card having an upright Nova, typically positive, and a negative inversed Eclipse.
If any of the major constellations were real and connected to these cards, I’d be worried I was using them incorrectly.
“What should I do?” I asked them, closing my eyes as if to will my intent on the expensive cuts of paper.
I picked the first card.
A vice. The Gambler in Nova. The imagery was of two hands holding coins, one mummified and the other youthful. At least it wasn’t an Altair. The card said take a chance, take a gamble, and it might work, I supposed.
Briiiing!
The phone blared again.
Briiiing!
And again.
With a disgruntled weight to my step, I forced myself out of the room. There was no preparing for who was calling and what leaden conversations were about to be dropped into my arms, meant to endure their weight.
The phone kept ringing, until I finally plucked it from the receiver. An object that I once looked forward to the sound of was now just as good as a cartoonish phantom haunting my home.
Cupping the receiver to my ear, I answered.
“Hello?” I prompted.
Nothing but scratchy static.
“Hello?” The greeting came rather harsh.
“Hello,” a voice said.
Not just some strange, faceless voice.
It was Dorian’s.
“Dorian?” Disbelief threatened to take me out by my knees. I let my back heave flat against the wall. “Is it you?”
“Dorian, is it you?” the voice repeated, a monotone shell of the words.
I had to remove the piece from my ear, staring at the receiver cup. There was no possible way it was him. I wasn’t delusional enough to believe it. A trick, something unwell. Punishment meant for me alone.
I hung up the receiver.
The tremors of my hands did not cease when met with the hot skin of my face. My tears only made them clammier. Either my mind was playing cruel tricks on me in my grief, or I was dreaming altogether. This all could be a dream. I was hysterical, ill.
Briiiing!
I picked up again. “Enough!” I screamed into the microphone. “Leave me be, you ill thing!”
“Ma’am,” the polite voice wavered in concern, “this is the coroner’s office. We were calling about delivery for viewing.”
The static was almost thrumming in tune with the blood rushing to my head, stars in my vision.
“Hello? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here.” A thick swallow as I patted my forehead with my sleeve. “Address is 626 on Sixth Avenue. Please phone Maxim Collesano for organizing a delivery date.”
“Of course. Have a pleasant evening.”
The phone went dead.
Pleasant. I didn’t think it was possible in this state.
Maxim would take care of it, I knew he would. He was organized to a fault and couldn’t bear unfinished tasks.
Stop worrying, I chanted to myself. Focus.
Then there were the matters of a wake and funeral, something that Dorian’s family and I most likely wouldn’t agree on.
I wasn’t keen on preparing two funerals to appease everyone.
I prayed the death mask was done well, or I would make it everyone else’s issue.
At least the funeral would be a single-day event, especially with the traditional refusal to embalm.
With everything to consider, I could not think about it until tomorrow.
Tonight, I had work to do.
Summoning was no different from luring any other creature. Before, it felt like light romancing. Now, it was a trap. My last preparations were not enough, not for whatever was blocking my way through. I needed something stronger.
The lazy steam rose from the freshly drawn bath. Clean, clear.
My fingers danced along the bottles of the vanity, one by one, until I found it, a deep azure glass in a tall teardrop shape. Usually, I might add only a drop or two. The oil was so rich and pungent, a small amount was enough to carry the scent through the steam.
I emptied the entire bottle.
The liquid trickled in a thin line as I circled the bath, shaking the bottle to assure that not a drop was wasted.
The room radiated with the scent of iris, strengthening by the minute. They said the alien-looking flower was a staple in spiritual practices, used for divination and sharpening one’s manifesting. I was hoping this meant it would act as a beacon when I did my own summoning.
I dipped one leg in, then the other. As I sank into the basin, the hot water tingled, engulfing me in the steam.
The oils made the bronze of my skin glow rich and the white markings pearlescent.
The melanin on my right arm had started to return in patches and spots since the failed Otherside encounter.
Conversely, new patches of vitiligo were forming across my face, my brows, even moving closer to my lips.
Markings spread around my knees and crawled up my thighs.
Some formed by the dimples of my hips. Most were symmetrical, with some wayward patches, except the marking on my face.
Even the star-shaped piece on my chest seemed to stretch its points farther.