36
Demi
“But you see,” Kitty said. “For these to live, something else must die.”
The memory of the wilted lilacs and the philodendron hits me with the scent of spring and a sense of horrible dread. That was the day the aunts sacrificed their houseplant to make a point to Blue and me about the laws of nature. Magic can do anything, but there is always a cost.
When I did the spell to bring Tristan back, it’s not that I didn’t believe there could be consequences but compared to the weight of bringing this man back to life, I didn’t really care.
And, yeah, maybe I convinced myself that the aunts were exaggerating, or that I was somehow immune from having to pay the universe back for what I was taking from it for him.
But, as it turns out, the cost might be me .
What have I done?
After my hand seems to flicker like static and pass right through Tristan’s handsome jaw, I ask him to bring me the spell book from where I’d left it in the living room.
Then I pore over it like it’s my job, hoping to find an answer.
I must read the spell over and over again at least a hundred times, trying to see where I may have gone wrong. The book gives me nothing.
So then I Google it.
I soon find myself in a questionable online witches' forum where the consensus seems to be that a necromancy spell is typically successful only when a sacrifice or cosmic payment is offered, usually in the form of a few drops of blood.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” I mutter out loud.
“What doesn’t?” Tristan asks. He’s been quiet. Really quiet. Sitting next to me with a grounding hand on my leg or on my back, but seemingly lost in his own thoughts. When he looks at me, the worry is evident in his eyes.
“This is talking about blood being used in necromancy spells to act as a sacrifice, but we didn’t use any blood.”
He shakes his head slowly, then stops, jaw clenched hard.
“The blackthorns,” he says.
“What about the blackthorns?”
But it dawns on me with stunning and devastating clarity.
Tristan, behind me in the foyer mirror. “You’re bleeding.”
“Got in an argument with the blackthorn tree out front.”
My blood was on the blackthorn berries I used in the spell.
Tristan stands and slowly runs both hands through his hair, his whole body tense and rigid. His face is stricken. I’ve never seen someone look so tortured.
“Demi, did you sacrifice your life for mine?”
“I… I don’t know. Not on purpose.”
In three long strides, he moves to my side of the bed and sinks to his knees in front of me, taking my face in his hands. His eyes are wild, desperate.
“Undo it,” he says.
“But you’re alive. ”
“Undo it, Demi.”
“I don’t know how.”
That’s when the tears come. I feel lost, hopeless. The look on Tristan’s face is breaking my heart. Everything about this is breaking my heart. How could I be so reckless, so arrogant, and stupid?
But I look at Tristan, this beautiful, soulful man, and I know what I did wasn’t a bad thing. It was good. I gave him his life back, and he deserves ?to have one. A good, long one. And yet— what about me?
Am I turning into a ghost? Am I dying? Taking the place of the man I’m falling in love with?
Tristan wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me close, burying his face in my chest.
“We have to fix this,” he says softly, voice rough.
I think he might be holding me like this so I don’t see him cry.
“This can’t really be happening, right? There has to be some other explanation,” I say, not sure if I’m giving reassurance or looking for it.
“Demi—” Tristan says quietly. Under my hands, his shoulders are tight and tense.
“Maybe I just need to take a nap. Maybe this is just some weird glitch, and I just need to get some sleep.”
“Demi,” he says my name again, and his tone makes me stop rambling. “Your heart is beating really slowly.”
Dread and fear are pinpricks in my scalp.
“Is that bad?” I ask. Tears spill down my cheeks.
It makes no sense. I’m panicked and anxious; my heart should be racing right now.
Oh, god. Am I dying ?
Tristan turns his head and presses his ear to my chest, his arms fully enveloping me. Holding onto me for dear life. After a moment that seems to last forever, he looks up at me with his features set so carefully I hardly recognize him,
“You’re going to be fine, Demi. Because we’re going to fix this,” he says.
“Fix it how?”
“We’ll find a way to reverse it.”
“Tristan, no.”
Still on his knees in front of me, he brings my hands to his lips and kisses my knuckles. Then he gives me the saddest smile I’ve ever seen.
“I told you from the start that I’d do anything to be alive again, to touch you, but there was one thing I wasn’t willing to risk. And that one thing is you.”
“There has to be another way.”
He hands me my phone. “Then it’s time to call your aunts. We can’t do this alone.”
The doorbell rings. As if on cue, as if by magic. I hear the front door open and the muffled voices of Kitty and Mickey admonishing Blue for walking in without being greeted. I smile, but it fades quickly when I hear the tone of Blue’s voice when she replies, “I don’t care.”
It’s Blue’s scariest voice—the one devoid of any feeling, a cold monotone that chills me to the bone.
“Demi, dear, sorry to let ourselves in!” Mickey calls from the foyer.
“We heard you aren’t feeling well!” Kitty adds.
“It’s okay! I’m in the bedroom!” I call back. Then, quieter, I say to Tristan, “It might be best if you make yourself scarce for this conversation. ”
A muscle pops in his jaw. “I’m not leaving your side.”
My sweet, sweet man.
“It will be easier for me this way. Please.”
I think it’s the “please” that does it for him. He rises to his full height, then leans down to kiss me softly. “I’ll be in the library.”
A moment or two later, my aunts sweep into my room with a flurry of concerned questions and the scent of patchouli.
Blue strides in a pace or two behind them, and while Kitty and Mickey make a beeline for me and climb onto the bed, touching my forehead and cheeks, my sister calmly moves to the bay window and sits down.
She won’t even look at me; she gives her attention instead to the garden out the window.
“Blue said you’re sick. You can’t taste anything?” Kitty asks, moving her hands around my face, checking for a fever.
Mickey is rummaging in her basket, pulling out velvet pouches of herbs and clattering glass vials of oils. She pauses, and I follow her gaze—the spell book. Open on my bed to the spell I used on Tristan.
“Why do you have this book out?” Mickey asks.
“Do you want to tell them, or should I?” Blue asks from her perch in the window.
I meet her eyes, and my stomach sinks. She knows.
I can see it all over her face. Blue has arranged her features in such a way that to the casual onlooker, she might appear completely impassive.
But I know her well enough to know that she's at her most dangerous when she’s quiet like this, when she’s locked her feelings behind her walls.
“Blue. I’m so sorry,” I manage to say .
She just shakes her head.
“Tell us what?” Kitty asks.
“Tristan,” Blue says.
“How—” I start, and then it dawns on me.
This afternoon, when my sister shook his hand, Tristan introduced himself to her by name.
I didn’t think anything of it at the time, too caught up in my confusion about what was happening to me and the pain in my stomach.
But I should have caught it. Of course, Blue knows who Tristan is.
I gleefully told her and the aunts all about him during a Coven meeting.
The day I asked if all witches could see spirits. The day the aunts gave me the book.
Tristan Beaumont, the ghost in my house, who mysteriously revealed himself to me.
“What’s going on, girls?” Mickey asks.
“Demi cast a spell,” my sister says.
“Blue,” I snap.
“What spell?” Kitty’s eyes land on the open book on my bed as well. She glances at Mickey, expression grave, then gently pulls the book onto her lap. Both aunts read what’s on the open page, look at each other once more, then rest their attention back on me, waiting.
It’s time.
“I brought Tristan Beaumont back to life.”