Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirty-Four
My soul hits my body like a snap of a rubber band. My eyes fly open. Rook’s face is above mine, behind him the shadow of trees and the pinpricks of stars. His hands are on my cheeks. His mouth is moving, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.
I shove him away, turn to my side, and vomit into what I’m realizing is grave dirt.
We’re in the cemetery. Which means it’s time to do the resurrection.
Except it’s not. I never met up with Ezra and CJ, which means they shouldn’t have given Credence her finger bone, which means Tolliver shouldn’t have brought me back.
Phantom pain runs up my arms, but my wrist holds firm, my shoulder now intact. However, my body shudders as I continue to heave, though my stomach has been emptied.
“Elle! Elle?” Rook’s voice comes into focus, frantic. “Elle, we’re running out of time.”
“Wha—wh—” My teeth chatter. “Wha—at…happened?”
“Credence,” Rook says. “Her soul reunited with her body. You have to do the spell. Now.”
“What?” I slur.
“Please, Elle, she’s stuck in the ground. She can’t be fully resurrected without the spell.”
I shake my head as another wave of nausea hits me. “Poppy…”
Poppy is the one who’s supposed to do the spell. She should be back by now…
But no. The backup plan. What was the backup plan? If Poppy couldn’t do it, then—
“CJ,” I mumble.
“There was a problem with Juliet,” Rook says, speaking so quickly he’s almost stumbling over his words.
“You were the only one who came back. Tolliver’s working on it.
But we can’t wait. We don’t know how long it’ll take to bring them back, and she’s stuck, Elle.
Credence is stuck. You have to help her. Please.”
I blink. This was never even a possibility. I can’t do magic, not like they can. I’ll mess it up.
“I can’t…” I choke out.
“You have to,” Rook says. “It has to be you.”
I look up, finally having enough focus to fully see him. His eyes are red and wet. A fat tear runs down his face.
“Please,” he begs.
I shake my head, but I’m not saying no. “Do you have the—”
Relief washes over his face as he shoves the codex into my hands.
The night air is frigid. Tolliver must have put a coat on me, but I’m still trembling, pain shooting through my limbs. My senses are too dull from the sudden return, but I can vaguely hear the rustle of the wind through the trees and make out the shapes of tombstones.
Rook helps me to my feet, hands firm under my elbows.
Every instinct tells me to find Tolliver and help him bring CJ and Ezra back, but Rook all but drags me over to Credence’s grave, and I can see now why he’s so worried.
The grave dirt is wet with the potion of life.
The scent of fresh tilled earth and new leaves and pomegranate waft up from the grave.
But there’s something else as well. Something hitting a sense I didn’t even know I had.
It’s like wailing, but I don’t hear it. Like an itch, but I don’t feel it. It rattles my bones, squeezes my chest. It’s a desperation that fills me. A hunger that will only be sated by finishing the spell.
I take a deep breath, trying to feel the magic inside me. I know it’s there. I’ve been going to the Afterlife since I was six years old. More times than I can count, and I’ve barely done any magic. I must be filled to brimming with it. I can do this.
I can do this.
I think I can do this.
The grimoire automatically opens to the resurrection spell. I look at the page, trembling. Rook puts his hand over mine, holding me steady as I begin to read the incantation.
“Au…dite me…spiritus ultra…velum.” My voice is thin. I stumble over the unfamiliar words. “Rompe limen—”
“Rumpe,” Rook corrects me.
“Rumpe…limen reforma nexum.” I let out an unsteady breath before continuing. “Magicae fluit…per med…u…llam profundam…” I shake my head at the next word.
“Expergiscere,” Rook says, voice starting to lose its gentle edge.
“Ex-per-gi-sce-re,” I pronounce the words carefully. “Nunc e…somno…aeternum.”
“Good,” Rook says. “Two more times.”
I nod, taking another deep breath, and begin again. “Audite me. Spiritus…ultra velum.”
My voice is stronger this time. I try to reach inward, to feel some pull of magic, and I’m surprised when something sparks to life inside me. Something calling to the unfinished spell. Or the unfinished spell calling to me.
“Rumpe limen…reforma nexum.” A shiver runs through me. A prickling sensation that comes from the inside out. Like something lives inside me and is trying to break free.
“Magicae fluit per…medullam profundam.” Wind rustles my hair. An owl hoots in the distance.
“Ex…per…giscere…nunc e somno…aeternum.” A sudden rush hits me.
Not the wind this time but something very much like it.
I feel my hair lift, then my body with it, like a string is tied to my heart and pulling me upward until my toes barely skim the ground.
I barely notice as the codex falls from my hand.
The spark inside me bursts to life, clawing at my chest. My vision goes white, and when I speak this time, there’s some otherworldly quality to my voice.
“Audite me, spiritus ultra velum.”
I am filled. I am whole. Light shoots from my toes, my fingertips, burns bright inside me.
“Rumpe limen, reforma nexum.”
I see Credence’s soul now in my mind’s eye. I see it struggle among the pile of her remains. I see it gasp in delight as it finds purchase.
“Magicae fluit per medullam profundam.”
I see bones stitched together with tissue, sinew and veins forming, stretching out along the pathways of a body. Organs, then flesh, then skin, all the crude materials that make up a body knit themselves together. Muscles contract. Lungs fill. The heart beats. Eyes flash open.
“Expergiscere nunc e somno aeternum.”
The final line echoes through the cemetery in a voice I don’t recognize, though it came from my own lips. As soon as I’ve finished the final syllable, my body drops to the ground. I land on my knees.
Silence falls. No more owls hooting, crickets chirping. Not even the wind dares make a noise.
I wait.
The grave is still.
“Maybe we should—” I start, but then Rook is dragging me back, and I finally see movement.
The earth is shifting and crumbling. A dull groan sounds from under the dirt. Rook still has his arm around me, and I feel both our hearts thumping in time, each breath no more than a quick inhale.
Finally, a pale dirt-encrusted finger emerges from the soil.
“She’s here,” Rook says, releasing me.
I watch as the single finger becomes a whole hand, then two, clawing at the damp grass.
Slowly, agonizingly, more of her appears.
A forearm. An elbow. A second arm. Then the crown of her head emerges, pushing through the dirt.
It seems an eternity before her entire head is free. She gasps in a breath, eyes wild.
Her naked body is smeared in mud as she pulls herself free from the grave. Rook is already beside her, throwing a velvet robe around her shoulders and helping her stand.
And she does stand. Whole and alive.
Resurrected.
I did it.
Oh my god, I did it.
Not only did I do magic, but I did the magic. I brought someone back to life. Someone who had been rotting beneath the ground. Her soul had been tortured in Tartarus, and now she’s here before me. Alive.
She stands taller than her brother, brushing dirt out of her hair, and I realize it’s much lighter than I first thought. A pale blond. The robe is tight around her thin form, but she doesn’t seem cold. She seems elated.
“You did it,” she says to Rook, her voice a breathy rasp.
I did it, I selfishly want to say, but I don’t. I turn to give them their private reunion and try not to think about how I should be having a similar one with my brother.
I want to share what I did with the others, but they’re all still lying motionless on the forest floor. I watch the three of them breathe in and out, wondering how long until they…wake…
Three of them.
But there should only be two. CJ and Ezra. Poppy entered the Afterlife in some Phantoms’ moritory. And Tolliver should be working on what went wrong with Juliet.
But instead, Tolliver’s lying next to CJ and Ezra. Feet and hands bound. A gag in his mouth.
I turn slowly, hoping for a reasonable explanation but knowing I’ll find none.
At the foot of the grave, Rook is bowing to his sister.
She stands tall and pale in the moonlight, arms spread as though she’s glorying in the feel of it.
“You’ve done well,” she says to Rook.
I shake my head, struggling to make sense of what I’m seeing.
My mind flies back to the con. Rook grieving his sister as I was grieving my brother. Rook opening the door covered in blood. Me falling prey to empathy. Rook, tears welling in his eyes. Me not feeling so alone. Rook kissing me. Rook making me feel seen.
Rook offering me exactly what I wanted, and I realize…
The con was never mine.
It was his.
And I—
I was the mark.
Rook’s eyes meet mine, and the corner of his mouth quirks.
“Welcome back,” he says to the person who is definitely not his sister, “Hades.”