Chapter 21 #2
The temperature in the cavern, already chilly, began to drop.
Beside me, Persi’s breath was coming out in sharp little puffs, like a steam engine.
But it was more than cold that permeated—it was also a tidal wave of intense emotion—fear and hope and curiosity and anger, all twisted together.
It hit me like a fist, and I reeled back from it, trying instinctively to stop it from tangling itself into my own feelings, confusing me.
I glanced at Persi. She had noticed the change in temperature, but that seemed to be all.
I turned back to the circle just in time to see a figure shiver into existence within it.
“She’s here,” Jess murmured from beyond the circle. “She’s been here all along.”
I would have known her anywhere. Sarah Claire’s spirit.
Persi stiffened beside me, and I laid a steadying hand on her arm, as much a gesture of warning as it was of support.
I could see from her expression that she would have liked nothing better than to leap across the room and tear Sarah to spectral shreds.
Persi did not look at me but she did nod once, sharply, a gesture which seemed to say, “Yes, I know. I’ll behave myself. ”
Sarah seemed to be all thin limbs and wild hair and huge, dark eyes that were focused entirely on the Claire grimoire.
Jess was right—her connection to it had drawn her right in.
She drifted toward it with an expression of bemusement, like she recognized it, but couldn’t place it in her memory.
She sank into a crouch to examine it, and that was when she saw the Vesper grimoire as well.
The change that came over her face was terrifying.
An absolutely feral hunger swept over her features, and a keening moan of longing burst from her lips.
She dove toward the book, and then gasped in alarm when she found she could not touch it.
Her fingers clawed desperately at thin air, never able to come within an inch of its battered leather cover.
She unleashed a scream of rage and then turned, eyes combing the ground, and settling on a nearby piece of rubble.
She reached for it but, because it was outside of the boundary of the circle, she could not pick it up.
Her eyes went wide with rage as she realized what had happened: she was trapped.
Persi made an incredulous noise beside me. “It worked,” she muttered. “I can’t believe it actually worked.”
I could. I’d seen the extent of Jess’ magic before.
Sarah began to scream with frustration, throwing herself against the barrier of the circle in all directions, noticing the chalk upon the ground, and shrieking even louder. After all, witches used circles too. Her voice rose to a crescendo, the ferocity of her energy making the very air vibrate.
“Stop.”
It was Jess’ voice. She spoke quietly, and yet it cut through Sarah’s cries completely, and silenced her at once. She stepped out from her hiding place, her gaze trained on Sarah with a mixture of anger and pity. Sarah glared at her, but seemed too wary to speak at first.
“I said stop. Stop now. It’s over,” Jess said.
Sarah cocked her head to one side, and looked Jess over from top to bottom in a swift assessment. Then she curled her lip in disdain.
“You are no witch,” she spat, but even in her condemnation there was something like doubt. The statement almost became a question.
“You’re right. I’m not,” Jess said, “and every moment I spend in this town makes me more grateful for that.”
Sarah didn’t seem to register anything but the first few words. She peered at Jess more intently now, as though trying to read her, like a book in a strange language, or tea leaves in the bottom of a cup.
“No, not a witch, and yet… and yet there is something about you.”
“I get that a lot,” Jess said with a smirk.
“What are you?” Sarah hissed.
“I’m the one who’s here to crash your party and ruin your fun,” Jess said, rising from her circle and tucking her chalk back in the velvet pouch at her waist. “Now tell me what you’ve been doing to this Geatgrima.”
Sarah’s eyes widen. “What is this word you use? I do not know it.”
“Yeah, and that’s only the first in a long list of things you don’t know, which is why you shouldn’t be messing with it.”
“You… you speak its name. You…” She drifted up against the edge of the circle, coming as close to Jess as she could. “You are… connected, somehow. I feel it. The essence of the Source—there are traces of it in you.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Jess’ face. “Explain yourself!”
“You first. I asked you what you’re trying to do to the Geatgrima.”
But Sarah wasn’t listening. She was looking at the Vesper grimoire again.
“How did you come by this book? You are no Vesper. No witch,” she hissed. “You have no idea of the forces you are meddling with, mortal. Undo this magic. Give it to me.”
“No, Sarah. You will never use that book again,” Jess said firmly. “It was never yours to begin with, and you have done more than enough damage with it.”
Sarah’s face spasmed with emotion. “You cannot stop me. This is my destiny.”
“There’s no such thing as destiny,” Jess declared.
“There are only the choices we make and the natural consequences of those choices. Now, you still haven’t answered my question, and I’m running out of patience with you.
This Geatgrima is damaged—unstable. The damage is recent, and I know that you caused it. What have you done to it?”
Sarah’s face twisted with anger. “I do not seek to damage it. But it resists me.”
“Of course it does,” Jess replied. “Would you let someone tear you to shreds without fighting back? If you’re not trying to destroy it, then what are you trying to do?”
“It is none of your concern.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find it is,” Jess said, dropping the light conversational tone. “You said it yourself. There’s something that connects me to this place, and I am sworn to protect it.”
“It does not belong to you,” Sarah hissed. “It belongs to him, and I am the key. I am the only one who can unlock its power for him.”
“Him?” Jess asked, and for the first time, her calmly confident tone faltered. I saw her eyes dart over to the corner where we were hiding.
I nodded my head. “The Darkness,” I mouthed to her, and watched her go pale.
Sarah continued to rave, oblivious to our aside. “It calls to me. Me and me alone. I am the pentamaleficus. I am the only one who—”
Jess shakes her head. “Again, you misunderstand. It calls to you because it calls to every spirit. Even before your spirit leaves your body, it can feel that pull. It’s not because you’re special.
It’s not because you alone can master its power.
It is universal and unmasterable. I say again, you do not understand what you are messing with. ”
“Do not presume to understand the Source!” Sarah shrieked, her face twisted with a mad rage. “Only he… only I can…”
“Sarah.”
I didn’t remember making a conscious decision, but suddenly I had spoken aloud.
Not only that, but I stepped out from the hiding place we’d been concealed in.
I felt Persi’s fingers claw at the back of my shirt to pull me back, but I was already out of her reach.
Suddenly, I was there, fully visible, and Sarah’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head.
She went as still as a statue, looking, for a moment, like a flickering hologram in a film.
“You.”
The one word sent a shiver of sheer terror up my spine. Never had I heard a single syllable infused with so much pure hatred.
“Yes, it’s me.”
She shifted as I stepped forward, and I realized she was trying to put herself between me and the Geatgrima.
“It’s over, Sarah. You have to give this up.”
Sarah threw her head back and laughed, a dangerous sound devoid of humor and brimming with lunacy.
“You expect me to stand aside for you? To give up the greatest triumph of my life and my afterlife? What a pathetic little mouse he has tried to replace me with. How could he have ever thought you worthy?”
“I don’t know,” I said, suppressing the stinging truth of those words. “But I don’t want to be chosen, Sarah. I don’t want to replace you.”
“Then you are a fool, and just as unworthy as I knew you to be. But he doesn’t need you,” she said, and turned to gaze at the Geatgrima again. “I will penetrate the secrets of this place, and he will welcome me back to him.”
“Sarah, this is delusion,” I said. “You are no longer a pentamaleficus. He cannot use you anymore.”
She spun around, her face rendered inhuman with rage. “I CAN FIX IT.”
“Your powers are tied to your bloodline, and you no longer have a body. No blood, no body, no powers. I know it’s hard to accept, but you must accept it.”
“I cannot,” she replied in a strangled whisper.
“Why? I don’t understand.”
“You haven’t seen what I have seen. What could be. What will be. If you only knew—”
“Then show me.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“Show me. You say I would understand if only I could see. So, show me.”
Sarah’s face split into a smile of bleak amusement. “You would fall so fast, pentamaleficus. You would turn in the moment and flee this place, straight into his embrace.”
“Prove it.”
I didn’t know where this recklessness was coming from, but it seemed, at least partly, to be a desperation to understand.
This girl had stood in the very same position that I was in now.
The Darkness had wanted her—tempted her.
But where I had resisted, she had given in.
And I wanted to know—I needed to know why.
“Show me!” I shouted again.
Sarah held out her hand. I stepped toward her.
“Wren, no!” Jess cried out. From the corner of my eye, I saw her start toward the circle, reaching for me.
But I had already made my choice. Without stopping to think, without considering the consequences, I stepped over the boundary of the circle, right out of my own reality.
And into Sarah Claire’s.