Chapter 50
CHAPTER FIFTY
I don’t know how long I sat there at the edge of the cliff, trying to hold it all in. The rain had soaked me to the bone, leaving me shivering and drenched.
A group of girls got out of their car and crossed the lot whispering among themselves. One of them hit the other when she saw me. I didn’t want anyone seeing me like this. I just wanted to get back to my room, curl up in a blanket, and never come out again.
I was close to the door of House Torlaine when a voice yelled my name. For a second, I considered pretending I didn’t hear it. My nerves felt like exposed live wires, ready to hit the nearest passersby with an electric jolt.
“Cella!” the voice called, more anxious this time. Footsteps pounded the ground behind me.
I turned and saw Maritza, face pale. “Maritza? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She swallowed hard. “They’ve found another one. Another person like Dani and Luce.”
Another? My stomach dropped. I thought I had more time for the binding spell—more time to confront the brothers. Hell, I thought I’d at least have until morning. “Who’s the student?”
Maritza averted her eyes. “I just want you to know that he’s stable, for now. The worst of the thrashing seems to have stopped, but there are some concerns about his heart, given his age—”
My stomach clenched violently. “Maritza, who was it?”
“The librarian, Mr. Fernara. They found him outside the cafeteria. His spine—they’ve given him a powerful muscle relaxant to stop the contortions, but it’s only been a few hours. We aren’t sure how much worse it will get.”
My blood ran cold. “Vern?” I shook my head. “No, it can’t be Vern. He, no, I just saw him, he was going home the other night, and—”
“A student found him thrashing on the ground this morning. We don’t know how long he was out there,” she said quietly.
A thread knotted in my stomach. I felt like I was going to be sick. “Where is he? Oh God, what about his wife? Has anyone told her?”
She nodded. “They’ve taken him to a secure wing of the hospital. Sonia is with him there. I have to go. I just thought you’d want to hear it from me personally.”
“Thank you,” I said, barely able to concentrate on what she was saying.
She squeezed my arm. “Try not to panic. He’s sedated right now. From what we can tell, he has about two hours until the worst of it kicks in and he starts to levitate.”
She hurried away, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to not let the world collapse all around me.
Magic had its foothold in, and unless I could stop it at its source, bind Dani to her objects, it would get stronger. It would find more and more conduits, more ways into this world, and tear them apart until there was nothing left. Until it swallowed us all.
I threw open the door to House Torlaine and tore down the hall. I pulled out the Book of Autumn and reread the instructions for binding.
What had I done? “Vern. Please, God, I’m so sorry.”
This was all my fault.
Max was gone because of me. This had happened to Vern because of me. Because I wasn’t good enough. Because I couldn’t figure it out before it was too late. Because I tampered with things I had no business dealing with.
I glanced back at the spell. Even with Max, S’s spell would be difficult. Without him, it could kill me.
This was no simple charm. This was dealing with one of the strongest, most destructive forces on earth. This was trying to tear a hole through an ocean and hold back the water with the palm of your hand. But I had no choice. It was Vern. I wasn’t just going to let him die.
Out of some form of self-preservation, I pulled out my phone to call Max. He didn’t answer, so I started typing out a text.
Max, I know you hate me right now, and I deserve that. I probably deserve a thousand more things, but—
Delete, delete, delete.
Vern is a vessel. Need to do the binding spell. Pls call me back.
I hit send. Then I held the phone in my hand, begging the screen to light up again.
“Come on!”
I stood, legs shaking. I needed a plan. Plans were how you moved forward. Plans were good. Smart.
I tore the spell out of the book, tucked it in my jeans, and started gathering the ingredients, dumping all my objects into my backpack.
“Two hours, Max. Then I’m doing this spell … whether you’re here or not.”
Two hours for the worst of the convulsions to set in, for Vern’s body to levitate, for the Magic to start to whittle its way at his skin. Two hours and no longer.
Max, or no Max, I would do this spell.
I wondered vaguely, as I filled a water pack, if Odysseus made a plan before he went to the Underworld, if Hercules did before he captured Kerberos. I wondered if they had any tips for summoning courage.
I unrolled a pair of wool socks Max’s mom had knitted for me years ago and pulled them on.
She’d used yellow and black yarn and embroidered them with little bees.
Then I strapped a mounted flashlight to my head and steeled my nerves.
I’d never been comfortable with any kind of darkness.
The darkness in the desert was one that felt so alien to anywhere else, but it wasn’t just that.
Things found me in the dark. Magic. Dani.
In every one of my dreams, she was in a dark room, a hallway, a shadowy corner of some long-forgotten place. And it terrified me.
I rubbed my finger over my leather cord, felt the familiar weight of the Christmas mug in my backpack. Then I headed back toward the spot where we’d gone the other day, before we’d decided to turn back. There was something there; I just knew it.
I was praying to anything listening that it was Dani’s third object, because Max or no Max, I still needed that object if I was to do the spell.
I snuck out past the Phi Kat house, keeping low. I hoisted my legs over the old barbed-wire fence, the faint smell of fire catching on the breeze. A wildfire? Or another one of the brothers’ bonfires?
My nerves were on edge. I jumped at every sound of the wind blowing through the creosote bushes and each snap of a twig.
I squinted in the low light, flinching at every movement in the grass, terrified that someone or something would jump out of the bushes. The moon cast just enough light that every shadow of a rock looked a little like a figure looming in the dark, and the distant coyote bray sounded like a scream.
What if the brothers were still out there? I couldn’t run away this time. I sent another text to Max. Going into the canyon. If I’m not back by dawn, tell Robetresse. Tell everyone.
But I’d already gone too far to get a signal. I turned off my phone to conserve the battery.
It took me longer than I thought to reach the spot again, a rough crag of red rock down a weathered cliffside.
I dug my foot in, testing my weight, then climbed onto it.
Suddenly, I realized climbing in the dark wasn’t one of my brighter ideas, but something told me this was it. I just needed to get down there.
I moved steadily down.
Below me was only a chasm of blackness, and though I wasn’t that high up—it couldn’t have been more than twenty-five feet—my stomach swooped violently.
A bird echoed in my ears, screeching like a nighthawk about to take its prey.
My eyes swiveled wildly, and I fumbled for the headlight to shine on the bird and scare it off, but the light slipped off my forehead and clattered to the rocks below.
The smell of burning filled my nose. When I shut my eyes, images were burned behind my eyelids.
Symbols on the cattle skulls, symbols that I had drawn as a warning, as a reminder, as yet another one of my plans that hadn’t worked out as I’d imagined.
Dani’s face, over and over again. A pale hand, a strand of blond hair plastered against her forehead.
Concentrate, Cella. You can do this, I ordered myself.
My foot stretched for the next foothold. As my hand reached out for a rock, it slid off a sharp edge, slicing my palm down the center. I cried out at the pain and clung with my other hand to the rock.
Shit shit shit.
“I’m so sorry, Vern,” I whispered to the sky. How the hell was I going to climb down with only one hand?
I remembered the last thing he’d said to me. I was leaving the library for the day, and he looked at me. “Just keep moving forward,” he said quietly. Vern believed in me. He thought I could do this. For him, I had to. I would.
I went over the facts in my head, tried to keep them straight, repeating them like a mantra.
But the symbols just kept burrowing in my eyes, and the birds sounded closer now. My eyes yearned for light, and my heart thumped erratically in my chest.
The flap of wings sounded near my ears, and a wild screech filled the air. The bird was going in for the kill.
Wings beat furiously; beaks pierced my neck, my face. I swung my arms to keep them all off me, shoving away razor-sharp talons. My foot slipped, and my remaining grip on the rock fell away.
A scream ripped apart the air—mine, I realized—and then I was falling.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DANICA STEWART
APRIL 2ND [THE DAY AFTER THE MURDER]
Then if this mortal Body thou forsake,
And thy glad Flight to the pure AEther take,
Among the Gods exalted shalt thou shine,
Immortal, Incorruptible, Divine:
The Tyrant Death securely shalt thou brave,
And scorn the dark Dominion of the Grave.
—
—
A man must be made good, then a God.