Chapter 24
The days in between my fall and the ritual passed in a blur of activity.
Yasmin rushed around gathering materials and practicing her magic chants like she was rehearsing for a play.
She had a notebook full of scribbles that she consulted, adjusting her glasses and squinting at her own handwriting.
She tore off a page and told me to memorize the lines on it.
“Can you do that?” she asked. “It has to be perfect.”
I scoffed and reminded her of all the lyrics and chords I kept in my brain. Learning a magical chant was nothing compared to the list of places in “I’ve Been Everywhere.”
On the morning of the ritual, Nate, Sage, Adam, and Tyler helped move the furniture in the sitting room out of the way, then rolled up the large rug that had covered the floor.
The rug wasn’t horribly ugly, but it had at least a decade’s worth of stains and dust. Once it was off the floor, I realized how much better the room looked without it.
I told Yasmin to have it cleaned instead of throwing it away, figuring it might come in handy if whatever they were going to do ruined the floors.
She directed Nate to take it outside where she’d already scheduled a pickup service.
Once dealing with the rug was finished, Yasmin checked the item off her to-do list with a flourish. She was good at this.
Under her direction, Adam and Tyler painted a large circle on the floor with the enthusiasm of kids armed with paint and a forbidden surface. Yasmin painted smaller symbols within the circle herself, using directions from her copy of the grimoire and handwritten notes from the one I’d burned.
I stood in the hallway and watched as my cousin destroyed the hardwood floor of my house. “What do I do ?”
Miranda took me by the elbow and steered me to the wingback chair in Annabelle’s alcove. “Sit right there, love.”
“But what can I do?”
“Do you know your part of the incantation?”
I nodded.
“Good.” She looked at me with kindness and fond exasperation. “Then you can sit.” She patted my knee and walked away.
All I could do was watch, feeling useless. It felt like waiting for Christmas as a kid, without the surety that at the end of the night, I would receive a gift.
“Are you all right, my dear?”
I jumped, startled at Annabelle’s sudden appearance. She was standing at my elbow, halfway embedded in the floor so that her eyes were level with mine.
“Sorry, were you there for a while? I think I might have zoned out a bit,” I said.
“I’m here,” Annabelle said, not quite answering the question.
“What about you? Are you okay, Marley?”
“I must confess I’m a bit nervous,” she said.
“Understandable.” I rested my head on the back of the chair and turned to look at Annabelle as she watched the preparations unfold. A lock of her hair escaped from behind her ear, and for the umpteenth time, I wished I could reach out and touch her, if only to tuck it back.
A lump formed in my throat as I settled back to watch Yasmin boss Nate, Miranda, and the kids around.
Miranda playfully squeezed Nate’s arm when he muscled an antique side table out of the way, causing him to blush all the way from the V-neck of his shirt to the tip of his hairline.
The house, once so empty and silent, seemed full to the brim with life and laughter.
The hole in my chest filled with feelings.
These people were here for me and Annabelle, not because I had asked, but because they wanted to help.
A cold, ghostly hand gently stroked the back of my neck.
Little tingles lit up my sensitive skin in the spots where Annabelle’s fingers made contact.
I remembered feeling this same sensation my first night in the house.
Despite not knowing how I would react to the presence of a ghost, Annabelle had tried to comfort me the only way she could.
“Thanks, Marley,” I whispered. “If this doesn’t work—”
“It will,” she said firmly. “And ... I know.”
***
Timing was crucial. Annabelle was to step into the magically drawn and charged circle exactly at sunset.
The ritual would happen hours before the full extent of the eclipse.
I assume there were magical reasons that had to do with the mystical properties of sunset versus midnight or whatever, but didn’t ask.
If it let Annabelle come back sooner, sunset was fine by me.
Yasmin had smeared a dark red liquid on her face and around the circle on the floor. I didn’t want to know what it was or if it would stain but I had a feeling it would definitely stain.
Annabelle stood on the edge of the circle, fidgeting as the grandfather clock in the sitting room ticked down the seconds until she was to step forward.
Yasmin had three different watches on her wrist and an alarm on her phone to get the timing right, but Annabelle kept her eyes on the old clock.
All three of the magic books were infuriatingly vague about what would happen once she entered the circle at sunset on the night of the blood moon.
All Agatha’s book said was: “She shall come to be as she no longer was, then shall come thrice more.”
At 8:17 p.m., Yasmin clapped loudly. “It’s time!”
Miranda, Yasmin, and I stood on the edges of the circle and held hands.
We chanted a series of phrases. With her maroon dress and matching overcoat, Miranda looked exactly like a friendly witch you might find living in a cabin in the woods.
Yasmin, however, was channeling a more modern version of witchcraft, wearing an off-the-shoulder patterned dress with long bell sleeves and knee-high boots.
Our intoned words bled into each other in my mind, adding an eerie soundscape to the darkness slowly falling on the house. Nate, Sage, Adam, and Tyler watched from the alcove. Tyler filmed the entire thing on his phone but had promised not to narrate.
Finally, it was time.
We stopped chanting and everyone seemed to take an anticipatory breath as we broke apart and allowed Annabelle to step forward into the circle.
She looked around, bemused. She held her hands at her sides, twitching her fingers every now and then as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with her hands.
Yasmin grabbed my hand again and squeezed it. “Second incantation.”
“Right.” I joined in with Miranda and Yasmin, my mouth slipping on the words I’d boasted about hastily memorizing while my head was still stuffy with painkillers. My ankle throbbed from bearing my weight for the minutes we’d been standing.
For a minute that seemed to hang suspended in time, nothing happened.
Then all of a sudden, the energy in the room changed.
Annabelle started glowing with a pulsing light.
The radiance around her head reminded me of a halo, and I remembered the first time she appeared over my head. I had thought of her as an angel.
“Oh,” Annabelle said, looking at her glowing hands.
Yasmin squeezed my hand again, and I realized I had forgotten to keep saying my assigned phrase. I squared my shoulders, ignored my aching body and resumed. Across from me, Miranda’s face was a mask of calm.
There was a knocking at the door, but we all ignored it. Annabelle was still glowing, her body becoming brighter and brighter.
In addition to Annabelle’s glowing radiance, the circle itself started pulsing with an ominous reddish light. I looked down at my feet. My toes were right on the outer line Yasmin had drawn on the hardwood.
The knocking got louder, turning into a pounding at the door.
“Don’t break the circle,” shouted Yasmin.
“What the hell is going on here?” Seymour Anderson burst in the door and stood in the entranceway holding a briefcase. He was wearing a Patagonia sweater, khakis, and a bewildered expression. “We had an appointment!”
Yasmin, Miranda, and I ignored him, focusing on the energy swirling through the room and surrounding Annabelle. I vaguely heard Sage shouting and a scuffle as Adam and Tyler tried to shoo Seymour out the door.
The circle was still humming with energy and emitting a bluish light.
Yasmin tightened her grip on my hand, and I squeezed Miranda’s with my other.
Inside the circle, Annabelle looked calm, even as an unnatural wind whipped through the house, tousling her hair and rustling the wide legs of her trousers.
“I’m not sure if it’s working, dears,” she said. “I don’t feel—”
Suddenly, Annabelle’s head snapped up. She looked to the ceiling and seemed to see something no one else could. Her expression became puzzled. Like her train had arrived early and she wasn’t ready to step onboard.
A bright light appeared over her head, shining down on her golden curls, making them glow fiercely in the dimly lit sitting room. Her face, always pale and shimmery, went translucent, then flickered, briefly into solidity. Her blue eyes opened wide in shock.
“Oh fuck ,” Annabelle said.
She took in a very deep breath, holding it, and flung her arms over her head.
Then she was gone.