Chapter 26
26
DON’T PANIC.
I respond to the voice before I fully realize it’s Elizabeth’s. I feel a sudden sense of calm and well-being that I’m not sure matches the moment, but all I can think about just now is that I’m grateful that I can still hear her at all.
Because I can’t hear Zander anymore, and maybe he’s not talking...but I kind of doubt that.
The cold is spreading. Elizabeth’s don’t panic wears off pretty quickly as I’m floating around in some weird black space.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
We’ve been untethered , she tells me in that same sedate way, though this time it doesn’t have that ghostly Valium effect. We must stay calm .
How the hell am I supposed to be calm when I’m floating about some magical space void, untethered ?
How did this happen? I ask.
Elizabeth sighs audibly, there inside me. Look to your protections, child.
I look at my hands. The bracelets and the ring are all intact. I reach for my head to find the crown still sits there. Georgie’s little book is in my pocket. I can feel Zelda’s necklace around my neck, but when I lift my hand to touch it, to wrap my fingers around the metal the way I sometimes do to reassure myself everything is okay, it burns.
I look down, and it’s covered in an oozy kind of black. Deep and dark and wrong .
In the distance, in the dark, I hear what sounds like a scream. The kind a weasel might make.
Black magic, I think. Worse, blood magic. It’s burning there against my skin.
My first instinct is to pull it off, but something in me tells me that’s all wrong. Like intuition, but louder. And far more certain.
I try instead to wipe away the oily black. It burns when I pull at the gooey substance, but it also moves. So I ignore the burn and claw the black off the necklace. It keeps growing back, but I don’t give up. It seems like the only thing I can do.
It hurts, it all hurts, but it’s centered here like they can’t get to me any other way, and that gives me some relief.
I manage to clear a spot off the metal.
Ellowyn. Baby. I can’t find you , comes Zander’s voice at once, and it nearly makes me weep. I hear him, and that means there is hope.
I want to give that back to him. You can , I tell him, there in that channel that’s only ours . You can find us, Zander. All of us.
I don’t just say it, I believe it. I trust it.
I trust him .
Something makes the back of my neck prickle, and it reminds me of that night that feels forever ago. Stepping out of Zander’s apartment on stilts and that black shadow swooping at me. Zander saving me in the nick of time.
I don’t see a threat here in this void, but I throw up the protective bubble anyway. Just like he did then.
I’m just in time, because the entire black world around me explodes in flame. I nearly lose the shield around me, it’s so shocking.
I am surrounded by fire. The flames are huge, raging. Angry and hot .
They are everywhere.
They are licking at me, at the protective barrier, and I can feel them too well.
I feel Elizabeth lend her strength to mine. That means we can hold off this fire for a while—
But it won’t last forever.
Sooner or later we’ll burn our power out, and then what?
Maybe, I think in a dark sort of way that reminds me of the Ellowyn I used to be—and in that moment, also tells me how much I’ve changed since I accepted the Revelare in me—that’s the whole point of this. Whatever this is.
Don’t panic —but this time it isn’t Elizabeth telling me that, it’s me telling me that.
Because I’m not that girl I used to be, with a human-sized chip on my shoulder, convinced I was a target and the butt of every joke. I’m not the teenager who decided I might as well dress the part of the town’s black cloud, and act like it too, since truth might be a curse, but it can also be a weapon.
She’s part of me, that girl I was, but I am so much more than she could imagine I’d become.
I swallow and try to think, though the roar and hiss of the flames makes that difficult. I know that I was able to hear Zander when I cleared off the necklace, so I look down at it again. I hold my breath as I wipe away the black ooze, waiting for the pain to hit me, but it doesn’t burn.
Instead, it turns into a crackly kind of ash and falls away.
Just like that, I know. The Joywood’s black magic is working to make this fire. To make it rage and potentially consume me.
They can’t do both. They can’t keep the fire going like this and maintain the dark, grimy block on my protection at the same time.
They don’t want to. They want to make the fire last longer than I can last, trapped here, protecting myself.
I have to force myself to breathe. Not to hyperventilate.
I can’t panic.
I have to fight .
Because I won’t let them take this away from me. This new life I’ve found in the last year—in these last few months. My baby girl. The love of my life. My coven’s very good chance at kicking the Joywood’s ass in the ascension, through the voice of the people they claim to protect but have only controlled.
I won’t let anyone take this away.
I heard Zander before, so I try to reach out. Zander. Baby, where are you?
I know he can’t hear me, because that man would tear down heaven and earth to hear me call him an endearment of any kind. I have to accept that our connection is blocked.
No doubt by more dark magic. The necklace was only the beginning of the ways they’ve cut me off from my coven.
I understand that this is supposed to wreck me and leave me sobbing in a ball on the metaphoric floor as the fire sweeps in and gets rid of me once and for all. They couldn’t harm my physical body, but they can get my soul out here.
Only if I let them.
I have more weapons than the Joywood ever gave me credit for, then and now. Elizabeth, I can’t reach Zander, but they don’t know about you. You can reach Zachariah. Tell him we’re in the fire. They’ll find us then.
I won’t be able to help you with the protection.
I look around me, at the way the bubble has shrunk down. The way I can already feel my strength start to flag, but if we don’t do anything , I’m literal toast anyway.
Reach out to him. Connect to him. Lead them to us, Elizabeth.
I can feel her inside me. Her fear, her worry, and her determination. Then a kind of sigh. All right, Ellowyn.
Because she knows, as I do, that this is our only shot.
I try not to shake at the enormity of that.
All it means is that failure is not an option.
Be strong, child , Elizabeth whispers to me, and then she slowly begins to ease her magic away from the protective bubble. I don’t hear her call out to Zachariah. Maybe I’m too focused on keeping the fire back, but it doesn’t matter. I have to trust her too.
I tell myself she’ll only be a moment, but the moment seems to stretch out into an eternity.
My muscles are shaking from exertion. Sweat trickles down my temples, my back. I’m not sure how much of this I can sustain.
But I have to , I think with a resoluteness that feels more like me than anything else ever has, though I’ve never encountered it before. So I will.
And I do.
Moment after moment after one more terrible moment, I do.
Then I see something. Something out there in all those writhing flames. At first, I think that it’s just a mirage. Me making up what I want to see most—a little spot in all that fire that means someone is reaching through.
That someone is coming to help me.
I can’t let myself believe it.
I hold on. I shake and sweat and cry, but I hold on—
Then I see a finger. I feel the wetness on my cheeks. I want to scream with relief, fall apart and sob, but I have to hold the protective shield around me. Around us .
Slowly, interminably slowly, so many moments I barely survive, the finger becomes two, and then half a hand.
After a few more forevers, I feel Elizabeth pour her magic back into our bubble, but her voice in my head isn’t relief or celebration. It’s all warning.
You have to wait, Ellowyn. Wait until you see his forearm. When you do, you’ll need to grab his hand and drop the protection all at the same time. If you don’t do it at exactly the right time, we’re all lost.
Maybe that would have felt like an unbearable amount of pressure—if I wasn’t already under too much pressure to handle. Yet I am handling it, because there’s no other choice. Maybe, too, because her magic is helping.
I nod.
I watch the hand press forward through the fire, knowing without having to be told that it’s Zander. I would recognize one of his hands anywhere, and besides, I know nothing will keep him from me.
Not even a wall of flame.
No matter how much it hurts, and...you don’t just stick a hand through a fire. Even as a witch with protections, it must be agonizing. He’s reaching toward me, but his skin is darkening.
He’s burning right in front of me, and this is the thing I can’t stand.
I might let the fire burn me, but not him —
I nearly reach for him right then, but Elizabeth’s voice holds me back.
You can’t , she warns me. Not yet.
I can’t stand this. He’s hurting.
Sometimes love means letting those we love hurt a little , she replies, and there’s a kind of sorrow in her voice I don’t want to recognize, that speaks of old wounds I don’t want to look for in myself, to save them from suffering far worse .
Nothing in my life has ever been this hard, and I pray to all the gods and deities, seen and unseen, that I’ll never have to endure this again.
Watching Zander hurt himself. For me.
When what we were always best at was hurting each other so much it almost felt good, in the end.
I don’t want that either, but I want this less.
I don’t dare blink, silently urging the rest of his arm to push in just a little more. To give me something to hold on to. I won’t let him suffer a second longer than he has to.
The moments I have to wait for this, watching burns deepen on his skin, are eternities. Each and every one of them, but then at last I see he’s almost there, carving his way through the flame just enough —
I take a deep breath and hold it. I make myself wait longer than I want to, so he pushes his way in just that much more through that wall of terrible fire. I let it out in a rush.
At the same time, I wrap my hands around his wrist and let the protection go.
Then, finally, everything speeds up.
He yanks me through the fire, his strength unwavering even though, when he catches me on the other side, I can feel him shaking.
Suffering.
The fact we’re falling through space when we shouldn’t be feels beside the point next to that.
I’m so weak now. I have so little power sparking in me, but I can feel Zander as well as I can feel me, and I know he has none left.
I try to slow our fall. At least attempt to ease into some kind of landing, but I can’t quite see below us. I don’t know where we are, I don’t know where we’re falling from or to , and it’s taking all of my strength just to wrap myself around him and hold on tight.
Everything is burned, fading, barely bleeding. All of this hurts. “I swear to Hecate, if I lose you, I will find a way to kill you all over again,” I promise him, my mouth against his shoulder.
He hears me. I feel him move a little and a small sound escaping his mouth.
I want to believe it’s a laugh.
The other things it could be, like a death rattle, are unacceptable.
Without warning, we’re suddenly crashing into a high tree branch. I grunt, then try to brace us for more impact—
Instead we’re jerked sideways.
Leave the tree landings to me. Ruth. An echoing eagle’s screech from Storm.
Then, finally, I hear the chanting of our coven as they slowly lower us to the ground. My soul body and physical body merge as I land as if the earth is a cushion, thanks to everyone who loves us. It takes me a deep, half-panicked beat to realize that we’re back at the cemetery.
Whole. Breathing.
But barely.
There’s an immediate commotion as we land. People surround us, pulling Zander and me apart and blocking us from each other. That’s okay, because I feel Healer hands on me and I assume they’re taking care of Zander too.
My eyes fall shut, and I can’t seem to open them. Even though all I see is Zander, fighting his way through that fire despite the cost to him, his skin, his poor hand—
Still, I’m whole again. I’m me. And there were other things that happened tonight, or should have.
“Did it work?” I ask Jacob, but when I open my eyes, he’s not there. It’s Maureen sitting next to me, working on the burns I didn’t let myself feel while they were happening, as long as they didn’t get the baby.
I don’t need her to tell me the baby’s fine. I know she is.
Maureen smiles at me, and I see my mother beside her. “We got exactly what we needed to make the cure and protection. Rest now.”
There’s something in her eyes though, and the fact that it’s her and my mother next to me and not Jacob. Not my coven.
Not Zander.
“Ellowyn,” my mother says, but I ignore her, twisting around and looking for him. I see Jacob hip to hip with his sister, kneeling over a form on the ground, broken—
No.
I stumble over on a half crawl. Over my mother’s objections.
“I’m okay,” Zander rasps when I get to him. His eyes are closed, but he must feel me, or he heard my gasp, felt my horror. I don’t know.
What he’s not is okay . Not even a little.
Still, he spoke. Even though he’s burned all over. So much worse than what I saw on his hand, or the small pink marks that show where the fire licked at me.
It’s only then that I see the flickering form of Zachariah next to him. The ghost doesn’t look burned, but something isn’t right. He’s him and not him. Almost as if the light is going out of him.
I get it then. “You saved us.”
I didn’t think ghosts could get hurt —they’re already dead and all—but his energy is fading. Even though Zander is in a bad way, it’s clear Zachariah used just about everything he had to keep it from being a whole lot worse.
Elizabeth emerges from me then, still buzzing the way she did while she was protecting me and my baby. Her light is dimmer too, but not like Zachariah. Not still like him and almost gone.
She makes a pained sound and falls to her knees next to him. She doesn’t say anything at first, just stares at him. “If he disappears here...” she whispers, then coughs, like she inhaled smoke even though she doesn’t breathe. Not really.
That’s magic for you. An asshole to the grave and beyond.
Elizabeth coughs again, clearly in shock. She doesn’t finish her thought. She doesn’t move from Zachariah’s side. She murmurs something, pressing her hand to his head—or trying, because even her ghostly hand goes through him.
I know what’s happening. I see it clearly, as if I’ve seen it many times before. His soul will be lost if he doesn’t get some of his energy back.
Even in death, no one is fully safe. He needs to recharge, or he’ll go dark for good. There will be no raising him again, no talking to him in visions, nothing. It reminds me of Zelda, working so hard to find enough energy to be herself on this side of the afterlife.
He needs to go to his side. Now.
“You have to get him back,” I say to Elizabeth.
She looks from Zachariah’s nearly disappeared form, sparkling tears falling down her face, but she doesn’t argue. “You still need me,” she whispers back.
Except that’s not true, not the way she means it. I will always need her, the way I need Zelda, the way Rebekah and Emerson need their grandmother. But life isn’t about getting everything you need when you need it.
It’s about love.
Sometimes love is losing the people you need the most, and then honoring them by living on without them. Because love never really goes anywhere. It’s inside us. It’s the sunrise on a still morning. It’s the stars in the sky. It’s the scent of lavender on the breeze when no lavender is growing. It’s the way a bright blue bird appears on a windowsill in a cold winter, reminding you.
Love is everywhere, but inside us most of all. “You’ve given me everything, Elizabeth,” I tell her fiercely. “ Everything. Take him back. Before you lose him. Before we lose him. Take him back and make him well, and when you’re right again, you’ll both come back. You’ll meet our daughter.”
Her tears flow, and her voice trembles when she speaks. “I fear we’re stuck here. Or surely we would have faded long since.”
I won’t allow this. Not for these ghosts who have helped us, loved us, and sacrificed for us.
Not for family.
Because that’s who Elizabeth and Zachariah are to me. To us. To Zander and our baby and our whole coven too.
I look down at myself. I have these protections all over my body, and this power that I can draw on no matter the state of my own tonight. And I have more than that.
I reach into the past, to the Goods who were Revelares before Elizabeth, stretching through generations of witches who led to Elizabeth.
My head tips back, and thanks to the centuries that worked to make me, I find the words.
“Spirits below, energy around. Time and space, work as one. Protect as they have protected. Save as they have saved. Souls beyond the thinning veil, bring your brother and sister home.”
Something bright and hot glows around them, holding them. Elizabeth reaches out and clasps the faded hand of the man she loved and lost once already. She’s openly sobbing now.
So am I. I can hear the chanting of spirits, voices I recognize and voices I don’t.
“Goodbye, my children,” Elizabeth says through her tears. “Be well.”
A crow caws somewhere in the distance, and then they’re gone in another bright flash. Almost in the same way they came.
I sit there in the aftermath of that, feeling hollowed out.
It’s not forever, I try to tell myself, so maybe I can stop weeping like I’ve just endured a funeral. They’ll regain their strength. They’ll visit. They’ll send us signs from beyond. Happy signs.
Birds on sills. Rainbows. A butterfly landing on my arm. Clocks that read things like 11:11 or 4:44 every time you look at them.
I have to believe that.
“I’m sorry,” Zander rasps out into the dark of the cemetery.
“You don’t need to apologize for a thing,” I reply, a tear dripping down my chin and splashing onto his face. I wipe it away. “You walked through fire, Zander. They’ll be back. No one we love is ever fully gone. Never. ”
He won’t be gone either, because they saved him. I hold on to his undamaged hand while the Healers work on him. Burns turning to blisters. So much energy. So much pain.
Pain is the price , I told Emerson once.
It’s a price worth paying if I get him. If I get us. All of this life, all of this love. This is worth paying for.
There’s more cost to come though, because that great toll rings out across the witching world once again.
“Joywood. Riverwood.” She seems louder tonight. Deeper, somehow, as if she’s made her way into my bones. “Come before the Undine for your final trial.”
We all look around at each other, in the shadow of the redbud trees and the gravestones of our ancestors. Everyone looks as exhausted as I feel. Hurt and injured. So much energy used for the ritual, for finding me, saving us.
Of course she calls us in now.
I’m surprised she didn’t call while I was stuck in a fire. If she had, maybe that pull would have saved me so I didn’t have to lose my ghosts.
I won’t let myself believe they’re lost. I sent them back. They’ll recover. They’ll be back, and maybe it won’t ever be like it’s been. Maybe it shouldn’t be, because Zander and I have to be just us, surely. We have the baby on the way.
Five is definitely a crowd. Like back in that linen closet, a thousand lifetimes and not that many weeks ago.
But Elizabeth and Zachariah changed the course of my life.
Our lives.
I won’t forget that. Ever.
“We’ll handle finishing and distributing the cure,” Maureen says. She puts her hand on Jacob and gives him a squeeze that has a little of the color seeping back into his complexion. “We’ll be there soon. Be well, Riverwood coven. Be strong.”
I help Zander to his feet. Emerson doesn’t help Jacob rise so much as hug him, hard, when he does. Frost and Rebekah stand with Georgie, and we are us again. The Riverwood, and this might be our last stand, but we’ll do it together.
So we let the Undine tug us across the river to face the evil bastards who tried to kill us once tonight already.