My throat tightened and I blinked rapidly. I was going to miss him. Jax could never take his place. If there was a charm or spell to lengthen his life, I’d use it and damn the cost. My hand reached to push his hair back from his eyes, then dropped before it touched him. Everyone dies. The living find a way to assuage the loss and go on.
Depressed, I cleared a spot on the table. With the extra sea salt Jenks had gotten with his new pets, I carefully traced three plate-sized circles, interlacing them to make seven distinct spaces formed by three arcs from each circle. I glanced over the dusky room before retrieving the focus from my bag, which had been at my feet all night, safe from Nick.
Jenks was sleeping at the table, Ivy was sleeping in the back room, having returned from her “date” shortly after sunrise, and Nick and Jax were outside making sure the air bag wouldn’t engage when Jenks ran the Mack truck into it tonight. And the NOS. Mustn’t forget the NOS that Nick had in his nasty truck, which would be rigged to explode on impact. I’d have no better time than now to do this. I’d like to say that I had waited this long so it would be quiet and I’d be undisturbed. The reality was, I was scared. The statue’s power came from a demon curse, and it would take a demonic curse to move it. A demon curse. What would my dad say?
“What the hell,” I whispered, grimacing. I was going to kill Peter. What was a little demonic-curse imbalance compared to that?
Stomach knotting, I placed the statue into the first circle, stifling a shudder and wiping my fingers free of the slimy feel of the ancient bone. Jenks had watched me do this earlier, so I knew what came next, but unbeknownst to everyone but him, it had been a dry run using the wolf statue. I’d lit the candles but hadn’t invoked the curse. The little wolf with its fake curse had been sitting on the table all night, Nick carefully avoiding looking at it.
Another glance at the light leaking around the curtains, and I rose, going to Jenks’s things piled carelessly by the TV. I plucked the totem from his belongings, feeling guilty though I had already asked to use it. Nervous, I placed his carved totem with the stylized wolf on top in the second circle. In the third, I placed a lock of my hair, twisted and knotted.
My stomach clenched. How many times had my father told me never to knot my hair even in fun? It was bad. Tying hair into knots made a very strong bond to a person, especially when you knotted your own hair. What happened to the bit of hair I placed in the third circle would happen to me. Conversely, what I said or did would be reflected in the circle. It wasn’t a symbol of my will, it was my will. That it was sitting in a circle to twist a curse made me ill.Though that might be from the Brimstone, I thought, not putting it past Jenks, even though he’d agreed with my decision to stop taking it. At least it had been medicinal grade this time, and I wasn’t dealing with the roller-coaster moods.
“Okay,” I whispered, hiking my chair closer to the table. I glanced at Jenks, then got my colored candles from my bag, the soft crackle of the matching colored tissue paper they were wrapped in soothing. I had used white candles the first time, picked up by Ivy out “shopping” with Nick, a bitter touch of honesty to the lie our lives had become.
I set them down and wiped my palms on my jeans, nervous. I’d lit candles from my will only once before—mere hours ago, actually—but since my hearth—the pilot light on my kitchen stove—was five hundred miles south of there, I’d have to use my will.
My thoughts drifted to Big Al standing in my kitchen, lecturing me on how to set candles with their place names. He had used a red taper lit from his hearth, and it would probably please him that I’d learned how to light candles with ley line energy. I had Ceri to thank for that, since it was mostly a modified ley line charm she used to heat water. Lighting them from my will wasn’t nearly as power-retentive as using hearth fire, but it was close.
“Ley line,” I whispered, focus blurring as I reached for the line I’d found halfway across the town. It felt different from the line in my backyard, wilder, and with the steady, slow pulselike change and characteristic fluidity of water.
The influx of energy poured through me, and I closed my eyes, my trembling foot the only indication of the torrent of energy filling my chi. It took all of a heartbeat, feeling like forever, and when the force balanced, I felt overly full, uncomfortable.
Jaw clenched, I tossed my red frizz out of my eyes and scraped a bit of wax off the bottom of the white candle, holding it to the back of my teeth with my tongue. “In fidem recipere,” I said, to fix the candle in the narrow space where the circle holding the totem and the circle holding the knot of my hair bisected. My thumb and first finger pinched the wick, and I slowly separated them, willing a spot of heat to grow between them as I thought the words consimilis calefacio, setting into motion a complex, white ley line charm to heat water.
Okay, so it heated the moisture between my fingers until the wick burst into flame, but it worked. And the wax I’d scraped off on my teeth was the focal object, so I didn’t set the kitchen on fire. My attention flicked to the small burn mark on the table. Yeah, I was learning.
I gazed, fascinated, when the wick first glowed, then caught as the wax melted from the virgin wick and the flame took. One down, two to go.
The black candle was next, and after I scratched the white wax off my teeth, I replaced it with a bit of the black candle before I set it in the space connecting the totem and the statue circles. “Traiectio,” I breathed, lighting this one as well.
The third candle was gold, to match my aura, and I placed it in the space between the statue and my knot of hair. “Obsignare,” I said, lighting the candle with a studied thought.
My pulse increased. This was as far as I’d gone earlier that morning under Jenks’s eye. I brought my head up, seeing his breathing shifting the hair about his small nose. God, he had a small nose, and his ears were cute.
Stop it, Rachel, I berated myself. I wanted to finish this before I set the smoke alarm off. I pulled a gray taper from my bag, setting it in the very center of the three circles, where they all bisected. This was the one that scared me. The first candle had been set with protection, the second with the word for transference, and the third with the word that would seal the curse so it couldn’t unravel. If the gray candle lit itself at the end, then I had successfully twisted the curse and I was officially an intentional practitioner of the dark arts.
God, please forgive me. It’s for a good reason.
In the glow of my three candles, I massaged my finger, forcing out a welling of blood. My bleeding finger scribed a symbol I didn’t know the meaning of, then I wiped the remainder on the candle. I felt as if my will left me with that simple drop of blood, smeared on the faded laminate before the gray pillar of wax given meaning from my intent.
Shaking, I pulled my hand out of the three circles. I scooted my chair back and stood so that when the circles formed, I wouldn’t accidentally break them by having my legs in the lower halves. I gave a final look at the three lit candles and the one marked with my blood. The table glowed in candlelight, and I wiped my hands on my jeans.
“Rhombus,” I whispered, then touched the nearest circle with my finger to close all three.
I jerked when the ever-after flowed out of me and a haze of black aura rose to envelop the candles, totem, statue, and my knot of hair. I’d never set bisecting circles before, and where they existed together, the gold of my aura was clearer, making glittering arcs among the black smut. Though small, the circles were impenetrable by everything but me since I was the one who had set them. But sticking my finger into the circle to influence what was inside would break the circle, and if I had made them large enough for me to fit in, my soul would be in danger of being transferred along with the original curse.
It was my knot of hair that made this possible. It was my bridge inside. The black candle would go out when the power was moved from the statue to the totem; the white candle would go out to protect and prevent any part of me from being sucked into the new artifact along with the old artifact’s power that I would be channeling; and the gold candle would go out when the transfer was complete, sealing it so it couldn’t unravel by itself.
My body resonated with the power of the unfamiliar line. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, and I wished it was. Grimacing, I reached out my will. “Animum recipere.”
I held my breath against the rising strength and the taste of ash flowing into me from the focus, overwhelming my sense of self until I was everything it was. My vision blurred and I wavered on my feet. I couldn’t see, though my eyes were open.
It sang to me, it lured me, filling me as if twisting my bones and muscles. It would make me everything I wanted, everything that was promised but that I continually denied myself. I felt the wind in my face and the earth under my paws. The sound of the spinning earth filled my ears, and the scintillating scent of time was in my nose. It coursed in a torrent too fast to be realized. It was what made a Were—and it hurt. It hurt my soul that I couldn’t be this free.Hunched, I struggled to keep my breathing even so I wouldn’t wake Jenks. I could be everything if I accepted it fully, took it entirely into me. And it made promises, making me long for it. If I’d had any doubt that Nick had done a switch, they were set to rest now.