The Book of Spells (Private 0.50)

“What are you talking about? There’s nothing you can do about death!” Alice cried, scrambling to her feet. The light blue skirt of her dress was covered in mud and muck, with evergreen needles and bits of rotted leaves clinging to the wet fabric. “The Lord has chosen to take her and—”

“The Lord didn’t choose anything!” Eliza shouted vehemently, rising to her feet. She grabbed the sulfur stick and shoved it into the pocket of her skirt. “He would never have taken her. She was too good, too kind, too . . . loyal. She—”

“Eliza’s right, Alice,” Theresa interrupted. “She was only sixteen years old. This was not her time. If there’s something we can do about it, I say we do it.”

“We have to move her. We need to get her back to the temple,” Eliza said, needing to have a task to focus on. To have a plan. To have something to think about other than Catherine’s gaping eyes, the unnatural twist of her neck.

“No. We need to go for help,” Alice said, shaking her head as tears streamed down her face.

“I’ll get under her arms, you get her feet,” Theresa instructed Eliza.

Alice tripped backward a few steps to get out of Theresa’s way. “No. You can’t do this. No.”

“Alice. You’re either helping us, or you’re not,” Eliza said tersely. Alice just continued to sob, covering her face with her dirty hands. Eliza’s heart was suddenly hardened against the girl. How dare she try to stop Eliza from saving her best friend?

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“We’ll lift again on three?” Eliza said. Theresa nodded determinedly.

Alice let out a wail as Catherine’s body rose off the ground. Eliza started backing toward the sloping portion of the ravine, the way down which Theresa had come.

“No! Wait!” Alice shouted.

Automatically, almost against her will, Eliza stopped. Alice stepped forward and, her hand shaking violently, reached out and placed her thumb and forefinger over Catherine’s eyelids. Turning her face away, her own visage screwed up in grief, Alice drew Catherine’s lids down over her eyes.

“God bless you, Catherine,” she whispered. Then she took a deep breath and looked at Eliza, her chin lifted, her eyes shining. “Now go.”

Creativity

Eliza tried not to think about the gruesome load she was carrying as she and Theresa struggled down the dark, winding stairs to the temple, the wooden steps groaning ominously beneath their weight. She tried not to think about where Catherine’s soul might be right then, whether her friend was watching them. Tried not to think about how things had gotten to this horrible point. How, if Eliza hadn’t been so selfish, they would both be asleep in their room right now.

Instead, she thought about the next day, when Catherine would be back with them. When their power had brought her back. The power they never would have realized they had, if not for Catherine.

“We’ll lay her in the center of the circle,” Theresa said. Perspiration covered her face, but she hadn’t complained once, nor had she asked to stop.

“Wait!” Alice cried.

She gathered a few of the softer scarves and tapestries and laid them out reverently on the floor. Arm muscles straining, Eliza waited until Alice was satisfied with the bed she had fashioned. Then she and Theresa moved forward and laid their friend’s body down carefully, her blood-matted hair coming to rest on Alice’s mink jacket, which she’d folded for that purpose. Eliza felt a pang of gratitude.

“What do we do?” Eliza asked as Theresa made a move for the book.

“We can’t just do it now,” Theresa replied, flipping quickly through the pages. “There are special supplies. And we’ll need the entire coven.”

“What?” Eliza asked, devastated. “But I thought—”

“Special supplies?” Alice interrupted. “You’re not . . . you girls aren’t actually planning to . . . to bring her back?”

“Why do you think we carried her all the way back here?” Theresa demanded.

“I thought we were just bringing her out of the woods,” Alice said, her bottom lip trembling. It seemed she was unable to face reality. “Bringing her home.”

Theresa slapped a thick page down. “Here it is. The Life Out of Death Spell.”

Eliza rushed over to peer over Theresa’s shoulder. A shudder went through her at the sight of the awful skull, and she wrapped her arms around herself as the cold air of the chapel started to slither around her wet limbs. She averted her eyes from the drawing and concentrated instead on the words, clinging to them like a mantra.

Life Out of Death. Life Out of Death.

“No. We can’t do this,” Alice said, backing toward the stairs. “It’s unnatural.”