“Aren’t you lucky for that,” he shot back. “You can’t get a soul to spontaneously attach itself and hope it sticks, even if it’s his own soul and his own body. It left once, it will again.”
He was right, and I tried not to look so pensive. The thought occurred to me that he might be giving me a black charm in the hopes of damning me with it. It wasn’t illegal to know black magic, just to do it. And destroying the soul of a newborn so an old man might live again was about as black as it got. “No wonder the demons hate you,” I said under my breath.
“Oh, are we going to compare past atrocities now?” he said even as he began writing a list of ingredients beside the pentagram.
I cocked my hip and watched him; his penmanship was as precise as his dress. “Stealing healthy babies and substituting your own failing infants is pretty nasty.”
“So is a thousand years of slavery. Or creating a species for your own pleasure, one that necessitates acts of perverted brutality to survive, acts committed on the people you love.”
He was talking about the vampires. “No worse than destroying your enemy by attacking their unborn children.”
Landon stopped writing. “They did it first.”
But who really knew the truth? I couldn’t solve a puzzle two thousand years dead.
His motion cocky, Landon spun the paper to me. Listed was a mix of plants, objects, and ley line equipment designed to sympathetically harness intent: blood, hummingbird egg white, sunrise spider silk, aspen sap, a copper Möbius strip, silk scarf, salt—probably to scribe the pentagram with—and a familiar phrase of Latin. Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay cooreen na da.
My lips parted and a wave of disconnection flooded me as the words rose from my mind. “That’s the phrase Trent used to move my soul,” I said, my voice sounding hollow, as if from outside myself.
Landon frowned, actually doing a double take as I blinked to find myself. “Trent has done this? Are you kidding me?”
“Not this one,” I reassured him. “But he held my soul in a bottle for three days while my aura replenished itself. I remember the words.”
Ta na shay cooreen na da. It flowed through me, and I held the counter as if it wasn’t real. I’d been trapped in my mind, standing at this very spot making cookies that faded away until Trent and I worked together, a symbol of us joining our minds so he could pull me out.
“Kalamack put your soul into a bottle?” Landon said, his disbelief obvious.
My breath came in a rush, as if I’d forgotten how to breathe. “My aura was burned off when I fought Ku’Sox. My mind thought I was dead, and he kept me on life support until my body was recovered and my aura was strong enough.” It had taken a kiss to break the spell, seeing as it was a very old charm to “wake the princess” from a lifesaving coma. I was starting to think that was when I’d begun to love him.
Oh shit. I love him.
The realization fell on me hard. My knees went wobbly, and I held the counter as a surge of emotion rose. I loved Trent. Sure, I’d toyed with the idea before, but now, after seeing him with Ellasbeth and giving him the foolhardy chance to make amends with her, I knew it was true. Damn it, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be romantic, with flowers and sun or moonlight, his touch on my face, and the scent of our hair mingling as we kissed. But no. It was me in my kitchen standing before a man I loathed, listening to the muted strains of the man I loved persuading his ex to get over herself and play by his rules.
Perhaps that means it might last this time.
“Rachel?” Landon said, and I shook myself.
“He’s better at magic than you think he is.” Head down, I locked my knees. Love shouldn’t be scary, but whenever I fell in love, my life fell apart. I didn’t want anything to change, but how could I stop it?
“He’d better be,” Landon muttered, looking at me as if trying to figure out why I was so distant. “Same words? Are you sure?”
Think about it later, Rachel. “It circled my brain for three days. What does it mean?”
Head down, he crossed off and rewrote things. “Most of it is to gain the Goddess’s attention.”
Swell. “And the rest?”
“I don’t know.”
It was more likely he just didn’t want to tell me. Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay cooreen na da. It hung in the back of my brain like a whisper of awareness—slowly gaining strength.
“She is a demon,” Ellasbeth said from the back living room, her voice breaking through the singsong litany in my mind where nothing else could. “Do you have any idea what people are saying? What this does to our child’s chances at success?”
“Lucy doesn’t care,” Trent said back. “Why do you?”
Landon cleared his throat, pushing his sketch across the counter so I could see it right side up. He was uncomfortable, and I didn’t think it was because of Ellasbeth and Trent. I wasn’t keen on any charm he had to remember, but it wasn’t as if I had much choice.
“Pay attention,” the man said, cementing in my thoughts that it was his skills he was nervous about. “I agreed to help you, but I’m not going to do it, and if anyone asks, I was here with Ellasbeth helping her petition Trent for the right to see her firstborn child.”
“Sure.” His stubble was starting to show, and I could smell the cold plastic of airport on him over his faint woodsy scent. Distant, I looked down at the curse. “Did the parents know you were doing this, or did you just steal the babies, too?”
Landon pulled himself straight, the width of the counter between us. “You want to be held accountable for the sins of your forefathers? Just keep throwing stones, Morgan.” Expression closed, he looked me up and down. “I’m assuming you can get a soul into a bottle?”
I scanned the spell, thinking it looked easy. But most of the bad ones were. “Yes.” I didn’t like trusting Landon and his memory-recalled charm, but he did want an end to the vampires.
“Good.” He leaned over the counter and tapped his pencil on the instructions. I knew the moment he caught my scent when he froze, then pulled back. “The, ah, spell calls for removing the original soul from a healthy body. I skipped that part.”
“You mean killing a baby,” I prompted, and he stared at me until I looked away.
“Step one,” he said tightly. “Sketch a pentagram onto a square of silk using salt. If you can match the scarf’s color to the recipient’s original aura, that’s even better.”
“I’ll ask Nina if she knows,” I said, tucking a strand of hair back.
“Second, anoint the feet of the pentagram with the sap, and do the same for the soles of the recipient’s feet.”
“Using what?” I interrupted, shocking myself when I looked up and found him too close. “The vampire recipient is like what, lying down?” This wasn’t good. There were too many variables to remember, and he clearly hadn’t done enough magic to know what was important and what could be fudged. “Are you sure there isn’t a book it’s written down in?”
“No.” His voice was tight. “I won’t misremember it. I’ve got it okay.”
“You’ve got this okay?” I accused, and there was a sudden silence from the back room. “You said no one’s done this for thousands of years. How do you know if it’s right or not?”
“The charm is fine,” he said, face red. He was lying; they did this charm at the dewar—more often than they wanted to admit—and that sickened me.
“Then what do I use to anoint the scarf and his feet? My finger?” I asked snarkily. The reason it wasn’t written down was plausible deniability. You couldn’t be brought to justice for a black charm there was no written evidence of.
“Ahh, I would think an aspen rod,” he said, and I took the pen out of his hand and added it to the list. “I’m destroying that before I leave,” he said, meaning the paper.
No you aren’t, I thought, but was smart enough not to say it. Damn it all to the Turn and back, people were crap. How can you respect a group who sacrificed babies
to lengthen their own pathetic lives?
“Aspen rod,” I said, setting the pen down with an accusing snap. “Then what?”
Landon was eyeing me in distrust, and I gave him a sarcastic smile. “You do the same with the egg white, anointing the arms of the pentagram first, and then the recipient’s palms.”
“Using the same wand?” I guessed, and he nodded, flushed. “Can I use a chicken’s egg?”
“Not if you want it to work,” he muttered, and I took that as a fact. Eggs were a symbol of rebirth, but the Mayans used to believe that hummingbirds were the souls of warriors and would make an even closer tie. I could probably pick up one at one of the more exclusive charm shops.
“So let me guess,” I said, pulling the paper to me. It looked funny seeing the clearly old charm on fresh white paper. “Step three is to anoint the point of the pentagram and his forehead with his own blood?”
He grimaced, shifting from foot to foot. “I’d use the same wand again.”
“Then what?”
Landon hesitated, as if trying to decide only now if giving me this info was a good idea.
“What next, Landon . . . ?” I intoned, and he tugged the paper back to himself.
“Roll the scarf into a cylinder and run it through the Möbius strip. Both loops.”
Big Möbius strip, check. I had one of those. I had two of them, actually. “What’s it made of?” I asked, and I almost saw him kick himself.
“Shit, I forgot that part,” he muttered. “Copper. Yes, copper.”
My fingers drummed on the counter. “You know what? I think I’ll just go to the library and find a nice reincarnation spell. Take my chances.”
Landon glared. “I know how to do this.”
“You sure?” I snapped, and both of us looked to the hallway at a pixy guffaw. No one was there, but a tiny whisper of pixy dust was slipping down.
Landon rolled up the paper, clearly ready to take his ball and go home. It was the lure of being the one who brought down the vampires that kept him here, kept him honest. “Most of this is all just to get the Goddess’s attention. It’s the thought that counts.”
I sobered at the reminder of the Goddess. Newt had assured me that the mystics and the Goddess herself wouldn’t recognize me even if I stood in a ley line and shouted for her, but she wasn’t called a goddess because she was impotent. “Okay, run the pentagram through the Möbius strip. Then what?”
My sudden meekness bolstered Landon’s mood, and I frowned when he tucked the paper into an inner pocket and went to get his hat from the table. “The scarf finds a neutral flow from the copper ions it picks up, so now you can shake the salt out and drape the scarf over the recipient’s face, blood spot at the forehead right where you anointed him. From there, you simply open the container holding the soul. Chanting the phrase will draw it forth, and the soul should go to him and fix into place. At least until he dies again. Burn the scarf to break the pathway and prevent the soul from escaping the body.”
He put on his hat, clearly ready to go. I nodded, still uneasy in that he might have forgotten something—intentionally. “You never said where the spiderweb fit in.”
“Oh! Right.” He hesitated in the archway. “Drape it over your shoulder for protection against an aggressive soul.”
Aggressive soul. Yes, I’d run into one of those before, but Al hadn’t used spiderwebs to help protect against them. Come to think of it, I’d never seen a spider in the ever-after, and I thought it pathetic that the elves and demons had polluted their world to the point where even a spider couldn’t survive.
“Ellasbeth, are you ready?” Landon called as he stood in the threshold between the kitchen and the hallway, and I heard her ask him for a moment. Frowning, Landon leaned against the frame of the opening.
“You sure you don’t want to add anything else?” I said, trying not to look at the pocket he put the charm in. I wanted it, wanted it bad.
“No.” Mood sour, he looked into the living room, then pushed himself forward. Steps fast, he came three paces in, eyes intent as he pulled the paper from his inner pocket, taunting me with it. I jumped when he tugged on the line out back, tossing the paper into the sink and igniting it with a single word.
Son of a bastard, I thought, grimacing at the sudden rush of shoes in the hall. Trent slid to a halt when he saw Landon standing over the fire in the sink, and he exhaled in relief. Ellasbeth click-clacked in behind him, coat over her arm, and Trent frowned. “Thanks for your help. You both have a flight out of here tonight, right?” Trent asked, clearly eager for them to leave.
Landon chuckled, turning the taps on to wash even the ash into the sewer system and out of my reach. “I’ve got a reservation at the Cincinnatian. Ellasbeth tells me it’s the only decent live-in hotel in the area.”
“Even if the staff is surly.” Ellasbeth’s mood wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad either. Trent must have given her something, but I bet it had cost her. Suddenly I felt as if both of us had been manipulated, even if it had been us who had called them.
“Do you have what you need?” Trent asked, and I nodded. The more satisfied Ellasbeth and Landon became, the more uneasy I felt. It technically wasn’t a curse if I didn’t have to kill anyone to perform the magic. There hadn’t been any indication that it required direct contact with the Goddess to do the curse either, but he could have left that out. He had before.
Smile stilted, Ellasbeth turned to Trent. “Thank you,” she said, and my pulse hammered. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I get a permanent address.”
My expression froze. Crap on toast, the woman was moving to Cincinnati. Shit, shit, shit! Why had I gone along with this? Made it sound like a good idea?
“I’ll wait for your call.” Trent put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a cold kiss good-bye on her cheek. My gut tightened. I knew I gave myself away when Ellasbeth leaned in to accept it, her eyes on mine and a mocking smile on her thin, lipstick-red lips. The tension rose. Landon clearly wasn’t happy either. I’m an idiot. My clear conscience wouldn’t keep me warm at night, hold me when I cried, or smile when I made a joke.
“Landon,” Ellasbeth said as she held her coat out to him, and he slowly moved to settle it across her shoulders.
“Bye now,” I said as I leaned against the counter and tried not to grimace. “Thanks for the soul-stealing charm.”
Her coat on, Ellasbeth waited a telling moment for Trent to escort them to the door, but when he ignored them, she turned on a heel and stalked off, shoes clicking on the hardwood floor. Landon lurched to catch up, already digging in a pocket for the car keys.
A shower of pixy dust sifted down from the overhanging rack. I hadn’t known Jenks was up there, but I wasn’t surprised as he gave Trent a thumbs-up and darted out after them.
Trent sighed heavily, and together we listened to Ellasbeth’s heels aggressively striking the floor in the sanctuary. “That woman is plotting,” I said softly, and Trent pulled me into a sudden, unexpected hug.
“Oh God,” he almost moaned, his arms tight around me as I scrambled to shift gears. “I think you are the only thing keeping me from going insane sometimes. You and the girls.”
But he had kissed her. “Really?” I mumbled. From the front, the door slammed, making the curtains over the sink drift.
Breath catching, he nodded, still staring at the ceiling as if the words he wanted to say were imprinted up there with pixy dust. “When everything seems to impact everything and there’s no easy answer, I ask myself: Will this decision take me closer or farther from you? And then it’s so clear. Even if it doesn’t make sense at the time.”
He thought this would bring us closer? My heart thudded. He had meant that kiss as show, but fear still lingered. Ellasbeth had brought everything back that I’d been ignoring, everything that Trent had been working his entire life for and lost because of me, everything his father had begun, everything that I couldn’t help him with and she could. I could do nothing as a flash of heartache lit t
hrough me. I love him. I can say that now. “You’re going to let her see Lucy? Trent, that’s so dangerous.”
“It was your idea.” He exhaled, pulling me closer so my head was against his shoulder and I could feel every inch of him pressed against me. “You’re right, though. It would be more dangerous not to,” he said, his words making my hair move. “Besides, I’m angry, not cruel, and I’m confident that Ellasbeth is now cognizant of what she gambled and lost by casually tossing that all-or-nothing choice down before me. If she wants to see Lucy, she’s going to make every sacrifice she would’ve made if she had married me in the first place, but now all she gets is to be a part of Lucy’s life, not mine. She will hate Cincinnati for the very things I love about it. My revenge is complete.”
He’s giving her a chance to fulfill her original role, I thought, tension winding through me. Trent wasn’t seeing this as a way for Ellasbeth to wind him around her finger, but I did.
Trent gave me a squeeze, but I couldn’t get myself out of my funk. He was bringing pieces back into play to try to regain his standing. I knew he wouldn’t sacrifice me to reach his end, but there was no way he could do it if I was beside him—and someday he’d realize that. He’d grow cold, indifferent. I’d seen it before.
“I don’t trust Landon,” I said, feeling my breath come back from him as my fingers defined the lines of his back. “I don’t trust Ellasbeth, and I certainly don’t trust them together. As soon as we’re no longer useful to Landon, and she realizes she won’t get what she wants, she’ll try to gain custody with a more permanent means, you know that, right?”
Trent let me go, avoiding me. Damn it, he did know, and yet he was giving her the very chance she needed to stick a knife in his ribs. “Trent—”
“You think Landon’s charm is true?” he interrupted.
He was still holding me, and I pressed into him. “I don’t like using a charm passed down by oral tradition for two thousand years,” I said, then added, “But I think they use it enough that as long as Landon remembered it right, it will work. Are you sure you don’t have anything in your library? He could be setting us up. That charm might take our souls for all I know.”