Spirit (29 page)

“Stupid
jackasses,” I muttered, not sure if I was cursing Jacob or Gwyn or both just
then. “Took my mount, took my knife, took my flint,” I grumbled. If I had the
knife, I could’ve tried to strike it against a rock to make sparks. When I
glanced at my crossbow on the ground at my side, I had a spark of inspiration.
It took more tries than I care to admit, but I managed to cause a spark from
scraping an arrowhead against a rock, finally getting the fire going.

My hands shook
and I was on the verge of tears as I skewered the bird on a longer branch and
braced it over the fire to roast. Balor moved closer to my side and licked my
uninjured cheek. I gave him a watery smile before wrapping my arms around his
furry shoulders and resting my head against him. We watched our dinner cook.
Nothing in either world ever smelled or tasted as good as that burnt bird. I
knew saving some for later would be smart, but we were so damn hungry and tired,
we cleaned the whole thing of meat before I realized we were done.

I let Balor lick
the fat off my fingers before I washed them in the river again. I splashed some
water on my face to clean my wound again too. It didn’t hurt quite as much this
time, thankfully. I watched Balor lay down near the fire, cleaning his front
paw. The light of the flames turned his white fur a muted orange.

“Balor,” I said,
getting his attention. “I don’t know how much you can understand me, and maybe
right now I look like a crazy person talking to a dog, but I want to tell you
something.” Balor stopped the assault on his paw and lifted his head to look at
me, his ears flicking forward. I felt a little silly, but he’d done so much to
help me that the idea I was probably going to abandon him gnawed at me.

“You know how
I’m always looking into this thing?” I asked as I held up the looking glass,
but he made no motion to indicate if he understood me or not. “Well, I’m
checking on my home.” At the word “home,” Balor tilted his head to the side.
“And my friends are trying to figure out a way to bring me back, to make me go
home. So that means I’ll be leaving here and probably leaving you behind.”

Balor continued
to stare, giving me no indication whether or not he knew what I was saying. But
I pressed on. “I feel horrible about it. You’ve stuck with me and here I am
about to ditch you. I’m so sorry; I want you to know that.” My voice caught in
my throat as tears sprung to my eyes. Balor got to his feet and walked over to
me. He dipped his head and nudged my face with his cold nose, whining softly.

“I know, I’m
sorry,” I said, wiping the tears from my face, flinching as I touched my
swollen cheek. “If I can figure out a way to take you with me, or bring you to
my side once I’m there, I promise I will, if you want me to.” Balor licked my
cheek, and I wrapped my arms around his thick neck, hugging him tightly as I
cried into his fur.

***

I woke later,
curled around Balor like he was some over-sized stuffed animal. White fur clung
to the dried tear tracks on my cheek, tickling my nose when I sat up. Wiping
off my face, I tried to loosen the knots that had formed between my shoulder
blades. I could still feel the two sore spots where my wings had been ripped
away, but the pain was a mere echo of what it had been.

Carefully
pulling my body away from the sleeping dog, I scooted a few feet away. The fire
had died down to glowing, orange embers. I pulled the looking glass from my
belt. Balor huffed in his sleep, his large paws twitching as he dreamed of
chasing some tiny animal.

I rolled my
shoulders again and then focused my attention on the looking glass, holding the
image of Jodi and Steven in the front of my mind, wanting to see what progress
they had made on the invocation spell. When the black glass shifted to fog and
then cleared, I watched as Jodi and Steven walked through a dark clearing. It
was unfamiliar to me, but it didn’t look like a natural clearing from this
angle. They were both bundled up against the cold night. I guessed at this
point it was February, but I couldn’t be totally sure. Steven was wearing a
slim cut, black peacoat, dark washed jeans, and a black knit hat with a thin
bill. Jodi was dressed almost identically, though her coat was charcoal and she
had a dark purple scarf wound about her neck, coming up around her jaw. Her
yellow blond hair was the only bright spot between them.

I tilted my head
and the looking glass, trying to see past my friends to try to figure out where
they were. I expected to find them in the same wooded area where Jodi had
managed to tap into her elemental powers again, but they obviously weren’t
there tonight. Jodi stumbled over a dip in the ground. Steven’s hand on her arm
kept her from falling, but we all heard something break, making Jodi curse.

“Hope that isn’t
bad luck,” Steven whispered, reaching down to pick up the broken vase and
scattered roses. He bundled them into a bouquet and set them carefully against
a tombstone. My heart stopped for a moment before slamming into my chest again.

“A cemetery?” I
hissed. “Are you two freaking serious right now?”

“You’re kidding,
right?” Jodi asked, turning her wide blue eyes up to him.

“What?” Steven
said, turning to look at her again, realizing what he said. “I was just kidding.
I have no idea if that’s a thing or not.”

“Not funny,
dude,” Jodi said, furrowing her brow in a scowl.

“Kinda funny,”
Steven argued, quirking one corner of his mouth in a smile.

“Just c’mon,”
Jodi said, grabbing him by the sleeve and pulling, taking more care with where
she placed her feet as she walked.

“Where are we
meeting them?” Steven asked, keeping his voice at a whisper as if he could
disturb the dead just by speaking. I couldn’t see the iridescent spectral
ghosts like I could when I was on that plane, but I knew they were there
nonetheless.

“A little
further in,” Jodi said, gesturing in front of her with her empty hand. In her
other hand, she carried a small, plastic birdcage with a chirping, brown
sparrow trapped inside. “So we won’t be seen from the road.” As they crested
another hill, I realized where they were: the largest and best maintained
cemetery in Ventura. My great aunt and uncle were buried there. I had only
visited their plots a couple of times, but as Jodi and Steven moved across the sweeping,
sloping lawn, I finally recognized it. Steven hitched the bag on his shoulder a
little higher, reaching out to take Jodi’s hand out of habit, making sure she
didn’t trip again.

If I could’ve
screamed through the looking glass, I would have. We never, ever cast in a
cemetery. Cleaning your space of any interfering entities was nearly
impossible, and really, the only types of people who would cast in a cemetery
were the kinds of people that would use the dead to help empower evil spells.
People like Ian. People assumed cemeteries were consecrated ground, but that
wasn’t always true. Nowadays, not all cemeteries were on church grounds, so
they were rarely blessed by clergymen. This wasn’t a good idea, and I had no
idea why Jodi and Steven were going along with it.

“I think I see
them,” Steven said, nodding his head in the same direction they were already
walking.

“Oh yeah,” Jodi
agreed. “Well, if it’s not them, then we’re not the only creepy people in the
cemetery tonight.” Steven snickered, making Jodi smile. It was good to see them
a little more lighthearted finally. I just hoped they didn’t get themselves
into trouble with this crazy idea.

“Hi,” Sherry
said when she saw them approach. She rushed forward to guide them around the
salt circle she’d already drawn, leaving a one foot space open for them to walk
through. Once Jodi and Steven were inside with Jane and Sherry, Sherry picked
up the canister of sea salt and poured a line to close the circle.

“How’re you kids
doing?” Jane asked in the same hushed whisper Steven had spoken in.

“Fine,” Steven
answered while Jodi said, “A little creeped out.”

“Nonsense,” Jane
said with a smile. “Few places are safer to be at night than a cemetery.” I
couldn’t help the snort that escaped me.

“Right,” Sherry
said with a nearly identical smile, “everyone here is already dead.”

“Oh yeah,” Jodi
said with an eye roll. “That makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“Jodi,” Steven
admonished. Seeing them trade roles was strange, but right now, I totally
agreed with Jodi.

“What?” Jodi
demanded, giving up speaking in hushed tones. “Can you please explain to me why
we’re doing this in a cemetery? We never, ever cast in cemeteries. They aren’t
exactly safe.” I let out a sigh of relief.

“’Atta girl,” I
said, even though she couldn’t hear me.

“Well, for a
number of reasons,” Jane said as she walked around the inside of the circle,
placing white candles at equally spaced intervals. “For one thing, we won’t be
disturbed out here. This is a rather vocal spell.”

“But isn’t that
why you live where you do? So you can cast in the forest on your property
without being seen?” Jodi asked.

“Yes, but that’s
our family’s sacred space,” Sherry said, careful to use their code word for
“coven.” “And since they voted against helping you, we can’t use it.”

Jodi made a
small noise of discontent before nodding at Jane to go on.

“Also, we’re not
invoking some random spirit of a deity or angel,” Jane said, continuing with
her candles so that she didn’t notice the look Steven and Jodi shared. “We’re
invoking a dead person, so the cemetery will lend us its power and energy.”

“I don’t know,”
Jodi said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Still doesn’t seem right.”

“Sure, I mean,
yeah, we’re working with the dead.” Steven’s voice caught on that word. “But we
want her back alive, or at the very least her active spirit, so shouldn’t we
work somewhere that promotes that?”

“Where would you
suggest?” Sherry asked. She placed the four different items that represented
the four different elements and directions in their appropriate places on the
altar in the middle of the circle.

“Like a forest,”
Steven offered. “That was Shay’s place of power after all.” Steven’s suggestion
actually made them pause, and I had to wonder why they hadn’t had this argument
while they ironed out their plan in the first place.

“Well, if Shay’s
power laid in the ground and growing things, then it really shouldn’t matter
where we perform this,” Jane said, coming to help her sister.

“Right, so long
as we’re outside.” Sherry lifted her face to smile at my friends. They were
right, to a point, but so were Jodi and Steven; they shouldn’t be in a
cemetery.

“I guess,”
Steven said without much conviction. He glanced at Jodi and gave a little shrug
of defeat. Jodi pursed her thin lips, cocking one blond eyebrow, but with a
shake of her head, she too gave in and knelt to help place the various casting
tools.

Jane sat back on
her heels to survey their work. “Okay, we have the pillar candles around the
perimeter, and we have the symbols for Air and Fire.” She gestured to the caged
bird and the large black candle. “We brought the blessed Water and the sacred
Earth.”

“Um,” Steven
held up a finger to interrupt her, “where did the dirt come from?”

“The
sacred Earth
,” Jane stressed, “was taken
from the garden here.”

“From the
cemetery?” Jodi asked, her head snapping up to look at Jane.

“Kids,” Jane
said, her voice holding the first signs of strain, “I promise, it’s going to be
fine. Sherry and I know what we’re doing.” Jodi and Steven shared another
silent look, and if they could still speak mind-to-mind I knew they would be
arguing frantically about how wrong all of this was. This was definitely not
our kind of magic.

“All right,”
Steven finally said, gesturing for them to go on. “This is your show.”

“No, it’s our
show,” Sherry said, making a circular gesture to indicate all four of them.
Jodi and Steven chose to keep their mouths shut. Sensing the strain, Sherry
glanced at her sister, who was still moving items around until she was
absolutely satisfied with their configuration.

“Did you bring
something of Shayna’s?” Jane asked, looking at Jodi and Steven expectantly.

“Um, yeah,”
Steven said, drawing all three gazes toward him. He pulled off the black
leather glove from his right hand to dig into his pocket. When he opened his
fist, I saw the bracelet he’d woven for me the first year we’d met. It looked
so small in his hand and more faded than it actually was against his tanned skin.
He stared down at it for a long, quiet moment, brushing the frayed ends with
his thumb before closing his eyes and sniffing.

“I know,
sweetie,” I whispered, as if I could reach out and touch his arm to comfort
him.

“Just place it
in the middle,” Jane said quietly, trying to keep her voice as gentle as
possible. Steven opened his eyes, blinking rapidly, and set the bracelet in the
center of the altar. In the darkened cemetery, cresting on the small circular
piece of black onyx, it looked like a thin crescent moon.