Page 23 of Death and Do-Overs

“Hmm,” Andrew said, unhelpfully.

“I can’t say for sure if what Wendy did helped or not.” Rose shot me an apologetic look.

I wasn’t offended or saddened by her words. She was right. We had no way of knowing if more time would allow Nie to speak, or if winks and spasms were the extent of Nie’s return from the dead.

My hope was tempered with a heavy dose of realism. But that glimmer of hope still remained.

“No matter its state, it’s fortunate you still have the head,” Andrew said. “Rose, I need you to open the blacklight app on your phone.”

“Kay, just a sec.” She picked up the phone and tapped on the screen.

“Tell me what you see,” Andrew told her.

The back of Rose’s phone lit up. She shined it on Nie. I flicked off the overhead bathroom lights.

It was unclear what exactly we were supposed to be looking for. Nie’s eyes showed stark white against her bluish-purple skin, exactly as they should. I glanced over at Rose, seeing a similar but diluted effect on her own face.

“What exactly are we—” Rose’s sentence ended in a gasp.

I snapped my attention back to Nie. Intricate swirls appeared on her skin, twisted and sharp like thorny vines. The swirls grew brighter by the second.

“Thick, spirally lines,” Rose said.

“How did you know the lines would be there?” I asked Andrew. “What do they mean?”

“I found a nearly imperceptible vibration in the ear wax,” Andrew said.

Seriously?

I repeated, “Vibrating ear wax.”

“It suggests the residual echoes of a cursed whisper,” Andrew said.

First, curses were real? Second, all that it took to deliver one was a whisper into someone’s ear? This revelation was another thorn in an already prickly situation.

I reminded myself that any information was helpful at this stage.

“So…a bad witch did this?” Rose asked.

“Unclear,” Andrew said. “Curses can be learned.”

Learned magic instead of innate was like Andrew’s alchemy. It didn’t have to be a witch who had cursed Nie.

Rose sighed. “So it could have been anyone.”

“What did the curse do to Nie?” I asked.

“A spiral shape suggests a curse of thorns, such as Anchorbriar Chains,” Andrew said. “There are others, but they all essentially do the same thing—bind the cursed to a physical location.”

Bound her…here, to Piccadilly? And then she got on the train.

“Did the curse kill her?” I asked.

“Unclear,” Andrew said. “It certainly didn’t remove her head from her body.”

“Will the labs tell us for sure how Nie died?” Rose asked.

“I can’t make any promises,” Andrew said.

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