Page 70 of Until the Stars Fall

1/14. Didn’t AP. Not sure I ever will again. Real life is too perfect. Slept my first peaceful night since take-off. With G. ? I’m so in love.

The most recent entry was last night.

2/2. Gemma doesn’t want to be with me. I can’t explain this pain or how much I love her. We’re in the Bifrost. Ship seems good, but now abject fear is escalating with the grief. I’m too wrecked to stay in my body right now. I’m going to the forest to AP. Hoping that calms me down enough that I can go talk to Gemma. I can’t lose her, not when I’ve just found her.

A sob escaped my lips, and I closed his journal before my tears could sully the pages. But he gave me the answer. I kissed its cover before putting the book back and ran all the way to the med bay.

“He astral projected!” I shouted, rushing into the room and breaking up whatever conversation was happening. “He astrally projected. He’s been practicing for months. He must’ve gotten stuck. How do we get him back?”

Zola’s eyebrows knitted. “But if he’s been practicing it, why wasn’t he able to go back into his body?”

“I don’t know. He had a list of dates in the journal. Maybe it had something to do with interference from the Bifrost? He did it in space before without mentioning any problems.”

Eyre got up. “Zo, don’t you have a spell for someone to go into the spirit world and bring someone back?”

I snapped my head to Zola. “Can we go in and bring him back? I’ll go.”

“It would have to be that spell. None of us can astral project, unless anybody else has been keeping magical secrets.” She eyed us each in turn, but we all claimed innocence.

“Okay, but first let me run this through Clara and see if there’s any precedent, or if astral projection is consistent with his brain patterns. I want him back, too, but it’d be crazy to send someone into the spirit world if we don’t have to.”

“I’ll go,” I said again. “Where’s this spell?”

Zola pointed to a bookshelf on the far wall. “It’s in the white book, there on the top shelf.”

While Zola perused her tablet, I grabbed the book and opened it to the spell. Hannah came to read over my shoulder.

“This is the right spell, yeah? Do we have all of these ingredients?” I asked.

Hannah frowned. “I think so…shit. Everything but a diamond.”

Eyre came around my other side. “I don’t know how we’ll make up for that. It’s not like replacing eggs with applesauce in a cake.”

“I have one,” I blurted, looking at Hannah. “Mom’s ring.”

“Oh thank God you still have it.”

Eyre paused with her finger on the spell. “Gemma, it may not survive the spell.”

“I don’t care,” I said, all thoughts of Madam Indigo gone from my head. Hannah nodded in solidarity.

Zola laid her tablet on the table. “Here’s something. About a hundred years ago, scientist witches did a study. They did an MRI on a person’s brain while they had an out of body experience, and it’s consistent with Beck’s imaging.” She scanned the article. “Okay. Okay, now I’m on board.”

Thirty minutes later, we’d moved our base of operations to the Star Deck, the only space large enough to perform the spell. There, Hannah and Zola had a potion cooking in the cauldron from my birthday celebration.

“So if we’re really doing this—” Hannah began.

“We’re doing this,” I said. I was on my hands and knees on the wooden floor, helping Eyre chalk sketch a massive triquetra—a circle woven inside the three points of an endless Celtic knot—for the spell. Beck lay on a pallet of blankets inside the triangular space at the center with Oby curled up beside his head.

I paused in my work and leaned over Beck, smoothed his brow with the un-chalky back of my hand. “I’m coming for you,” I whispered, hoping he could hear me.

“A full coven of witches would make the spell more potent,” Hannah said, “which, considering one of us is going after him into the spirit world, would be a good thing.”

I wiped my tears. “How many is that? We don’t have enough?”

“Five is the minimum, but Beck’s our fifth,” Hannah explained.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll take Beck’s place.”

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