Page 72 of Until the Stars Fall

Twenty minutes later, I’d been initiated into my first coven—on an emergency basis—in a simple, abbreviated ritual involving smoke cleansing and vows to do no harm. Zola promised a full ceremony after we landed safely on Gaia, if I wanted to, and if Beck agreed. But I was too worried about getting him back, spiritually and romantically, to think about what that might look like, or if it was truly something I wanted.

Nearly ready to begin, we poured thick lines of salt over Eyre’s triquetra sketch on the floor. I stepped barefoot over two salt lines to sit in the triangular center beside Beck. Scooping his hand into mine, I kissed it and sent up a prayer that this spell worked.

Hannah sat inside one of the knots, close to me, and she reached across the salt line between us to hold my other hand. Our high priestess filled a vial from the potion and took her place outside the peak of the knot nearest Hannah, and Eyre and Summer placed themselves outside the peaks of the other two knots.

Hannah leaned in and wrapped her arms around my neck. “For luck,” she said, squeezing me tight. “I believe in you, Gem. You can do this.”

“Gemma,” Zola said, “this spell will confine the estranged aspects of Beck’s spirit, and your own, inside the spellspace. But also,” she warned, “other, lower entities—demons, other spirits—may be temporarily suspended inside the spellspace as well. They might talk to you or try to deter you from your task. Know that they speak neither truth nor wisdom. Their goals are their own, and the only thing you can trust about them is that they want to lead you astray from love, truth, and light. Ignore them. Find Beck’s estranged spirit half, and anoint his spirit with this oil.”

Zola crouched before me and dabbed her fingertip into the vial. The heavy aroma of lilacs and fresh cut grass came alive in the air as she rubbed the oil in a star pattern on my forehead, right over my third eye. She made the same shape on Beck’s forehead, then placed my mother’s diamond ring over it. She returned to her position, folding her hands. “Gemma, focus on a happy memory with Beck, when you felt closest to him. Hannah, focus on a happy memory of Gemma, when you felt closest to her.”

Hannah smiled at me, a million childhood joys between us: running outside, playing with our dolls, riding bikes.

I closed my eyes, focused on choosing a memory with Beck. I’d had so many close, sweet times with him in the short time we’d known each other. Lying under the stars on the diving platform, hiding and laughing in the forest, forming a deeper connection when we made love, working companionably together in the engine room.

But the memory I focused on was the night we’d officially become “a thing,” as he called it. My heart warmed, remembering the deep murmuring of his voice, the bliss of him surrounding me. I’m all yours if you want me. If you want me, I’m all in.

The coven chanted softly around me, Hannah’s sweet soprano beside me.

Quickly, I fell into a different space altogether. But instead of panicking, I was calm. Hannah’s hands were warm around mine, and even though I drifted into the unknown, I had a purpose, and a peace that I was supported and safe in my sister’s hands, no matter where in the realms I wandered.

I opened my eyes to the spirit world, the in-between where souls lingered after this life and before the next. It shimmered in a thousand shades of gray and white, shadows and light. The silence hurt my ears. I looked down to see my hands, transparent here, but vaguely prismatic. I had no heartbeat, no rush of blood through my veins. My senses, whatever they were in this form, adjusted, and soon I could hear a silken rush like phantom waves on the gulf.

The bright auras of the women in the coven—Zola, Eyre, and Summer—flared like rainbows around the perimeter of the spellspace, drenched in luminous colors. A radiant golden cord connected from my heart to the flame nearest to me: Hannah, the flame I recognized. My heart warmed at the shimmering golden cord stretching from Hannah to Summer’s belly, strong and secure. Another stretched from Zola’s off into infinity. Toward Noah.

A golden tether pulled low at my belly, the same one I felt the morning after my first night with Beck. It was stretched thin, and I couldn’t see the other end of it, but it glowed golden and bright. As if it would cover any amount of distance, even if pulled to an airy thinness. Lines of an ancient poem flitted across my mind. No matter how far apart we may be, I was connected to him, and I knew that connection couldn’t be severed.

I got up and followed my tether to find Beck, but dark, ugly splotches were peppered across the spellspace, pulling at my attention, bubbling beneath the surface of the shadowy ground I walked on. I forced my eyes to track them.

One in particular, larger than the others, squatted off center of the middle of the circle beside the pale aura of Beck’s body. Its two stubby horns rippled beneath the veil between worlds as if it were silk woven of black sparkling shadows.

It lunged at me, its long arm like a sea serpent beneath the waves, and I recoiled. The little coiled rainbow soul near Beck’s head hissed at it.

Parent killer. Its gravelly voice sifted through the veil like dirty sand. You have no power here.

Another horrid voice spoke nearer to me.

You cannot have him. He is growing weak, and we shall have him.

Shut up! I shouted. Dread mired each step across the spellspace, yet still I went on.

Another cackled, a swarm of cicadas to my ears. Parent killer tells me to still my voice when she treads where she should not!

Beyond the vile forms shifting under the veil, a pale rainbow caught my attention, tenuous as the sun shining through the spray of a backyard hose. I moved toward it.

Unnatural coward, the first hissed. You killed your parents with your dark gift. Embrace your soul’s corruption. We will come for you next.

You’re lying, I told it. But fear and doubt snaked into my heart, and I suddenly felt mired in the clay of my corporeal body. My vision in the spellspace wavered against the insides of my eyelids. But I forced myself to persist in the spirit world. The only way to Beck is past my fears, I told myself. I took a tentative step, and another.

You’re weak, another spat. You cannot tread here. You cannot save him. This one lunged at me, but it seemed fixed to its position. I took a step. And another. The only way to Beck was past them all.

Gravelly voices scraped together like bones in a graveyard. Yes, come closer so we can claim you too.

Zola said they were lies. I armored my heart and went on. I was almost within the grasp of the largest entity, but I forced myself to keep placing one foot in front of the other.

I will drag you into the blazing sulfur and watch your godless soul writhe in its flames!

It scrambled its top half toward me on spindly arms like a spider, lunging at me from beneath the veil. I winced and cried out, but its swipe went through me, neither dividing me, neither disturbing my own bright flame. A pulse of love traveled across my tether from Hannah, into my spirit. Warmth like sunshine beamed through me, and I grew bolder.

---