Page 67 of Witchlore
“Since I started reading the grimoire, I’ve been having these… visions,” I say hesitantly. “It’s like I remember things that happened to the shifter in the diary. Things they don’t mention but they all fit together. Every time I’ve touched an ingredient for the spell I see their life, I feel it’s mine. But how could I be getting their memories? What does it even have to do with the spell? We don’t even know if the same person who wrote the diary in the grimoire wrote the spell.… This is all so weird.”
“It is weird,” Bastian says. “But it’s a weird spell. There’s a reason there are no resurrection spells anymore. It’s a type of transformative power we only see in history; it’s volatile. But shifters, you have that power naturally.” He kisses my forehead reverently. “I’m not surprised it’s impacting you.”
I swallow hard. It has been impacting me, not just the strangeness of it or the way the grimoire has been gradually sliding into my consciousness over time, but the heaviness of carrying thoughts and memories that are not truly mine.
“It is a lot,” I confess in a whisper, my eyes stinging.
“I know.” He sighs. “I wish I could tell you why it’s happening and why you keep shifting, but if I had to guess… I’d say it’s because it’s a spell that needs a shifter. So the magic is starting to connect to you. In some ways it’s positive, I think it means it’s more likely to work, but…”
“But it means I might have more shifts ahead of me,” I finish for him.More visions, too.Bastian nods.
“If I knew how to stop it, I would.” He runs a finger down my nose. “I don’t want you to be in danger.”
“I don’t want you to be in danger, either.” I press my hand against the edge of his bandage. He nearly died tonight. I remember how it felt to hold him in the cathedral, the helplessness overwhelming me, staring down at the inevitability of losing another person. The idea of feeling his last breath leave his body, just like I felt it leave Elizabeth’s, is unbearable. There are so many things I don’t know right now, but I do know I cannot ever do that again.
“Maybe… we could just stop,” I whisper, body tense with anticipation. I know what I’m suggesting.If we stop, I won’t ever see Elizabeth again.When I think that, I hear Counselor Cooper’s voice in my head:I would encourage you, Lando, not to be scared of it, of… moving on.Bastian’s hand, which has been stroking my hair, pauses.
“Is that what you want?”
I don’t know how to answer that. Of course I want Elizabeth not to be dead, but do I want her back if she is different? Do I want her back if it means I can’t have Bastian, just like this, warm and soft and holding me so closely? Most important, do I want her back if I have to risk Bastian’s life again to achieve it?
“What’s left for the spell?” I ask, dodging answering.
“Not much. Getting the last ingredient, dirt from her grave, will be easy, and using your blood to open the wizard stone won’t be difficult,” he says. “‘Wizard stone’ is nearly always a reference to Merlin and to caves. I’ve done some research and the only local place that fits is the wizard’s cave at Alderley Edge.”
“What?” I jerk up, staring down at him, suddenly feeling lurching sickness rising up inside me. I hear her voice inside my head:Don’t leave me, Orla.“No, I can’t go back there. That’s where Elizabeth died.”
“Wait.” Bastian winces as he leans up on his elbows, frowning at me in the darkness. “Thiswas the cave you were in?”
“Yes!” Inside my head, I see a repeat of the moment all over again: her body, lying half in and half out of the cave, her head caught against a deadly slate, her bloody hair and my bloody fingers.
“Maybe that’s why you had a magical discharge, why you shapeshifted,” Bastian is saying, pulling me out of my recollections. “If there’s a resurrection spell connected to shapeshifter blood cast into that particular stone, then having shapeshifter blood there but not the rest of the spell would have disrupted whatever she was trying to do. You could have been the right ingredient in the right place but with the wrong spell—”
“So you’re saying it’s my fault?” My voice is sharp, because I already know it was, I just don’t want to hear him say it.
“No, Lando, no, I’m not.” Bastian cups my face, his eyes earnest. “I’m just saying—magical spaces like that are ancient. There were spells cast into that rock that we have no record of and they’re connected to some of the oldest and most volatile magic in the country. If part of our spell is woven into the stone there and it depends on a shifter’s presence it could, theoretically, react badly. It’s absolutely not your fault.”
I don’t believe him. All the technical stuff about the spell might be correct but not this.My only child is dead because of you,Elizabeth’s mother’s voice echoes in my mind. It will never stop being true.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whisper. “I don’t know if I can go back there.”
“You don’t have to.” Bastian strokes my cheeks soothingly. “But if we do this and we do it right, then everyone will know that none of this, her death, any of it, was your fault.”
It’s what I want, I realize. Not just to have Elizabeth back but to no longer be responsible for her death. The only way to get rid of that guilt is to undo it. I want to give Elizabeth back her life, to turn back time entirely. This is the closest way to get there.
“You’re not worried about resurrecting my girlfriend?” I trace a pattern on Bastian’s naked shoulder. It feels like we should definitely talk about it. If Elizabeth comes back she will have questions, but at least she will be alive to ask them.
“Listen, we all have to do what we have to do.” Bastian’s eyes are lit with intensity. He pulls my bare wrist, ghosting a kiss over my scars. I shiver. “I won’t be mad if you still have feelings, but that’s not important. I remember what it’s like to be… haunted.”
“Are you talking about Shasta?” I ask.
“Yeah.” Bastian sighs and pulls me down so my head is resting on his chest. I brush his charms out of the way so the feathers aren’t tickling my nose. I remember what Bastian said at my parents’ house, about it being okay for me to wish that the moment of Elizabeth’s death was quicker. I imagine Bastian and Shasta in the car on a dark road; I imagine the abruptness of Shasta’s life, snatched away.
“After Shasta died, and everything with Mum and Dad just fellapart, I was… well, I went a bit wild. I think it’s because I was so angry that the world was moving on without him. But it has to move on.” Bastian’s voice is distant. “We all have to do what we have to do to move on.”
What seemed impossible to me three days ago now seems just very, very difficult. There’s hope here, in Bastian’s touch and Bastian’s words.
“How do you move on?” I whisper. “How did you do it?”
