Page 75 of Witchlore
“I know you don’t believe this, but I do actually care about you, and I believe you.”
“Believe me?”
“I believe that you didn’t mean to hurt Elizabeth. She was a secretive person. I loved her. I knew it came from fear, but if she had told me or told her mum what she was planning to do, I believe we could have stopped it. Whatever happened, I believe that you deserve a chance to correct it,” Kira says steadily. My ribs hurt and I rub them, trying to breathe through it. So far, the only person to say that to me has been Bastian, and Bastian turned out to be a liar. “Also, well, you’re crap at witchcraft. I’m worried you’ll hurt yourself.”
Her eyes drift down to my wrist. I feel self-conscious and coverit. She’s got me there. My plan at the moment doesn’t leave room for an in-between scenario; either I’m successful in the ritual, Elizabeth comes back, and I am cleansed of my guilt and have atoned for my colossal fuckups, or I’ll bleed out in the cave just like I almost did in the bathroom. Kira nods, like she’s read all of my dark, destructive thoughts in my eyes.
“You’re less likely to mess it up or bring her back wrong if I help,” she says practically. “And that’s what we want, isn’t it?”
I close my eyes briefly, imagining Elizabeth, standing again in the sunshine, wondering where the summer has gone. She’ll probably never forgive me for what’s happened with Bastian, but what does it really matter? She’ll be alive. Even if she never touches me or speaks to me again, it’ll be enough that she’s breathing. I’ll have done the impossible. I’ll have turned back the clock on death, and even though it might never make up for what Bastian’s done to me, or this time without Elizabeth, it will be something, at least. I may have defeated a boggart, a hellhound, and my slimeball bully, but Kira is right, I still can’t produce magic. I need her help. Also, I reckon there’s a real chance that she will follow me if I don’t agree to let her join in, just based on the way she seems to have spied on me pretty consistently since term started.
“Okay, yeah,” I say. “You can help me. It needs to be Samhain. Early morning, so people don’t see.”
“I have class at nine on Monday morning.”
“Well, bunk it off.”
“I don’t do that.”
“You will.” I open my door for her, trying to look dignified, even as Mr. Pebbles runs past me with a hiss. “Meet me at the Alderley Edge Cemetery at seven.”
Kira lets out a long, frustrated sigh that does not endear her tome one bit. I look at the door significantly. I’m not above telling her to get the hell out if I have to.
“Okay.” Kira stands up and walks out the door, looking back at me. For a second, her brown eyes are filled with nauseating pity. “I’m sorry he hurt you, Lando.”
That, it turns out, is the end of my tether. I slam the door in her face.
On Sunday night, I dream of Elizabeth. I dream of the long, exhausting seconds after her death when I sat in the catastrophe of my loss, her body still painfully warm against mine, despite the world being entirely upended. Then, my dream changes. The face in front of me is no longer Elizabeth’s. It’s the tear-streaked face of a dark-haired woman who looks like an older Bisan Tavi, staring at me with all the hatred of a woman broken beyond repair.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that she died.” I weep.
“You are the reason my child is dead.” Her voice is so cold but full of magic. I know there is nothing I can do to stop what’s coming.
“I swear, I did everything I could to save Bizzy—”
“If she had not been with you, she would not have died!” the woman screams, the ruby ring on her finger glowing intensely, light beginning to pulse out of it in a threatening way.
“I wish it had been me!” I scream back at her desperately.
“It will be you! I will curse you, shapeshifter.” Suddenly, her face twists into Elizabeth’s mother’s face, her hands lifted into the preparatory triangle, twisting her fingers into shapes that I know will ruin me.
I wake up, gasping in the darkness. I can still feel the heat and smell of her magic, fierce as a petrol fire. My heart is still pounding, my brow sweaty. Elizabeth’s mother’s face and the womanwho could have been Bisan Tavi’s mother blend together in my mind, a sickening combination on the edge of a vision or a nightmare. I turn on my bedside lamp and see that my phone is alight with messages. They’re all from Bastian.
Lando, I’m so sorry.
Please don’t do the ritual.
You mean so much to me.
I wipe away a tear with a shaking finger. He’s been messaging me all weekend; he even tried to drop round on Saturday afternoon, but I told Beryl not to let him in. She looked absolutely agonized about it and offered to do a heart healing ceremony with me to open my love chakras, but I turned her down. She told me to have a session with Counselor Cooper but I wouldn’t pick up the phone. Beryl or Counselor Cooper must have made a call to Paris because I received an email on Sunday morning from my mother. The subject line was simple and infuriatingly unhelpful, two words—Not witches—but the content was surprising. A train ticket to Paris. It is certainly a measure of how bad things feel this weekend that I actually considered it; anything to get away from my inescapable, irrepressible want and despair.
Despite myself, when I look at Bastian’s messages, I still wish he was here. I wish he could hold me like he did last week, stroke my back and tell me I’m safe. I hate myself for it, for not longing for Elizabeth and for wanting Bastian instead. Sniffing, I pull outThe Witchlore of Bodiesand flick to the very last pages. If my dream was actually a vision, and the woman I saw cursing me really wasKira’s great-grandma, Bisan Tavi’s mother, then surely there will be an entry about it. I search desperately for any references to the cursing I saw in my dream but I find nothing, nothing at all. The last words in the diary are about Bisan.
Without her in my life, I don’t know how to go on. I need to find a way. Whatever it takes, I will do it.
It’s so abrupt, I flip forward, looking for more. That can’t be the end, so bleak and unsatisfying. What if my shifter was cursed and died, just like in my dream? It’s such a passive, terrible ending for a person who always took firm control of their life. I don’t think I can cope with the loss of my shifterandBastian, so I turn my mind to other explanations. I lean back against the headboard and remember Elizabeth’s mother’s rage when I saw her at the hospital, her words that live inside me every day:I should curse every inch of you, shifter.Is it any surprise, really, after all of that, that my mind created a dream where my shifter was cursed, just like Dr. Toppings threatened to do to me? I cling to the hope this is a mere invention of the mind. I want my shifter to have had a different ending. I’m not naive. I know it’s likely that they perished, either in the war or some other way. The diary ends in 1941, the same year that Kira told me the shifter disappeared.
Suddenly, I wonder if the shifter from the past is more like me than I thought. Maybe they tried the resurrection spell to bring back Bisan Tavi? Even if they didn’t survive that process, tonight that feels like a better ending to me. Isn’t striving for love better than helpless and cursed?
