Page 65 of A City of Smoke and Demons
‘A dead body, yes, but death is different to life. In death, everything is arrested. Blood has stopped moving through the veins. The heart has ceased its rhythm. The vital organs have cooled. The skin has lost its heat. But in life,’ Charles paused, adjusting his spectacles. ‘A current of energy moves through thebody. The brain is sending a thousand messages all at once, telling us to breathe, to blink … to live.’
Analise considered his words. ‘You’re right,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t know what it means to live, not on a mechanical level, anyway.’
‘If you’re going to use your magic to help us, you need to understand the workings of the living body, Analise.’ Charles got up and went to stand by a strange contraption Analise had never seen before. ‘We call this the Pile.’ He flicked a switch and the whole thing started humming. Analise drew closer, curious.
‘It generates electrical current,’ Charles told her, going on to explain that the Pile was a series of alternative discs of copper and zinc, with pieces of brine-soaked cloth between them. ‘The human body is not dissimilar. The brain sends messages to the body through the nervous system, generating its own form of electricity.’
He turned the machine off and returned to his bench, gesturing for Analise to follow him. ‘When I left the Royal Society, they were beginning to stimulate human organs with electrical current.’
Analise’s eyebrows rose. ‘Is that … ethical?’
‘What do you mean ethical?’
‘Did the dead consent? Or did a bunch of scientists chop them up and start poking around at their insides?’
Charles snorted, turning to Maddog. ‘You’ve brought me one of those.’
‘One of what?’ Analise demanded.
‘One of those who believe science and magic have no correlation to one another.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Analise said. ‘But I do believe in respecting the dead.’
‘Are they respected when they’re thrown into those incinerators?’ the alchemist challenged.
‘If they come to me before, then yes, they are.’ She glanced at the Pile again. ‘It’s a battery, isn’t it? And you believe the body is a battery?’
‘Yes, and yes, to an extent,’ Charles said. ‘Both create energy in different ways. Electricity allows us to manipulate the body—studies are only new, of course, but it’s being used in medical treatments now. Your magic should be able to do something similar,’ he added, giving her a curious look. ‘Have you ever brought something back from the dead?’
‘Things that are dead should stay dead,’ Analise said firmly. In her mind, a hand clawed its way free of the earth.
‘But you’ve taken life with it.’
Analise hesitated. Maddog was watching her carefully. ‘Yes. I have. I killed a bird when I was a child—pulled the life from its body and helped it die. It was injured and dying anyway. More recently, I killed a man who was going to kill me, or worse.’ She sat up straighter on the stool. ‘I don’t want to kill anyone else by accident.’
The alchemist raised his eyebrows, a knowing smile tugging at his mouth. ‘What about on purpose? I heard through the grapevine that you’re a little unhappy with a certain someone. I don’t blame you, of course. If someone lied to me that way, death might be the preferred option.’
Analise glared. ‘The grapevine has a big mouth.’
He chuckled. ‘Alright, no personal questions.’
‘What did you mean about giving life?’ she asked. ‘A death witch can take it, can guide a soul to the next world, but we cannot give life.’
Charles looked at her. ‘Are you sure about that?’
Analise pulled the book Blackwood had given her from beneath her bed. She stared at it, wondering whether this was the right thing to do, then crawled onto the bed with it. Sitting cross-legged, she took a deep breath and opened it.
She had questions that alchemy and science could not answer. Perhaps the Church could.
Charles hinted that death magic was also about life, that life and death were two sides of the same coin. Analise had never heard anyone else refer to her magic like that. She’d always known death witches were not the only ones to see spirits; Charles said she was clairaudient, which meant so were the mediums and seers and anyone who dabbled in the other side, the soothsayers and druids of a time long gone. Being able to take life was unique to a Daughter of Lilith.
According to Charles, if someone had enough understanding of how the body worked, they would know the way the body acted in those moments before death. The stopping of the heart, either slowly or abruptly. The cooling of the blood and, eventually, flesh and organs.
If someone knew how to cause death, could they not reverse it?
But even if someone could bring a soul back from the other side and somehow guide it back into its body, should they?
She’d learnt more about her magic after one conversation with an alchemist—who she was certain was not entirely sane—than she had over the last twenty-five years of her life. All Analise had was rumour and conjecture, things she picked up on the streets and things the nuns told her. She’d never spoken to another death witch.
