The realization fell on me hard. My knees went wobbly, and I held the counter as a surge of emotion rose. I loved Trent. Sure, I’d toyed with the idea before, but now, after seeing him with Ellasbeth and giving him the foolhardy chance to make amends with her, I knew it was true. Damn it, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be romantic, with flowers and sun or moonlight, his touch on my face, and the scent of our hair mingling as we kissed. But no. It was me in my kitchen standing before a man I loathed, listening to the muted strains of the man I loved persuading his ex to get over herself and play by his rules.
Perhaps that means it might last this time.
“Rachel?” Landon said, and I shook myself.
“He’s better at magic than you think he is.” Head down, I locked my knees. Love shouldn’t be scary, but whenever I fell in love, my life fell apart. I didn’t want anything to change, but how could I stop it?
“He’d better be,” Landon muttered, looking at me as if trying to figure out why I was so distant. “Same words? Are you sure?”
Think about it later, Rachel. “It circled my brain for three days. What does it mean?”
Head down, he crossed off and rewrote things. “Most of it is to gain the Goddess’s attention.”
Swell. “And the rest?”
“I don’t know.”
It was more likely he just didn’t want to tell me. Tislan, tislan. Ta na shay cooreen na da. It hung in the back of my brain like a whisper of awareness—slowly gaining strength.
“She is a demon,” Ellasbeth said from the back living room, her voice breaking through the singsong litany in my mind where nothing else could. “Do you have any idea what people are saying? What this does to our child’s chances at success?”
“Lucy doesn’t care,” Trent said back. “Why do you?”
Landon cleared his throat, pushing his sketch across the counter so I could see it right side up. He was uncomfortable, and I didn’t think it was because of Ellasbeth and Trent. I wasn’t keen on any charm he had to remember, but it wasn’t as if I had much choice.
“Pay attention,” the man said, cementing in my thoughts that it was his skills he was nervous about. “I agreed to help you, but I’m not going to do it, and if anyone asks, I was here with Ellasbeth helping her petition Trent for the right to see her firstborn child.”
“Sure.” His stubble was starting to show, and I could smell the cold plastic of airport on him over his faint woodsy scent. Distant, I looked down at the curse. “Did the parents know you were doing this, or did you just steal the babies, too?”
Landon pulled himself straight, the width of the counter between us. “You want to be held accountable for the sins of your forefathers? Just keep throwing stones, Morgan.” Expression closed, he looked me up and down. “I’m assuming you can get a soul into a bottle?”
I scanned the spell, thinking it looked easy. But most of the bad ones were. “Yes.” I didn’t like trusting Landon and his memory-recalled charm, but he did want an end to the vampires.
“Good.” He leaned over the counter and tapped his pencil on the instructions. I knew the moment he caught my scent when he froze, then pulled back. “The, ah, spell calls for removing the original soul from a healthy body. I skipped that part.”
“You mean killing a baby,” I prompted, and he stared at me until I looked away.
“Step one,” he said tightly. “Sketch a pentagram onto a square of silk using salt. If you can match the scarf’s color to the recipient’s original aura, that’s even better.”
“I’ll ask Nina if she knows,” I said, tucking a strand of hair back.
“Second, anoint the feet of the pentagram with the sap, and do the same for the soles of the recipient’s feet.”
“Using what?” I interrupted, shocking myself when I looked up and found him too close. “The vampire recipient is like what, lying down?” This wasn’t good. There were too many variables to remember, and he clearly hadn’t done enough magic to know what was important and what could be fudged. “Are you sure there isn’t a book it’s written down in?”
“No.” His voice was tight. “I won’t misremember it. I’ve got it okay.”
“You’ve got this okay?” I accused, and there was a sudden silence from the back room. “You said no one’s done this for thousands of years. How do you know if it’s right or not?”
“The charm is fine,” he said, face red. He was lying; they did this charm at the dewar—more often than they wanted to admit—and that sickened me.
“Then what do I use to anoint the scarf and his feet? My finger?” I asked snarkily. The reason it wasn’t written down was plausible deniability. You couldn’t be brought to justice for a black charm there was no written evidence of.
“Ahh, I would think an aspen rod,” he said, and I took the pen out of his hand and added it to the list. “I’m destroying that before I leave,” he said, meaning the paper.
No you aren’t, I thought, but was smart enough not to say it. Damn it all to the Turn and back, people were crap. How can you respect a group who sacrificed babies to lengthen their own pathetic lives?
“Aspen rod,” I said, setting the pen down with an accusing snap. “Then what?”
Landon was eyeing me in distrust, and I gave him a sarcastic smile. “You do the same with the egg white, anointing the arms of the pentagram first, and then the recipient’s palms.”
“Using the same wand?” I guessed, and he nodded, flushed. “Can I use a chicken’s egg?”
“Not if you want it to work,” he muttered, and I took that as a fact. Eggs were a symbol of rebirth, but the Mayans used to believe that hummingbirds were the souls of warriors and would make an even closer tie. I could probably pick up one at one of the more exclusive charm shops.
“So let me guess,” I said, pulling the paper to me. It looked funny seeing the clearly old charm on fresh white paper. “Step three is to anoint the point of the pentagram and his forehead with his own blood?”
He grimaced, shifting from foot to foot. “I’d use the same wand again.”
“Then what?”
Landon hesitated, as if trying to decide only now if giving me this info was a good idea.
“What next, Landon . . . ?” I intoned, and he tugged the paper back to himself.
“Roll the scarf into a cylinder and run it through the Möbius strip. Both loops.”
Big Möbius strip, check. I had one of those. I had two of them, actually. “What’s it made of?” I asked, and I almost saw him kick himself.
“Shit, I forgot that part,” he muttered. “Copper. Yes, copper.”
My fingers drummed on the counter. “You know what? I think I’ll just go to the library and find a nice reincarnation spell. Take my chances.”
Landon glared. “I know how to do this.”
“You sure?” I snapped, and both of us looked to the hallway at a pixy guffaw. No one was there, but a tiny whisper of pixy dust was slipping down.
Landon rolled up the paper, clearly ready to take his ball and go home. It was the lure of being the one who brought down the vampires that kept him here, kept him honest. “Most of this is all just to get the Goddess’s attention. It’s the thought that counts.”
I sobered at the reminder of the Goddess. Newt had assured me that the mystics and the Goddess herself wouldn’t recognize me even if I stood in a ley line and shouted for her, but she wasn’t called a goddess because she was impotent. “Okay, run the pentagram through the Möbius strip. Then what?”
My sudden meekness bolstered Landon’s mood, and I frowned when he tucked the paper into an inner pocket and went to get his hat from the table. “The scarf finds a neutral flow from the copper ions it picks up, so now you can shake the salt out and drape the scarf over the recipient’s face, blood spot at the forehead right where you anointed him. From there, you simply open the container holding the soul. Chanting the phrase will draw it forth, and the soul should go to him and fix into place. At least until he dies again. Burn the scarf to break the pathway and prevent the soul from escaping the body.”