“This is far enough,” Xander said, stopping. “I need to slow the bleeding before we can do anything else.”
He lowered Claire gently onto the forest floor, turning to look at Allegra over his shoulder. “Get everything ready. As soon as I have her arms bandaged, we need to move.”
“I don’t want to move anymore,” Claire protested, shivering.
“Don’t worry,” he said gently. “We’re almost done. I have to tear some pieces off this thing you’re wearing, okay? It’ll stop the bleeding better than my T-shirt.”
She nodded.
He reached for the bottom of the tunic and tugged, ripping two strips off the garment almost before Claire knew what was happening. Lifting her right arm, he sucked in his breath when he saw the extent of her injuries.
“How bad is it?” Allegra said from somewhere behind Claire.
“They weren’t fooling around, that’s for sure.” He looked into Claire’s eyes. “I’m going to be as careful as I can, Claire, okay?”
“Okay.” She wasn’t scared. She couldn’t feel anything anyway, even when he began winding the first strip of fabric around her arm.
He knotted it, repeating the action with the strip on her other arm.
He looked up at Allegra. “Everything ready to go?”
She nodded, pulling something from a black backpack Claire hadn’t noticed before. A second later, she heard the strike of a match and a small, orange flame bloomed in Allegra’s fingers. She lit a row of gray and purple candles, setting them in a circle around Claire.
“What are we doing?” she asked them.
Xander lowered his face to hers. “We didn’t get to you in time. Max had started the Cold Blood spell, and they’d already covered three of the dolls in the potion. The only reason three of us aren’t dead is because we interrupted the ritual, but if they try to continue, it’ll all come down to who’s stronger. It’s a close call with Eddie on our side, but we need to use Marie’s counterspell to make sure everyone will be okay.”
Claire shook her head. “I don’t know how to use it. I don’t know how to do anything.”
“You know more than you think,” Xander insisted.
“You’re wrong,” she said, looking away. “I don’t even know if I believe.”
Allegra knelt next to her in the dirt. “Look at me, Claire.” Her voice was harsh. “You don’t have to believe. You’re the one. The one mentioned in Marie’s counterspell. ‘One with enough power to summon the loas,’ remember?”
“That’s not me,” Claire protested.
“Yes, it is. Don’t you see? It’s why they wanted you.”
Claire tried to pull the counterspell from the haze of her memory. “Even if it were true, we don’t have everything else.”
Allegra pulled the black backpack up near Claire’s body. “You dropped the book when they took you. We brought everything we need. Everything except you. Will you try?”
Claire’s memory of the ceremony was fuzzy, but she knew Xander was right; Maximilian and Eugenia had already started the Cold Blood spell. She recalled the dolls, their submersion in the potion mixed with her blood, the liquid dripping from them in the light of the fire.
How long would it be before one of them stopped breathing? Before their heart was unable to pump the thick, cold blood running through their veins?
“There wasn’t a spell,” she said. “In the book. There was only a recipe for the potion. I don’t know what to say or do.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say or how you say it,” Allegra insisted. “Remember? The power is yours to call on whenever you need it.”
Claire hesitated one last time before nodding. “I’ll try.”
Relief washed over Allegra’s face, and Claire realized for the first time that her friend was scared. Maybe she hadn’t had her veins sliced open or been held up for sacrifice by Maximilian and Eugenia, but Allegra’s risk was every bit as great as her own.
Xander held a hand out toward Allegra. “Give me the container.”
Allegra placed a ceramic container in Xander’s hand. He removed the lid and set it on the ground.
“I have to undo one of these bandages for a minute. Is that okay?”
Claire nodded.
He bent to kiss her forehead before unwinding the strip of fabric on her right arm. As soon as the pressure was off the wound, a fresh trickle of blood oozed down Claire’s forearm. Xander held it over the open container, letting it drip for a minute before handing it back to Allegra.
He rewrapped Claire’s bandage while Allegra mixed Claire’s blood into the other ingredients.
“Okay,” she said. “Ready.”
“It’ll be easier if you stand,” Xander said to Claire. “Do you think you can manage it if we help you?”
“I think so.”
Xander took one of her arms. Allegra took the other, and they helped her to her feet. Claire swayed, the forest tilting wildly as she tried to regain her balance.
“It’s okay,” Xander reassured her. “We’ve got you.”
Her head cleared a little and she looked around, trying to find something—anything—she could fix her gaze on to keep everything from turning upside down again. It was dark, the trees in the forest a blur of shadow around her. She finally settled on the candles near her feet, focusing her eyes on their flickering flames.
“What do I do?”
“I’m going to sprinkle the potion around your feet,” Allegra said. “I’ll use a counterhex spell, but while I do that, you need to call on the spirits in your own way. Just . . . I don’t know. Call on the loas. On any spirit being who offers protection to those under threat.”
Claire took a deep breath, feeling foolish for being self-conscious. There were more important things at stake than her pride. She had to try.
Allegra took the ceramic container, tipping it and sprinkling the potion near Claire’s feet, around the candles on the ground. Allegra spoke in a murmur that gradually rose, the words coming slowly at first and then in a rush of French. Some of the powder blew across the flames, sending a hiss into the air around them.
When she had completed the circle with the potion, she tipped the rest of the container into her hands, offering up the rest of the mixture to the night sky as she continued to chant. Her face was beautiful and terrifying, her dark hair spilling down her back. The power she wielded was almost undeniable, even to Claire.
Then Xander’s voice joined with Allegra’s, speaking the same words.
Claire closed her eyes, needing to block out all the reminders of her real life.
A life with bicycles and yoga and college. A life of reason.
She spoke softly, the words a whisper, even to her own ears. She started by asking, just asking for help, pleading with the loas and Marie and the others who had gone before her to intervene, to help her right the wrong that had been committed against the Guild firstborns.
The words came faster as something instinctual took over, the drumbeat resuming within her body, marking time to a spell she somehow knew. A spell that seemed to have lived in the shadows of her consciousness all this time, for ages and ages, for centuries and eons, waiting for the time when she would call upon it.
She only dimly registered that she was speaking in French, the words of the spell, a plea to the loas, coming as surely as if she’d memorized them from some long-ago spell book. She repeated them over and over, a presence building inside her that was both familiar and strange, both part of her and something entirely other.
The presence grew, demanding release as she continued to chant, filling her up until it seemed to overflow, pouring out of her hands and fingers, into the ground at her feet, escaping into the air that she breathed. It swooped around her, picking up smoke from the candles, winding its way around and around them like a tornado until they stood within a solid column of wind, the roar of it filling every crevice of Claire’s body.