“That’s not true!” My voice echoes off the walls. Hurt, inside and out, is starting to singe at the edges of the gratitude I felt at Yarrow House. I think back to the moment that the book fell open to the Lazarus spell, the moment of pure clarity. That had to be a sign from Riley. It’s too big for coincidence.
“Then where did this grimoire come from, huh?” Toby’s voice hatchets into my thoughts. “Any book that purports to have the answer to death isn’t Wicca, I’ll tell you that much. This is some dark shit. You are inviting the devil to your door.”
“Wiccans don’t believe in the devil,” I snap back at her.
Her eyes narrow. “Don’t tell me what we do and don’t believe. I’ve been a practicing witch since before your mama dropped her first egg. And I know damn well enough not to go around trying to tamper with death. If you go rummaging around in the darkness, you’ll only bring more darkness down on yourself. Do you hear me? People need to stay dead. And some people have to go early.” She presses her lips together until the blood runs out of them and they’re stark white against her face. It makes her look ancient, skull-like. “I know what it’s like to have your life ripped open by grief. I know how it can make you do things you’d normally have the sense to fight. Don’t let it take your sanity. Stay in the light, Mila. Please.”
I know now that I’ve lost another one. Another adult who looks at me and only sees crazy. No one is going to understand that I have to try to bring Riley back. The only person who could understand is the one who needs my help.
As much as I want to set every bridge in my life ablaze, I will still need ingredients from here. When Riley is back, she’ll want to be welcome here. So, I swallow down the vitriol in my throat, self-poisoning instead.
“You’re right,” I hear myself say. “I’m being stupid. Childish.”
“It isn’t childish to miss your friend,” Toby says, her voice sliding into the same register Dr. Miller had used with me at the beginning of our meeting. Placating and distantly afraid. Of me or for me, I don’t know. I don’t care.
I promise to come back another day when I’m ready to work a minor spell again. Something light, I say. A devotion for Samhain.
When Toby turns her back, I scoop up the iron rose hematite and slip it next to the velvet bag in my jacket pocket.
Rosemary for remembrance, salt to ward off negativity. It’s a mourning bag.
But I’m done mourning.
FIVE
I HAVE A notebook open on my bed. The iron rose I took from Lucky Thirteen is balanced on the corner where I normally write my name and class period. My phone is tucked between two pillows, showing the list of ingredients so I can copy it down. Unlike the spells Riley and I were used to, the grimoire demands fresh supplies. Lucky Thirteen and Etsy won’t cut it this time.
Beeswax candles. A trip to Walmart. Easy!
White petals that bloomed in the shadow of the full moon. Harder.
The question that needs answering. Hardest. And possibly a riddle.
Everything else is mostly what you’d expect from a resurrection spell, blood and bone and breath. Spiderwebs damp with dew. Salt to open up the earth so that Riley can step out without ruffling the party dress they buried her in.
On the other side of my closed bedroom door, I hear the sounds of family dinner. Plates tinkling against the table and cups being filled with water, voices mingling together in a well-trod dance.
For a second, I wonder when they will talk about me. They obviously notice that I’m in my room instead of sitting in the empty chair next to Nora. It’s never acceptable to miss family dinner. I can’t count how many times my phone rang while I was studying at Riley’s after school, Mom’s voice on the other end. “Dinner is in twenty minutes,” she’d warn. Enough time to make it back, roll out the placemats while Izzy put down paper towels and Nora counted out silverware.
Not tonight, though. I heard the warning knock on Izzy and Nora’s door, but mine never came.
It’s not that I’m not hungry. I’m just not hungry enough to sit still and listen to my sisters recount every minuscule detail of their days—the trials of middle school and the meaningless conversations with all their totally alive friends. I don’t want Mom and Dad to ask me anything about my day, but I also know that it’ll hurt like hell if they don’t.
There’s no winning. So, I’m going to stay alone for everyone’s sake.
Turning my attention back to the spell, I notice that one of the last ingredients is “a heart to beat for each day he walks.” The spell is written in masculine pronouns, but that’s not the crappiest part: All the “hearts” need to be buried alive in the grave dirt, sort of like life jumper cables. Which means I need seven creatures small enough to be buried alive.
Shit. I don’t feel great about killing seven things.
But the spell isn’t specific about what needs to be buried. I could get some bugs into a jar. Or I could outsource the job so that I can focus on the bigger stuff.
Despite all of Toby’s warnings, I’ve done some deep Googling to try to decipher the spell’s wording. Like when it says that I need an “anchor” to Riley’s physical body, I’m afraid that it means her hair or spit or other organic material. Exactly zero of my possessions have Riley’s DNA floating around on them, which is great for not being a murder suspect but turns out to be a real hindrance when it comes to bringing her back to life.
Blood pounds in my ears, the rumble of a breakdown getting closer and closer—the thunder preceding a storm. I try to cling to the feeling I had when I first opened the grimoire, or when I could hear Riley’s voice so clearly at the memorial service. That feeling of her nearby, nudging me toward the right answer.
The next full moon is Saturday, so I have one shot to find fresh, lunar-light-infused flowers or else I’ll have to wait a whole month before I can perform the spell. And I don’t know if Riley can wait that long. The book doesn’t say anything about how fresh she’ll be when she wakes up, but I figure a month from now her body will be past the point of resurrection: rotten and deformed and smelling so bad that not even her cotton candy perfume could cover it. And who knows how many other people could be dead by then?
There’s a knock on my door. I have just enough time to slap my notebook closed before the knob turns, revealing Nora’s nose sneaking around the corner a moment before the rest of her body follows, a plate of chicken and rice in hand. Izzy hangs back in the doorway.
I sit up, feeling a wave of terror as Nora moves to set the plate in my hands. There has literally never been a plate of food in my room before. It’s one of my parents’ house rules. Eating alone would mean that you weren’t eating with the family—a cardinal sin, according to Mom—and you could be attracting ants, Dad’s greatest nemesis. He flipped his shit when they got into the garage over the summer. And the garage is basically outside.
“I’m not allowed,” I start to protest, but the plate is in my hands and Nora is dropping a fork and a paper towel onto the bed next to the iron rose.
“Tonight you are,” she chirps. Her voice is high and soft, making her sound younger than she is. Sometimes, when I hear her talk, I expect to look up and see a round-bellied preschooler instead of a sixth-grader with a braces-lisp and bra straps constantly falling down.
“We could get ants,” I say, looking over Nora’s shoulder at Izzy, who shrugs.
“Then you’ll have to cast a spell to get rid of them,” she says blandly.