The Magick of Dark Root (Daughters of Dark Root) (29 page)

Love
spells, no doubt.

I took the book and texted Ruth and Merry. “Come outside. Now. Don’t wake June Bug or Mother.”

The curtains flickered in the nursery and the light went off. A minute later Ruth Anne and Merry joined us on the porch steps, their faces heavy with worry.
 

“What’s wrong?” Merry asked, putting a hand to her chest. “Is it Aunt Dora?”

“No.” I shook my head, trying to figure out how to tell them what had happened. The horror of the event began to creep up again, and I pushed it down.

There’d be plenty of time to process it all. I had to keep my head, at least for now.

Luckily, I didn’t have to be the one to tell the story. Eve told them, in fits of hysteria intermixed with woeful sobs, about how we had ignored Merry’s warning and were out hustling pool, and about the man who had come on too strongly.
 

“It was my fault,” she said, gasping for breath. “I wore my perfume. Maggie was trying to save me.”

“What do you mean your fault?” Merry asked.

I pointed to the car, and the passenger inside that neither Ruth Anne nor Merry had noticed.
 

“I have father’s
deathtouch
,” I said simply, showing them my offending hands. “I killed him.”

“What?” Merry bounded down the steps towards the vehicle with Ruth Anne following. “Maggie, what did you do?”

“I didn’t mean to,” I said.
 

Seeing the man through Merry’s eyes, I envisioned him––not as the creepy stranger who wouldn’t leave Eve alone––but as a person with family and friends who were probably waiting for him somewhere.
 

“I didn’t mean to,” I repeated, as Merry cradled the man’s head in her arms.
 

We wept. We all wept.
 

Except for Ruth Anne, who stared curiously at the moon.
 

“
Can you do anything Merry? Anything at all?”

Merry had been working over
 
the man for the last twenty minutes, the color draining from her small frame as she tried to pump her energy into his.
 

At last, worn and tired, she withdrew from the car.
 

“It’s not enough,” she said, falling back against the side of his Cadillac. “If you had gotten him here when he was almost dead, maybe. But he’s dead, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

She held out something to show us. “I got his driver’s license. His name was Leo. Leonard actually, but I think he went by Leo. He was forty-three years old and an organ donor.”
 

“We’re going to jail,” Eve cried. “And then to hell.”

“Did you try your wand?” I asked, desperately. “Maybe if you use your wand…”

Merry shook her head. “I tried everything.”

Eve snatched the license away from Merry, reading his stats aloud repeatedly.
 

“We’re not going to jail
or
hell, and this man is not staying dead!” I turned to my sisters, fixing them with a resolved stare. “If I have to violate every law in The Universe, we are fixing this. We were given powers for a reason. There has to be something we can do.”
 

My voice cracked as I spoke, panic settling over me. I had counted on Merry being able to fix this. I hadn't allowed myself to think about what would happen if she couldn’t.

“You heard Merry,” Eve said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“No.” Ruth Anne startled us. She had been quiet until now. “If you’re really willing to violate every law of The Universe, there may be something we can do. But I’m not sure it will work, and I’m not sure we are up for it.”
 

Ruth Anne regarded me blankly, academically, sending a chill down my spine.

“Anything,” I said. “I will do anything.”

“You might have to.”

Seventeen

BACK TO GOOD

“In the days when it was The Council of Thirteen, I overheard a discussion––an argument really. Dark Magick, Miss Sasha called it, though some didn’t agree.”
 

Ruth Anne took a deep breath, sending soft plumes of smoke into the night as we gathered around her.
 

“There were certain spells our mother didn’t believe anyone should have access to. Claimed they were unnatural, and went against everything Dark Root stood for. Banishment. Summoning…”

“Necromancy,” I said, remembering my conversation with Aunt Dora.

“You mean?” Eve asked.
 

“Yes. Bringing back the dead,” Merry confirmed solemnly.

Ruth Anne’s eyes took on a faraway look. “Miss Sasha sealed those spells off. Forbade their use. Of course, some of the others, especially Armand, were furious about her decision. ‘Who are you to determine what we should have access to and what should be sealed?’ he demanded. But Miss Sasha was firm and stubborn, as usual. Too much power in the wrong hands, she insisted, could be dangerous.”

I regarded my sister. Ruth Anne was older than us and remembered things from the old days. “So, you think the spell…the necromancy spell…exists?”

She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, but it sure caused problems in The Council once she made the decree. If it didn’t exist, why did it cause so much turmoil?”

Eve opened Mother’s spell book and flipped through pages. “I’m not seeing it,” she said.

“She may have gotten rid of those spells altogether,” I said.

“Doubtful,” Ruth Anne said. “Our mother may not have been a fan of such magick, but she hated ignorance more. She’d never destroy arcane information like that.”

“Look! The last page is thicker than the rest!” Eve showed us a page four times as thick as the others in the book. “And it’s blank!”

I ran my fingers over the last page, looking for bumps or incriminating marks, something that would indicate a spell.

“Some spells can only be read by the light of the moon,” Ruth Anne said.

Eve lifted the book. We squinted at the blank page, trying to squeeze out words where there were none.
 

“Maybe it needs to be a certain phase of the moon? Like a full moon?” Eve suggested.

Merry put a finger to her chin, her wide eyes darting around. “If Mama was serious about hiding these spells, she’d put them where no one could look.”

A thought clawed at my mind. “Her room! C’mon.”

“Quiet now,” I said, holding my fingers to my lips as we crept across the floorboards of the living room and up the stairs.
 

The staircase protested our combined weight with creaks and moans. As I went to turn the doorknob, Eve clamped her hand over mine.
 

“Let me,” she said.
 

Eve had always been the sneakiest and the stealthiest among us, as quiet as a cat when she wanted to be. We watched, not daring to move, as she twisted the brass knob to the right, soundlessly opening the door.

The bedroom was dark, save for the sliver of a moon that shone through the window, casting its crescent beam directly onto Mother’s face. Her eyes were half-opened, in the same manner as Leo’s, staring into the canopy above her. She looked doll-like in her large bed.
 

I kept an eye on her as Eve tiptoed across the floor, rolled up the carpet, and revealed the chalky outline of the pentagram.

We then scoured the room, pulling open drawers, looking under knick knacks and behind frames, searching for hidden alcoves, quietly and desperately seeking out the lost spells. I tripped over the furled carpet and fell headlong into Mother’s bed. We all froze in place but Mother kept sleeping, her eyes not even blinking.

After several minutes we all shrugged at one another.
 

We’d searched every spot, and had come up empty. Perhaps we’d been wrong to think the missing spells were in here. I sighed, motioning for the others to follow me out. As I stepped forward I heard a creaking in the floorboards where the carpet had been. I touched my foot to the spot again, and once again the floorboard groaned.
 

I removed my phone from my pocket and aimed the light at the wooden plank. It looked exactly like the rest of the floorboards, except newer. My sisters gathered near me and we lowered ourselves to our hands and knees to for closer inspection.

“A knot!” I pressed my fingers into the pine knoll, expecting it to move. Nothing.

“Try again,” Ruth Anne whispered, the room so cold I could see her breath. I pushed my entire palm into the knot and the side of the board suddenly gave way, dropping into a small, open pit.

We turned towards the bed, but Mother slept.

I reached inside, feeling around inside the small, dark hole. I crawled my fingers along the insides, looking for…

“Scrolls!” I said in a booming voice, then quieted myself as I removed a dozen or so from the chamber. One by one, I handed them all to Merry.

Ruth Anne glanced out the window. The moon was high, illuminating her thoughtful face. “How long has it been since the, um, incident?”
 

“About an hour, I think. Maybe a little more.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t think we have much time. According to some legends, the soul completely leaves the body within three hours. If you can’t bring him back before then, you never will.”