“And this,” he says.
I look down to see the hilt of an athame—a ceremonial dagger, like the ones sold at the Black Cat—held out to me. My stomach does a nervous flip, but I try not to let it show as I grab the handle. The dagger is much heavier than I expected, the ruby-encrusted gold hilt and five-inch blade glinting in the fading light.
Bishop reaches into the bag again and pulls out a small burlap satchel, tied at the top with twine. He returns to the circle drawn in the dirt.
“Salt,” he explains as he opens the burlap bag. He does a slow walk around the circle, the bag tipped over so that white crystals fall in a steady stream over the lines in the dirt.
When the bag is empty, Bishop crumples it up and stuffs it into his pocket. He kneels by the backpack, then pauses to look up at me. There are deep lines in his forehead, and his dark eyes are tense with worry.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asks. “Remember, black magic comes with a price.”
I shiver at his words, but I’m willing to do anything to help Paige. “I have to try it,” I say.
He sighs, like he was really hoping I would change my mind. “You can stop anytime,” he says. I don’t breathe as he pulls the canvas down around the base of a small glass tank. A flash of movement inside the tank makes me take an involuntary step back. Bishop pulls on a pair of gardening gloves, which does nothing to dispel the fear rippling through me, and then opens the lid of the tank. He plunges his hands inside, then pulls out a two-foot-long snake.
“Holy crap!” I scramble away from him. “What the hell is that for?”
He stands carefully, the snake wriggling in his grasp. Its scales are the deep blue color of the sky at midnight, so dark they almost look wet. Red eyes glow from the snake’s triangular head; a forked tongue hisses from a jaw full of spiked teeth. I haven’t had many run-ins with snakes in the past, but the ones I’ve seen didn’t look like this. I doubt he picked it up at the local pet shop.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask, not taking my eyes from the snake’s liquid scales.
“Irena hooked me up,” he says.
Oh, just his insanely beautiful friend. Hooking him up.
“When you’re ready, get inside the circle,” he says.
Fear courses through me, but I hop into the circle. I expect to feel different being inside its lines, but I don’t.
Bishop steps closer. His wary eyes never leave the snake as he holds it as far from his body as possible. The snake, for its part, looks like it doesn’t want to be close to him either, recoiling like Bishop is the predator and not the other way around.
“The Bloodhound can smell the supernatural in our blood,” Bishop explains, as if reading my mind. “They’re more scared of us than we are of them.”
Speak for yourself, buddy.
“But that doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous,” he continues. “One bite from this sucker can knock you out for hours, if not days. But it won’t try to attack you unless it feels threatened.”
My heart races as Bishop approaches with the squirming blue-black mass. “So what do I do to make it feel unthreatened?” I ask.
He glances up at me, an eyebrow arched high.
“What?” The dagger feels heavy in my hand all of a sudden. “No, Bishop….” I back up.
“I said you can stop anytime,” he says.
“You want me to kill it?” I croak, like saying it out loud will make it untrue somehow.
“Blood sacrifice is the foundation of black magic,” he explains.
“Kill an animal? That’s so wrong.” My voice sounds thick, my stomach abruptly uneasy.
“I never said it would be pleasant. Listen, Indie, I can put it away. Don’t think just because we came out here that you have to go through with this. We can go home right now. I’ll help you practice every day after school and all day on weekends. There isn’t a rush.”
The offer is tempting. I don’t think I can kill a living creature, and I definitely don’t want to. But as soon as that thought crosses my mind, I think of Paige. Of her unflinching loyalty and crazy-confident smile. She’s in that place, facing down demons a million times worse than a snake. I need to do this for her.
“What do I do?” I ask, impressed that my voice comes out so sure, not at all the way I feel inside.
“You need to cut its head clean off.”
I feel like I’m going to hurl, but I give a minute shake of my head before Bishop gets any more ideas that I want to stop. I can do this, I tell myself. I can kill this mother-effing snake.
“When I put it inside the circle, it’ll be trapped by the salt,” he explains. “The trick is to kill it before it gets a chance to bite you.”
The circle, which had felt so large to me when Bishop was digging it, feels unbearably small now.
“You remember the words we practiced in the car?” he asks.
I nod.
“Okay,” he says, bending down carefully. He looks at my left hand, which clutches the candle, and a flame bursts to life at the end of the wick. He leans into the circle, still firmly gripping the snake, then looks up at me for confirmation.
And then he lets go.
The snake slithers frantically over the leaves. I let out a yelp and jump back, my heels pressed up against the white lines behind me. The snake zips straight for the opposite side of the circle, but when it hits the salt, it lets out a hiss and its scales smoke as if burned. It’s even more panicked now than before, darting around randomly desperate for a way out. I brace myself, trying to match its movements. I super wish I didn’t have a massive bandage hindering my knife-wielding arm right now, making it hard to bend. Sweat slicks my palms, the knife cold in my grasp. My chest is so tight with terror I can’t get a good breath.
“One firm hit,” Bishop calls. “That’s your best bet.”
I leap out of the way as the snake darts past me.