With a ringing clang of cast iron on cement, June drops a Dutch oven full of wood scraps in front of the chair. The spell requires a lot of setting different things on fire, and she’s in charge of making sure we don’t burn the house down around us.
“I mean, only one of us can actually die,” she said in a mocking singsong as I delegated fire duty to her on the drive back to Cross Creek. “So, you really want me to protect you?”
“Yes, June. Please don’t kill me. Also, if you burn down the house, you’ll have to camp in the woods until Sunday night.”
“Ew,” she said. “Camping is gross.”
Pretty strong words coming from someone currently sharing her house with two other dead girls, a dozen raccoons, one surly cat named after an obscure Disney character, and an increasing number of dead mice and spiders, but whatever. At least she agreed not to actively participate in my death.
Dayton reads from the grimoire, double-checking the ingredients June placed inside the Dutch oven.
“Why doesn’t this rhyme?” she asks. “Aren’t magic spells supposed to rhyme?”
The stairs groan as Riley marches down them, carrying Binx in her arms. I’ve noticed that she’s been holding on to him more and more, like she’s afraid he’s going to run away or end up liking one of the other girls more than her. As a former outdoor cat, Binx doesn’t relish the attention. His purrs have been replaced with a low-pitched whining sound that makes me think of a distressed cow.
“Spells are for visualization, not poetry,” Riley says, parroting words that Toby has said to us a thousand times. “The clearer the image in your mind, the more effective the spell. Rhyming spells are fine if they’re well written, but most people sacrifice image clarity for a strong rhyme.”
“Right,” I say, dragging my nails through my hair. “Like we could rhyme rot with pot, but what if we just got Caleb stoned? Or turned him into an actual cooking pot?”
“Or we could accidentally make him hella hot,” Riley says with a single flick of her eyebrows. She doesn’t smile, but I can feel her delight as June clenches.
“He could get lost on a yacht?” I add.
“Oh, then it would be all for naught.”
I almost forgot how goofy Riley could be. That we could be goofy together. Images of gummy bears thrown into each other’s mouths and leaf fights in the woods flash through my mind, and I feel a pang in my chest. Riley and I used to do fun, silly things—we didn’t stay up until sunrise every weekend having serious discussions about revenge or spells gone wrong.
“Stop,” June demands, cutting off our rhyming.
Riley tips her head. Binx wiggles in her arms, his unhappy noise rising like a siren. “I apologize a lot.”
“Okay, I get it,” Dayton says. “Rhyming is stupid and doesn’t belong in magic.”
Riley drops Binx to the floor. He makes a loop around the room, sniffing and nudging things, his green eyes wary as ever.
Dayton turns and leans against the cinder-block wall, her hands pressed behind her. She bounces on her toes, her tongue wedged into her cheek. “So, is that how you brought us back, Mila? Did you visualize the wrong thing?”
“I don’t think so?” I frown. The resurrection spell is a blur of big emotions, meaningless words, and the earthquake that shook the puke out of me. “I don’t know. I mean, I could have visualized it wrong. The whole school was talking about you guys dying, and the last time I saw Riley was at your funeral. I guess you could have popped into my mind at the wrong time. Maybe it’s because I asked to help get justice against Riley’s murderer and he’s the same guy who killed you?”
“Maybe the universe sensed how good you two would be at gathering spell ingredients,” Riley says, sweeping a hand around the room. She smiles at me again. “You know, in Haiti, zombies are actually slaves that someone feeds a bunch of drugs to? They supposedly make a hallucinogen out of puffer fish toxins and human remains.”
“That is disgusting.” June shivers.
“Yeah, we really got off easy being brutally murdered and then resurrected by vague and shady means.”
“We have everything the book says we need,” Dayton says, raising her voice over Riley’s. “Do we need to chant or something?”
“I don’t know what you think witchcraft is,” I say slowly. “But it’s a lot less rhyming and chanting and a lot more lighting candles and hoping something happens.”
“Like most religions,” Riley says brightly.
I don’t know what has cheered her up so much today—remembering stuff? Getting out of the house? Belly full of quality food?—but I love it. It feels like I really have my blister back.
“Okay,” I say. I square my shoulders. I am a leader. “Let’s get to work.”
I have cast many spells in the daytime, but this one seems strange. The grimoire doesn’t say anything about what time or moon cycle is best, so I have no choice but to use my family dinner as the stopwatch on it. The hazy sunlight coming in from the basement window and illuminating the paper-wrapped heart does feel sort of ridiculous. Not that I’m going to say this out loud. I’m supposed to be The Witch, using all my mystical powers to draw the rot out of Caleb’s heart regardless of time of day or atmosphere.
Still, casting the resurrection spell at midnight in a graveyard felt cooler. Witchier.
Riley takes a piece of white chalk from the ingredients pile and draws the circle in the middle of the floor. I direct June and Dayton to place the white candles at the north, south, east, and west corners of the room.
I unwrap the heart and ball up the paper. The meat is wet and slick in my hands. And heart-shaped. Not like a valentine, but like a page of a biology textbook come to life. It has ventricles, for fuck’s sake.
I don’t have a knife with me, and I don’t want to slow down to hunt for the ceremonial dagger. I dig my nails into the heart and tear an opening in the middle. It’s not as pliant as a cut of steak. The heart is a muscle, and this one was well used before it ended up at Mercado del Valle. But I rip it with the same sort of jagged mark that a broken-heart emoji has. I set it on top of the wood in the Dutch oven. My fingers are tacky with blood. The whole basement smells like iron.
Riley lights the candles, whispering in a familiar rise and fall as she invites the Goddess into the circle. June picks up Binx and sits on the bottom stair, watching as I pack the heart with salt and charcoal and a chunk of tiger’s-eye stone. The rest of the cast-iron pot is filled to the brim with dried herbs and spices. I find the big box of fireplace matches. It sticks to the blood on my hands.
“Open the window,” I say to Riley.
Setting the grimoire on the ground, she drags the wooden chair under the window and balances on the seat. Teeth digging into her lip with concentration, she pushes open the small window. Cold air whooshes inside, and the stink of blood lifts.
I make a shooing motion with my hand, and the girls all back up against various parts of the wall.
I take a deep breath, strike a match, and light the kindling under the heart. Smoke pools lazily in the bottom of the pot. Sparks crackle. The herbs light. And then it’s a fire. A roaring, snapping fire that swallows the heart and everything inside it. I need to talk fast.
“Enemy of mine,” I say, pitching my voice low for effect. Magic is real, and the Goddess provides, and blah blah blah, but I also want it to look as impressive as it is. “The evil inside of you rots you. For the deeds you have paid no penitence, let that which rots you mark you. For the hurt you have brought others, let that which rots you mark you. For the acts you have committed in defiance of the Goddess’s will, let that which rots you mark you. For the lives you have taken and those left behind, let that which rots you mark you.”
I pour another handful of salt into my palm.