“How did you do it? How did you not go insane?”
“Who says I didn’t?” Florence laughed. “I spent a decade punishing myself. Living in that misery as my own form of penance. And it didn’t do a damn bit of good. It took me another decade to start forgiving myself. To accept that the stupid indiscretions of youth, despite their consequences, didn’t have to define me anymore. My misery served no purpose. It didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t bring me closer to you. And I knew that if I met you as I was, I’d be ashamed. So, I went on a quest to become someone you’d be proud to call your mother.”
Her words were buoyant and calm, and Sadie turned them over in her mind like a sand dollar you find on the beach. She’d given a lot of thought to her mother over the years, but whether she’d be proud of her hadn’t been one of them. She wondered what it would be like to be a mother. To carry the weight of your children in your heart, etched into your skin, worrying always, the way Gigi had. The way her mother had too, apparently.
“Do you have any ideas about how we can fulfill the life debt?” Sadie asked, turning the subject to what she felt was safer waters. The threat of death seemed safer than motherly love.
“I’m still working on it. But I know he needs to learn how to control his magic before it consumes him. Because for him, it’ll pull him down to the depths. The darkness. And climbing your way out of that is—well, sometimes it can be too hard to do. He’ll lose himself.”
“But if the sacrifice is complete, it’ll be easier for him to get control, won’t it?”
Florence nodded.
Twelve days.
And still no answer in sight. Anxiety was a poison that made her frantic. It was cold and cushioned as fresh snow, welcoming her with its icy arms until her teeth chattered and her heart felt frosted over. It was time to pull out all the stops. The seven founding families all had elements of magic, and though they’d never heard of a curse like theirs, she was willing to try anything. And she’d start with Sorin Tovah. Only two years older than her, Sorin was an expert with alchemical elixirs.
“Maybe you could try purifying him,” Sorin said, pushing her glasses up her nose. “You know, burn the curse out.”
Sadie left Sorin’s house with a recipe and a spark of hope.
“You want me to drink what?” Seth demanded when she showed him the paper. “You realize that mercury and sulfur are poisonous, right?”
“Only in big doses,” she said. “Would you rather have a little bit of poison or be dead?”
“Touché, sister. Where do we start?”
They took an ounce each of gold flakes, silver flakes, sulfur, mercury, and hemlock and watched as it slowly melted in the glass beaker, the flames burning blue and then silver.
Once it had boiled, they poured it into small glasses and went out to the garden, where Sadie poured a circle of salt around them.
“Bottoms up?” Seth asked. His tone was light, but Sadie could see the hope in his eyes that this could work, and the fear that it might not.
“Three, two, one,” Sadie said, and they both drank the elixir.
A few moments passed.
“Do you feel any different?” Sadie asked.
“Yeah, like my insides are trying to claw their way out.” His skin went white, and before Sadie could ask another question, he leaned over the circle of salt and vomited into the tomatoes.
“Okay,” she said, trying to hide the disappoint in her voice as she rubbed a hand up and down his back. “One down, onto the next.
Seth was still too ill, so she left him on the couch to recover and made her way to the Delvaux family’s house on her own. They lived on the opposite side of town, in an all-white manor house with marble columns and a sweeping front porch. Adina answered the door in a long, flowing dress, her green eyes soft with concern as she pulled Sadie into a hug.
“I have a spell,” she said, cutting right to the chase. Adina was a few years younger than Sadie and though she didn’t know the girl well, Sadie liked her no-nonsense manner.
After explicit instructions and a detailed lesson in how to pronounce the French portion of the spell, Sadie left. The spark of hope was small, but it was there, and she let it fuel her as she went to the café. Seth wouldn’t be ready to try the spell for another few hours, and she needed to be somewhere familiar, keeping her hands and heart busy.
It was the lunchtime rush, and Ayana was refreshing the pastry case while Gail rang up customers. Sadie slipped behind the counter, tied an apron around her waist, and slid into the swing of things. She cleared tables and refreshed coffees, delivered orders and stopped to chat with both familiar and unfamiliar faces. There was a tall, blond woman sitting by the window and a cherubic little girl in a high chair next to her.
“And who’s this?” Sadie asked, smiling at the girl. She thought of Jake and Bethany, and her smile froze in place.
“This is Grey,” the mom said, her eyes brightening as she said her daughter’s name. Grey’s blonde curls looked like golden wheat swaying in the summer sun, and her caramel-colored eyes were flecked with green. “She’s only fifteen months old, but she’s so tall people always think she’s older. This is our first time here. We’re from Aurelia and my girlfriend kept raving about this place, and I just had to get out of the house, you know? So, here we are,” she said, and laughed self-consciously. “Sorry, I haven’t been talking to a lot of adults lately.”
“I’m so glad you came,” Sadie said warmly. They continued to chat while Grey pulled things out of her mother’s purse, until the bell over the front door rang and Sadie’s neck grew warm. “Can I get you two anything else?” Sadie asked the woman, whose name she’d just forgotten. The woman smiled and shook her head.
“I’d do just about anything for a cup of coffee,” Jake said as he followed Sadie to the counter. She felt lighter in his presence, like the spark of hope she had when she’d left Adina had grown to a small blaze in her chest. It felt like a betrayal, knowing he belonged to Bethany, but flames were tricky things that eluded whatever might put them out.
“It’s your lucky day,” she said, busying herself with his order. She didn’t ask what he wanted. She already knew. A vanilla cappuccino with nutmeg and cinnamon on top.
“I just got off,” he said. “And wanted to see—”
“How I was doing?” she finished for him. “I’m fine,” she added with a smile, pushing the cappuccino toward him and then turning to package up a piece of honeyed peach and lavender tart with a dollop of fresh whipped cream. She pushed the tart toward him.
“Hey, Sade?” He paused at the door.
“No, you may not have your dog back, Jake. But if you’re on your best behavior, I might let him have a sleepover.”
His laugh trailed after him down the street, leaving little starbursts of light in the air.
“Can’t we wait until tomorrow?” Seth complained.
“Absolutely not,” Sadie said, scandalized. “Excuse me but I hardly think this is the time to lollygag.”
“Who even uses the word lollygag anymore?”
“I have another choice few words I could use instead.”
“Alright, alright, I’m coming.”
“Outside,” she said. The aunts and Florence were in the kitchen, pouring over Gigi’s journal and old recipe books, still looking for any clues they’d missed, anything that might set them on the right path for saving Seth. And she preferred to do this in nature, anyway.
Sadie made a circle out of oak branches in the clearing between the garden and the forest edge before pouring moon-blessed oil over them.
“Adina said this calls on our ancestral magic,” Sadie said as they both stepped inside the circle. She held out her hands to Seth, who grasped them with a deep breath.
“Sadie,” he said quietly. “What if this doesn’t work either?”
“Then the next one will.”