“A corpse?!” I asked, feeling my eyes go wide as I flicked a glance her way. Matz was waiting in the corner, a journal pressed to his chest, an entire sideboard covered in supplies to his right. All the things the gods had said I’d need, communicated via runes traced all over Elijah’s naked spiritual body. “What do you mean a corpse?”
“I mean, she sent over the body of a guard who recently died, and who didn’t leave a spirit. The message she sent along with it seems to indicate that she isn’t sure how, exactly, this all works. Do we need a body to put a spirit in? Or can we, somehow, recreate the form they died in? I’m suspecting the former.” Jasinda passed over an official letter from the queen, sealed with the same wax I’d seen on Elijah’s decree back at the Grandberg Manor. It was already cracked, so I opened it and scanned the message.
“I hadn’t thought of it before,” Air said, crossing his arms over the silver buttons on his black tunic. He looked every bit a prince in it, with that shiny blonde hair and those high cheekbones. “But making a whole body from scratch? We’d need a metaphysical womb. It makes more sense to think we could put a spirit into an available body.”
“What does that mean for me?” Eli asked as I turned my attention over to him. He’d been torn limb from limb and then eaten by wild animals. There was nothing left of Elijah of Haversey to salvage. “I’d get a completely new body?”
“That’d be my guess,” Jasinda said, but the spell I’d been given was ridiculously specific on somethings—ingredients for example—and horrifically vague on others. I guess that’s what happened when two gods, famous for their feuds, got together to create a spell. “But we won’t know unless we try.”
Eli slicked his fingers through his hair and glanced over at me, his blue eyes dark with worry. He didn’t want a new body. I mean, I could understand that, but it did make more sense.
“So the queen sent a corpse for me to, what, play with?” I pushed loose strands of white hair from my face and stared down at the pair of double circles on the floor. The larger of the two had Haversey’s symbol drawn inside of it while the inner had Hellim’s. In between the places where they overlapped, runes were meticulously drawn to match the images my mother had copied down. Just a slight change in one of those could affect the entire spell.
“She sent a body so you could test it,” Air said softly and I sighed, nodding in Matz’ direction.
“Well, let’s bring it … her? … in and get started.”
“Who are you going to be attempting this particular casting on?” Professor Cross asked, standing on the opposite side of the circle with his shirt still undone, his loose black tie hanging over his muscular, tattooed chest.
“Good question,” Eli said with a little brow raise. He slouched into the nearest chair like a lazy housecat. If he were Dyre or Vex and had a tail, I expected it’d be wagging in frustration right about now. “Because I’m quite happy with this”—he tapped at his crotch as I rolled my eyes—“and it sure seemed like you were, too, the other night.”
Vexer growled from behind me, spreading his wings wide enough that they blocked the flickering gas lamp on the wall and cast shadows across the floor.
“Please, you’d be lucky to be resurrected as a woman,” I said and he smirked at me.
“I don’t particular mind either way,” Professor Cross said, pulling out a pair of glasses from the front pocket of his open jacket and tucking them on his nose. “Women have twice as many nerve endings in their clitoris as men have in their penis, so I imagine sex could very well be twice as pleasurable.” He flicked his attention up to me and smiled. “Do it. Make me a woman,” he said, runes sparkling across the surface of his glasses. I knew they were fake, a figment of his soul in spirit form—the real glasses he’d once worn were long gone—but still, I was impressed. Spelled glasses like that cost a fortune in gems.
“Okay then,” I said, sucking in a sharp breath and reaching up to touch the necklaces hanging from my throat. I looked first to Air, then Eli, Jas and Matz, Professor Cross, Dyre and Trubble, before glancing back at Vexer. “Let’s give it a shot.”
Doing a spell this complex was like … starring as the lead in a complicated play, one that you’d never been allowed to rehearse.
One that had consequences. Big ones.
Professor Cross … err, Spicer sat in the middle of the circle with his red rectangular glasses drooping down his nose, his blue and turquoise eyes following me as I walked the circle and chanted in a language I didn’t know. As soon as I started speaking the words however, I felt them. Haversey and Hellim. They filled me like, well, I didn’t mean to be crude, but like Vexer had filled me earlier. My chest felt stretched, my spirit swollen with their magic.
Two echoes overlapped my words—one high and feminine, the other booming and masculine.
“Holy fuck,” Eli whispered as I passed by.
“Excellent,” Trubble purred as I came full circle and paused at the point representing the bottom point of Haversey’s star.
With a sigh, I pulled first Haversey’s knife from my belt and cut one palm, before doing the same to the other with Hellim’s. Crimson droplets spattered the floor as I held my arms straight forward, palms down, liquid dripping into the silver ash. As soon as my blood touched it, it was absorbed, silver light blooming along the runes and the double stars.
At this point, the instructions of the spell were muddled.
Speak the spellwords. That’s what the runes said. But what spellwords? None were listed in the instructions, so I’d have to make it up. Obviously, I was going to try out my Haversey spellwords first. Elijah’s are so much cooler, I thought, narrowing my eyes in his direction. He smirked at me, but it was toeing that line between shit-eating grin and supportive smile, so I let it go.
“Goddess-speed and happy endings,” I whispered, and magic rippled out from me, lighting up the whole circle and casting shimmering reflections on all the faces in the room. I clapped my palms together as the instructions had indicated, mingling the blood from both hands.
But Hellim’s circle remained dark.
“I don’t have spellwords as a shadow whisperer,” I said aloud, dropping my hands by my sides.
“Do you think we should take care of that first?” Air asked, moving around the circle and standing so close to me that our shoulders touched. I gently pushed him away and he smiled at me. He knew as well as I did that if we were pressed up against each other when I started casting, the whole thing could go haywire.
Technically, to officially register my spellwords, I had to visit a clerk’s office in the Whisperer District, check to see if any other shadow whisperer had used those words before, have my mentor sign off on them. But I didn’t have a mentor nor did I think an Amerin Royal Clerk would sign off on me having spellwords of any kind considering I’d never been trained in shadow magic.
“Only Hellim has to agree to my words,” I hazarded, because that was true. For spellwords to be active, to have power, I only had to speak them while using shadow magic and wait for the dark god to respond. Hellim’s spellwords weren’t nearly as important to him as Haversey’s were. Thank fig or else I’d end up losing two feathers for every flub-up.
“Technically, yes,” Air said with an exhale and a little shark smile. I loved his slightly pointed teeth. They made me want to kiss him, to run my tongue over those little points and see if I could make myself bleed. “And if anyone asks, technically the crown prince should have all the powers and then some of a clerk. We’ll say I fast-tracked it.”
“Aw, well thank you for that,” I said with a slight smile, turning back to the circle and letting my mind whir through a dozen super lame phrases. It’d taken me weeks to come up with my Haversey spellwords and even then, they were still sort of … not cool. And now I had to come up with some on the fly? “Cursed spirits and shadows,” I said, reaching up to rub my hand down my face. As I did, blood spattered across the second star … and it lit up in with swirls of black magic.
Well, crap.
Pretty sure I’d just set my new spellwords to a popular slang phrase.