Authors: Amy Garvey
Tags: #Girls & Women, #Eschatology, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Religion, #Horror & Ghost Stories
Cold Kiss (10 page)
I don’t know what I was expecting, but the guy behind the counter looked like my seventh-grade science teacher. His hair was combed over sideways to hide a bald spot, and he had on a stained white button-down and khakis that looked like the grime was the only thing holding them together.
“We do a lot of business on the web,” he said when he caught me looking around, “special orders.”
“I’m thrilled for you,” I said, and started through the books lining one shelf. A lot of them looked like they were Wicca Lite, but there was a good handful of older books, too, well-thumbed volumes with cracked leather or cloth bindings. I picked three and carried them up to the counter, where Creepy Guy raised a thick black eyebrow.
“Pretty heavy reading there, kid.”
“I’m in Mensa,” I said, getting out my wallet.
“Smart doesn’t have anything to do with this stuff.”
“Cool. Then maybe you’ll want to borrow them when I’m done.” I gave him a sweet smile and waited. “You going to give me a price or what?”
He shook his head, but he toted up
The Burnside Grimoire, The Compendium of Shadow Magick,
and a book by Aleister Crowley. I’d read on the internet that he was some famous occult guy from the turn of the century who was into all kinds of what he called “magick.” I was lucky I had my ticket home—I was out nearly a hundred dollars, all the money I had saved at the moment.
The Burnside Grimoire, The Compendium of Shadow Magick,
and a book by Aleister Crowley. I’d read on the internet that he was some famous occult guy from the turn of the century who was into all kinds of what he called “magick.” I was lucky I had my ticket home—I was out nearly a hundred dollars, all the money I had saved at the moment.
“Good luck,” Creepy Guy called as I left, the brown paper bag of books stuffed into my backpack. I closed my eyes and focused, and just as the door shut behind me, a cloud of slate-colored smoke mushroomed into the shop, tickling the back of my legs.
It was just smoke, not fire, and it was petty and wrong, but I didn’t care. I paid for a soda from a cart on the corner when I knew I had enough money left for the subway, and spent the ride home sneezing, my nose buried in the musty books.
It should have gotten scarier the more I researched. When you find yourself buying mandrake root on the internet, it’s probably a good time to question what you’re doing.
But the more I read, page after page of incantations and phases of the moon and streams of energy, the better I could see Danny’s face again. Not the waxy, blank one I had seen in his casket.
Danny,
laughing, shaking the hair off his forehead, rolling his eyes at Becker’s weak Borat impression, leaning in to kiss me, his wide, soft mouth curved up on one side.
Danny,
laughing, shaking the hair off his forehead, rolling his eyes at Becker’s weak Borat impression, leaning in to kiss me, his wide, soft mouth curved up on one side.
I wanted him back. I wanted him back so much I couldn’t think about anything else. Everywhere I looked was suddenly somewhere Danny wasn’t. My hands were empty because Danny wasn’t holding them. My room echoed with quiet because Danny wasn’t there whispering ridiculous things to make me laugh, or make me shiver.
It seemed so right. Danny was mine, I was his, and that wasn’t going to work if he was dead. So I would make him not dead, not anymore. I didn’t think any further than what it would feel like to kiss him again, to wrap my arms around him and bury my head against his shoulder.
That was my first mistake. It also turned out to be the biggest.
Gabriel pushes a hand through his hair, mouth set in a tight line. “Then what?”
I finished the strong tea he brought halfway through my story, and now my throat is dry. “I had to wait for the right time.”
“Full moon?”
I nod, hating the look in his eyes. Pity, horror, something a little like awe, but not the good kind. The kind that “awful” comes from.
“Tell me,” he says for probably the thirtieth time. “The details, Wren.”
“Why does it matter?” I huff out a breath and sink back against the sofa. “You know how it turned out.”
“It matters, Wren.” The sharp edge of his voice slices through the room. “It matters because it determines what you brought back.”
“What are you talking about? I brought back
Danny
.”
Danny
.”
“Come on, Wren.” For the first time in over an hour, he gets up, and the coffee table screeches against the floor as he pushes off it. He rakes his fingers through his hair again as he paces toward the windows. “Is he really the Danny you knew?”
The cold knot in my stomach tightens. I swallow back a wave of nausea. “Yes. Mostly.”
“Wren.” Gabriel turns around, head tilted to one side. “Be honest.”
“He
is
.” I sit up, wrapping my arms around my knees again. “He’s a little … different, but it’s him. It is, Gabriel.
He
is.”
is
.” I sit up, wrapping my arms around my knees again. “He’s a little … different, but it’s him. It is, Gabriel.
He
is.”
It’s nearly four thirty, and the light outside is already dying. Backlit by the windows, Gabriel’s face is hard to read—I can’t make out more than the angular line of his profile and the hard set of his jaw. When he suddenly moves across the room to turn on a lamp, I’m startled, and I flinch when he drops down next to me on the sofa.
“Just tell me.”
I take a deep breath. He’s so close, there’s only an afterthought of space between his thigh and my hip. The lamplight is a dirty gold puddle across the room, and in it the apartment looks even more like Early Fallout Shelter crossed with Garage Sale Reject.
I focus on a torn cardboard box spilling T-shirts and towels onto the faded floorboards. “I had to wait for a full moon. So I figured out when the next one would be and got everything I needed while I waited.”
“What spell did you use?”
I flick my gaze sideways. “I wrote it myself.”
His eyes widen. “Seriously?”
I shrug. “Seriously. I mean, I got my ideas from a few different books, but yeah.”
His mouth is still hanging open a little when he makes a “go on” motion with one hand.
“I needed some things I couldn’t find around here,” I continue, staring at the toe of my boot over my knee. “Mandrake root. A ritual, um, blade. They call them—”
“Athames, I know. My grandmother had one she gave my mom when she died.”
I swallow again. I wasn’t expecting that. “I wrote it all out, and collected the other things I needed—saffron, poppy, hemlock. I sort of scoped out the cemetery a few nights before the full moon, to make sure no one would be around. And to, well, get used to it, you know?”
I shivered as I remembered those nights before the moon was due to rise full, and I sat near Danny’s grave, sometimes resting my cheek on the simple stone, tracing the letters of his name, engraved in the marble. DANIEL FRANCIS GREER. I had never known his middle name was Francis.
“And on that night?”Gabriel sounds almost angry now.
“I was there at eleven, waiting for midnight. I had a picture of him, and a T-shirt of his, and all the other things. I had already blessed the athame, too.”
I can feel the slight motion as he nods. “Then?”
I close my eyes to picture it. I don’t think about it much anymore—it was hyper real at the time, too many sensations, the chill of the earth even in late July, the damp kiss of the grass on my knees, the flat, chalky smell of the stone, the dark blanket of sky overhead.
I had everything ready—a candle, a bowl and a small container of milk, the herbs, and the blade. I laid it all out, trying to ignore the way my hands shook, the faint crackling of squirrels in the trees, the grasshoppers’ steady hum.
“At about five minutes to midnight, I poured the milk in the bowl and wrapped the mandrake root in Danny’s shirt. I put that in the bowl, submerging it, and then added the saffron and the poppy and the hemlock.” I glance at Gabriel, and his brow is twisted into a crooked, unhappy line.
“I laid the picture of him on the grave,” I say, and my voice trembles a little then. It was a picture I loved—everything in it was perfectly Danny, from his Stooges T-shirt to the sun in his hair to the sleepy, soft smile on his face. “And I got out the knife.”
“Shit, Wren.”
I ignore him, plowing ahead, determined to get the rest of it out now. “I pricked my finger and smeared the blood on the picture. Then I cut my hand, here”—I hold out my right hand and show him the scar in the center of my palm—”and waited. As soon as it was midnight, I started the spell and squeezed my hand over the bowl.”
I can remember the words even now, the smooth weight of them on my tongue, the sound of my voice in the silence. It had taken me almost a week to get it right, or as close to right as I thought it could be.
This night I seek to rekindle Life’s bright fire
Fire stolen too soon by the cold grasp of Death
Untimely Death.
Spirits bright
Spirits dark
Spirits undecided and in between
Witness my invocation.
Life taken from you, Danny, return!
Love awaits you.
Death has no hold on you.
By candlelight By starlight
By moonlight growing stronger
I command this to be.
With this symbol of Danny
With my blood
I command this to be.
Return to life
Return to me
Return to life
Return to me
Return to life
Return to me.
Gabriel closes his eyes and scrubs a hand over his face when I repeat the spell to him, and I bite my lip. It sounds wrong here in this shabby room, on the sofa that smells like ancient must and smoke. It sounds crazy, wrong and
crazy,
but I have to tell him the rest.
crazy,
but I have to tell him the rest.
“I took the blade and drove it through his picture and into the ground, into the dirt.” My heart is pounding now, remembering the racing thrill in my veins as I waited, the air in the graveyard swelling, pushing out, and the cool breeze that licked at the candle until it guttered and went out.
“And?”Gabriel says. He leans closer, folds his hand around my ankle again.
My voice is nothing more than a whisper. “I opened my eyes and Danny was there.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT’S NO PLAGE TO STOP, BUT AS GABRIEL RAKES a hand through his hair again, my phone rings. It’s Robin, so I can’t ignore it.
“What?” I sound wrecked, even to my own ears.
“I can’t find him and I looked everywhere! Are you coming home now? Wren?”
I can’t make any sense of it, but then I picture Danny’s face and my heart drops into my stomach without warning, a sickening
whoosh
. “Find who, Robin?”
whoosh
. “Find who, Robin?”
“Mr. Purrfect! He’s not anywhere in the house, and he won’t come when I call, and you know he—”
“Robin.” I sit back as my heart starts to beat again.
Of course she doesn’t mean Danny. She doesn’t even know about Danny; she wouldn’t be looking for him. I’m totally losing it. “Calm down.”
“Wren, he’s
old.
” She’s panicking, which she almost never does, and she sounds about five years younger, the little Robin I remember, terrified in the middle of the night after a bad dream. “And he gets confused lately, and what if he’s stuck somewhere or—”
old.
” She’s panicking, which she almost never does, and she sounds about five years younger, the little Robin I remember, terrified in the middle of the night after a bad dream. “And he gets confused lately, and what if he’s stuck somewhere or—”
“Hey, seriously, calm down. I’m coming home right now, okay? I’ll be right there.”
Gabriel is glaring at me when I flip the phone closed, and I shrug. “I have to go, it’s my sister.”
“We have to talk about this,” he says, and folds his arms over his chest.
“Not right now we don’t.” I stand up and grab my backpack, hefting it over my shoulder.
I know I’m taking the easy way out, the perfect excuse to run away from the expression on Gabriel’s face and the judgment in his eyes, but I don’t care. It may be a relief not to have to lie about what I can do, what I have done, but I hadn’t thought about how much disapproval would hurt. “Look, I get that you’re worried or whatever—”
“Worried?” His laugh is a bark, short and sharp. “Are you kidding? You have your dead boyfriend living in your neighbor’s garage!”
Power floods through me in a hot, aching rush, and across the room the lightbulb explodes beneath the lamp shade. “Back. Off.”
I have to give him credit—he doesn’t even flinch. But when he opens his mouth, I cut him off.
“I get it, okay? I really, really get it, believe me, and I’ve been living with this since July, instead of the last half hour. So just … back off already. I’m a big girl and I
will
deal with this. But first I have to find my sister’s senile cat.”
will
deal with this. But first I have to find my sister’s senile cat.”
It’s such a ridiculous thing to say, Gabriel snorts a laugh, and I can’t help smiling. It breaks the tension in the room, soothes the angry hum of electricity in my blood.
When I head for the door, though, Gabriel grabs my hand. He turns it palm up and scrawls his phone number there with a blue ballpoint.
“Whenever you want,” he says, and steps back.
And despite my big words, it’s a relief to know he cares that much. But I’m pretty sure calling him might be a matter of need.
I drop my backpack by the front door and shrug off my jacket when I get home. “Robin?”
“In here.” She appears in the door to the kitchen, tears dried in silver tracks on her cheeks. Mr. Purrfect’s favorite catnip mouse is clutched in one hand. She looks, well, like her beloved cat is missing, and my heart squeezes in sympathy even if I wish Mom hadn’t let her give the beast such a completely lame name.
“Hey, come here.” I open my arms and she walks straight into them, laying her head on my shoulder. The wet warmth of tears and snot is a little gross, but I stroke her hair anyway. “We’ll find him, Binny. I promise.”
I haven’t called her that in years, and it makes her sniffle and heave a big, shuddering breath. “I know it’s stupid. I know it. But he’s getting old, Wren, and the Tates have that big, nasty dog—”
“Shhhh.” I hold her closer and swallow a sigh. It’s been a long time since the biggest crisis in my life was as simple as a cat who went out for an unsupervised walk, and I’m exhausted after Gabriel’s interrogation. But Mom’s at work, which leaves me to handle Robin, and the damn cat. Who hates me, not that that should matter.
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