The Lingering Grace (13 page)

She licked her lips, expecting to feel blistering flesh, but they were smooth. Her mouth felt normal. She swallowed and it was painless.

“I didn’t do it,” she said. “I couldn’t do it. It was just too big. Did you stop it?”

Eva must have stopped it just in time, just before the flames consumed her entire face.

“Eva? Did you stop it?” she asked again. What was Eva thinking, pulling out a spell like that and promising her it wouldn’t hurt—promising her it would be fine? Was she out of her mind, or did she genuinely not care what happened to Alice?

“Eva? What did you do?” Alice asked again; her voice had turned high and sharp.

But Eva did not answer. She was sitting on the floor next to Alice, knees pulled up to her chest, eyes closed. She rocked back and forth, breathing heavily, and when Alice called her name again, she shook her head.

“Just … ” she gasped, “ … give me a minute … one minute … ”

It only took a few seconds of watching this to snuff out the better part of Alice’s anger. Eva made a mistake, but she obviously cared. No one got that worked up about something that didn’t matter to them.

“Are you okay?” Alice asked, gently now. She realized a second later how ridiculous it was for her—the one who had just escaped death by magical fireball—to be worried about Eva. But she couldn’t help the jerk of fear in her gut as she watched Eva struggle to take deep breaths. Alice put a hand on her back and Eva slowly stopped rocking. A minute later, she spoke.

“I’m … fine,” she said, but her eyes were bloodshot. She reached out and touched Alice’s knee. “Are you sure you’re okay? It’s just … I thought … when you weren’t moving for a minute … ”

She cut off. Alice vaguely remembered Eva’s panicked scream; she had heard someone yell like that before. When Alice had hit her head on the pool and been rushed to the hospital, Alice had watched from behind the mirror—trapped—as her mother had screamed just like that.

She could only assume that Eva had let out a similar cry when she’d pulled her dead sister out of the pool, tried to shake her awake, tried to save her …

Eva’s unsteady breathing rattled the air. Alice saw the panic still fresh in her eyes and understood it.

“It’s okay,” Alice assured her. “I’m fine.”

Eva nodded heavily. “Maybe it was too much to try. But I had to. I had to.”

“It’s partly my fault,” Alice said. “I thought I could handle it. Clearly I couldn’t.” She rubbed the back of her head and found a nice large lump forming. Wincing, she leaned back against the wall. Of course, very little of this was
actually
her fault, but Alice didn’t mind taking the blame if it would calm Eva down.

“What do you mean, ‘couldn’t’? Alice, you did it. It worked.”

Eva wasn’t just shaken up—she was also not thinking straight. Alice explained, “You saw that thing—it was too big. You must have stopped it before it could hurt me.”

But Eva shook her head vigorously. “Once the spell is in motion, it can’t
be
stopped. Just like falling—you decide to start leaning backward, but once gravity kicks in, you don’t have a choice. You can’t change your mind; it happens whether you want it to or not. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be much of a commitment, would it? Once you start, you had better mean it. It’s a promise, after all.”

Alice couldn’t get past the image of that fire—nearly large enough to engulf her head. She remembered closing her eyes and the pain in her mouth … the warmth trickling down her throat.

Eva was right.

Swallowing roughly, she reached up to feel her lips, her face, yet again. Surely it had burned her. But try as she might, she couldn’t feel any damage. Running her tongue around her mouth, she didn’t even feel any pain. It was gone so completely that she doubted herself, wondered if she had imagined the agony. It couldn’t have been that bad. Something that painful leaves a mark.

“My face?” she whispered to Eva.

“Perfect,” Eva assured her. “It’s not normal fire, remember? I know—it seems so real. I tried to warn you.”

Alice doubted that any amount of warning would have prepared her for being scorched by a miniature sun.

“So now … ” she started.

Eva finished for her. “We’re bound—at least for a while.”

Alice let that sink in. She felt like someone who had gotten a tattoo on a whim and has only just begun to realize that the mark would be more permanent than the impulse. The feeling wasn’t regret; it was more surprise at how far-reaching such a quick decision might be.

Eva, on the other hand, seemed to come alive at the thought of consequences. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted—
needed
—someone I could trust. I was praying to find someone like you, and I don’t even believe in God.” She laughed, and added with a smirk, “If he always comes through like this, maybe I’d better start.”

“Well you know, my mom says God comes through even when you think he doesn’t,” Alice said.

This made Eva smile wider. “That is
exactly
the reason I don’t believe in him in the first place. Why put so much confidence in someone who isn’t reliable? Congratulations, Alice. I now trust you more than God.”

Alice didn’t have time to respond to this before Eva jumped up and ran to her dresser.

“And now because I can trust you, it’s time to explain why you’re here,” she said.

Alice stumbled to her feet, leaning heavily on the side of the bed. “Why I’m here?” she asked, watching Eva dig through an overcrowded drawer, throwing shirts onto the ground. Alice had never seen her so energetic.

“Yes, why you’re here. You didn’t think I brought you here just for magic lessons and a sleepover, did you?”

Alice’s head pounded; she wasn’t sure her concussed brain was thinking straight, but this statement still struck her as odd. “I kind of thought that was why—”

“Here!” Eva whipped back around, a well-worn book in her hand. It looked like an old journal: large, heavy, leather bound. It was tied closed with a belt. A large black triangle was burned onto the front cover. “This is it,” Eva declared, cradling it against her.

At the sight of the triangle, Alice’s heart began racing. Both the witch and Elizabeth had been obsessed with triangles—with the rule of three. Triangle mirrors. Triangle desks. It was possible that triangles were just an overused magical symbol. Surely the book Eva had found couldn’t have any connection to the hotel and the witches who had nearly killed Alice. Still … She laced her hands behind her back.

“Where … where did you get that?”

Eva, seeing her face, put the book down. “Do you need to sit down? Your head. It must be your head. Do you think you need to go to the hospital? I would try … I’m sure there’s a spell. But I just—” she took a deep breath. “I tried with my sister. Tried to help. And it didn’t do anything.”

“It’s not my head … I just need to sit down.” She took a seat on Eva’s desk chair. “Where did you get that book?”

“I found it before we moved. We were cleaning out the attic and there were a few of my grandma’s boxes up there. This was in one of them, but I don’t think she wrote it. She refused to keep a journal, and this isn’t her handwriting anyway.”

“Can I see the inside?” Alice asked. She had seen the witch’s writing and Elizabeth’s. It was nearly impossible that the book had been either of theirs, but Alice would breathe easier if she knew for certain.

Eva handed the book over without a moment’s hesitation. “We’re on the same team now,” she said. “What’s mine is yours.”

Alice was too focused on the book in her lap to give more than a passing thought to Eva’s sudden openness. She traced the triangle on the front with the tip of her finger, feeling the deep groove in the leather, reminding herself that it was just a book. No matter who had written it or touched it or read it—it was an object first and foremost.

It’s just a thing
, she repeated to herself, peeling back the cover.
It’s not dangerous on its own.

But all the calmness she could muster wasn’t enough to stop her blood from running cold when she saw the writing on the first page. There were only two lines: the first one simply printed and then crossed out, the other scrawled carelessly underneath it.

Property of Hester Moore

Property of Elizabeth Blackwell

Alice stared at the words so long her vision started swimming. She was totally still. When she finally lifted her eyes, the room looked foreign to her. She breathed in and breathed out and that too felt unnatural. It was as though she’d blinked, and upon opening her eyes found herself in a world that looked, felt, and smelled like her own, but was in fact only a projection. She may as well have been sitting in an empty box.

“Oh my God,” whispered Eva. “It’s hers, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Alice answered. The word came out of her mouth but she felt no connection to it.

Eva grabbed the book back and stared at the page. “My God, I should have known. When you said the woman’s name was Elizabeth, I never guessed … She’s the one who cursed you, then?”

Crossing her legs, Alice clasped her hands in her lap. “She cursed the hotel,” she said in a monotone. “She used a witch’s books to find out how to do it. I never knew the witch’s name—I met her but she never told me. I guess it was … ” she gulped. The witch had always appeared to her as a teenage girl with bobbed black hair and large brown eyes. The eyes had stuck with her, the irises rimmed with a golden glow that defied the ordinary. Alice could still see them. She could still see the wide, simpering smile, the mouth that had spoken the words that nearly convinced her to give up.

“Hester.” Eva finished the sentence for her. “That girl you saw—the girl who was the witch, who taught Elizabeth how to cast the curse. Her name was Hester. You met her. I … I’m not sure how … ” she trailed off, then closed the book and placed her hand on Alice’s knee.

Alice met Eva’s eyes, expecting an apology of some kind. Maybe she hadn’t meant to, but Eva had brought the hotel—and with it the curse—back into Alice’s life. It was a place she was sure she had escaped. A place she knew she couldn’t bear to return, even mentally. She would rather die than go through that kind of hell again.

And now, in some cruel, karmic twist of fate, hell was sitting inches away, on her new friend’s lap.

“Don’t be sorry. You didn’t know,” she told Eva, wishing she could assure her that it was okay but unable force out the words.

Eva gave her a quizzical frown. “Sorry? Why would I be sorry? Alice, don’t you see? This is the best thing that could have possibly happened! We
know
that the spells in this book are powerful. We know they work!”

“Wh-what?” Alice asked, her voice catching. Didn’t Eva understand? The witch’s magic—and Elizabeth’s magic—had been dangerous, lethal, and cruel. “You have to get rid of that book!” she said, her voice rising. “That book nearly killed me!”

Eva could not have seemed less concerned. She stroked the book protectively and shook her head, as though Alice were being especially thick skulled. “Don’t be so dramatic, Alice. This
book
didn’t kill anyone. Sure, Hester and Elizabeth were bad news, but it’s not the book’s fault. Power can always be used for good
and
for evil. The important thing is that
we
have
power
now.”

“You think this is good news? You actually think you’re going to use that book?” Alice demanded. A wave of horror worked its way down her back.

“Use it? Of course I’m going to use it! If I’d known earlier what it was, I would have spent more time reading it and less time plowing through the online nonsense. Half the spells on the forums are totally useless. Most of the spells in here require so many specialty ingredients that I didn’t want to spend the time even trying them. But now that I know I can trust it, I’ll have to find a way to get what I need. Luckily you can get everything online nowadays!”

Alice had heard enough. She tried to grab the book from Eva; she had no clue what she intended to do with it—rip it apart? Burn the pieces? It didn’t really matter as long as she could destroy it. Eva could not be allowed to keep that book.
No one
could have it.

Eva was too quick for her. She jumped to her feet, pulling the book out of reach.

“Calm down, Alice!” she laughed. “I don’t see what the big deal is. You’re fine! The curse didn’t kill you! Why are you freaking out? Aren’t you glad that we have this? Think of all the things we could do!”

“I don’t want to do anything that’s written in that book!”

Eva’s mouth tightened and her glittering eyes narrowed. “Then you aren’t much of a witch.”

“I want to do magic,” Alice protested. “I just don’t want to do
that
magic.”

Eva crossed her arms around the book and glared, her expression almost a sneer. “Magic is magic, Alice. You can’t pick and choose. You do it or you don’t. You want power or you don’t.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple!”

“
Yes, it is.
It’s
exactly
that simple! You should have known what you were getting into. It’s too late to back out now—you’re promised.”