The Lingering Grace (27 page)

Three hours of work and research later, they began to lose steam. Eva stretched out on the floor with her open notebook on her stomach and closed her eyes, pen still in hand. Alice, exhausted, grabbed a pillow from her bed and curled up with one of the spellbooks. A few minutes later, she got up and turned off the light. The glow from the rosebush was bright enough to read by, but her eyes were closing of their own accord and the spellbook slipped from her hand.

“I want to do it tomorrow,” Eva said, just as Alice was beginning to doze off.

“What?” Alice mumbled. She opened her eyes just enough to see Eva’s profile, lit by the rosebush’s glow. Eva’s eyes were wide open.

“I guess I should say today since it’s past midnight. I want to try the spell tonight, Alice.”

Alice sat up.

“Tonight? But we’ve only just—”

“I know what you’re going to say,” Eva interrupted, “but how much more prepared are we going to get? We have the spell nearly written—we could easily be done with a few more hours of work. And then what? We can’t test it out. We just have to do it. Why wait?”

Alice’s breathing was quick and shallow. “But … ” she stammered. “But we’ve only done one spell together, and that was a disaster!”

“We’ll practice again tomorrow. Once we have the spell written, the coordination will be easy.”

It hadn’t been easy last time.

“Besides,” Eva continued, “the longer we wait, the harder it will be. The longer she’s been … you know … the more her body will have … ”

Eva turned her face away. She sounded like she was going to gag, and Alice didn’t blame her. To think of her own sister decaying bit by bit, the once smiling face melting into a permanent skeletal grin …

Eva cleared her throat and continued. “Besides, it’ll be a full moon tonight. I’ve heard magic is strongest under the full moon. And I know it sounds crazy, but Alice, I’m sure our best chance is tonight. I can feel it.”

To her own surprise, Alice didn’t immediately object. She swallowed hard and wished her fluttery stomach would settle. She too felt the urgency, the eagerness to be done with it.

“Let’s see how far we get tomorrow,” she said.

“Yes, we’ll just have to see,” Eva said. But it was clear from the set of her jaw, from the fire in her eyes, that as far as she was concerned the matter was settled. More than that, Alice could feel Eva’s determination as solid as a concrete block.

Alice lay back down and closed her eyes. She was so tired that even her nerves couldn’t keep her awake for long.

Alice didn’t want to wake up, but it was hard to sleep with Eva rifling through the spellbooks and muttering under her breath. She was sitting at Alice’s desk, one of Alice’s blankets wrapped around her shoulders.

“How long have you been up?” Alice asked, rubbing her eyes.

Eva jumped and swiveled in her chair. “You’re awake, good! I couldn’t sleep—been up for an hour.”

Alice picked up her phone to check the time. It was only eight thirty. Usually on Saturdays she didn’t get up until noon or until her mom dragged her out of bed—whichever came first.

“Jeremy’s awake,” Eva said. “I made sure he got some breakfast. He’s watching TV downstairs.”

“Um … thanks,” Alice said. Jeremy certainly didn’t need any help with his bowl of cereal, but Eva was used to taking care of a much younger sibling, and Alice appreciated the help. Jeremy had probably been grateful for the attention anyway. She hadn’t been a very attentive sister lately.

Alice rolled over in bed and closed her eyes. Her head pounded like she’d slept with a vise clamped around it, and her eyelids were heavy and puffy. She didn’t even want to think about how she must look. If Tony ever slept over, seeing her first thing in the morning would be a real test of how much he liked her. It was a grim prospect.

“Hey, hey … ” Eva plopped down right on top of Alice’s feet. Her eyes popped open and she cried out. “You can’t go back to sleep. We have way too much to do!”

“Just give me a minute,” Alice groaned, closing her eyes again. The weight on her feet lifted as Eva jumped up. Alice heard her scurry across the room, then the whoosh of the blinds being pulled up. Light flooded in and Alice, seeing she wasn’t going to win this one, sat up. Just as she turned to look out the window, the blinds came crashing down. Eva held the limp cord in her hands.

“Awake now?”

Alice moaned, blinking to clear her blurry vision. Eva went out of focus, then back in. Her expression was hard to read.

“Good,” Eva said. “Now I have it all planned. We’ll finish the spell first, then get in some practice with two-person enchantments. At nine sharp we’ll head over to the graveyard. We should be done by midnight.”

It sounded so casual, as though Eva were simply outlining a particularly eventful day of sightseeing. Alice could think of several pressing questions off the top of her head (like what they were going to do with a resurrected seven-year-old who’d been declared dead weeks before), but she saw the gleam in Eva’s eyes and knew nothing she said was going to deter her. Somehow this all had been decided, and Alice, still a little hesitant, suddenly found herself with no neutral ground to stand on. It was all in or all out, and for her mother’s sake, she couldn’t back out.

There was, however, one thing she couldn’t leave unsaid, a question she couldn’t brush away as much as she tried to ignore it.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said.

“What?”

Alice took her time answering. She had a feeling that this was a question Eva didn’t want to discuss. “What’s the cost?”

As expected, Eva bristled. Alice could feel her enthusiasm flip to uneasiness.

“What do you mean?” she asked, putting on a show of surprise. She couldn’t have honestly thought she would fool Alice—not with the binding spell—but she was trying anyway.

“If the cost of bringing the roses back to life was a tree branch, what’s the cost of bringing your sister back? Is it a life for a life?”

And whose life would be taken?
Like a stone in her gut, the vision dragged her down. Tony’s pale face swam before her eyes; her knees wobbled. Was Tony the spell’s unwitting victim?

Eva opened her mouth, then shut it. She was considering very carefully; Alice could tell that this aspect of the spell was not news to her. It was something that she had been thinking about for much longer than Alice had.

“Don’t lie to me,” Alice said. Of course Eva couldn’t have lied if she had wanted to, but both of them already knew this.

“Look, Alice,” Eva said at last. “I have it worked out—it won’t affect you or anybody else, I promise. But it’s complicated and I’m hungry. Can we talk about this later?”

“No.” She was thinking of Tony. “We’re talking about this now.”

“I need to get something to eat. I’m starving—really.”

Eva clasped her hands together pleadingly and Alice stared back unmoved. “Can you promise me—one hundred percent—that this isn’t going to …
kill
someone random?”

“I swear, Alice,” she crossed her heart though the magical bond rendered this redundant. “This spell isn’t going to search for someone to steal a life from. It isn’t going to kill a random hobo in the bushes. It isn’t going to kill you either. What kind of person do you think I am? Do you
honestly
think I would make a spell that would murder an innocent person just to get my sister back? I accidentally …” she trailed off, her lower lip trembling. She lowered her voice. “I already killed one person and I can hardly live with myself.”

Alice knew what the vision had shown her, but she knew that Eva wasn’t lying either. Was it possible that both were true? At least if she went with Eva, she could make sure that Tony was nowhere nearby. If she didn’t go … who was to say what Eva would do? Maybe trying to avoid the future would only bring it to pass. Wasn’t that how all Greek tragedies went? By running from fate, the heroes sealed their doom.

“Let’s get something to eat,” she said, letting Eva pass. Uneasily, she followed Eva downstairs to the kitchen, and the smile she put on for Jeremy could not have been more forced.

Alice tried to help Eva with the rest of the spell, but while Eva seemed to thrive under the pressure of the looming evening, she was barely functioning at a minimal level. She could hardly follow a train of thought from beginning to end without darting off in another direction entirely.

At about five o’clock, she called Tony. He hadn’t texted her at all today. With her flighty mind darting from one thing to the next, she had temporarily forgotten her worries about Tony and the graveyard and the vision. When she did remember, her thoughts would jump to something else before she had a chance to act on them. But by the time the afternoon had faded into early evening, Tony popped into her mind yet another time and she grabbed her phone immediately, refusing to let her lapsing brain affect her boyfriend’s safety any longer. Darting out of her room, muttering something about seeing if her parents were back yet, she rushed downstairs.

The first floor was dark. Jeremy had decided to sleep over at his friend Morty’s house, and her mom had just texted to say that the tests had taken longer than they were expecting. They’d been sent to a different specialist for some scans and would be back much later than planned.

Alice settled herself on a bar stool and dialed Tony’s number, gnawing on the inside of her lip. He didn’t pick up for several rings and she was already trying to decide whether or not to leave a message when he finally answered.

“Hey.” He sounded out of breath.

She exhaled heavily, relieved. “Did I catch you in the middle of something?”

“No, no … just was in the other room. Ran to grab the phone.”

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

She winced. “Right, right … I just meant I’m glad you picked up. I hadn’t heard from you. Wanted to say hi.”

“I meant to text, but then I … ” He hesitated, as though trying to decide how much to reveal. “I’ve been really busy,” he said. Tony wasn’t usually so evasive, and the vague answer sent Alice’s thoughts straight into worst-case-scenario mode. What if he had gotten in deeper with the Seekers? What if they had abducted him, what if they had a gun to his head this very moment? That would explain why he had been breathing so hard when he picked up the phone …

“What have you been doing?” she asked, gnawing on one fingernail after another, grateful no one could see.

“Homework,” he said quickly. “What are you doing?”

“Same,” she said. “Just homework. Eva’s still here.”

“And you’ve both been doing homework all day?”

Now he was the one who sounded suspicious.

“Is that so hard to believe?”

They both fell silent. Alice was positive Tony was keeping something from her. Unfortunately, she had no way to tell how much of the worry and irritation was coming from him and how much of it was a result of her own mental state.

“I’m glad you called,” said Tony. “I wanted to ask you… Do you have any plans tonight?”

“Eva and I were going to do something,” she said, realizing with a pang that she was now the one being vague. But she couldn’t exactly tell him the truth either.
We’re just going to head over to the cemetery and use untested witchcraft to resurrect her little sister. But don’t worry—it’s no biggie.

“Okay, that’s … that’s fine.” Tony, far from sounding disappointed, actually sounded a little relieved. Alice had assumed that he had been hoping to do something together. Now she was wondering if he was just trying to make sure she’d be out of his way. What exactly was he up to?

“Do
you
have plans?” she asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said.

More evasion. With a heavy sigh, she dropped all pretense and went straight for the heart.

“Tony, I don’t know what you’re planning, and I know this sounds weird, but please,
please
promise me you won’t do anything dangerous. Okay?”

Her neck ached from how stiffly she had been sitting, but she didn’t move. She pressed the phone to the side of her face so hard that her ear hurt.