True: An Elixir Novel (21 page)

Sage’s nose flares and every muscle tightens, like he’s fighting to gain control. In a rapid swoop, he grabs the pills and water, downs the rest of the bottle, then throws the pill bottle and cup to the floor. He goes back to hugging himself and rocking . . . but then he settles back into that sleep that
looks like death. I collapse on top of him and cry until I have no more tears. I feel so out of control and sick. I’m so spent I almost fall asleep, but I remember his flailing limbs and drag myself onto the rug, where I curl up and close my eyes.

The knock on my door makes me scream.

“It’s us. Ben and Rayna,” Ben says.

I stagger to the door and open it. The two of them wear matching blank expressions, and Ben has a satchel slung over one shoulder.

“I know what to do,” Ben says. “We can go right now.”

“Go? Where?”

“Boston Common.”

“What? Why?”

“I’ll explain in the car.”

I look at Sage, and they follow my gaze. There’s no way he’s getting up to go anywhere.

“We have to carry him,” Ben says.

It takes all three of us, and we have to stop several times, but we get Sage to Ben’s car and wrangle him into the backseat. I slip in too and rest his head on my lap.

“Why Boston Common?” I ask when Ben starts driving.

“Magda’s message: Seek the Greeks, appease the ancient healers. We’re going to invoke the ancient Greek goddesses of healing, and we have to do it in a place that’s sacred to them.”

“Boston Common is sacred to Greek gods?”

“You’d be surprised. There was an oak tree there. It’s gone now, but in the 1600s and 1700s, it was a big spot for public hangings, many of them for blasphemy. Specifically, they hung people dedicated to the pagan gods, like the Greek pantheon. Even now, the area around that tree is supposed to be filled with the energy of souls ripped away before their time. Souls who gave their lives for the ancient gods. We need that energy to make the ceremony work.”

“But you said the tree isn’t there anymore,” I remind him. “Boston Common’s big. How do we know exactly where to go?”

“Your dad knew,” Ben says. “It’s the kind of thing that fascinated him. He and I talked about it a long time ago. He even took me there a couple times, so I know it. What I didn’t know was how to invoke the healing goddesses, but I figured out today. It wasn’t easy. Their mythology isn’t usually tied to spiritual healing. I never would have known to even look at them if you hadn’t found Magda.”

So Magda did come through for Sage in the end. Hopefully we won’t run out of time before what she told us can help.

We don’t talk a lot for the rest of the ride. I concentrate on Sage, cradling his head, wiping the hair off his brow. He stirs every now and then, but there’s none of the wild flailing like before. I choose to believe that’s because the drugs are helping him rest, not because he’s slipped beyond our reach. I run my hands over his face and imagine him waking up with his soul intact and untroubled, a normal human being. I hold tight to that thought and don’t let my mind wander.

It’s dark by the time we get to Boston Common. Ben parks close to the park and shoulders his satchel, and he and Rayna help me drag Sage out of the car. I feel better once we get past the streetlights and into the unlit Common. The three of us dragging Sage’s unconscious bulk isn’t exactly inconspicuous. Ben and I are under his shoulders, while Rayna holds his legs. We either look like the casualties of a college kegger, or the most harebrained Mafia body dump ever. We bob and weave as Ben directs us across the park, and it only gets harder when Sage starts to stir. The first flail of his forearm smacks Ben in
the cheek, and he almost drops him.

“That’s it over there,” Ben finally says as we climb onto a low rise. “Let’s put him down.”

We do it just in time. A wild tremor sends Sage’s whole body into spasm, and we all jump away. It settles as fast as it began, but I know we’re running out of time before he wakes up completely. And I don’t have any more pills.

I look around, but in the moonlight I can’t make out anything special about the spot. A stretch of field, the rise of grass, a copse of trees.

“So none of these trees is the oak?”

“No. It was torn down a long time ago. But right here, where Sage is . . . This is where it used to be. Now I just need a couple minutes.”

I want to sit with Sage and hold him, but he’s not in control of himself. If this goes well—when this goes well—there will be plenty of time to hold him. Instead I move next to Rayna, her curls whipping her face in the light wind. She’s pale in the moonlight. When she looks at Sage as he is now, who does she see?

I take her hand. “It’ll be okay,” I assure her. She doesn’t respond at all for a minute, but then she squeezes my hand, never taking her eyes off Sage and Ben.

Ben pulls five colorful geodes from his bag. He says they’re agate, fluorite, wulfenite, calcite, and malachite. Each one represents a different healing goddess: Panacea, Hygeia, Iaso, Aceso, and Aglaea. He arranges the geodes in a pentagram around Sage. Then he takes out a notebook . . . and something else. A ring. A gold ring.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“A token to appease the host body,” Ben says. “I got it from Rayna.”

Tears run down Rayna’s face. I step closer to her, my arm pressing against hers.

Sage moans, a low, deep groan.

Hold on, Sage.
I close my eyes and try to send him my strength. Just a little bit longer.

“Okay,” Ben says. “Let’s try this.”

He stands as close to Sage’s head as he can without being in the line of fire and starts reading from the notebook, chanting words I don’t understand. Is it ancient Greek? It must be. It goes on for what feels like several minutes. Then he raises his voice, holds the ring over his head, and shouts out the names of the ancient healing goddesses.

Their geodes begin to glow.

Ben grins. He walks to the blue stone—the
agate—at the head of the pentagram and touches the ring to it.

I gasp as slowly, ever so slowly, a thin blue tendril of light reaches out and stretches toward the lavender-crystalline geode. It’s beautiful, but I can’t believe it’s happening.

Ben reaches into his satchel and pulls out one more geode. It’s jet-black, with wicked spikes inside. Ben touches the ring to the black crystals, then raises them both in one hand while he chants more Greek from the notebook.

The thin blue light laces with inky blackness. The beam meets the fluorite on one side, and emerges out the other, lavender stained with black, slowly moving toward the next gem, the orange wulfenite. Lavender to orange, orange to pink, pink to green . . . The laser-light path moves faster and faster as it travels, each thin stream of colored light stained with swirling black. It’s mesmerizing . . . but it makes me uneasy. It reminds me of an oil spill. Or the colors flecking in Sage’s eyes.

I don’t like it.

I want to stop the ceremony. Now. Magda lied to us. She didn’t want to save Sage at all. She wanted to torture him, just like before.

I open my mouth to scream . . . but I catch myself before I make a sound. I’m being irrational. Sage was already being tortured; he was already being destroyed. Magda didn’t have to do anything to make that happen, and she knew it.

Right now Sage’s soul is barely hanging on, and this ceremony is the only thing standing between him and oblivion. If I second-guess it and stop it now, there’s no way he can survive long enough to try again.

I force myself to watch Sage and not the lights. He rests peacefully. He looks calm, not tortured. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing him to heal with every ounce of my being.

Out of the corner of my eye I see the beam of green and black has almost reached the head of the pentagram, completing the circuit.

Sage’s body goes rigid. He screams, then folds into the fetal position.

“SAGE!” I shriek. “Ben, what’s happening? You’re hurting him!”

But when I see Ben’s face I know. He’s smiling—a wide, soulless smile I know from other lifetimes, when Ben’s soul destroyed us again and again.

No. God, no. The Elixir is gone. The cycle is supposed to be broken. This can’t be happening.

“It’s almost over!” Ben says in a high, shrill voice. “A couple more seconds and everything will be all ov—”

He doesn’t finish. Rayna’s red hair flies behind her as she leaps into the pentagram and slams into Ben, tackling him to the ground.

RAYNA

I wish I hadn’t read his notebook.

I saw it when Ben was in the bathroom, before we went to get Clea. It had fallen out of his satchel. I didn’t plan to flip through it. I was just going to put it back.

But something told me I had to check it out.

I knew what it was. Clea had told me Ben was keeping notes on all his research, adding her own observations, using it all to try to find a way to stop the soul rejection and save Sage.

That’s not what was there at all. There were
notes, yes. And all kinds of research. But everything Ben wrote was about finding ways to get Sage’s soul out of Nico’s body, not to help Nico, but to get rid of Sage forever. The worst part was the words scrawled in huge dark pen strokes and underlined three times: “Convince Rayna Nico’s soul is in danger to get personal item!!!”

I was livid.

Right after I read that, I heard Ben coming back, so I quickly slipped the notebook back in the satchel and acted like I’d never seen it, but it was all I could think about as we went to Clea’s and drove to Boston Common.

Ben only told me the story of Nico’s soul being trapped inside his body so he could get the ring. Did Ben even realize it was true? Maybe . . . but maybe not.

And yet it
is
true. I connected with Nico’s soul in Sedona. Part of it
is
trapped in Sage’s body and deserves to be set free.

But is this ceremony the way to free him? What if it destroys Sage’s
and
Nico’s souls? Or what if I stop the ceremony, and that destroys the last chance for Nico’s soul to move on?

I don’t know anymore. I have no idea what’s the right thing to do. I feel all alone.

I look at Ben.

He’s smiling.

Smiling.

Ben might have Nico’s blood on his hands. He might even know Nico’s soul is in torment. But that’s not why he’s doing this. He’s doing it because he’s still in love with Clea, and he can’t have her as long as Sage is alive.

And me? Am I really trying to do the right thing? Or is it just too painful to see Nico’s body with someone else, when I can never have his soul?

Oh God. Sage is going to die, and he’s going to die because of me.

“You’re hurting him!” Clea screams.

That’s when I run, as fast as I can.

Ben says something, but I don’t hear it. I just run. I jump over the blue-and-black light and into the pentagram, diving for his legs. He’s not expecting it, and he tumbles to the ground. The impact knocks the black geode out of his hands, but it’s still inside the pentagram, and the final ray of light is still racing to complete the circuit. When the green/black light hits the blue agate, it will be over. Sage will be gone, and I’ll have killed him as surely as if I’d stabbed him in the heart.

“What are you doing?” Ben says. The geode is only a few feet away, and he crawls on all fours to get it. I have to stop him, fast, and I only know one way.

I stand up and kick him between the legs as hard as I can.

Ben goes down screaming, and I run to the geode and throw it out of the pentagram.

Instantly, the colored beams of light cleanse themselves of the black. They’re crystal clear now—blue, lavender, orange, pink, and green—and as the green beam of light reaches the agate to complete the pentagram, I’m surrounded by a rainbow of light.

It’s not just light, though. It has weight, and vibrates with energy. I hear voices—male, female, young, and old—and I somehow know they’re the voices of the people who lost their lives in this spot. They laugh, talk, and sing, and even though I can’t make out what they’re saying, I can feel the emotion. They’re happy.

The slightest shadow of a single face stands out in the blur of color.

“Nico.”

I can see him, that shadow of his soul that was trapped. I see him smile, the same smile I saw in
Sedona. I reach out to touch his face, but he has all the substance of a trick of the light. He smiles sadly when I pull my hand away, but I know he’s sad for me, not himself. He’s free. I shake my head and smile, because I don’t want him to feel bad. I’ll miss him, but I’ll be okay.

“One day,” I tell him.

His smile broadens, and his face moves toward mine like he’s going to kiss me. I lean in for it, but his lips don’t meet mine. As it touches my skin, the entire rainbow swirl of his face morphs into sparkles of white, then dissolves.

He’s gone.

CLEA

Everything happens so fast. Rayna’s in the pentagram tackling Ben, they struggle, then I see all the black muddiness disappear from the colored lights. A second later the pentagram outline is complete, and the entire shape is filled with beautiful rainbow colors. Rayna, Ben, and Sage are all inside. Are they okay? What’s happening?