The Lingering Grace (28 page)

“Alice, I’m not the one in danger here: you are. I think we should be worried about you.”

“That’s not a promise,” she said. She was beginning to wish her boyfriend were a little dumber. It was hard when he was this smart to get a straight answer when he wanted to evade the truth.

“Well, will you promise me that you’ll be careful? That you won’t go off alone in the dark or something like that?”

“I promise not to go out in the dark alone.”

She wouldn’t go out
alone
.

“Then I promise not to do anything dangerous.”

Although this offered far less comfort than she thought it would, Alice grudgingly said, “thanks.” Maybe it was just because she had found a way to twist her promise—but she automatically assumed he would do the same. It was projection. She only thought he wasn’t being trustworthy simply because she herself wasn’t being trustworthy.

This logical explanation was no comfort.

“Well, I’d better go help Eva with her history homework.” Alice was suddenly desperate to get off the phone and away from this conversation. Better to worry privately than try to wring more information out of Tony when the answers she had gotten made her feel even worse.

“Yeah, I’d better get back to homework too.”

“Bye then.”

“Bye.”

She hung up the phone and set it on the counter, still chewing on her nails.

“Bye,” she whispered.

Love you
, she thought, and immediately her anxiety spiraled to an even higher pitch.

What if she never got a chance to tell him that? What if she never spoke to him again? What if she found herself holding his limp body, whispering those words to someone who would never hear them—who would never hear at all …

She jumped to her feet and sprinted up the stairs, afraid that if she didn’t get up and go do something, she would never get up at all. She would just sit on a stool in the dark, biting her nails, imagining approaching horrors until finally one of them caught up to her.

By the time the sun set, Alice was already exhausted. Her eyelids drooped as she listened to Eva lecture about yet another important detail (they had to sprinkle the grave with exactly a teaspoon of rosewater three times—once for the calling spell, once for the fire, once for the binding).

Alice was actually shocked they’d managed to assemble the spell so quickly. There were so many details to consider when bringing someone back to life, so many steps. The body had to be reanimated, the soul found and called back, the soul bound to the body, the original injury healed. It was deep magic, and even reading silently, the power of the words drummed inside her like a giant fist pounding on a wooden door, begging to be released.

Eva was the genius of the operation. She had a knack for spotting the useful bits in other spells and for isolating the relevant portions. Alice was sure this skill came at least partly from Eva’s greater experience with magic, but she wondered if there was something more to it. Magic made sense to Eva intuitively; it was in her blood. The longer they worked, the less Eva tried to explain what she was doing. Alice was more than happy to let her take over, tired as she was. Besides, she could hardly follow Eva’s explanations, much less keep up with her spell crafting.

The detail about the rosewater must have been particularly important because Eva harped on about it for at least five minutes. Alice nodded and tried to act like she knew what was going on, but she must not have been very good at faking because Eva grew increasingly frustrated the longer she went on. Finally, shaking her head at Alice’s blank stare, Eva waved her hands and said, “Just don’t make any sudden movements or knock anything over and it should be fine.”

“I can do that,” Alice said.

“But you
will
have to recite with me once I start the incantation. How about I give you a cue, like this.” Eva held up three fingers and mouthed a countdown.

“Three, two, one, yes,” Alice sighed. “I get it. I’ll watch for that.”

Alice expected her parents to be home before they left but was more relieved than concerned when they didn’t show up. She was sure one of the doctor’s appointments had just run especially late, and she was grateful not to have to lie about where she and Eva were going. Her mom would have bought just about any old story, but her dad had a tendency to get suspicious when Alice put a foot outside the house after eight thirty. It would be far easier to explain her late-night absence after the fact than to have to justify it beforehand.

Eva seemed to know where she was going, and Alice didn’t ask many questions. The whole ride seemed like something out of a nightmare, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that none of this was actually happening. Her thoughts had the foggy thickness she associated with dreaming.

She held a shoebox on her lap; Eva had carefully packed everything they would need inside—with the exception of the shovel bouncing around in the trunk. Alice felt like a chef on the strangest cooking show ever, with all her ingredients measured out, prepped, and ready to go. The rosewater was in three glass vials they had stolen from Jeremy’s old science kit. There was a little plastic container full of dried rosemary and another with a few tablespoons of thyme. They had pulled the bones out of a rotisserie chicken, and a few of the smaller ones were piled in a plastic bag. A small brown egg was tucked neatly in the corner, wrapped in a tissue.

Pressed against the side of the box was a long, thin knife. It was from the set Alice’s mom had inherited from her mother—the pure silver set they never actually used because every time her mom reached for them, her hands trembled and she pulled away.

“Silver’s so hard to clean,” she would always say. Then she would blow her nose, excuse herself, and disappear for a few hours.

Running her finger down the sharp blade, Alice remembered what her mother had said after her grandma died: “One day, I’ll pass these on to you.” She pulled her hand away, swallowing hard over the lump in her throat.

They hit a speed bump hard and Alice was thrown forward, then back. As her head hit the headrest, she suddenly remembered what had been buried all day by more immediate concerns.

“Eva, you never told me what the exchange was.”

The car leaped forward as Eva pressed down hard on the gas.

“Oh, right … I forgot.
No
.”

She winced, and Alice knew what had happened. Eva had lied and the binding spell would have none of it. She had not forgotten.

“You didn’t forget.”

Eva didn’t answer.

Alice, realizing that there was no more time to delay, asked the question so chilling that she hadn’t even dared voice it to herself.

“I hope you’re not going to try to … ” she gulped. She didn’t know any way to say this that wouldn’t sound horrible. “Eva, I don’t know what you’re planning to offer in exchange for your sister, but I can’t … I
can’t
let you sacrifice yourself.”

The words fell from her mouth, stiff and blocky, and Alice’s stomach sank. It was like asking a friend if she was suicidal. There was no easy way to do it and even after you’d said the words, you had the feeling you had broken something—that some unspoken boundary had been crossed.

Eva didn’t react in any perceivable way. Chilly stillness radiated from her side of the car.

“Don’t you realize how that sounds?” Eva demanded.

“Of course I do, but I have to ask—”

“I don’t want to die, Alice! Okay? I don’t want to die, so don’t ask me that!”

Alice mostly associated anger with heat, but Eva’s fury poked and pricked with icy jabs. Guilt soaked Alice like a sheet of rain, washing the question out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to say that you were—”

“Just forget it,” Eva snapped.

Alice looked out the window, wishing to be anywhere but in this car. That’s when she saw the park and the graveyard across the street. The marble gates, the thin, young pines, the long wooden benches she and her cousins had sat on, side by side, in total silence.

“No, this … this can’t be right,” she gasped.

“This is where Penny is,” Eva said, a sharp edge to her voice. She glanced at her and frowned. “Alice, you
did
realize we were going to have to go to a graveyard, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. Her lungs were burning, but every time she took a breath, air escaped her as though someone had perforated her lungs. “But I didn’t realize that Penny was
here
.”

“Calm down.”

But the fear shooting through Alice—so sharply Eva surely must feel it too—roared louder and would not be quieted. She could feel the blood pulsing in her fingers and she tightened her hands around the box, forcing the cardboard corners to cut even deeper into her hands. Eva parked on the street and turned to Alice, her lips pale and thin.

“What is
wrong
?” Eva asked, sounding more annoyed than concerned.

“My aunt is buried here,” Alice murmured, staring past Eva’s head at the rows of tombstones.

“I’m sorry,” said Eva. She folded her hands in her lap, then put them by her sides, then on her knees. “We should get going,” she said. Her foot tapped quickly against the car floor.

But Alice couldn’t will herself to move—not even to unlock the door.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

Eva grabbed the box from her lap. “Alice, please. I’m sorry about your aunt, but this isn’t the time to back out.”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“Don’t understand?” Her eyes narrowed.

Alice blinked several times and looked down at her palms. They were covered in dark imprints from the edge of the box. She balled them into fists, thinking hard, barely breathing. The only thing she could even think to do at this point was tell the truth, but she spoke heavily, fully aware that Eva wasn’t likely to abandon her plan for any reason.

“When we tried the spell to see the future, I did see something about Tony and me—but it was here. It was in the graveyard,” said Alice. She explained what she had seen as quickly as possible, noting Eva’s deepening frown. But when she finished, Eva just huffed and shook her head.

“That wasn’t a
vision
. You just passed out and your brain made up some weird nightmare.”

“But how can you know—”

“I can’t
know
!” she cried, raising her voice. “But magic does funny things to people’s brains and it certainly messed with yours. Just because you saw something doesn’t mean you saw the
future
. It doesn’t mean anything! We were both there, Alice—you know as well as I do that the incantation broke.”

Red spots broke out on Eva’s cheeks. She was breathing hard as she ran a hand through her listless, unwashed hair. Her eyes shone brilliant in the darkness, as though lit from within.

“You can’t betray me now,” Eva hissed.

Alice looked at her friend’s fierce expression and shrunk back. Her shoulders hunched; her whole body seemed to collapse in on itself. At the mention of betrayal, her breath caught and her chest became so tight she could hardly breathe. As she grew dizzier, the will to fight Eva slipped away. The change was too sudden, and Alice dimly wondered if this was what it felt like to be magically compelled. Had Eva invoked the bond between them? But this was hardly betrayal … or was it?

“You gave me your word,” said Eva, her voice growing softer still. “And I’ll hold you to it.”

Alice’s throat clenched. Unable to speak, she simply nodded. Immediately she could breathe again. Her whole body loosened; her vision cleared.

Eva relaxed as well. “Good. Then let’s get moving.”

She opened her door and Alice reached out to do the same. As she stepped out onto the concrete, her head swam. Dread filled her from head to toe as the vision flashed before her eyes again and again. But as soon as she thought of turning and running away, her lungs compressed again, as though a giant, invisible hand were squeezing her. She started to walk toward the graveyard after Eva, and the pressure disappeared.

Realizing that she wasn’t going to get out of this, Alice grabbed her phone from her pocket and called Tony’s home. She didn’t care if she sounded paranoid; she needed to know where he was. Shivers ran down her arms and her teeth chattered though she wasn’t cold. She silently prayed to the gods, the universe—every higher power she could think of—that Eva was right and the vision was nothing more than a dream.

And that Tony would survive the night.

And that she would survive the night.

“Hello?” Nora’s warm voice could have come from an entirely different universe, it was so distant.

“Hi, it’s Alice.”

Eva turned around and mouthed at Alice to get off the phone, but Alice ignored her.

“Alice?” Nora paused, then said in a worried tone, “You sound … Are you okay?”

“Is Tony home?” she asked through numb lips.

“He was just in his room last I checked. Do you need help? Where are you?”

Alice exhaled, the tension in her shoulders easing some. Tony was home, then. Knowing this, though it was hardly a guarantee of safety, was a comfort indeed.