Page 62 of Our Crooked Hearts
I tasted acid and apple. This was where the summoning would make its hairpin turn into banishment. If Marion could pull it off.
Her eyes were vacant with effort, her shoulders slumped beneath the heat. She signaled to us and we sliced our palms, dropping to our knees to press them to the floor. I felt compacted grit loosening beneath my blood.
Marion laughed. A sound so high and wild I felt it shuddering through all three of us, connected by an invisible net of blood magic. And weknew.Right then we knew Marion was going to betray us.
She spoke Astrid’s full name, her voice filling like a wineglass with rich red satisfaction. She took a deep breath.
And she made a terrible mistake.
Dipping her hand into a hidden pocket, Marion pulled outsomething that pooled brightly over her fingers, glinting in the moonlight like one of the devil’s golden hairs. Below the glass, Astrid stopped smiling.
I craned to make out what Marion held, pinching my needle tight. She worked her fingers like a cat’s cradle, the thing unfolding between them into a veil fine as fog.
Sharon charged the circle, but this time its borders held.
“Don’t do it,” she cried desperately. “Marion,no!”
Marion paid her no mind. Holding the drifting veil above the manhole of mirror, she began to speak.
“I charge you, Astrid Washington, to do my bidding. To serve me. I charge you to bind yourself to me. To be my helpmeet and my—my familiar.”
Fee gasped. Sharon cursed with such ferocity she was making a spell of it, the words spilling out in a cool blue mist. Even Marion stumbled over what she’d asked for. A mediocre witch standing in a table salt circle, her hopeless plan revealed: not a banishment, but abinding.
Marion dropped the veil. I blinked and saw how she meant it to go. This delicate piece of fey magic, god knew where she’d gotten it and what currency she’d paid, would fall over the silver-blonde crown of Astrid’s head. It would fix itself to her, sticky as cobwebs, and bind her.
That wasn’t how it went.
Almost before the veil left Marion’s fingers, Astrid was raising her own to meet it. Its translucent weave clung to her skin, glowing as it made contact. And ifIwere Astrid, I would’ve done exactly what she did next. Which was this:
You summon me to do your bidding?
We couldn’t hear her, but her lips moved so crisply there was no question what was being said.
You summonmeto serveyou? To bind myself to your worthlessness and be your helpmeet? Would a lion put her head down to be bound by a mouse? Would the lightning bow to the lightning bug?
The whole time she spoke, she was smiling. It was worse that way.
You would have me be,she said, “your familiar?”
The last two words we heard. We heard them because in one smooth motion Astrid hefted herself through the glass, crouching on its edge with her toes still dipped into mirror world. The room became sosmallwith her inside it, so vivid with the scent of witching.
“Stupid girl.” Her voice was a crow-feather scratch, hoarse and glimmering. “I and my book have been your only teachers. You have no magic you didn’t take from me.”
Marion was shaking. “I—I charge you—” she began, and with a languid hand Astrid flung the binding veil.
It stuck to Marion like cling wrap, visible for an instant then drawn into her skin. She pulsed the color of yellow gold before it was absorbed completely. The room’s odor of blood and sweat bent beneath the stench of big magic, well water and bitters and clove. Marion reeled against the circle’s edge but couldn’t cross it. It was a prison that held them both.
Fee was at my shoulder reciting her Hail Marys in three languages. Sharon paced the edges of the salt, looking for a weakness. Seeing themtryingshocked me into motion, into remembering something I’d nearly forgotten: we weren’t entirely helpless.
I grabbed Fee, pressed my mouth right up to her ear. “We still have a piece of her power,” I said frantically. “If we can just get Marion out of the circle…”
Fee’s eyes widened. Some idea had struck her. “Broken,” she said. She turned to face me, putting a hand to my heart—to the place just over my heart, where my necklace charm hung. “All broken things wish to be whole again.”
She began to chant.
Draw tight the power of three
Add blood to a loving cup
