Another Crack

** contains witchcraft involving a little blood **

Kye only looks at peace when he sleeps. He seems younger when those off-hue amber eyes are closed, when his hair sweeps over his forehead and over his eyelids, when his tired body can finally get some rest.

We at last convinced him to sleep on the bed instead of balled up in the corner. I sit in a chair beside him, not wanting to spook him. He still gets nervous around us, but he seems to trust us by now. Then again, under the compulsion spell, he may not have a choice.

Curled up with a blanket and casting obsessive glances over at Kye, I flip through some spellbooks Aiden and Crystal gave me. We’ve been pouring over the ancient texts – uselessly – trying to find a remedy for Kye, one that will let us take him off the compulsion charm but also get the monster invading his body out of him. So far, every spell or potion we’ve found has been too weak for our purposes. I’m nearing the end of the book I’m currently reading as well, with no progress to show for it.

With a sigh, I’m about to switch to a new tome when something catches my eye on the last few pages. The book closes out with a chapter on restoration spells, but it seems to end too early – a couple last pages look blank when they shouldn’t be; ancient alchemists weren’t ones to waste paper.

“Hey,” Crystal says, her and Aiden coming into the room quietly. “We’re here to take over the night shift. Did you get him to sleep?”

“Yes, finally.”

Aiden sets down the tray of food he was carrying. “This is for you,” he says, handing me a wrapped sandwich. “The rest is for Kye when he wakes up.” He notices the spellbook open in my lap. “Find anything useful?”

“Actually, I’m not sure,” I turn the book around to them. “These last few pages, they seem like there should be something written on them.”

Crystal peers over and shakes her head. “There is, but it’s redacted. A lot of old spellbooks are redacted when the rituals call for the dark arts.”

“Is there a way to make them un-redacted?” I ask and the two of them whip their gazes over to me.

“There’s a reason they were redacted in the first place, Rose,” Aiden says. “Ancient alchemists wanted to keep those spells out of the wrong hands.”

“But we are not the wrong hands,” I point out. “We’re the good hands. It’s not like we’re going to try to summon demons or anything sinister. We want to help someone – that can’t be dark.”

“Rose, those spells are no joke,” Crystal says, her eyes wide. “They literally are used to summon demons, to open the Gates of Hell, to cast a demon into a body.”

“Then that might be exactly what we need. According to the chapter title, these should be restoration spells so if you cast a demon into someone, shouldn’t there also be a spell to cast them out? You know, like if someone changes their minds? There might be something useful here, guys. We at least should see it.”

Aiden and Crystal exchanges grim glances.

“What you’re asking, Rose, is illegal,” he says quietly. “It goes against all the rules of magic. Hell, against the rules of nature.”

“And how is Kye being invaded by this monster or kept under a compulsion indefinitely following the rules? Huh, Aiden? Didn’t you say compulsion is something you’re not allowed to use either?”

He frowns. “It’s frowned upon.”

“See?”

“But, it is not explicitly forbidden.”

“Frowned upon, explicitly forbidden: who cares? Kye has followed the rules all his life, so I am willing to break them for him.”

They silently exchange the same grim look and my heart cracks.

“You guys,” I plead them. “Please. I need to get him back. You would do it for each other if you were in this position, wouldn’t you?”

They intertwine their hands without even looking. Aiden bows his head with a nod, blowing out a sigh as Crystal says, “Yes, we would,” and I know they are forbidden words for them to admit.

She takes the book from me and sits down on the floor as Aiden searches through their bag of magical items. She gestures for me to sit to her left and Aiden drops to her right, the three of us forming a triangle.

The mood immediately darkens, and I tell myself that we’re not truly engaging in the dark arts; we’re doing this with pure intentions. I don’t know if that helps.

Crystal strikes a match and lights a black candle. Aiden places a glass bowl of burning sage in the middle of our triangle and arranges four gemstones at the corners of the book, handing a sharp fifth one to Crystal.

“You sure you’ll do this?” he asks. Aiden is seriousness incarnate but I’ve never seen him this somber before.

She nods. “I need you ready in case something goes wrong.”

I swallow hard, never once before hearing them hesitate.

Crystal takes a deep breath and slices the sharp stone through her palm, a trickle of blood welling up. I gasp, but Aiden holds me back, though I’m sure it hurts him too.

“Dark arts require the users to give a part of themselves through a blood promise. The blood is what makes it different from regular magic.”

Regular. He meant safe.

Crystal murmurs a chant and places her bloody palm on the blank page. The paper soaks it up, as if accepting the promise. A breeze that is both cold and hot whirls around us, rustling the pages. Aiden glances over at a sleeping Kye.

“I really hope this doesn’t wake him. The last thing we need is him waking up to us doing devilcraft.”

My heart stutters, but then the wind settles down, blowing out the candle in the process. Crystal sits back on her heels, swaying unsteadily.

“Babe, you okay?” Aiden asks, immediately by her side.

“Yeah. Yeah, whoa. That was, intense. Did it work?”

My gaze drops down to the open book. There are words now visible on the previously blank page. A rush of hope – or dread – sweeps through me as I say breathlessly, “It did.”

Despite their reservations, Crystal and Aiden crowd around me to look themselves.

“Whoa,” she gasps. “This is serious stuff; there’s actually a resurrection spell in here. That’s like the most taboo thing ever; nobody messes with the dead.”

I fight the chill running down my spine. “Keep looking. There’s got to be something about casting out demons.”

We scan the pages in horror and awe until Aiden eventually pauses, “There. Restoration from demonic occupancy.”

“Kye’s body isn’t a damn hotel,” I grit between my teeth.

“There’s one for mortals and one for alchemists,” he directs us to the second one. Crystal reads out loud.

“ ‘Due to the magic present in alchemists’ lifeblood, expelling a demon from within the body of an alchemist is a greater challenge than from a mortal’s. The demon feeds on the magic of the host, and thus, its hold is stronger due to the nourishment it receives from the blood of its host.’ ”

“God,” I shudder, glancing at Kye. “How do we get it out of him?”

“I’m getting there,” Crystal says. “ ‘Casting out a demon from an alchemist’s body requires a three-step procedure. It will require multiple people as one cannot perform sequential steps in the ritual. Person 1 must gather the ingredients; Person 2 must enchant the potion; Person 1 or 3 must deflect the infected host’s magic back. It is important that users’ energies do not overlap between steps. All handling of the potion and its ingredients must be kept pure.

Step one: create the cleansing potion. Step two: enchant the potion. Ingredients: ½ cup of holy water, 1 vial of molten silver, 2 tablespoons of willow bark ash, 6 peppercorns,’ – okay random – ‘2 ounces of effervescent dissolving salts, 1 piece of obsidian, 1 lock of the infected host’s hair, and’ – holy-” she breaks off with a colorful swear.

“What is it?” Aiden and I instantly look over her shoulder.

He sees it first. “Oh, hell no.”

“That would be an appropriate reaction,” Crystal says warily as I finally catch up to them.

6 drops of the infected host’s blood.

“You do not mess around with spells involving blood,” Aiden says.

My stomach churns violently and I swallow hard. “What’s step three?”

“Rose.” Oh, Aiden’s voice has that I’m-not-screwing-around edge that usually ends all arguments but I did not get this far to back out now.

“What. Is. Step. Three?”

Aiden’s gaze hardens and I think a part of him hates me in that moment but I don’t care.

Crystal clears her throat, paraphrasing. “Step three involves dipping the spear of a crystal wand into the mixture. We would need to trigger Kye’s magic and at the moment the magic leaves his body, we need to draw blood with the spear. A simple cut like the one I made to unlock the pages will suffice. The tricky thing is that we need to reflect his magic back at him. The combination of the released infected blood and the returning clean magic will cast out the demon and restore Kye.”

“How can we trigger his magic if he’s under the compulsion spell?” I ask.

“We take the necklace off,” she says. “We would need to get the timing exactly right, and I mean down to the nanosecond. Enough time for Kye to fire off his magic but not enough time for the monster inside to wake up. And enough time for us to reflect his magic back at him.”

“Is it possible?” I start to stand up when Aiden grasps my arm.

“You’re operating on the assumption we’re actually doing this. Rose, this spell is beyond dangerous. Did you even read the warning at the bottom?”

Please note that making a mistake in the potion or not reflecting the host’s magic in time results in dire consequences. The potion not properly used is a lethal toxin to the host. This ritual should only be done in the most tightly controlled environment. Blood products must be handled with the utmost care. Please proceed with extreme caution.

I actually cannot breathe. I want to save Kye but this spell could kill him.

But I trust Crystal and Aiden to get it right. I trust Kye to be strong enough to handle it. And I trust myself to get him back.

I remember to take a deep breath at the last second before I pass out. “Can we do this?” I ask.

Aiden immediately starts to protest but I stop him.

“I mean physically? Is it physically possible that we pull this off?”

Aiden swears and Crystal hesitates but both eventually nod.

I glance at Aiden. “Now I mean can we do this? And before you say no, tell me if you would do it for Crystal if it were her.”

He lets out a long breath. “That’s emotional blackmail, Rose, and you know it.”

“I do know it. You also know what Kye means to me.”

He shifts his gaze to Kye, jaw set like stone. “The dark arts leave a mark on the soul, Rose. They leave a trace, and if anyone discovered that trace on us, we would be stripped of all our powers and forced into a servitude compulsion spell ourselves in the High Alchemists’ Court. It’s a huge risk to us, Rose, not to even mention to Kye if something goes wrong.”

I hang my head down expecting him to refuse, and we can’t do this without him.

“Now I’m telling you all that so you know I’m not taking it lightly when I say, of course we’ll help you.”

I must have misheard him. My eyes snap up and he nods. I nearly tackle him to the ground with my hug. “Oh my God, thank you, Aiden. Thank you both.”

“Rose,” he pauses. “I know you don’t have any magic, but I don’t want you to go off the deep end here. There is still risk to you. We will get Kye back, but you need to make sure you are still here when he returns. This stuff, this will haunt you.”

“He doesn’t recognize me, Aiden. He doesn’t even recognize his own name. That already haunts me.”

“This will be nothing like that. The compulsion charm? Yeah, it’s unpleasant, it’s frowned upon, but it is safe. This? Even the best intentions could get twisted. And since we can’t overlap steps and only Crystal and I have the magic needed to do parts two and three, you’re going to need to do the dirty work and get the ingredients: his hair- ”

“Well, I’ve been telling him he needs a haircut,” I try to laugh it off.

Aiden does not laugh – though Aiden rarely laughs. “His blood.”

Yep, that sobers me up.

“You asked us if we can handle it. But Rose, can you handle it?”

I’m going to need to cut Kye. I’ll need to draw his blood. Just marring that beautiful body with a little papercut is enough to make me want to throw up.

But then I think of what the monster has put him through, how many injuries he sustained under its control. A papercut seems a trivial price to pay.

I take a deep breath and nod. “I can do this.”

Crystal and Aiden exchange another trademark grim look. “Let’s do this.”

Late at night, when the two of them go off to consult some of their other spellbooks, I’m alone with Kye. He’s out like a light, still asleep from earlier this evening. He didn’t even notice the snip of the scissors when I plucked off a lock of his dark brown hair. It still felt wrong, and though it seems ridiculous, that one uneven strand glaringly stands out against the rest of his thick hair.

The next part is even harder.

With a deep breath, I remind myself that Crystal and Aiden are risking everything to do this ritual with me – for me – so I better pull myself together and do my part, even though it kills me a little – more than a little.

I hold the sharp point of the scissors against his palm, ready to make a small cut, though my hands tremble wildly and my gut clenches. Sleeping so sweetly, I don’t want to startle him; he’s already afraid of everything, this would completely freak him out – understandably. Crystal told me to use the compulsion charm to my advantage.

“Kye,” I whisper right over his ear, feeling sick to my stomach that I’m exploiting his vulnerability like this. “Kye, you’re going to be in a little pain for a second. But stay asleep. Do not wake up. In the morning, you’re going to think you scratched yourself on the bedframe. You will not feel or remember this.”

His breathing remains steady and mine goes erratic as I puncture his skin with the blade and it feels as if I were cutting into myself. It feels dirty and vile, like things that should stay in the shadows or locked behind the Gates of Hell.

A thin line of blood slides down Kye’s palm and I catch it in a sterile vial. Quickly, I press a napkin to his hand to stop the bleeding, taking a lingering moment to soak in the feel of his hand around mine again. To feel his touch without him springing far away from me.

Figuring he’s out cold from the compulsion, I press a gentle kiss to his temple. “I love you.”

For him, I will break the rules. I will break this spell. I only hope it won’t break my heart in the meantime.

But what the hell is another crack in something already shattered?