Maybe I can save him if I cook.
I ran my hands through my hair. This was crazy. When Morales arrested Bane, he’d make the asshole give up a cure for Danny.
“Don’t be naive,” the voice whispered.
Bane had pulled Danny into his plans because he knew it would handicap me. For some reason, he wanted me in pain. He’d gladly do a longer sentence for not offering up the antipotion if he knew I’d be suffering outside the cell.
So what was the alternative? Sit around, wringing my hands and hoping that my principles would keep me company after Danny died?
Principles were nice in concept. But in practice, they were real sons of bitches.
I set down my beer and followed my gut to the place where I knew I’d find what I needed. Down the stairs. Past the Mount Doom of laundry and into Danny’s room. His scent—a combination of funky gym socks and the cologne I’d given him last Christmas—lingered in the air. I ignored the painful scent memories and soldiered on. Pushing aside an avalanche of clothes, sports equipment, and other tools of the American teenaged boy, I finally reached the door at the back of the closet.
I’m not sure why the previous owners had built the hidden space. I assumed it was for added storage since the original construction had no attic and they’d converted the basement into a bedroom. It was more of a small closet set behind another closet, but we called it “the attic” anyway. Probably they’d used it as a convenient space for old clothes and photos and precious memorabilia. But me? I used it as a dumping ground, a hiding space—a cemetery?—for all of the skeletons I didn’t want to see anymore but couldn’t bear to destroy from my old life.
The instant I wedged open the door, the musty scents of dried herbs and essential oils gone rancid hit my nose like a punch. The fist to my gut wasn’t caused by the scents so much as the realization that part of me was eager to go digging through those boxes.
“Jesus, Kate,” I said out loud. “Get a grip.”
Cardboard boxes were shoved in haphazard piles along the walls. I groped for the string I knew was hanging from the ceiling and pulled. The single, bare lightbulb exploded with light too close to my eyes. Tracers and dust motes danced in my vision for a moment, playing tricks on my mind. I imagined I saw Uncle Abe’s smirking, too-knowing face in the corner. I blinked and rubbed my lids to clear away the specters.
This room was where Danny had gone to find the potion manual and the old pictures of our mother. Evidence of his snooping was everywhere—from the torn lids on a few boxes to a sticky puddle of soda and the footprints he left in the dust.
“At least I don’t have to worry about him turning into a criminal mastermind,” I muttered to myself. The sarcasm felt forced and overly optimistic given the fact that at that moment my brother needed the help of machines and tubes to breathe, eat, and piss.
I swallowed the bile that rose at that thought and moved forward with a determination borne from denial. Going through those old boxes suddenly felt a lot less scary than contemplating the idea that my brother might never wake up from his nightmares.
The first box was a loser. Nothing but some old clothes. The acid-washed denim jacket I’d worn my entire fifteenth year after Volos told me I looked cool in it. Next came some old CDs from bands no kids today had ever heard of. Hell, they’d barely even heard of CDs.
The second box revealed I was getting warmer. Some old beakers and a few tools of the potion trade. But the third box presented the mother lode: a heavy marble mortar and pestle, an empty olive-wood saltcellar, and a ceremonial athame. I ran my thumb over the edge of the blade, which was dull and curled over as if it had simply lost the will to hold its edge. Mama had given it to me for my twelfth birthday. At the time I thought it was the most precious thing in the entire world. The jeweled handle and shiny metal made it seem like a rare treasure. But looking now with adult eyes and the tarnish of maturity, I realized it was little more than cheap brass and aluminum, now browned and pitted from time. And as for the “precious jewels,” they were little more than paste gems glued into the handle.
My fingers rubbed dust from my nose and brought with them the sour stink of the brass on skin. Much like the future Uncle Abe had promised me, the athame had proven little more than a glittering illusion. In reality the promises of power and happiness were worth less than that cheap brass knife.
I jerked myself out of those memories and threw the knife back in the box. A quick wipe of my hands on my jeans didn’t dispel the scent, but it made me feel a little better. That was another benefit of being older: I realized my emotional connection wasn’t to the cheap metal or the paste jewels, but to the woman who’d given the knife to me. Funny how I’d used it every day as a girl, but now it might as well have been an alien artifact.
I grabbed the box and stacked the other on top. The cubbyhole wasn’t large enough for any potion work. I stopped and considered my options. Doing magic in our home seemed sacrilegious somehow—not to mention dangerous. That left one option: the old garage-turned-storage shed out back.
I headed that way, hefting the two boxes with me. After I’d dumped them outside the door, I went back in to grab a few more supplies: candles, matches, and a couple more beers because it was never a good idea to do dirty magic sober—blocked the flow of energy.
Naturally, I was aware that all my prep work was its own form of procrastination. Truth was, it wasn’t the early autumn chill that made my hands shake. But once I had everything hauled to the dusty, old shed, I couldn’t put it off any longer. I pried open the double doors and was immediately assaulted by the scents of gasoline from the old lawn mower and fertilizer I’d bought for the flowers I’d never gotten around to planting.
I dragged in the boxes and set to work, clearing space on the old workbench. The small lantern from Danny’s fifth-grade campout went on the shelf. The meager light wasn’t much to brag about, but once I lit a few candles visibility would improve.
Next came the bag of ceremonial tools. Lots of wizards these days scoff at the old ways. They see the ceremonial traditions as little more than superstitious mumbo jumbo. I wasn’t sure I disagreed, but the routines had always helped to relax me and get me into the right frame of mind for cooking up a potion. I wasn’t sure they did much to help the magic work, but they sure made me feel better. Or they had—back when I did magic regularly.
After I made sure the doors were shut, I went back and prepared the initiating rituals. First, I lit four candles—one for each direction on the compass. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. My lungs hitched as if they were congested. I cleared my throat and tried again. This time the air flowed more smoothly into my lungs until my ribs expanded. On the exhale, I tried to release all my stress. I blew for a long time. Felt as though I could have exhaled for a year and I’d still have tension to spare.