“Do not be childish, Salomé,” he chided me. “Do you forget the work of Death?”
He held out the jar, and my stomach squirmed to even think oftouching it. I could see the pale eyelashes and the curled body, and I did not want to think of how it had been acquired.
But he was right—recently I had forgotten who he truly was. He had become safe to me, my protector, my teacher.
I lifted my hands and grasped the jar tightly, fighting my revulsion.
“You have drawn the shapes. Here are the items you will use for the spell.” He swept his hand across a collection of jars and pots. “Quicksilver, galena, stone salt, aqua vitae, and that pig—whose body you will use as the vessel.”
I nodded jerkily, and he continued. “Next you will draw your sigils. I will leave it up to you to determine the ones you think will best call an old god such as this. I would encourage you to think of the language and words that might speak to him. Include inscriptions for each of your ingredients. Once you have completed that, you will place the items on their inscriptions and the pig in the center. Then you must use your power to activate them together and call his name. Then …” He trailed off and sat in my chair, as if to watch.
“Then?”
“He may answer,” Death said lightly. “Or he may not. You are trying to command his obedience, so remember your power.”
I could not imagine commanding any being, let alone an old god. But with Death I had already seen and done so many things I had never once imagined; I had reached a point of faith in him that was so strong, it swallowed my doubts and drowned my instincts.
I set the vessel with the pig down and looked at the shapes I’d drawn on the desk.
My earlier mistakes with the wine spell had taught me that the language would determine the outcome. It wasn’t the individual words and how they were strung together, but the rhythm and cadence of translation, of meaning. Picking up the chalk, I wrote the Latin words for each of the ingredients, four cardinal points, and then in the center the word forpig.
I’d learned that I felt most comfortable in Latin for spells, partiallybecause I associated it with holy terror already. But Latin would not be enough here. Not French or German either, because what would an old god know of French? But I did not know the language he would recognize as his own. I felt instinctively that to call forth a creature such as this, I would need both—a language of spell I could cast and a language of spell the god might hear.
Death did not rush me. He sat watching, as if he read my tumbling thoughts and observed the way I twisted apart the puzzle. I stood before the desk with the chalk motionless in my hand for some time. Nothing felt right. At a certain point, I walked over to my desk and looked for the transcriptions I had done with the occult alphabet. Death did not move out of my way, only let me bend over him and riffle through my work. Though he did not touch me, I felt the pull of his presence and the way he closed the atmosphere in tight. Pulling out the sheets I needed, I took them back to his desk, his gaze heavy on me.
I began copying the sigils, but even these—the look and feel of them—were wrong. I ended up rubbing the chalk off with a frustrated dash of my hand.
“Do you need assistance?” Death asked mildly.
I was determined to feel my way through it, but I thought of his books and papers and narrowed my eyes. “You said an inscription on a votive had his name. What language was the inscription?”
His mouth curled into a hint of a smile, and he stood. “It is a Celtiberian script. I will get you what you need.” He left the room and returned moments later with a heavy book. Where had he even gotten it from in this rambling château? But I laid it on his podium opposite the desk and began carefully leafing through the thin vellum pages. This script immediately felt right, and I quickly filled in the words of the spell.
That time had now come. I set down the chalk and pushed back the sleeves of my dark tunic and coat. Drawing my breath tight into the bottom of my stomach, I reached into the jar of thick liquid and drew out the curled pig. I did not let myself think or feel. My attention wasfocused solely on the shape of the spell and the objects that would build on it. Placing the pig in the center of the shapes, I stepped back and began in earnest.
It is hard to describe how a spell feels. There’s no clear indication it’s working or not working until one has got to the end. I could just begin to sense the rise of power in my throat and the sink of it in my stomach. The soaring middle was the abyss opening in me as answer. But it was so subtle and still so foreign; I stood there driving up a sweat as I used the words of the ingredients, repeating them in Latin but also in my own French, calling the old god by name, trying to flood it all out of me while also hearing Perchta’s caution deep in the back of my mind to hold my own borders.
I don’t know how long I stood over that spell, waiting to be told it had worked by some sign or indication—or Death putting me out of my misery and telling me I had failed. I felt as if it must be working—my arms grew tired, my back was on fire, and sweat dripped down my temple and gathered at the back of my neck. But everything sat, inert and empty.
Finally, Death stood. I took this as a sign I had failed.
“I don’t know where I went wrong,” I said, hoping he would guide me.
“Sometimes you do nothing wrong,” he said, gathering up the objects I’d placed. His sleeve swept along the chalk, erasing it. “Perhaps you need more powerful vessels to call upon powerful gods. A pig was not enough. A child or young woman would work better.”
He said it so casually, that I was unsure how to take it. My entire soul recoiled from such an idea, one so repulsive that I could not even imagine it and could not believe I had heard correctly. “Is that how …” But I did not want to accuse him of something so horrifying. And yet he was Death. Maybe there was some justification for it?
Thankfully, he did not make me guess. “No, Salomé,” he said with a chuckle, replacing the items of the spell in his cupboard. “I do not have any children or virgins to spare. But I’m curious, what would you have done if I did?”
I did not know how to answer such a question. I handed him thejar of quicksilver, shaking my head. “I don’t … I think I would want to understand.”
“What if I usedyou? You who are brimming with power. I don’t need you to do the spell, I could simply use you as a fuel, like that pig. What would you have thought of that?”
“I would think that I sound like bait.”
He laughed—a genuine, human-sounding laugh—and closed the cupboard door and carefully locked it with the small, twisted key. “Do not fear. I have no intention of using you for such purposes. I have no need of such workings. But do not be fooled, many sorcerers find they must. Great power calls for great sacrifice.”
“I have sacrificed too much already,” I said, thinking of Rochelle and Valerie and Dacia.
