I lost my mind. Wordlessly screaming my grief, all I could do was cry as Mother stepped out of the pentagram, and Dora’s blood filled it.
Rushing to the table, Mother picked up a small crystal orb and chanted over it—slowly moving it up and down as she circled the pentagram. “Pontem ad praeterita aperi. Pontem ad praeterita aperi. Pontem ad praeterita aperi.”
On and on again she chanted as I screamed that I’d never forgive her. That she’d done the opposite of saving our family and bringing us together. She’d broken it forever.
But I couldn’t speak and she couldn’t hear, so the divide between us grew wider than the last four years life and death kept us apart.
Within the pentagram, Dora’s blood moved strangely. Rather than pooling, it spread out along the lines of the pentagram—greedily racing for the sacrifices. As soon as her blood touched them—
“Ah!” White, blinding light rushed into my raw, leaking eyes. It shocked me so much, it took me a second to realize I could speak again.
“I’ll let you keep your voice if I can get a bit of hush out of you.” The red-eyed fucker bopped me on the nose again. “’Cause this is the part where it gets really good.”
I winced, fighting to see through the beams of light shooting up from the tips of the pentagram.
Slowly, it dimmed, and in the middle of the five-point star, hovering above my sister was a—
Mirror?I squinted, confusion rattling my overwrought mind.No, not a mirror... A window.
“Gather ye round, sisters.” A voice rang out clear as day in the hushed, stone room. “There is naught time to dally.”
Mother snapped her fingers, and the words the voice just said, wrote itself in black, wispy letters above our heads—answering the question of how she was supposed to know what they were saying.
The strange, floating window was about my height but twice as wide. Within it, I saw about a dozen women of all ethnicities, dressed in high-waisted, silk gowns with hooped skirts and tightly cinched bodices. There could’ve been more than a dozen, but they were all moving in and out of frame too much for me to notice.
I couldn’t see the ground, but I had a feeling there was something on it from the fact that more than once, a woman would pick up her skirts and make an odd movement like she was stepping over something.
Soft, sniffling cries fell from my lips as one of the women broke from the pack and took a position that put her directly in front of the window.
“Hear me, sisters, and take courage,” the woman began. She looked to be in her early forties and quite pretty, if it wasn’t for the clown paint caked on her face. Face paint as white as flour leeched her of color, and then she artificially slapped it back on with ruby red rouge on her cheeks, lips, and eyes. She finished the look off by drawing on thick, black lines where her eyebrows were supposed to be.
But as wild as it was to say, underneath all that makeup, I saw the green eyes and button nose of my mother.
“What we do here today, we do for all mankind,” she said. “For we will break the yoke of wickedness, and return this land and all within it into the loving hands of the goddess.”
“For the goddess,” they echoed. “For the goddess.”
“Bring me the girl,” my ancestor ordered.
Someone moved across the space. She called her a girl, but the sister towed a young woman who looked to be about twenty to my ancestor. We caught a glimpse of her solemn face before she was placed facing my ancestor with her back to us.
“Let us begin,” she said, then moved back—leaving the young woman in the middle as she joined hands with her sisters. “The hallow of the air, gives an aigrette light and fair—”
“Wait, hallow?” Lucifer cried, lurching forward. “Did she just say hallow?”
I was pretty sure that question wasn’t for me or Mother—especially because the latter fumbled the orb and almost dropped it when she read the wordhallowin the air. She wasn’t paying attention to Lucifer in the slightest.
“—from the hallow of the sea, steal what he has given thee,” they chanted. “For the hallow of the fire, light the pyre—burn the sire. Among the hallow of the wood, join thy shackles to his manhood.”
I might’ve reacted to the wildness of that last line, but all I could do was gaze at Dora, because someone fucking should. Someone should pay attention to my sister as she bled out on the cold floor.
“My tale is told. My orders bold. Heed me well for power untold.”
Within the mirror, the sisters began their chant anew. “The hallow of the air gives an aigrette light and fair—”
A light, orange glow poured from the window, stealing my attention. Within, the young woman in the middle of the circle was the origin of that glow. Bright, wispy, dancing orange light swirled around her, then spread—sharing its radiance with everyone in the circle.
“—for the hallow of the fire, light the pyre—burn the sire!”
