Page 58 of Florescentia

He’d been trying to invoke the Otherside while his mind was clear.

“I need you to focus.” I pulled him forward, and he leaned over, still gripping my hands like I was his last prayer. “What did you do?”

His lip trembled, and one hand touched my face, tracing along the patterns like he always used to. A finger over my eyebrow, along my cheek and lip. “My star”—his words as delicate as his current state—“forgive me” was all he said.

Then his face relaxed again, his brows creasing slightly.

“Father?” I waited, as if there was more to say. I knew there had to be more.

“I’m going to be late for work,” he said slowly, looking back out the window. “I didn’t polish my shoes.” He sounded distressed now.

“I’ll do them, take a minute to relax,” I assured him. There was no point arguing when he became confused. “I can get you coffee.” I gathered the small dustpan, sweeping up the chipped cup with unsteady hands.

He was summoning something. It didn’t seem like his ritual had worked, even if it had stirred the Peculiars in his home. What would drive him in such a panicked state to try summoning something?

Then, as I leaned down to sweep chips from under his chair, something caught my eye.

Carved into the underside of his chair was an eye. An arrow crossed through it, head pointed inward.

He’d tried to catch something.

The house was quiet again, and the light fell from natural to candlelit. His last fit of brain congestion was bothering me more than usual. The more I thought about it, the less it made sense.

To open a door and summon something, you needed a peculiar, or water, as his journal described. Neither of which he’d been using when he’d attempted summoning from his chair. I could’ve written it off as an outburst of lunacy, not understanding how to do rituals any longer, but something in the back of my brain told me that wasn’t it.

My mother’s footsteps were soft on the stair runner as she returned to the bottom floor.

“Is he well?” I rubbed my temple. “I didn’t know what to do.”

She waved her hand, dismissing my worry. “He has been having a hard time lately. His fits have become more frequent.”

“I thought he was doing better?”

“He was . . . for a while.” She rubbed her palms, sitting adjacent to me at the parlor table. Her body physically sank into the plush chair. “What is that?”

I glanced down at the tattered book in my hand, my father’s attempts at incantation within. “He threw it at me.”

“I swear, it’s the books these days,” she scoffed, her eyes heavy. “They’re making people paranoid. All these stories, the debauchery they publish nowadays.”

“Depends on the story.”

“He used to read those things all the time. The old books with their archaic rituals. I believe they were warnings, not instructions.” She chewed at her nail, though the smile on her face looked almost wistful, nostalgic. Her eyes far off. “He was infatuated with them, so passionate. But one must not take comfort in fictional things—they jade you for the world we live in.”

“Did Father ever”—I paused, not knowing how to ask—“believe that the constellations were real?”

“They’re in the sky, we can see them,” she laughed. “Of course they are real.”

I shook my head, scooting to the edge of my seat. “No, like how they appear in the Everie. The creatures that serve as their patrons.”

“He did. We all do to some degree. Though it wasn’t something to speak about, unless you wanted to attract attention from entities we had no business in. We didn’t even speak their names unless in ceremony.”

“Which one was he most fond of?”

“You never took such interest in Astrium before.”

“A knowledge-based curiosity,” I assured her.

“Altair,” she finally said. “Bright, powerful, and even during the darkest time of the year, a glimmer of hope. I suppose that is what drew him; he’s a sickly hopeful. The will of that man was stronger than any I’ve ever known.”