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I leave Agency Headquarters and hurry back to the store. I arrive to find Theo In his workshop destroying the wolfsbane elixir that he had created.
I hesitate in the doorway. “So you decided to get rid of it?” I ask him.
“I thought about keeping some,” he says. “But it’s far too powerful. In the wrong hands it could wreak havoc on the werewolf packs.”
It warms my heart that Theo had invented that elixir especially for me. I had never realized. He had needed it for the dart he had given me to protect myself from the Wolf-Claw Killer. And then I had allowed Alys to steal the elixir and misuse it. I have told Theo about Alys. There is no point hiding her from him, not when he’s the only person I know who might be able to help me get rid of her.
He had told me it would not be so simple. That if what I had told him was true, then Alys was part of me, a part of my personality that had dissociated from the rest of me, and in order to get rid of her, I would have to absorb her back into myself.
He has spent the week consulting with his wizard, witch and mage contacts, making discreet enquiries about the magic that he needs to use. It is an untested area that he is unfamiliar with. He had been reluctant to share too much of the details with others in case it put me in danger.
This all means the spell we are about to try is completely unknown. New magic of his own invention with partially blind advice from others thrown in.
I have been wracked with nerves all week, and looking over to the pentagram that is carved into the stone floor in the corner of Theo’s workshop only makes it worse. Candles and strongly scented herbs are scattered all around it already. Sigils marked in white chalk have been drawn in two concentric circles around it. Beastie is already lying beside it, as if standing guard.
“Are you ready?” Theo asks me.
I nod. Nothing for it now except to take a leap of faith.
I take a deep breath. Trying not to think about what I am doing, I walk over to the pentagram. If I think about it I might run. I step carefully over the concentric circles of chalk sigils and take a seat in the center of the five-pointed star. I try to sit still and not fidget and not bite my lip. The last thing I want is for Theo to catch my nerves.
“It might be better if you lie down,” Theo suggests.
I shake my head. I feel better sitting up. The thought of lying down makes me feel even more vulnerable.
Little Mozz comes in and sits solemnly beside Beastie. Theo strikes a match and sets the candles alight. Next he sets fire to the herbs in their braziers. A strongly scented choking smoke rises from them.
I only notice the gap in the circles of the sigils when Theo crouches down to begin filling them in with a stick of chalk. He takes his time to carefully draw each one perfectly. When he fills in the final sigil the flames of the candles gutter as if blown by a strong wind and go out. Theo says an ominous sounding word and they relight, but this time their light is dim and unnatural.
In it, Theo’s face is full of shadows and his expression grim. It frightens me. I close my eyes. I hear him take a seat opposite me, outside the pentagram. I know that I am inside it in case the untested magic releases anything dangerous into our world. That is what Theo had told me, but I also know that really he is worried about the magic releasing something dangerous from inside me. I have told him about the Angel of Death. I have told him that Alys has told me that we are the Angel of Death. I had said it lightly, as if it was a joke, but I know that it had jarred Theo.
He’d said it was no laughing matter, as if waiting for me to take it back.
I said I wasn’t laughing.
He had asked me a string of questions that I had been unable to answer. I have as many questions as him on that topic. He had promised to me that whatever happens, he and I would deal with it together. And for some reason I know that I can trust Theo. That he is truly my friend. At least it feels that way, and I hope that I am right.
Stop brooding, whispers Alys inside my head. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we know where we stand.
I had been surprised she had agreed to this, and it had worried me that she had almost been eager. I suppose she has felt constrained and chained up inside me all these years. She wants to be whole again as much as I do, but something about this fact has been nagging me. Is she not scared that it will be me who emerges stronger? It has to be me who will be in charge when all of this is over. It has to be me. I have always been in charge.
Theo had started chanting words in the magical language under his breath so quietly at first that I had almost not noticed. His voice grows louder now and more confident.
It is Theo’s voice, oh so familiar to me, and yet the unknown language makes him sound like a stranger. I’m scared that if I open my eyes that Theo will have turned into a stranger. Like how a child is too scared to climb out of bed for fear the boogie man is under it. This fear becomes so strong that my eyelids tremble with the effort that I’m using to keep them scrunched shut. And soon my body is trembling along with my eyelids.
The burning herbs are choking me. I try to muffle my coughs, worried the sound will interfere with the magic. The flickering light of the candles is weaving and dodging behind my closed eyelids, making my head spin. My navelstone is aching deeply and the sensation is making me feel sick. A feeling is building inside me. A feeling that I can’t explain. It’s like a pressure. It is like a bubble growing larger and larger, but it is trapped inside my skin, inside my head, and it has nowhere to go. And yet it is growing. It is growing.
Theo’s voice grows louder and louder, until I feel like it is deafening. But it can’t be deafening. Not unless the magic is making it deafening.
And the bubble grows. It grows so large that I can’t breathe. It grows so large that I can feel the pressure of it pounding inside my skull, fighting for a way to get out. My ears are ringing. I am suffocating. I am suffocating. My abdomen has seized up from the pain now radiating from my navelstone. It hurts so bad. But I dare not open my mouth. I dare not because then I will scream and scream. And I’m scared that my screams will make Theo know the pain that I am in. That he might stop. Or maybe I am scared that he won’t stop. That he will carry on. That he will give me no mercy.
And the bubble grows, and the pressure and pain grows and it grows, and then it breaks wide open. And my mind splits into a thousand pieces, and my body flies apart into the substance of the universe, and I am nothing. And I am everything. And then I am whole again. I am me again.
I can feel my body. I am flat on the ground. The back of my head hurts where it had crashed against the stone when I fell over. AngelBeastie is yowling, demanding my attention.
But her yowls are distant. So far away. They are nothing compared to what is happening inside me. There is a rushing and jostling and sizzling in my blood. I am shaking. Not from fear, not from pain, not from the fragility of my body, because I am no longer fragile. I am whole. I am full of infinite possibilities. I am all of me. Finally I am all of me.
I open my eyes and the room is lit with light again. It is bright. The dark is gone. I sit up carefully. Theo is crouching just outside of the pentagram, his body stiff and wary as he stares at me with concern.
