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It’s worth it.
It had to be, right?
I stepped down onto the first step, counted to three in my head, then took the second one.
The world gave way, fracturing around me, and the darkness became a solid object, cloaking me like a suffocating velvet blanket. Things were silent, and then the oblivion began to scream.
My ears popped, but the wailing continued, filling my head with words in a million languages and all the terrible, terrible things the speakers of those words had experienced. My mouth felt full of cotton, and when I tried to catch my breath, it was like inhaling wood shavings, hurting my lungs and making me cough. Only I couldn’t cough because there was no way to get enough air.
The sensation of flying through space and time made me so dizzy I had trouble staying on my feet, and when we finally got to the basement, I staggered like a drunk who had gotten up from a barstool too fast.
The floor under my feet was rough stone, strewn with bits of hay and other debris I couldn’t put a name to. The air was hot and had the distinctive smell of humidity—a ripe dampness that soaked into everything. I wiped my brow, suddenly sweating. This had nothing on the October warmth we’d left behind in the
shop above. Contrary to popular opinion, warm air does not always rise.
There’s a reason people think Hell is full of fire and brimstone. It’s because the closer you get to the center of the earth, the hotter it becomes.
I stripped off my jacket and draped it over one arm, my skin immediately becoming so wet at the crook of my elbow the sweat dripped down onto the floor. It was over a hundred degrees down here. My ponytail stuck to my nape, and rivulets of perspiration started to trace their way between my shoulders and down to the small of my back.
“We’ll be quick,” I promised Ez.
He shrugged. “You know it doesn’t matter.”
Ez pushed past me and grabbed a lit torch mounted to one wall, then ducked into a low passage, taking the light with him.
All but for a pair of glowing green eyes in a corner to my right.
I hurried after him, following the flickering orange flame that moved at a steady pace through the round, smooth, rock tunnels. Every so often I’d hear an unfamiliar chittering noise or feel something brush against my ankles. Going back wasn’t an option. Standing still wasn’t an option. I had to stay where the light was.
I caught up to Ez in a large open area, about fifty feet across and two hundred feet up. Cool blue light filtered down from some unseen source high above us, and spores of some type of fungus flitted in the dim columns. Stalagmites and stalactites grew from floor to ceiling, some uniting in thick, calcified pillars.
A steady drip, drip, drip sound announced something leaking from somewhere, but in the hot, dank space it could very well have been my own sweat pooling on the floor.
“What do you need?” He moved quickly and quietly for such a big man, but with the rock formations and low tunnel entrances, he often had to duck under things in order to fit. At five-seven I was a pretty average height, but even I needed to stoop to get into some areas.
Small parts of the spell would be easy enough to collect upstairs, things like white and yellow candles, rosemary, skullcap, and belladonna—deadly nightshade—and a few other odds and ends any witch might need.
For this spell to work, however, I needed some things that shouldn’t be bought or sold over the counter. Things a Wiccan with a few starter books and crystals from a New Age shop wouldn’t know how to use or could do serious damage with.
“I need the bean pods of a sophora toromiro and amber with the soul of a dreamer in it.” I thought about what Memere had used when she performed the spell. Ez probably knew all the components as well, but he was right not to tell me. If I didn’t know for myself, I shouldn’t be doing it. “The brain of an elephant and the eyes of an owl.” I cringed at those two, but that was one of the things about working dark magic—it had costs. The spell would take something from me as well. It wasn’t like I was making demands and not willing to pay my own price.
Yet another reason I didn’t want Detective Perry getting any ideas of this being an ongoing offer of assistance. I couldn’t just pop up at every crime scene and perform this spell. I’d be dead within a month.
Ez nodded, making his way towards another tunnel. This one I knew was where the flora was kept—my pods. The sophora toromiro was a tree specific to Easter Island and had actually gone extinct in its natural form, meaning the pods were going to be harder and harder to find. I’d never used the greenhouse-cultivated kind in spellwork before, but doubted they would be as effective.
Easter Island had its own unique kind of magic, and the plants that grew in its presence carried some of that same special gift with them.
There was something else, a final ingredient I needed from down here, and I was wracking my brain as we walked to the first aisle of the basement apothecary.
“Oh.” I snapped my fingers. “And beeswax pollinated from a Queen of the Andes flower.”
A small smile crossed his lips, and he nodded. I knew I hadn’t missed anything.
We collected the pods, seven three-inch long yellow tubes that rattled when I shook them, then we moved to the next tunnel, this one smelling sweet but slightly rotten. A tall librarian’s card catalogue was against one wall, and each drawer was labeled with the name of a different flower. These blossoms all had one thing in common: they bloomed only once a decade. Or, in the case of the Queen of the Andes, only once every hundred years. Beeswax represented a sealed moment in time, and the pollen from the Queen of the Andes specifically represented connecting to a memory from long ago.
The memory I needed to connect to only happened a day ago, but with an ingredient this potent the memory would come through as clear as if we were living in it.
Wax was often used in the aid of astral projection, and what I was attempting to do was project the memory of one person onto the minds of several.
