My father insisted that we brew the elixir at midnight on a full moon. We were in my kitchen. It was around 10 p.m. and we still had two hours to kill before we could start cooking up the stuff that would, I hoped, free Willow and trap Hecate.
“A little theatrical, don’t you think?”
“It will maximize the strength of the potion,” Doc replied. He sighed. “There is so much I need to teach you.”
“Kind of late for that, don’t you think?” I slammed down the pot I’d been holding.
I’d invited Rebecca to join us, but she’d declined the invitation with a smirk. “No daddy/daughter bonding time for me, thanks,” she’d muttered.
“Do you think you’ll be able to find Hecate’s physical form?” Doc asked. He seemed oblivious to my simmering resentment.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” I replied. “Hecate, at least her body, can’t leave the underworld.” The goddess had found a way around her imprisonment by possessing Willow, but her form was stuck.
“The underworld is a very big place,” Doc said. “And you said you’d already searched Hecate’s castle.”
“I’ll find the body,” I said. “I have to.”
I was well into my fourth or fifth beer when there was a thump in the hallway outside my apartment.
I drew my athame and looked out. At first, I didn’t see anything. I heard a sound again and stepped out into the hallway. There was a body lying near the stairwell. Something about the dark hair and thin frame looked familiar.
I rolled her over. It was Rebecca.
Her nose was bloody and swollen and her arm hung at an odd angle at her side, probably broken, but she was alive.
“Met your ex tonight,” Rebecca said, right before she collapsed.
Doc carried her to the couch and set her down gently. The bone of her right arm poked through her skin. There was dried blood on her face, her jeans, even in her hair.
“We should set her arm before she wakes up,” Doc said calmly. “Find me some newspaper or a small board, and an old T-shirt if you have one.”
“We?” The thought horrified me. When he stared at me, I collected myself. “Last week’s newspaper is still on the kitchen counter.” I rounded up a ratty tee and handed it to him. Doc brought out some adhesive tape from the depths of his ratty trench coat and scooped up the newspaper.
“You’ll need to hold her steady,” he said. “It won’t take long.”
“Okay.” I watched as Doc fashioned a makeshift splint.
It was turning out to be a hell of a family reunion. Other than a whimper when Doc first started setting her arm, Rebecca didn’t stir.
A few minutes later, he said, “You can let her go now.”
“How is she?”
“Got any alcohol?” Doc asked.
I snorted. “That’s how well you know me,” I replied. “I always have booze.”
“Unless you’ve drunk it all,” he said.
I guess he did know me, after all. I handed him a bottle of vodka, thinking he was going to sterilize the bandages or something, but instead, he took a swig.
Rebecca stirred. “Steady, now,” Doc said. “You’ve been injured.”
“Where am I?”
“Nyx’s apartment,” Doc replied.
She tried to sit up and winced. “I remember now.”
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“A couple of demons jumped me,” she said.
“Was Hecate there?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“You said something about my ex, and since she’s currently possessing Willow, I thought…”
Rebecca shook her head. “You thought wrong. I was talking about the redhead. Naomi’s sister.”
“Wren jumped you?”
Rebecca grinned weakly. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “She looks like an angel, doesn’t she?” She touched her nose gently. “But I gave as good as I got.”
“Your arm is broken,” Doc told her. “You should rest.”
“We need to warn the others,” I said. I grabbed my cell and dialed Naomi’s number. When she picked up, I explained what happened.
“I’m coming over,” she said.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I replied. “It’s not safe.”
“I’m right next door, at Talbot’s,” she said. “I’ll call Claire and the aunties and then I’ll be right over.”
I started to say something, but she hung up on me.
Talbot and Naomi entered the apartment hand in hand, which was one bright note in an otherwise dismal evening.
Doc was glancing at the clock. I checked it, too. It was just after eleven—still plenty of time to make the elixir.
I filled Talbot in while Naomi checked on her cousin. She wet a kitchen towel and used it to clean the dried blood from Rebecca’s face.
“Everyone has to be very careful,” I said. “Wren is dangerous.”
Naomi overheard me.
“Wren won’t hurt me,” Naomi said. “Despite everything, she’s my sister.”
“It’s the rest of us I’m worried about,” I said. I slammed my beer down. “You still think Wren is going to come back and say sorry? That’s not going to happen.”
“So what’s the story?” Rebecca said. “Exactly how many of your exes want to kill you?”
“All of them,” Talbot quipped.
“Only Wren,” I clarified. “And she actually did kill me.”
“I need to go home,” Rebecca said. “Gotta feed my cat.”
“You don’t have a cat,” Naomi said. “What did you give her?” she asked Doc.
“A mild sedative,” he replied. “She shouldn’t be moved.”
“She’s out of it anyway,” Naomi said. “And it’s safer for her here.”
A soft snoring came from the couch.
My sister looked smaller, gentler when she slept. “Probably all the drugs Doc gave her,” I muttered. I grabbed a spare blanket from the closet and covered her up.
I’d wring Wren’s neck the next time I saw her.
“It’s time, Nyx,” Doc said reluctantly.
“Time for what?” Naomi asked curiously.
“Cooking lesson,” I said. “While Doc and I do that, why don’t you two go through the books on that shelf and see if you can find anything to kill a shitload of demons in one fell swoop.”
Doc was already in the kitchen.
I got out a beat-up old stockpot I’d found at Eternity Road. “Will this work?”
“I’d prefer to do this without witnesses,” he said in a low voice.
I shrugged. “Rebecca’s sound asleep and Talbot and Naomi are trying to find a spell.”
He frowned, but started to get out the ingredients.
“Hecate knows you’re alive,” I said. “Won’t she come after you?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said.
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” I said. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?” We had to do something. I would deal with Wren, too, when the time came.
“You don’t have a choice,” Doc said. “Hecate needs to be contained either way.”
“What if the elixir doesn’t work?”
He looked grave. “You know Willow better than I do. Would she want to suffer, knowing Hecate is controlling her body? Knowing others are suffering?”
“No,” I said. “She’d want me to end it.”
“Then that is what you must do,” he replied. “One way or the other.”
I turned my attention back to the elixir. “How does it work?”
“The spell forms a giant magical spiderweb,” he explained. “Or a net. It’ll trap Hecate, but free Willow.”
“You’re sure it will do the job?” I asked.
“Yes. It takes a lot of magic to possess a mortal,” he explained. “Once Hecate enters the trap, it will drain her powers and Willow will be able to break free.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because it worked on me,” he said.
“Someone drained you of your powers?”
“It won’t happen again,” he said. I believed him. “We’re going to trap her.”
“How do you know she’ll show up?”
“Because her body will be the bait.”
“Hecate knows we might try to take her body,” I said. “She doesn’t seem to care. She won’t let go of Willow.”
“You just haven’t given her the right incentive.”
My father’s plan was to find Hecate’s physical body and steal it. She’d be so pissed that she’d either give up her hold on Willow’s body to get her own back or she’d come looking for us.
“And how do you expect me to find Hecate’s body?” I asked. “I’m sure she didn’t leave it lying around unprotected.”
“But you found a chimera guarding the underworld,” he pointed out. “My guess is the body is there.”
“Seems reasonable that she’d leave her body where she felt safe,” I acknowledged. “Or because she hasn’t figured out how to use the bead yet. But that’s the first place I looked.”
“If she could leave the underworld on her own, she would,” Doc said. “It’s there somewhere.”
“Anywhere else you can think of?” I asked. “The cave where Wren was born was empty, too.”
He shook his head. “She probably has some nasty booby trap waiting for anyone dumb enough to touch her body,” he warned.
“Or maybe she wants us to take the body out of the underworld,” I said. “Maybe it’s a trick.”
“It could be,” he admitted. “But it seems to be your only chance. Otherwise, she’ll just keep sending demons until one of them manages to take you out.”
“According to the Fates, Hecate already has everything she needs to end her banishment in the underworld.”
“The Fates have been wrong before,” he said.
“So now that you’ve met Rebecca, what do you think?”
“I always knew about Rebecca,” he said.
“That’s a comfort,” I said. In a strange way it was. He’d abandoned her, too. No wonder Deci had hated my father. I hated him, too, sometimes. When I wasn’t feeling sorry for him.
“Nyx, this must be difficult for you, finding out you had a sister,” he said. “I wanted to tell you, but…”
Difficult?
“Try disappointing, infuriating, amazing,” I said. “And you kept it from me.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied.
“Let’s just make the elixir and get this over with,” I snapped.
He gave me a long look. “Where’s the vodka?” he asked.
I grabbed the bottle off the antique tea cart that served as a makeshift bar.
Doc took it from me and then poured a healthy amount into two glasses. He handed me one and then tilted his in my direction. “Cheers.”
He poured the rest of the vodka into the stockpot he’d brought with him and then sprinkled the black asphodel in.
“That’s it?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “May I borrow your athame?”
I handed it to him and he made a tiny cut along the thumb of his left hand. He held it over the pot and blood dripped onto the flowers. He turned on the burner. “It has to cook on low for exactly one hour.”
The air turned noxious, but my father continued to stir the elixir, seemingly impervious to the smell.
“The second Hecate tries to take possession of her own form, the elixir will start to work,” he said. “Now all we need is the bait.”
“What’s the one thing that will bring Hecate to our doorstep?” Talbot asked.
That was my cue. Time to go snatch a body.