“Not really,” Lucas said. “But Eli is powerful.”
“Did it work?” Claudia reached for the book and I handed it across the table to her. Lucas leaned over her shoulder to read.
“It doesn’t say. She goes into a little more detail about the candles and wording for the spell, but that’s the last entry.” Which made me worry that maybe it didn’t work. But if the dark days they were talking about was an apocalypse, then it hadn’t happened.
I glanced at Adrian to see what he thought, but he just shrugged. “Sounds like confirmation of your plan. Blood and ancestors’ ashes aren’t hard to come by. At least for us. But the fey? I mean—can the fey even die?”
“Course they can,” Lucas said. “They like us to believe it’s impossible. Makes them seem more powerful.” He muttered the last, eyes never wandering from the pages Claudia was reading.
“The note here in the margin?” Claudia pointed to the page.
“Yeah. I didn’t read those, what’s it say?”
“It’s in Luciana’s handwriting. She was thinking of forming a bond with a werewolf and a fey, but getting Astaroth to solidify it. She wanted to modify this part here—take away the sharing of power and keep it for herself.”
“At least she was consistent.”
“I know.” Claudia shook her head. “I think that’s why she agreed to have Cosette stay with us. She had to have known—”
Chris’ phone vibrated and he shot up from the table. “Be back,” he said as he walked quickly out of the room.
As I watched the door swing shut, I reached through my bond to Dastien. What do you think?
I don’t know. I only know the basics that they teach here. You’re way ahead of me magic-wise.
I’m no expert, and you’ve been around this stuff your whole life.
You know more than you think.
No. I’m faking it and trying hard not to screw up. I wish I had it more together. That I knew for sure what the answer was, and—
“I think this is it,” Claudia said. “With a few tweaks. Unless Cosette has another idea when she gets here. It’s almost too easy.”
“The spell didn’t seem easy to me. The ingredients alone are going to be tough to track down.”
“Not that. I mean—that Luciana had it. That you took the book. It’s too easy.”
“I know, but we don’t have a ton of time. Maybe it’s divine intervention.”
Claudia and Lucas shared a look, and then Claudia nodded. “Okay. I’ll call it divine intervention, because this spell is too perfect not to try.”
“We need ashes of our ancestors. It sounds like you need direct ones, at least a few generations removed, from each person involved. Do we have that?” Worst case, I knew we could dig up some of the bodies from the compound and burn them.
“We have werewolf ashes. Some of the ancients, which tie to all of us. What about witch?”
Claudia shook her head, but Adrian started digging through the box. “I saw something…” he said as glass jars clanked together. “Here.” He passed it to Claudia.
Her brows scrunched as she read the label. “This is our great, great grandmother’s ashes. Luciana must’ve dug her up and…” She placed the jar on the table with a thunk. “I hate that she did that.”
I didn’t want to upset her, but we were using them. “Are they tainted by anything that Luciana did?”
She yanked the rubber band off of her braid. Her fingers trembled as she quickly rebraided it. “I don’t know,” she said, finally. “I just don’t like it.”
“We can use all of our blood,” Adrian said. “That’s not a problem. Lepidium meyenii is maca root. We should have that. Ground celestite should also be stocked in our labs, but I don’t know about the rest. You said you took some stuff from Luciana’s room?”
“I don’t want to use anything she use
d. Even in preparing it, she could have tainted it with her dark magic,” Claudia said.