“Amelia. . . .”
Annie Domingo. Was she going through this now, right this minute? Had Peterson got her, too? Maybe there was still time. . . .
That’s right. We must fight so we can save Annie. There’s a spell. You hardly have to move, even.
“Or I could cut. Just a little. Then this all goes away.” A piece off the tip of his finger. He wouldn’t even miss it, and there’d be enough meat in that one bite, a bit of fat and enough blood to suck on to satisfy the monster—
Cormac! She had to shout at him.
He shook his head to clear his mind. He wasn’t thinking straight, he knew he wasn’t. He should throw the knife away, like Weber and Bellamy had. Or finally use it to cut, maybe a strip off the curved muscle of his forearm. . . .
No. Those two men had been stronger, to refuse that voice.
I daren’t ask you for a drop of blood, you’re liable to slice a whole limb off, the state you’re in.
“Blood sacrifice. That’s what you said, what all this is—someone needs sacrifices, that’s why Weber died, why Bellamy died—”
Yes. And if there is a sacrifice, there is someone performing the sacrifice. Someone who wants something.
“I’ve never been this weak.” He was lightheaded. His energy had fled, and his body was throbbing. It wasn’t pain so much as. . .need.
I know you haven’t. But so much of your strength is in your mind, my dear, we simply have to use it. Ignore the rest. Can you do that?
It was like he had Mary Poppins in his head urging him on. How could he say no? “Yes.”
I’ll help. Let me in, let me have your body so I can—
“No—you take over, you’ll be stuck too. We’ve done this enough, you can tell me what to do. But you need to stay safe.”
As long as you’re like this I am not safe.
“Amelia. Please. You don’t want to feel what I’m feeling. Just tell me what to do.”
How was it he imagined her taking a deep breath? Brushing her hands and rolling back her shoulders like she was about to push a boulder up a hill? She had no body. But she was as real and solid as if she stood next to him. He could almost feel her holding his hands, gazing into his eyes.
Show me what’s in your pockets.
The action seemed to take a very long time, far longer than it would have under normal circumstances. Every inch of movement seemed to require a renewed force of will. Move hand to jacket pocket. Put hand in pocket. Rest. Grab items, which amounted to simply closing his hand and keeping hold of what he could. Drop hand to his side, letting items spill. Repeat until he had everything out. Then on to the next pocket. No wonder the other victims hadn’t called for help.
Amelia was thinking faster than he was—her mind wasn’t clouded. She surveyed the pockets’ contents as he laid them out, recognizing them even in the near dark. His phone—drained and dead, of course. A bent nail. Matches. A couple of chunks of quartz. Black string, red string. A pillbox filled with dried clover. Paperclips. Feathers.
Black string, she said. Wrap it around your right forefinger. I’ll say the spell.
He focused on her words, but they were in another language, Latin maybe, so instead he let the sound of her voice flow through him and concentrated on the string, clasping it with his thumb and clumsily twisting his hand until the string looped around a couple of times. He didn’t have the energy for more, but when he finished, so did the words, and he could feel power rise up, a magical energy that hadn’t existed before, created by her words and securing him like a brace.
He took a deep breath—he was able to take a deep breath. He didn’t feel particularly
stronger, but life had stopped draining from him. The spell was an anchor. Whatever happened next, his life would hold here for a little while. She’d bought some time.
Next, we draw out the killer.
This would be a summoning, she explained. Not traditional demonic summoning like in the stories. Rather, this would be like a fire alarm, a strobe light—a disruption, to force the target to look over. Shake the spiderweb to see what came out of hiding.
Cormac didn’t much like that metaphor. He was already caught—what was he supposed to do, when the spider approached?
Smash it, Amelia declared.
“I hope this works,” he murmured.