Though if that happens, Ruth will get exactly what she wants.
Blinking, I look up at the grandfather clock and watch the seconds tick by. They turn into minutes, one slowly adding onto another. Fifteen have gone by and the halls are still silent. How long does an exorcism take? Is the demon holding on because it wants me? If I have to make another deal, I will.
Though I don’t think I could get out of that one. If I agree to go to the underworld with the demon, he’ll expect me to deliver and won’t stop until I do.
Suddenly, the office doors fly open. Kristy runs in, panting and out of breath. She has blood splattered on her face, and her eyes are wide with fear. I shoot up.
“Evander? Is he okay?”
She shakes her head. “The exorcism…it’s…it’s not working.”
Chapter 3
“What do you mean it’s not working?”
She lets out a breath. “Nothing we do is weakening the demon.”
Fear creeps up my spine at an alarming rate and I feel like I might pass out. I sink back onto the settee and close my eyes. It has to work. Evander has to be okay. I open my eyes and look back at the clock again. He’s been possessed for a few hours now, putting him at risk for aftereffects of possession.
“I’m coming with you,” I tell Kristy.
She nods and strides forward but stops. “Tabatha sent me for you. I came to undo the hexes but you—”
“Binx did it.”
“How did you call Binx while you were under hexes—never mind. Let’s go.” She grabs my hand and we run down the hall. Tabatha’s office is at the opposite side of the Covenstead, away from the school and closer to the gathering hall. I had graduated from the Academy by the time she became our High Priestess and have only been in her office a few times.
The strong smell of sage hits me as soon as we dash up the staircase that takes us to Tabatha’s office. And things aren’t silent anymore.
Evander screams in protest, and a collective of voices chant out a banishing spell. It’s a powerful spell, said by strong witches. If that’s not enough to weaken the demon…nope. I can’t go there.
Kristy and I slow, taking a few seconds to catch our breaths. I have no idea what I can bring to the team that they don’t already have, but I have to have faith Evander will be okay.
I flick my eyes up to the ceiling. “Help us, please.”
“Are you praying?”
I slowly shake my head. “I don’t know. He might not even be able to hear me.”
“Who, God?”
“No…he’s not God. The blue-eyed man. I don’t know his name or even what he is.”
“Explain later.” She goes to open the door and stops. “It’s not pretty in here, Cal. Are you ready?”
I swallow hard. “Yes.”
She pushes her shoulders back and opens the door. Magic sizzles at my fingertips as I walk into the office behind Kristy. Things aren’t playing out like they would be in a movie. Evander isn’t tied to a bed, with black eyes and boils all over his face. He’s not screaming at us in Latin or vomiting green puke all over the place.
He’s bound to a chair and tears streak down his face. His body looks worn and tired and his expression is sad. Lost.
Desperate.
Is he in there, begging for a break? Or is the demon trying to trick us?
“Callie,” the demon says through Evander’s voice. “How nice of you to join us.”
“Get out of him,” I snarl. “Go back to hell.”
Tabatha stands in front of him, with a council member on each side. Ruby and Ruth stand behind him. Ruth holds a spell book and Ruby has two sage smudge sticks. A ring of salt has been poured around the chair Evander is tied in, with white candles around the perimeter.
Kristy gives my hand a squeeze before letting go. She picks up a spell book and fills in the circle. I stand next to her, looking down at the banishing spell. The spell alone could send the demon back to Hell, but first we have to sever the ties it has on Evander, and to my knowledge, no witch has ever been able to do that.
We need a priest, and priests aren’t exactly willing to work with witches. Many are still convinced we are evil and working with the Devil. Even if we did find one who would agree to perform the Rite, it would cost us precious time waiting for him to arrive.
Evander doesn’t have that much time.
Now that I’m close, I can see him fighting to get the demon out, and that will wear him down fast. His eyes are bloodshot, and his cheeks flushed. I bet his skin is hot to touch too, and it wouldn’t be long before a dangerously high fever were to break out, putting his whole body at risk to start shutting down.
Tabatha looks around the circle and nods. We all start chanting again while she picks up a metal bowl of herbs from a table behind us. She whispers a different incantation, invoking the powers of the herbs.
“Auferte malum elementa invocabo,” I say, reading the spell from the book. “Dimittie eam mitte erranti est ultra modum.”
The herbs ignite and dark blue smoke rises from the bowl. Tabatha hurries over and wafts the smoke around Evander. His eyes darken and he smiles, sneering at us.
“Hic non receperint vos malum spiritus,” I keep reading. “Hinc ablegare invoco elementum purus. Sed vade et proficiscere et non relinquit vestigium!”
Evander’s body goes rigid and I feel magic swirling around my fingers of my right hand. I ball my fingers into a fist. Now’s not the time to be taken over by my emotions. I need to hold it together and focus on sending this demon to hell. I suck in a breath, watching Evander writhe with pain as he fights against the demon.
There’s nothing cinematic about this. It’s so far from how exorcisms are depicted in film it leaves me most unsettled. Evander is before us, hurting and in pain. There is a demon inside of him, one that’s quiet and smart and planning its next move so it can stay inside of my friend, so it can slowly kill him from the inside out.
For me.
Or…because of me, I suppose. I can hear Lucas’s voice echoing in my head, telling me I can’t blame myself for this. I’m not the one who forced a demon inside Evander’s body. I’m not the one who summoned the demon from the pits of hell and let him run loose in Thorne Hill…only, I did.
Not directly, I know. And playing the martyr doesn’t solve shit. Wallowing in guilt and shame will only set me back, but the reason the demon got out of hell was because another, more powerful demon was on a death mission.
Stop it, I tell myself. This is exactly the type of negativity a demon would want me to fall into. I take a breath and look into the demon’s eyes.
“Auferte malum elementa invocabo. Dimittie eam mitte erranti est ultra modum.”
Evander’s head flops back and he lets out a yell. Yanking against the restraints, he jerks his head forward and back over and over, until Tabatha drops the bowl.
“Stop!” she cries. “He can’t…his body can’t…he needs to take a break.” With tears running down her face, she goes up to her only son and places her hand on his head. “Somnum,” she whispers, and the sleeping spell takes effect immediately. Evander’s body slumps forward, head hanging against his chest.
I can feel Ruth’s eyes on me, but she’s not stupid. She knows how dire the stakes are right now, and shifting her attention away from Evander will make her look heartless in the eyes of the coven. I know she’s heartless, but the rest don’t.
She needs them to hold her in high regard. Because once I have proof that she forced me to perform a Satanic ritual, her own days are numbers.
“What do we do now?” Ruby asks, voice thin. She pushes her dark braids over her shoulder and pulls her robes closer around her body.
“Contact a priest,” one of the council members suggests. “We don’t have the power to compel a demon back to hell.”
But I do.
His voice is like a whisper of wind on the back of my neck. I whirl around, eyes wide. No one is behind me, yet I know that’s where the voice came fr
om. Where he came from.
The blue-eyed man.
“Help us,” I whisper. Kristy turns, having heard me, and narrows her eyes in question. I shake my head ever so slightly and look back at Evander. “Please, help us.”