“You can’t bring her back,” it says suddenly. Its voice ricochets against the grimy subway walls. A guttural boom. “Because she’s still alive, albeit in a stranger form than before. I can, however, propose a covenant.” From its jeans pocket, the doppelganger removes a yellowed scroll, opens it, then hands it to me. “I’ll grant you permission to cast any spell you need — but only one.”
I slump forward, pressing my hands against the floor for support. Thank Christ. Electra will be okay after all. Righting myself, I take the scroll from its hands and bite into my index finger. Ignoring the pinch, I sign my name on the scroll in blood.
Magic shakes its head. The scroll bubbles and becomes water. “Oh, if only you had read this contract first.” It sounds nearly regretful, but that cannot be correct. The twin shrugs and turns, looking back over its shoulder only once. “Delphi, I shall see you soon.”
I open my eyes, just in time for the Rose Mother to pull me from the plants by the back of my neck and lay me down on the grassy floor. As she sits down and straddles me, I look for the patch of flowers Electra was turned into. I need to make this work. I only have one shot.
I run through the various spells I’ve managed to retain in my head over the years and only land on one that may work. No, not may. It has to work. It’s an old one Copper-Eye taught me one afternoon when we were outside in the garden after a thunderstorm had rolled through the city. She told me to pick a stone from the ground and asked me to imagine it was something else. I decided on an Action Man. She had me chant a Latin sentence over and over. Eventually, the stone morphed into a green plastic soldier in my hand. Not exactly what I’d wished for, but it was something. It had taken a half hour for the transformation to take place, and by the end of it I had a bloody nose and a splitting headache.
I don’t have half an hour for the spell to work now, but a bleeding nose and headache I can deal with later.
Something warm pit-patters onto my head and rolls down the side of my face. I look up to see the Rose Mother drooling, her grin wide and maniacal. I suck in air through my teeth as the pain ramps up from boiling point to molten lava.
“My seeds are working their way through your system,” the Rose Mother says, crouching down and rubbing her face against mine.
I force myself to ignore her. I focus on Electra’s flowers.
“They are no doubt providing you with a little discomfort now, but once osmosis is complete, you’ll feel light as air.”
The Rose Mother’s breath is hot and rancid against my cheek. I keep the image of Electra alive in my head. I do not take my eyes off her flowers.
“Can you feel it, Delphi?” The Rose Mother chortles. Her hips grind against mine – moist leather skin meeting denim. “The two of us connecting?” Her tongue journeys down my face and navigates its way into the side of my mouth.
I think back to the day Electra and I first met. The excitement. The awakening. The lust.
“Absorbing one another?”
The night Electra and I made love in the Three Blind Mice. I love you. I love you. I love you.
“Permeating our membranes?”
I do not look away from her flowers. Not even when I feel as though I’m about to split in two. Not now when the air is charged with an energy far more powerful than anything I’ve felt in a long time.
“Becoming one?”
The hair on my arms rise and I lift my hand to point at Electra’s flowers. The Rose Mother shuts her mouth. The air around us stills.
“Expergisci et florebit quasi lilium!”
Wake up, and bloom.
Chapter Eleven
Wither
Fingers – filthy and cadaverous – claw at my face and enter my mouth. Gagging, I tear my eyes from Electra’s flowers to the Rose Mother on top of me.
“Your focus will remain on me,” she hisses.
I try fighting against her fingers as they dig into my cheeks and deeper into my mouth. Warm nausea roils in my gut and threatens to explode.
The spell didn’t work. The spell didn’t work. It didn’t fucking work!
Sliding the hand I used to cast the Fong Kong spell between the Rose Mother’s thigh and my