“And what of me, Father?” Abigail asked, her voice small as she held her hands up to her face, as if praying. “What will be my punishment? Will I be joining the Ice Queen?” She lowered her voice. “And Mother?”
Lucifer stared at his daughter, then laughed. His laughter filled the hall, echoing off the walls. He wiped at his eyes when he was done, before clapping his daughter on the back. “You, my dear, have so much more potential than I ever would have guessed.”
Abigail shifted, gazing up at him with a question in her eyes.
Lucifer stared down at her fondly. “I’m proud of you, you diabolical little Hell spawn of mine.”
She smiled, showing off her sharp teeth once more. “I only ever wanted to make you proud.”
“Okay, no need to lay it on too thick, you wicked little thing.” But he patted her shoulder affectionately, nonetheless.
“I’d say that’s our cue,” Freya whispered. “Let’s go put your boy back together, shall we?”
I smiled down at the soul I held in my hands. “Yes. Let’s do that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Beads of sweatwere rolling down Lexi’s forehead as I knelt before Auggie’s still body. I held his soul in my hands and hesitated before settling it onto Auggie’s chest, watching the slight rise and fall as the soul sat there, unbothered.
“Go in,” I told it. “Now.”
The butterfly stayed there, as if considering me.
Freya’s shirt rustled as she settled beside me, looking at the butterfly. “Perhaps it’s been too long?”
“He’s being stubborn,” Therese said.
Lexi smiled tightly. “You need to combine them, Callum. A spell tore the two halves from one another. Now a spell must bring them back together, to mend what was broken.”
I frowned. “But I don’t know of any spell to return a soul to a human body.” My hand went for my mother’s potion book. “My mother never recorded a potion that could do any such thing. My father didn’t either.”
“No, they probably didn’t.” Lexi conceded. “They likely never encountered a situation like that. But they encountered many things for the first time and created potions to remedy them.”
“But … I don’tcreatepotions. I just follow the instructions. My parents … they were the ones who knew what to do, how to cure ails and—and put things to right again. I’m not capable of that.”
“I highly doubt that,” Freya said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You are one of the most capable people I know.”
“Only because of them, of what they taught me.”
Lexi sighed. “Callum, you problem-solveall the time.You might be using your parents’ recipes, but you assess the situations you find yourself in and decide which potions to use for each encounter. Use that instinct. It was in your parents, but it’s also in you. You know these ingredients. Use them to save Auggie.”
“You can do it, Mr. Witch,” Therese added encouragingly, tired as she was from the energy she was providing Lexi.
I stared down at the butterfly that sat on Auggie’s chest. He was counting on me to do this. He was counting on me tosavehim. I had to do something. I had to at least try.
I closed my eyes, imagining my mother’s smiling face, my father nodding happily at me. I almost felt them guiding me as I considered the ingredients within my cloak. Nothing in it could do what Lexi asked, at least not on its own. But … I needed to mend two parts of a whole. Well, for that I would normally use the webbing of an iron spider. And returning something precious that had been taken away by magic, that required the blood of a two-headed goat, born beneath a full moon. And calming the soul took fae breast milk. Reinvigorating a despondent body required a troll’s tooth. I nodded slowly. Would those four ingredients suffice in this situation?
I opened my eyes to find my friends watching me. I withdrew the ingredients from my cloak with shaky fingers, added the tooth to a mortar, and crushed it to a fine powder. I took stock of the small amount of magic that Freya had lent to my orb, praying it would be enough. I added the blood and milk, then exhaled as I let a strand of spider’s web fall over them all. As soon as it touched the surface of the pink liquid, it suddenly turned gold.
It had donesomething.But was I forgetting something? Had I correctly evaluated what was necessary for this to work? I chewed on my lower lip, unsure, reminded of how a small miscalculation had ruined the potion to fix Therese. The energy in my orb was gone now. I had nothing left to give. As soon as I looked up to see Auggie’s soul waiting, and Lexi’s lips pinched together with flagging energy, I knew that I had to try, despite my reservations. And it had to be now.
“Okay,” I said. “Here goes nothing.” I lifted the mortar up to Auggie’s lips and dribbled the potion down his throat. I sat back and waited, watching expectantly for something to happen, for the soul to drop down into the body.
Nothing happened. At least not right away. But then I saw the butterfly wings twitch, the iridescent colors beginning to swirl within its body. Then it lifted off with two quick beats of its wings and flung itself at Auggie’s mouth, before squirming its way past his lips and down his throat.
I held stock-still as I waited for the spell to do its magic. Auggie’s chest continued to rise and fall, but nothing else happened. His eyes remained closed.
Perhaps I had thought incorrectly of what needed to be fixed. If I’d had more time, I could have come up with several different concoctions to try, but time was limited. Even now, Lexi was shaking with the effort of holding on to Auggie, healing his body long enough for his soul to reattach itself.
