Alistair froze, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. He’d imagined some kind of weapon, or something that could control minds. The stuff of fiction, sure, but also the kind of thing Sullivan would be interested in.
This, though…
“You’re holding a seance?” he asked. “This hex lets you talk to ghosts? For real, not just faking?”
“Better than that.” Sam poked at his dinner, then put his food down. “Let me explain.”
He launched into the tale of Amarna, the Heretic King, and Neferneferuaten. It made Alistair’s head spin, and the names were hard to track.
“So a pharaoh decided he wasn’t powerful enough, got rid of all the gods but one, then made himself and his family the only way of reaching the god,” he said, to make sure he understood. “He died, and his chief wife, who maybe helped him with the whole ‘you have to come to us to get to the divine’ thing, wanted him back. And made a hex for it?”
Sam nodded. “Right. But the hex is obviously very powerful, and it needs a lot of magic. Plus there’s no simple activation phrase—you need a whole ritual, performed at sunrise.”
The chicken noodles had formed a hard lump in his stomach. “And that’s where we come in. Wanda and Joel, Teresa and Reinhold, you and me—Sullivan needs every familiar-witch pair he can get his hands on. So he can raise his son from the dead.”
“Not just his son,” Sam said quickly. “This isn’t only about him. This is about all of us! And I don’t merely mean rebuilding The Pride, though of course that’s why Wanda’s joining us. We aren’t only bringing Sullivan’s son back. He’s going to bring back my mom and brother, too.”
Oh no. “That’s why you’re doing this? Sam, listen to me?—”
“No, you listen to me, for once in your life!” Sam brought his hand down on the table with a bang. “I can fix everything, Alistair. We can, together! We can bring back your parents—bring back Forrest!”
Alistair’s heart did a strange twist, halfway between hope and horror. Sam, his current witch, was sitting here offering to bring his former witch back to life.
Along with his parents, whose deaths had ended up with him in the orphanage. They’d gone away for a ferry ride and never come back, just like Forrest had walked away from him at the train station.
And of course it would have been better if they’d come home safe instead of drowning in the lake’s cold waters. If Forrest could have found a way to escape the pain that grew and grew inside him, until he couldn’t contemplate living with it a day longer.
But that was done, in the past. Nothing could undo any of it, could unbreak what was already broken.
Not to mention he didn’t—couldn’t—trust some untried hex from an ancient queen he’d never even heard of before. “This is all too good to be true. If it worked, why wasn’t it used?”
Sam’s pale skin flushed red with anger or frustration, or both. “I told you, she didn’t get a chance!”
“Sure, but what about the guy who came after her?” At least that name he knew. “King Tut. Maybe he didn’t want to resurrect the old pharaoh, whatever his name was?—”
“Akhenaten.”
“—but there had to be someone he mourned, someone he’d want to bring back.” Alistair flung up his hands in frustration. “We’re talking about returning the dead to life! That isn’t the sort of thing people just give up on if it works!”
“It will work.” Sam’s expression took on a stubborn cast. “Why can’t you be happy? I’m giving you everything you could possibly want!”
“Not at the cost of your life! If this doesn’t work, Sullivan will kill you?—”
“I said it’s going to work!” Sam shouted, rising to his feet.
Alistair stood as well, hands clenched so his nails dug into his palms. “Like your look-away hex worked? You didn’t think through what it might be used for, and you’re doing the same damn thing now!”
Sam rocked back, as if Alistair had slapped him. “I made the mistake of trusting Luke?—”
“Trusting Luke wasn’t your mistake! Getting involved with Sullivan in the first place was.”
“You’re a hypocrite.” Sam turned his back on Alistair and made for the coatrack by the front door. “I’m not having this fight with you again.”
Alistair followed him. “Where are you going?”
“To Sullivan’s mansion, to join Wanda and Joel, and hopefully Teresa and Reinhold.”
Right into the snake’s den. “Sam, listen?—”
