Alistair’s heart plummeted as he realized what Opal had been calling about yesterday.
Sullivan turned to Sam and gestured to the two plainer caskets. “See?” he asked, with the air of a parent at Christmas unveiling the gift his child had been begging for. “I told you I’d take care of everything. My boys had to rush to get to Gatesville, dig them up, and return, but here they are: your mother and brother. Ready for your loving embrace.”
Sam felt as though the wind had swept him off the tower and left him hanging above the gulf of air, ready to drop.
This was what he’d asked for. What he’d sacrificed for. And yet the reality still came as a shock.
The smell coming from the caskets was foul beyond words. Not Jake’s—there couldn’t be much left to rot after all these years—but Mom had only been in the ground for a few months. Acid burned his throat, the coffee trying to return the way it had come, and he was glad he’d skipped breakfast.
Alistair touched his arm, and he suddenly wished his lover had stayed away after all. Not seen this, as though it were something shameful.
“Familiars into animal form, please,” Sullivan said pleasantly. “But don’t distract your witches. This will require the utmost concentration from us all.”
“Mr. Sullivan, please listen!” Doc burst out. He wrung his hands together frantically, eyes darting to the caskets and back again. “You have to stop!”
He’d opened the coffin—what had he seen? Before Sam could suggest they listen, the gunman beside Doc punched him in the jaw. “Mr. Sullivan told you to shut it!”
“You are here to make certain we recreate the ritual perfectly, nothing more,” Sullivan told him coldly. “Is the positioning correct?”
“Y-yes. Yes, sir. I marked the place for you to stand.” He pointed at a chalk X on the floor.
“If it isn’t correct, you’ll be returning to ground level much more quickly than the rest of us.”
Sam wanted to speak up, to say they ought to wait and hear what Doc had found…but if he did, he’d be the one thrown off the building.
Sullivan took out a piece of paper that Sam recognized as the translation Doc had written down back at the lab. He ran his eyes down it, squinting a bit in the dim light, then nodded. “Places everyone. Sam, come stand beside me, close to your dead. Your familiar can stay back.”
Sam glanced at Alistair, who’d taken on cheetah form. “It’s okay, Sam,” he said through the bond. “I’m here with you.”
Surely, with Alistair behind him, he could do anything. This last step might be difficult—but it was worth it.
Less than an hour from now, everything would be fine. The Pride saved, Mom and Jake restored, the slate wiped clean.
Except Doc didn’t think so.
Too late now. He moved to his place at Sullivan’s side. Someone had retrieved the Aten Disc from the hexworks, as Sullivan took it from a deep pocket in his coat and handed it to Sam. “Hold it up,” he instructed, then raised his voice. “Witches! Focus all magic on this disc and the hexes it connects to, and fill them to the brim!”
Sam lifted the disc. In the east, the first blush of dawn touched the horizon over the lake, and Sullivan began to speak the words of the ritual.
31
A rush of magic flowed from Alistair, through the bond, and into Sam. The symbols on the Aten Disc began to glow, lighting up in a pattern. The completed hexes on the bodies flared to life.
“Thy rising is beautiful in the horizon of heaven, O Aten, ordainer of life,” Sullivan chanted in a slow, measured pace. “Thou dost shoot up in the East, thou fillest every land with thy beneficence. Thou art beautiful and great, and exalted above every other. Thy rays touch all the lands which thou hast made.”
The draw of magic continued—an ordinary hex would have been filled by now, especially with so many familiars and witches working on it.
These hexes were hungry.
“One God, like whom there is no other. Thou didst create the earth by thy will, thou alone existing, men and women, cattle, beasts of every kind that are upon the earth, and that move upon feet, all the creatures that are in the sky and that fly with their wings. Thou dost grace familiars with thy magic, and bless the witches who receive thereof.”
A wave of dizziness washed over him, and his injured leg gave out, forcing him to lie on the floor. How much longer could this go on? How much more magic could it devour?
“Thou settest every person in his place. Thy beams nourish every field; thou risest up and they live, they germinate for thee. Thou makest the Seasons to develop everything that thou hast made.”
Other familiars were beginning to wilt now. Witches glanced worriedly around, but no one dared to stop, and all of Sam’s attention was on the disc in his hands. The hexes kept sucking down magic greedily—almost malevolently.
From below, there came the sound of the elevator doors opening.
