Cordelia pressed her lips together. “You’re nervous. I get that—” she started.
Eustace rounded on her. “I’m not nervous, Cordy. I’m terrified.Whoever carved our mother up like a pumpkin, they werehere.Inourhome. They want to do the same to us. Or worse. And now we’re holding open the door, inviting them in. We could be inviting our death tonight.”
“I’m sorry.” Cordelia swallowed. She believed they were doing the right thing to try to draw their opponent out, but she hadn’t quite allowed herself to face the gravity of it. Eustace clearly had. She pointed to the open book. “This will help?”
Eustace nodded slowly. “I think. In any case, it’s all we’ve got.”
Cordelia drew a deep breath. “I’m in.”
“Good.” Her sister pointed to a slew of odd ingredients already on the table. “Let’s mix these up first—goose fat, elderberries, and the seeds of something called red orache, which I found in the solarium. I hope you don’t mind—I took this from your room.” She held up a small silver hand mirror. Finally, she picked up a sharpened twig. “Switch of an ash tree,” she told Cordelia.
“What’s that for?” Cordelia asked, a little concerned.
“You’ll see,” she told her, as she began crushing the fat, berries, and seeds together. “I looked into that word you mentioned—the one you heard upstairs. The one in our aunt’s letter.”
“And?” Cordelia stepped closer, curious.
Eustace sat the pestle down on the table. “Volvameansseeressin Old Norse, a kind of Viking witch. They practicedSeidr,an old form of magic that meansto bind.They traveled from place to place giving prophecies, casting spells, healing the sick, bestowing blessings and curses, speaking to the dead. They were revered but also feared. Even the gods respected them.”
“The dead?” Cordelia placed a hand to her throat, the silver bracelet catching the firelight.
“That bracelet,” Eustace added. “I told you the ends were different. This webbed style, like a duck’s foot, was only found in the jewelry ofvolvas.Several burial sites have been unearthedthroughout Scandinavia. They were entombed with great ceremony.”
She carefully drew the steel tray from the fire with a pair of long tongs, dropping the bones into the mortar and grinding. “We must be descended from these women, and the gifts have continued to pass down. ThoughhowI couldn’t say.Seidrisn’t exactly a common practice anymore, even in Nordic countries. It’s been all but forgotten.”
When the concoction had become a gritty, dark purple paste, Eustace stopped mixing. “There’s one other thing they did,” she told Cordelia as she picked up the ash twig. “They sang.”
Eustace dipped the end of the twig into the mixture and swirled it around. “They sang to put themselves into a trance. They sang to call the spirits of the dead, who would answer questions and tell them things no one else knew. They sang to bind, to make their magic. And now it’s our turn.”
Cordelia swallowed. “Our turn?”
“The spell instructs us to sing as we draw on the bind runes. But I have no idea what.” She raised the pointed end of the twig to Cordelia’s face. “Be still. Only your lips are allowed to move.”
Cordelia leaned back. “Why do I have to do the singing part?”
“Because you’re the ghost whisperer, dummy. Besides, I made the potion.” Eustace let the tip of the stick hover just over Cordelia’s skin, between her eyes. “I’m waiting,” she said after a long minute.
Cordelia racked her brain. “I don’t know any songs. Mom gave me her music aversion, remember?”
Her sister frowned. “Surely you’ve heard something you can remember in a store or someone’s car? We’re running out of time.”
Cordelia closed her eyes and tried to conjure a tune from her subconscious. After a minute she opened her mouth and uttered the only words that came, “Rock on, Gold Dust Woman…”
It came out unsteady and off-key, more of a warble than the throaty vibrato Stevie Nicks was known for. But it was the best she had under the circumstances.
Eustace raised one eyebrow in question.
Cordelia carried on, her husky rendition of “Gold Dust Woman” gaining volume as she continued.
“You do know this song is about cocaine, don’t you?” Eustace said, but she twirled the stick in the paste again, and brought it out, one end gleaming violet against the bark. As she laid the tip against Cordelia’s forehead, drawing out a thick line, Cordelia kept singing. Eventually Eustace’s voice joined hers.
Together they sang verse after verse as Eustace painted the runes across Cordelia’s cheeks and forehead, down her throat and arms. Partway through, Cordelia opened her eyes. The black wall behind them glowed faintly where their two names had been drawn, an inner fire igniting the letters. One by one, each name came to life in the darkness, catching the light, pulsing with power and the quaver of her voice, as if their ancestors were arriving one at a time, gathering at the sound of her song. Glancing down, she saw that the runes around the floor did the same, as well as the ones Eustace had drawn across her skin.
When she finished, Eustace held up the mirror so Cordelia could see how the runes were drawn and carefully copy them onto herself, making sure to remember they were backward in the reflection. More than once, Cordelia’s eyes met her sister’s as the song rose between them, their throats and hearts strengthening with every stroke. What felt silly and out of place at first now was full of energy and intention. Her tone-deaf warble had found courage and conviction and rang through the room with clarity and accuracy alongside her sister’s. When the last rune was drawn, Cordelia set the stick down, and she and Eustace sang the final line together—“Is it over now? Do you know how to pick up the pieces and go home?”
The glow of the writing on the wall faded slowly, the runes on the floor flattened to black again, and the purplish ones they’d drawn across each other dulled, eventually disappearing altogether.
Eustace looked at her sister. “It’s time.”
