Kick, Cella. Kick. You can do this.
I heard thethump thump thumpof horses and the sound of cicadas chirping, felt the cool kiss of summer rain, smelled grass and the sweet scent of summer blossoms, felt the flutter of moths on my face, and the coarse fibers of the saddle blanket Max kept in the back of his truck. His hair brushed my cheek; as I looked into his eyes, all I saw was blue, blue, blue.
“Cella, stay here, stay with me,” he said, and his lips were on mine, then off again. Each time, I felt a stab of pain as they left me once more.
His mouth formed quick words. “I bind thee into three objects.” He chanted it over and over again, more forcefully each time.
“I bind thee into three.I bind thee!”
The water was receding all around me in large, sucking swells like someone had pulled the plunger on a drain. All of a sudden, the room was in sight again. A light glowed at the surface. I reached for it, stretching with everything in me.
I opened my eyes.
I was back in the room with Max.
He was straining from the force of doing the spell on his own. The veins in his neck and arms bulged. The wind bit at my eyes. When did it get so windy? Hot red clay swept in from under the door, cutting my cheeks, swirling around the room, stinging my skin. Crosses shook against the walls and fell to the floor.
The wooden piece we’d used to bar the door shook and popped off. In stormed the brothers, led by Basile.
Dani looked at me, and things grew hazy again. I felt myself flying under the water again, simultaneously yanked deeper under a Magic I could no longer control, while Max worked to pull me back to the surface. Back to the farm, to his horses, to the dry, grassy space that encompassed him when he cast.
I didn’t know how long I wrestled beneath the waves, simultaneously drowning and sucking in the scent of evening air. Life became a single pinprick of blue, of darkness, of a call to infinite, inexpressible power, a chasm that I was so foolish to think I could hold onto.
And then there was Max, brown and warm and green and coarse and creaking. Callused hands, warm lips, rough stubble on his cheeks grazing my face, but I held onto his voice. It was what I focused on, rather than slipping into this deep, dark trench.
“Cella, come back to me. Come back,” he was saying. My memories blended with the present until I couldn’t tell where or when or who I was. We were back in his truck, and he was kissing my lips and my neck and willing me back to him, the call to my dimidium powerful in its own right, but I was so weak. I murmured for more.
His face appeared in front of me, larger than life. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose; his hair was damp against his forehead. His lips pulled away from mine. Then he was yelling, shoving at something behind him as hands pulled him away from me.
4 Hours Until Sunset
I opened my eyes. I was no longer in Maritza’s cottage. I was in some sort of dark space—a cell maybe? No. As my eyes adjusted to the low lighting, I realized it wasn’t a cell at all, but a cave. One like the cave we’d found in the canyon that the brothers had used. A sliver of light shone on a flat rock in the center, and there, sitting on it, was Luce Montgomery.
“Luce? What are you doing in here? Are you okay?”
Luce took one look at me and threw up. She ducked her head between her knees and moaned.
“No,” she said drily. “I’m dying, and apparently, I get to do it stuck here with you.Wonderful.” She retched again.
“What is this place?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “All I know is Basile knocked me out as soon as I went to talk to him about what I found in the canyon. After that, I remember a few hazy lights, and then … nothing. For a while, I thought I’d died and woken up in Hell. Actually, now that you’re here, it’s looking like more of a possibility.”
I looked around. “I don’t know what Basile did to you, but outside of this, you’re not doing so well.”
“Outside of this? What do you mean?”
“Last I saw, you were, um … possessed? By the Magic.”
She retched again. “Oh, that absolute ass.”
And I realized, all at once: Basile’s livestream. The brothers must have done this spell on Luce, let her become a vessel to the One to show they could send someone to the other world.
“Maybe that’s what we’re in,” I said. “Maybe this is the world of Being.”
“Well, great, I’m part of his little experiment. But why would the brothers want to get here? For all Basile’s talked it up, it looks like a prison.”
“I guess no one’s exactly made it back to tell them.” I shivered.
