* * *
I returned home but I did not remember the journey. It was a blur of portals, half-consulted maps, and one stop in the dead center of a park where I just stood there and envisioned an alternate world where it all had happened very differently. To say I regretted any of this was wrong. But it ached, this knowledge that Wraithbane who had endured challenges beyond my knowledge was going to succumb to a revenant scratch. Thaimon's words about time echoed through my ears and I continued onward until I was home, sitting restlessly by the fire.
I needn't say anything, I knew, I simply needed to go to him and hold his hand. No call for farewells. He'd know, my presence alone would say far more than I ever could. Admitting defeat to him wasn't the issue. It was admitting it to myself. I was the problem. I stared at the passionflower on the mantle above the fire. Half the things Thaimon had said I knew what they were, but not the rest. Not what was in the book. A book which had found its way to me recently, one which I hadn't ploughed through. Ever since the Bliss, life had been so...
I lost the train of thought.
Bliss.
The Bliss den.
Whiting's Bliss den, where I had been in her basement and a book's string binding had caught my finger. I hadn't seen it since that night. Where was it? It had to be in the van. Dropped on the floor?
I made it to the van and found the spare key in a case under the back bumper. The book wasn't on the floor, or in the glove box, or on the dashboard. Had it gone to a lost and found within the Kettle? On a whim I tried between the cushions and I came up with a journal-sized volume made of cracked leather.
I studied the book in my kitchen.
Any disguise Thaimon had put on the book long ago was now worn off, and in its place someone had globbed a wax seal across the pages and cover. It had the imprint of an owl in a tree and a distinct taint of magic drifted about it every time I moved the book. By now my ability to see magic and spells was waning, spurred onward by sheer force of will and a teaspoon of sugar straight from the spoon.
Across the front of the wax was the word Condemned and on the back in tiny print was Break the Seal Break the Law. What had happened to this thing between losing its disguise and now, I couldn't even guess.
My one hesitation about opening the book was what if it didn't help Wraithbane.
I knew the book was mine. I knew its smell, the musty staleness of a room which has gone unused and unloved. I knew the smooth glide of leather under my fingers as I rubbed oil into its cover. I knew the way it fit into the palm of my hand, the places the spine would fall open to first. I knew it like I was saying hello to an old, old friend who I hadn't seen in ages, a friendship which time and distance could not alter.
“Can you save him?” I asked.
The book slipped from my grasp; I caught it, but in so doing, part of the pages went up, part went down. The result was a single line which I could read at the top, the very end of a sentence.
...yes, we can.
Relief, astonishment.
Fear.
That is what I felt right before I dug nails beneath wax and snapped the seal like brittle plastic. A spell emerged from the crumbles, a dozen fireflies denoting that the book had been opened slinking away through the smallest crack in the windowsill, disappearing into the night.
For an instant I wondered if I had made a mistake, if the book had not been answering a question at all. If it had been a coincidence.
But the firefly spell was gone now, off to report my transgression to whoever had made the seal.
I wasted no more time.
Something teased at me, made my insides tremble. At first, as I flipped through the book, I wasn't sure what I was doing. Not all of the writing was in the same script, it wasn't even all in the same language. Yet I felt fascination instead of fear. My fingers stroked down margins filled with slantwise notes, lingered over sketches which began as amateur and evolved to masterful before becoming novice yet again. Letters would disintegrate into unwieldy blobs then become crisp again, the result of a writing implement—a quill—being repaired.
Botanical sketches faced details of malformed anatomy, records of names, services rendered, and payments. Notes on recipes and variations. A chart of the moon and placement of the stars, stories of constellations. References to parlour tricks, an illustration of a bottle stoppered with a cork, part filled with boiling oil and a bit of phosphorus, lines around the bottle denoting light. Titled simply Long Life Lamp.
Abruptly it all changed. A portal spell, using quotes from unnamed sources to construct, questions when information didn't match. Explanations for trial and errors, quickly written, very smudged. Next came a list of wards and spells and defensive charms, many scored through. More trials and errors.
Then it slowly became normalized again, but this time the tone was cautious, frantically involved in its records, more prolific than ever. Drawings of men, beasts, and ghosts filled gaps in narrative, the words themselves asking how to kill the monsters, how to prevent their existence, by necessity asking what they were and how they came to be. Revenants appeared frequently, a source of terror and frustration, a problem rejecting any and all remedies.
The context of these pages flitted in the periphery of memory, a shadowy impression which I understood but could not explain. With time, I'd know the surrounding events, just like looking at an old box filled with memorabilia from years gone by. But time I did not have. A hunch, a fragment of memory, perhaps just the way I felt I'd handled this book before, led me to a page near the end.
It had no heading, but the list was plainly on its own.
Purple from a Petal
Silver from Self
Red from Patient
Oil to Burn
Sparks
Vanilla
Combine Oil, Sparks, and vanilla in a soup bowl filled Half full with these Things. Attend patient, set oil mixture alight. Purple is to collect the red and hold it in its center. Be very very close to Patient with the bowl on its chest so it inhales the fumes. As you commit the purple and red to the flames, admit it with three puffs of silver. It WILL smell very poorly on account of the type of oil used, but endure until the purple and red is well incinerated and color returns to victim's lips.
It was something, but not exactly what I'd hoped for. For all the details which had gone into previous pages, why was this one so sparse? Why the vague references to color, why not real items, things I could put my hands on and—then I remembered the portal in the blood mage lair. That I had fixed using items of different colors. This recipe wasn't beyond me if I went about it without panicking.
The purple was the passionflower. I grabbed it from its vase. Red from the patient would be blood. Silver from myself was what, exactly? Magic? But I couldn't cast any. I felt I should know the answer, but I didn't.
A soup bowl, then. All of ours were gigantic, not likely to be close to historic portions, so I grabbed a sizable coffee cup instead. That ought to be about the volume of a soup bowl from a century ago. Vanilla extract was in the cupboard, the real stuff from a Madagascar bean. Here's hoping there was truth in advertizing. Sparks, sparks...I considered this puzzle while heating up some canola oil on the stove. Was there any Syrian sage root remaining from our cleansing thing, or had we burned it all? One frantic search through kitchen, den, and bedroom later, I found a big wad of shavings in the compost bucket from where we had peeled off the thickest of the bark. I washed it, hoped it was good, and poured the bubbling oil over it, releasing hot vanilla scent into the air.
That left blood from Wraithbane and silver from myself. As I rushed out the door, I had a nagging feeling I was forgetting something.