Chapter 105 I Won’t Allow It!
“Mad…” the voice was unsure and unsteady.
“Mad… Maddox?” Grace got off the platform so fast she nearly went down on the floor.
She crossed to him and put both hands on his face and the skin under her palms was wrong, the temperature, the texture wrong, it was not the skin of a person who was alive and warm.
“Maddox.” She tapped his cheek. “Maddox, look at me.”
He didn’t respond.
His eyes were open slightly, the whites visible at the edges, and the whites were not white anymore. They were darkening from the corners inward, black spreading slowly the way ink spreads in water. His skin was the grey she had seen from the other platform but up close it was worse, the ash colour sitting on the surface of him like something applied from outside, and the cracks ran across his jaw and his forehead and the backs of his hands in patterns that looked like eroded surfaces.
“Maddox.” She tapped his face again, harder, both palms against his cheeks. “Stop it. Wake up. I’m right here, wake up.”
Nothing.
She pressed her fingers to his neck looking for a pulse and held very still and the stillness lasted long enough to tell her something she was not going to accept.
“Do something,” she said without turning around.
Bastian was quiet behind her.
She turned. “Do something. Now. Whatever you have, whatever you know, do it.”
Bastian was looking at Maddox with a somber expression. It was the expression of a man who had already reached a conclusion and was working out how to deliver it.
“Grace,” he said.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I’m sorry to say this—”
“Don’t say it.”
“He is already—”
“Don’t you dare say it!” Her voice broke on the last word and came back louder. “Don’t say it, don’t stand there and say it, you fix him right now, you’re a warlock, you have this entire room full of things, you fix him!”
Bastian looked at her, sorrow in his eyes. This isn’t the first time he’d been in this position and each time he had not found a way to make it easier.
“There is nothing I can—”
“There is something.” She stepped toward him, her voice was shaking, her hands trembling and she did not care about either. “There is always something. Whatever happened that caused this…” she motioned to Maddox, “…I’m sure it had something to do with me being unconscious, you know things in this room that most people don’t know exist. So think. Think right now and tell me what there is. You saved me, so please, save him too.”
Bastian looked at the floor. “I didn’t save you, he did.”
“Please.” Her voice dropped. “Please.”
He was quiet for a long moment. He moved to the bookshelf against the far wall and stood in front of it with his back to her and said nothing, and she watched his shoulders and waited.
“There is a spell,” he said finally.
She waited.
“It is forbidden,” he said. “More forbidden than what was used on you. What was used on you was prohibited. This is in a different category entirely. The reason it is forbidden is not arbitrary. The reason it exists in a different category is because of what it costs and what it changes.” He turned. “If it works, and there is no guarantee it works, Maddox will not be what he once was. The process changes what a person is at a fundamental level. I cannot tell you how or to what degree. I have never seen it performed. I have only read about it.”
“Do it,” Grace said.
“I won’t,” Bastian said. “I am telling you it exists. I am not telling you I will perform it.”
Grace looked at him. Then at Maddox. Then back at Bastian.
“Then show me,” she said. “Show me the spell.”
Bastian stared at her. “You are untrained.”
“Show me the spell.”
“Grace, an untrained witch attempting a forbidden resurrection spell is not a smaller problem than the one currently on that platform. You could kill yourself. You could make it worse. You could—”
“Show me the spell!” She screamed, her voice laced with desperation and frustration. “Give me the book. Right now. Give it to me.”
Bastian opened his mouth.
“Now!” she demanded. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want another warning, I don’t want another explanation of why this is a terrible idea, just give me the damn book and show me where it is.”
He looked at her for a long moment. She held his gaze and did not move and did not look away and did not say another word.
Bastian turned to the shelf.
He moved three books and reached behind them and produced something older than the rest, a volume whose cover had no title and whose pages were the colour of old tea, he held it and looked at it then looked at Grace.
“It will change him,” he said. One final time.
“Give me the book,” she said, looking at him with eyes that held tears that were threatening to spill if she so much as blinked. “Just give it to me.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t lose him…”
He held it out.
She took it and opened it and found the page he indicated, she read the words on the page and read them again and a third time to be certain of the pronunciation, and then she went back to Maddox.
She put one hand flat on his chest.
“You can’t die on me, Mad.” The tears spilled over now. “I won’t let you.”