Instantly she heard someone crossing the floor and turning the bolt, and the door swung open. Grace Blackthorn stood in the doorway, her face set and serious. Even in the foggy weather, her hair, loose around her shoulders, glinted silvery bright. “You’ve come,” she said, sounding more surprised than pleased.
“I said I would.” Lucie pushed past Grace. The shed had a single room inside with a floor of packed earth, now partly frozen.
A table had been pushed against the wall under the Blackthorn family sword, which hung from coarsely forged iron hooks. On the table a makeshift laboratory had been constructed: there were rows of alembics and glass bottles, a mortar and pestle, and dozens of test tubes. An assortment of packets and tins took up the rest of the table, some lying open, others emptied and collected in a pile.
Next to the table was a fire that had been laid directly on the ground, the source of the smoke escaping from the missing roof. The fire was unnaturally silent, emanating not from wood logs but from a mound of stones, its greenish flames licking greedily upward as though seeking to consume the iron cauldron suspended from a hook above it. The cauldron held a simmering black brew that smelled earthy and chemical at the same time.
Lucie approached a second, larger table slowly. On it rested a coffin. Through its glass lid she could see Jesse, exactly as he’d appeared when they were last together—white shirt, black hair lying soft against the nape of his neck. His eyelids were pale half-moons.
She had not confined herself to birds and bats and mice. She had tried commanding Jesse to come back to life too, though she had been able to do it only during the short periods when Grace had gone to fetch something and left her alone with Jesse’s body. She had fared even worse with that than she had with the animals. Jesse was not empty, as the animals were—she could feel something inside him: a life, a force, a soul. But whatever it was, it was anchored in the space between life and death, and she could not shift it. Even trying made her feel ill and weak, as if she were doing something wrong.
“I wasn’t sure if you were still coming,” Grace said crossly. “I’ve been waiting forever. Did you get the thorn-apple?”
Lucie reached in her pocket for the tiny packet. “It was hard to get away. And I can’t stay long. I’m meeting Cordelia tonight.”
Grace took the packet and tore it open. “Because the wedding’s tomorrow? But what’s it got to do with you?”
Lucie looked at Grace hard, but the other girl seemed genuinely not to understand. Often Grace didn’t seem to grasp why people did things if the answer was because that’s how friends behave or because that’s what you do for someone you’re fond of. “I’m Cordelia’s suggenes,” she said. “I walk her down the aisle, but I also provide help and support before the ceremony. Tonight I’m going out with her to—”
Whoosh. Grace had upended the packet into the cauldron. A flash of flame licked toward the ceiling, then a puff of smoke. It smelled of vinegar. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m sure Cordelia is not fond of me.”
“I’m not going to discuss Cordelia with you,” said Lucie, coughing a little.
“Well, I wouldn’t like me, if I were her,” said Grace. “But we don’t have to discuss anything. I didn’t ask you here for chitchat.”
She gazed down at the cauldron. Fog and smoke collided together in the little room, surrounding Grace with a nebulous halo. Lucie rubbed her own gloved hands together, her heart beating quickly as Grace began to speak: “Hic mortui vivunt. Igni ferroque, ex silentio, ex animo. Ex silentio, ex animo! Resurget!”
As Grace chanted, the concoction began to boil more rapidly, the flames beginning to hiss, rising higher and higher, reaching the cauldron. A bit of the mixture bubbled over the side of the cauldron, splattering onto the ground. Lucie instinctively jumped back as green stalks burst out of the ground, growing stems and leaves and buds as they shot up almost as high as her knees.
“It’s working!” she gasped. “It’s really working!”
A quick spasm of delight passed over Grace’s normally expressionless face. She started toward the coffin, and Jesse—
As quickly as they had sprung up, the blooms withered and dropped from the stems. It was like seeing time itself speed faster. Lucie watched helplessly as the leaves fell away, and the stalks dried and crackled and snapped under their own weight.
Grace stood frozen, staring down at the dead flowers lying in the dirt. She glanced at the coffin—but Jesse had not moved.