Page 101 of Big Little Spells

Smudge flashes her claws.

“Don’t you dare,” I say, a knee-jerk reaction that I know is a mistake the minute the word dare is out of my mouth. Her yellow eyes flash at me.

Then she leaps from the page, leaving a little claw mark on the old brittle pages.

I mutter a curse so filthy I expect it to summon my grandmother to threaten me with soap in the mouth. Georgie groans and I lean in to look at the damage. Smudge’s antics have ripped out a word from the passage we’ve been giving ourselves migraines over, and I want to scream in frustration.

I glare at her. But the irritating cat sits on the edge of Georgie’s bed and licks a paw. Serenely. Delicately, even, as if she’s done nothing terrible and should, in fact, be worshipped and praised.

You’re a menace, I growl at her.

A long, slow, yellow glare. You’re welcome.

I look back down at the book because I’m considering throwing it at my obnoxious familiar. I glare at the claw mark while frustration simmers inside me—

Wait.

I scowl down at a particular word that jumps out at me, next to the hole Smudge ripped in the page. I put my finger over it.

It’s not that it hasn’t been there this whole time, but now I’m seeing it isolated instead of in a sentence thanks to Smudge’s claw mark. Hingeben. In the context of the rambling spell laid out here, we thought it was instructing the spell doer to lay down, but isolated...

Something inside me...wakes up. Like an alarm has been set off.

“Georgie, what does hingeben mean?”

She doesn’t have to consult the translation guides hovering about in the room. She tips back in her chair and stares at one of her crystals, because she just knows.

She repeats the word. Hingeben. “Well, in German it can mean to sacrifice...”

I don’t listen to anything else she says.

Sacrifice.

That damn word.

“This spell,” I say, shoving it over to her without reading through it. “Is this something we could do?”

Georgie frowns over the page, tsks at the claw mark, then murmurs words either to translate in her head or just because she likes reading out loud. I can’t tell.

“This is a pretty old-fashioned protection spell,” she says, shaking her head ever so slightly. “There’s a lack of consent here that’s not really acceptable these days. Even when you’re doing something for benevolent reasons there should be consent and acceptance.” She looks up at me, her dreamy green eyes clear and focused. “You’re thinking it’s for Nicholas, aren’t you?”

There’s no point in hedging. Not with time running out. Not with me doing my best here to be open and transparent when that’s not my natural state. “Yes.”

“It could be suitable, I guess. Though I’m not sure why an immortal would need protecting. I’ve never heard of an immortal losing their immortality. That kind of takes all the fun out of selling your soul, or whatever they do.”

“But there aren’t that many immortals wandering around,” I point out. “They must lose it at some point or another.”

Georgie contemplates that, and I have to give her credit. She shows nothing on her face. Not a hint of what she’s thinking. She looks as airy and dreamy as ever, as if I’m not sitting here asking her if we can save my immortal boyfriend from sacrificing himself.

“Most of the immortal creatures people write about aren’t exactly the sacrificial type, you know. So, there’s no precedent. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t try to make one.”

I tap the page beneath my finger again, like I’m taking that word—no matter what language it’s in—into my skin.

I know that he’s building to something. It swirls between us, unsaid, but I know it’s there. And like Jacob and I discussed, it has to be the kind of sacrifice Emerson was prepared to make. It even makes sense. Litha is about balance, and he’s a creature made of imbalances. Sacrificing himself with no thought of gain would be a way of righting the scales.

It would also hurt me more than I can bear to think about.

So I don’t. “But this spell can prevent him from dying, right? No matter what he does. What he wants to do.” He only has to be willing. He doesn’t actually have to die to complete the sacrifice. Emerson showed us that.

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