Page 63 of Soul Bound

Ranger and I step to the side of the office as Esme flutters around collecting the supplies for the spell. She dumps a bunch of items into the cauldron—all of the items look to be completely random to me, but I know they all hold a purpose. It’s amazing to watch her work, something I found while I spent time with her in the past couple of weeks. When she’s working on a spell, it’s almost like an intricate dance and she does it with such grace.

She goes to a shelf and pulls out what looks to be a rolled-up poster. She uncurls it and reveals it’s a map of the whole earth, “We start with this, and once it tells us what continent she’s on, we move to a map of that continent. And once we know the state or country, we move down to a map of that. Get it?”

“We start broad and slowly narrow it down?” I clarify.

“Exactly.”

She returns to the pot and pulls the vial of blood I had given her out of her pocket. I watch as she carefully pours some of the dried blood into the mixture. I’m expecting there to be a puff of smoke or a small explosion, but nothing happens. She strikes a match next and adds it to the pot, still, there’s no burst of sparks or anything. The contents just catch fire and the smell of burning herbs fills the space.

“We need this all to turn into ash,” she explains over her shoulder to us. “We’ll sprinkle the ash on the map, say the incantation and if things all go according to plan, it will show us what we are looking for.”

Sounds easy in theory.

It takes a couple of minutes for the contents to turn into ash. While we wait, we tell her about how we learned that Thalia is a witch and about her gift of astral projection. Esme confirms my suspicions about Thalia’s gift, giving her the extra strength in the spirit realm. She believes if Thalia didn’t have the skill, she wouldn’t have been able to appear to us the way she has.

Esme lays the map flat on the wood worktable and takes a bit of the ash between her fingers. She whispers something so quietly I can’t make out the words, but I have to assume it’s the incantation. She scatters the ashes across the map of the world.

At first, nothing happens, but soon the scattered pieces of ash start to shake and like magnets, they all join in one single spot. Right over the United States.

I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding when it happens. “It’s working. She’s here in America.”

“That doesn’t exactly narrow it down enough…” Ranger grimaces.

“We’re not done yet.” Esme unravels another colorful map and this time it’s one of the United States, each of the fifty states lined out.

Esme repeats the process, grabbing some of the ash from the pot and whispering something under her breath. The ash lands across the map and…

“Nothing’s happening,” Ranger states.

I bounce anxiously on my toes. “Give it a second.”

We do, and still…nothing happens.

Esme lets out a sigh. “I was afraid of this happening. The spell isn’t at full strength since the blood is wrong. I’m going to have to tweak it to make it work for us…”

“There isn’t that much blood left, how many more times can we try the spell before we run out?” I ask her.

“I would say we have enough for two more tries.” Esme gathers the scattered ash off the map, before dumping it back in the cauldron.

“We could always go back and get more...” I offer.

“Absolutely not.” Ranger glowers. “Sterling’s going to be watching the building even more closely now that he knows we went back there. Not to mention we killed two of his men, he’s not going to be happy with us. We can’t risk going back there; it’d be like walking into a damn trap.”

Shit.

“You’re probably right,” I admit, biting my bottom lip.

“Don’t give up on the spell, I’ll reach back out to my friend and we’ll come up with a way to adjust it, so it works at full power.” Esme’s calmness and lack of worry is reassuring to me, so I don’t lose all hope. “You guys go home, rest for a little while. I’ll call you when I know something.”

19

Winslow

We followed Esme’s advice and went back to Ryker and Pruitt’s house. She was right, there was nothing we could do there other than wait around for her to come up with a solution for the spell. All we can do is wait for her or Whisper to find answers and until then we’re at a standstill again.

After finally taking a nap, I find myself wandering down to the lake behind their house. The low late afternoon sun beams across the smooth water as it starts lower in the sky. A soft breeze blows through the trees that surround me. A fallen tree sits on the bank of the lake, and I sit down on it and look out over the water.

Even though I drowned, I don’t fear water. If anything, I find it peaceful.

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