Page 81 of Until the End of Ever
I would have typically insisted on handling the potion myself, but she had firsthand experience about this specific ritual and I didn’t. Learning to let someone else be in charge wasn’t easy. Especially when that someone was a nineteen-year-old usually tripping over her own feet on a flat surface.
The amphora contained a dark liquid, which emanated greenish smoke, just as I’d read. And the potion wasn’t supposed to be particularly complex.
“This is Liquid Dream,” Lucky declared. “It’ll put us in a temporary trance while the Perthro Rootdoes its thing. While we can technically perform the ritual without it, it smooths the transition, allowing us to relax enough to meditate.”
She got a notebook filled with graphics, symbols, and notes out of the leather satchel around her shoulder, and turned it until she found a blank page. Next she twirled her fingers until a pen appeared, more chewed-up than Gideon’s.
Her skilled hand drew a perfect circle, adding five points and connecting them all at the center.
“We’re to draw a summoning circle—Lucian has one in his study, we can use that—and pour the potion around the circle. Ideally, there would be four witnesses, one representing each element, plus the caster, facing the subject. The subject, Kleos, needs to be at the heart of the circle.” Lucky scribbled Kleos’sname in the middle. “The caster starts the spell. All four witnesses will feel some sort of echo. I was water, for Pan’s kid, and I had a vivid daydream. But the caster and subject will go on a journey, to discover the subject’s roots.”
That was exactly what I’d read. I only had one question. “How dangerous is it? I saw a bunch of warnings about the dream being real, for the caster and subject.”
I realized I was a worrywart here: I used spells ten times as dangerous on a daily basis. But it made me uncomfortable that this one needed so many sources of power.
“I mean, yeah. Your bodies might remain here, but it’s not just going to be a daydream; your spirits will travel. You die there, you die here.” Lucky reached for one of the few spare éclairs stacked between us, stuffing half in her mouth and chewing before saying, “But the kids at Sessona’s do it all the time. I’ve cast them myself a few times. No one’s suffered more than the occasional migraine and bloody nose.”
I didn’t like it, but the alternative was staying in the dark, which in this specific case was unacceptable. We needed answers.
“Has Silver heard from her foster mom?” I checked, just in case I’d missed a phone call while I was sleeping this morning.
I wasn’t surprised when Kleos shook her head. She would have told me.
I sighed, and made myself nod.
“The stronger the anchors, the better for something like this. I get the feeling poking around about Kleos’s ancestry might pack a bit more of a punch than looking into one of Pan’s kids,” Ronan said, wearing his concerned professor look, which should be forbidden in my house. “I’ll be your air, if you’d like.”
The offer made me smile at my friend gratefully. No one else in the underside had a stronger affinity to that element. Theman could literally fly when he was feeling particularly dramatic. “You’ve earned that éclair,” I admitted.
“I’ll be water, if you cast?” Lucky asked me. “Unless you’d rather I cast, as I’ve done it before. In that case, you can be fire.”
“I’ll cast the spell.” I wasn’t going to let anyone else go on a potentially dangerous spirit journey with Kleos. “So we’ll still need two.”
“Gideon and Silver,” Kleos immediately replied.
Half of that made sense. Gideon, between his heritage and temperament, would represent fire.
Then there was Silver. Despite thestrangenessabout the woman, and her visible lack of power, I knew her strength.
“The pink-haired crazy chick?” Ronan asked. “Does she have a link to earth?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Kleos assured him. “Silver can find her way in the wild, hang out with any beasts, and she just knows what’s poisonous, what’s edible. I only know one person with a stronger Earth affinity—my cousin, Rhea, and she’s only fourteen. Silver’s perfect.”
“All right.” I didn’t question it. Technically, a person didn’t even need to be able to wield magic to be linked to a specific element. “Tonight, then?”
“If you’d like,” Lucky said hesitantly. “But the potion will be potent for about a fortnight, and sometimes, the journey takes hours—I’ve even heard it can take days. Maybe it isn’t the best idea to get started on a Monday evening?”
She had a point, even if I didn’t like the thought of waiting an entire week when we had everything we needed to finally get answers.
“Well,” I said slowly, “if some of your friends got nosebleeds and headaches from mind trots around a child of Pan’s, I wouldn’t mind looking into ways to protect all of us during that ritual. Friday?”
“Perfect,” Ronan said. “Next Monday’s a holiday, so it’ll give your gainfully employed friends time to recover.”
Technically, he was also gainfully employed, though the man took time off whenever he felt like it, so that hardly counted.
I could tell Kleos didn’t like it any more than I did, but she nodded.
I had a week to find a way to protect our spirits during a body-less trip. It was good I loved a challenge.
