José Ortiz's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Zack reached the cottage in the woods before the sunrise. He knocked once. Alana opened the door already holding a bowl. She looked at his hands. "You got it." Zack pulled the folded handkerchief from his coat and set it on her table. From his other pocket he took a small tin. Inside was a lock of dark hair, brittle at the ends, wrapped in cracked paper. "His," Zack said. Alana didn't touch either yet. She set out a shallow black dish, salt, a candle, and a knife. "Sit down," she said. "You're going to want to be sitting." She worked without speaking. She cut a thread from the handkerchief where the blood had dried and dropped it into the dish. She unwrapped the lock of hair and laid three strands across the thread. She lit the candle, spoke six words Zack didn't know, and held the dish over the flame. The blood and hair curled together. The dish went cold under her palm. Alana closed her eyes. When she opened them she looked at Zack and not at the dish. "He isn't Lavitz," she said. "Not reborn. Not the soul. Nothing carried over." Zack didn't move. Alana kept going in the same flat voice. "When Lavitz died, you paid a witch to bring him back as an immortal human. Not a vampire. You wanted him fixed." Zack's jaw locked. He hadn't told her that part. "The spell failed," Alana said. "It didn't touch Lavitz. It scattered. Every so often it makes a double. A body with his face and his voice. That's all. José is the latest one. He has no piece of Lavitz in him. He isn't a memory. He isn't a message. He's his own person who happens to wear a dead man's face because of what you did." She pushed the dish aside. "You made him, Zack. Not on purpose. But you made him." Zack sat for a long minute. He looked at the handkerchief. He looked at the hair. "So he's nothing to Lavitz." "Nothing," Alana said. "And everything to himself." Zack stood up. He picked up the handkerchief. He folded it small and put it back in his coat. "Do you think I should talk to him?," he asked. "No. He isn’t Lavitz. If you try to date him you’ll try to make him into someone long gone." Said Alana. "Then i should keep my distance," Zack said. "Yes you should stay away. But I know you Zack. You won’t stay away will you?" Zack nodded once. At the coast, past miles of trees and road, José stood behind the front desk of the inn with a torn guest book page in his pocket, waiting for the man who took his blood to come back and answer for it. The answer was already walking toward him, and it was worse than either of them had guessed.