Rosemary Thorne's Arc

Chapter 6 of 24

The salt held through the small hours. Rosemary sat against the door with the green book open on her lap. Damien lay on his side, breath even now, the cold cloth gone warm on his neck. She had wards for one night. Maybe two. After that, she needed to know what the witch had actually done to him, or none of this mattered. She turned a page. The writing changed halfway down — a slanted hand in brown ink, notes crammed in the margins. A name at the top of the column. Morgana. Then a list. Bindings. Vessels. Second skins. "Damien." She kept her voice low. "Wake up. I need you to look at something." He opened his eyes. The scar on his hand caught the candlelight as he pushed up. She turned the book toward him and pointed at the margin notes. "Is that her writing." He read for a long moment. His jaw worked. "Yes." "Then this is her working book. Not just a spellbook. Her notes." Rosemary tapped the word second skins. "Is this you." He didn't answer. She waited. One of the cats climbed into her lap and settled on the page. She lifted the animal gently aside. "I can't help you if I don't know what she put in you," Rosemary said. "I've watched it move under your skin for eleven nights. I need a name for it." Damien touched the ink with one finger, not the page. "She called it a passenger. She wanted a body she could wear when hers wore out. She started the working on me two years ago. It isn't finished. That's why cold and weight slow it down — it isn't rooted yet." Rosemary's hands went cold. "She's coming back to finish it." "Yes." "Can it be cut out." "Not by me." He turned another page. Diagrams. A spine drawn in red. Anchor points marked with small crosses. He stopped at one drawing and pressed his thumb beside it. "Here. She wrote a reversal. For herself, in case a subject turned. She never thought anyone else would read this book." "Can we do it." "It needs her blood, not mine. And a place she's already stood." His eyes moved to the door. To the stone path beyond it, where the witch had drawn her hand back from the wards. Rosemary looked at the salt line. At the garden past it. The purple alligator was asleep under the bean rows, one eye slit open toward the path. The three cats sat in a row on the table, watching the door. "She told us morning," Rosemary said. "So we have until morning to be ready." She closed the book with her hand flat on the cover. She knew the curse now. She knew its name and its shape and the woman who wrote it. The man beneath it was still on her floor, awake, looking at her like someone who had decided to be helped.