Ignite (5 page)

“Wow, Pen, you’re very helpful,” he jeers. “Thanks for all of your
wonderful
suggestions.”

I punch him in the arm and roll my eyes. “Fine, you want a suggestion?”

“I would love nothing more.”

“We may have to lay low, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun. You still have those souls you reaped from the loony bin, right?”

“Yeah,” he answers, holding up the dark velvet satchel and jostling it roughly. He sets it down on top of a tombstone that sticks out of the mossy ground at an improper angle. “What a mess you left in there, too. Enough blood to fill a swimming pool. A bit disappointed that you weren’t more creative with your kills, though. The receptionist… her throat? Really? So cliche.”

“What, I’m not allowed to have any fun?” I force a smile.

“Oh, no. Clearly you can have all of the fun you want.”

I laugh.

“So, my sister, since you are so accustomed to having a good time, teach me your ways.” He spreads his arms wide. “Show me it is possible to have fun without trouble, blood, or death. Because I’ve yet to experience this.”

“Have a little faith.”

“Bad choice of words,” he says, grinning back at me.

I wave away his words and grab the cords that tie off the opening of the satchel. I swing it from my fingers, inches from his face. “Perhaps,” I smile broadly, “we could do some exploring.”

“Exploring?” He pushes the bag away from him and I drop my arm.

“You’re not allowed to reap, and I’m not allowed to kill anyone, but Gus said nothing about reanimation.”

“You need a body for reanimation. Are you hiding a corpse on you? Tucked it away in a pocket?” He crosses his arms.

“Reanimate the
memory
,” I draw out the word, letting the y hang on my lips. “In my lessons, Gus is teaching me how to reanimate the soul without needing a vessel. He uses it to gather information from them that might be useful—like special skills or weaknesses they could use to their advantage later.”

“And the point of this would be…?”

Nothing
, I want to say.
There is no point. It’s only a way to eat up the hours. It’s only a way to convince you we should listen to Gus instead of ignoring his orders and finding a more violent way to keep you entertained.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I offer him a suitable alternative, the next best thing to pain—recounting other people’s pain. “Aren’t you even the least bit interested about the memories of these souls? One girl drowned her brother.”

“I heard.” He sounds uninterested, bored.

“Yes, you heard about
her
. But they were all in restraints, tethered to chairs.” I watch him closely as he leans back against the grave. He crosses his ankles to match his arms. I come at him from another angle, swinging the satchel around in the air uncaringly. “Remember Ariel’s little aneurism back at the asylum?”

He lifts his chin, paying attention. “She said one of the souls was lost.”

“You heard that?” I ask, and he shrugs. “Right, so she was seriously freaked about something. And Sablo too—you saw his face. Don’t you want to know what made them give up so easily?”

He considers this, chewing his lip.

“Come on, Az,” I push, bouncing up and down on my toes. “Live a little!”

Something shifts on his face, dark amusement and a decision. “Again, not the best choice of words, but sure, why not.”

“That’s the spirit!”

I notice him pull out a dark, metal tube from his pocket. It is old and heavy, with black carvings that string around it like the greedy fingers of weeds. Jeremy’s soul is trapped within the container, locked until it reaches Hell. Azael rolls the vial between two fingers before sliding it back into his pocket for safe keeping. That’s the one soul we won’t get to explore, and I know it’s the one he’s most interested in.

The bag that holds the rest of the souls feels soft and heavy in my hands. I pull at the golden ropes until the knots fall apart and look into the shadowy bag. There’s a faint glow coming off of the souls, like the dying glow of a star behind a blanket of clouds—a hazy silver-gold that is warm and clammy. The greasy souls roll over one another, reaching towards the untied opening, grasping for freedom that’s just out of reach.

I plunge my hand inside and instantly the warm, slippery substance of souls wraps around my arm, grappling for escape. It feels like my hand is painted in oil, and I try to shake them off, but they hold on stubbornly, lacing tighter around my fingers and stretching up my arm with their clawing tendrils.

“Uh, a little help here?” I call over my shoulder.

Azael heaves himself off of the headstone and grabs my arm hard, scraping his scythe over my skin and forcing the wispy souls back into the bag. I read the carving on the stone behind him. The letters are shallow, only a whisper of a name.
ELIZABETH HART, 1889-1905. GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTE…
I imagine I can still see the N, even though it’s erased from age.

“Thanks,” I manage, pulling my arm from the bag and flexing my fingers.

He nods, cleans his scythe on his shirt, and walks back to the edge of the clearing. He sits down in front of a second tombstone that tilts backwards, as if it is trying to escape the patch of grass that splays open before it, and throws me a disparaging look.

“Pick a good one, Pen. I don’t want to waste time on a respectable housewife who lost her marbles over chipped china and stabbed her husband. Make it interesting.” His lips curl around his last word and he snarls slightly, settling against the grave and resting his clasped hands behind his head. His eyelids fall lazily, and if I didn’t know better, I would think he is sleeping.

“Sure,” I mumble, shoving my hand back into the bag.

I go back to sifting through the souls, wading through the warm, vibrating ones until I hit something solid at the bottom of the bag. Beneath the golden balminess of the still dimming white-hot souls, I feel an icy fragment the size of a small marble. The sudden, unexpected frost amidst the warmth slices through my hand sharply, hitting my bone, and I recoil from its intensity.

“Woah.”

Azael opens his eyes, looking moderately interested, and sits up. “Sounds like a good one. Grab it quickly and tie that thing back up before the others spill out.” He hauls himself to his feet, carelessly brushing away the dirt that follows him on his back pockets. “I’ll grab the basin from inside. When you pull it out of the bag, put it in this.” He pulls out a small, glass tube from the same pocket he keeps Jeremy’s soul in and tosses it over his shoulder at me as he strolls into the decrepit remains of the stone chapel.

I snatch the small vial out of the air easily as I grab the soul around its small, dense body. Its tendrils reach up my arm, squirming to my elbow and pushing sharply against me in an attempt to fight my pull. When I try to pluck it from the bag, it begins to dive deeper. I adjust my grip and seize the soul tighter, choking it into submission.

When I drag it past the warmer souls, I notice the absence of other greedy tendrils that would normally be hitching a ride with this soul and searching for escape. For some reason, though, this cold soul seems to repel the brighter, warmer ones. I manage to extract it, shove it into the vial, and quickly tie off the satchel.

Triumphantly, I cap the glass vial, holding the top down with my thumb. I watch as the marble-sized soul writhes restlessly. Holding it up to my face, I can see that behind the light, buttery tendrils is a dark center. Instead of having the fading white-gold light of a pure soul, there is an underlying dirty butterscotch-brown. It’s not as dark as Jeremy’s soul would be—a sooty black—but it’s not clean enough to belong to Heaven, either.
What is it?
I shake the vial and listen to the low pinging noise it makes as it rolls back and forth.

“Got it!”

I spin around and see Azael sauntering through the crumbling stone archway holding a large, round basin. In response, I hold up the vial and shake it again. The tendrils go wild inside the tube again and push against the corked top more forcefully. “Me too.” I tighten my grip on the stopper.

“Good.” Azael snaps his fingers and a small fire flares to life at the center of the stone pit. “You’re the expert here, so you’ll have to take the lead.”

“And that must kill you,” I tease.

“Just get on with it, will you?”

I chuckle and walk over to the fire, stretching my arms out so the flames lick my hand. The heat prickles my skin up to my shoulder and I revel in the sensation. It doesn’t burn, just feels sharp, like a hundred tiny needles tapping on my skin, not quite piercing through. Azael steps up next to me and pushes the basin under my outstretched arm, and the dish hovers inches above the fire, cutting me off from the heat.

“You’re no fun.” I frown at the capped fire.

“On with the show,” he prompts, his voice dipped in impatience that edges towards anger.

“Fine, on with the show,” I echo, handing him the vail with the restless soul. “Keep your finger on the top. This one’s feisty.”

He nods and takes the tube from me, squeezing the rubber stopper tightly.

I walk around the fire, trying to think back to my lessons with Gus. What was it he had said, again? I really should pay more attention
.

“There needs to be blood… and dirt, I think.” I chew on my lip, recalling the list of elements the spell calls for. “Also, you wouldn’t happen to have any crow feathers on you, would you?” My eyes flick away from the flames that lick the base of the gently curving basin and up to Azael.

He is holding the vial up to his face, tapping on the glass and agitating the soul. When he notices me watching him, he lowers the tube and shrugs. “A couple dozen. There was a flock of them outside the asylum. You know how our dark-feathered friends love following me around. I think they think I’m they’re leader.” He smiles.

“Do
you
think you’re they’re leader?”

“I think they’d be lucky to have me.” There’s a beat of silence that’s heavy with bitterness.
He wants to lead something, someone more than me. But he’ll never get the chance if he keeps disobeying orders.
“Is there some incantation we need to say for this to work? And when are we supposed to add this?” He rattles the vial again, indicating the convulsing soul. “It looks like yellow snot. Have you seen anything like this before?” He squints at it closer and scrunches his face.

“No, and be patient. Good things come to those who wait.”

“I hate waiting.”

“Obviously.”

“And good things.”

“Obviously,” I say again.

I tune out his grumbling and pull my blade from my boot, slicing my arm from wrist to elbow so a thin trickle of black blood can spill into the basin. I place the dagger back into my boot, keeping my bleeding arm held over the flame. After the bottom of the basin is completely obscured with my blood, I pull away, pressing my hand over the cut and waiting for the skin to heal. It’s slow and painful, but the cut begins to fade. A few beads of blood fall down my fingers and I lick them clean.

“Where are the feathers?” I ask, looking up at Azael who is still pestering the squirming soul.

Azael pulls out three perfectly dark feathers from next to his scythe in his boot. They’re bent, slightly crumpled, and some are broken—bent at strange angles—but they’ll do.

I pick them from his fingers and hold them over the basin, letting my blood reach a boil before I close my eyes and burn the feathers in my hand. I open my eyes just before the feathers turn to ash and pepper into the blood. The gray ash floats across the churning black liquid before it is pulled to the bottom of the basin to drown under the thick bubbles.

“You can add the soul now,” I say to Azael. “It will be trapped.”

He pops off the stopper and tips the vial so the greasy soul slides into the dark mixture. It splashes in and disappears under the dark surface of the seething liquid. The mixture begins to turn a rotten shade of green and the grotesque bubbles multiply as it boils faster.

“Grave dirt,” I instruct. “We need a handful for each participant.” I kick my heel into the ground, scoop up a fist of loose dirt, and throw it into the basin. Azael mimics me from across the flames and throws in a handful of his own. Slowly, I circle around the large basin, never taking my eyes away from the roiling contents, and grab Azael’s hand in mine.

“‘Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble,’” he chants sarcastically.

“Very astute, Shakespeare.” I squeeze his hand.

“
Romeo and Juliet
may be obsolete, but
Macbeth
never goes out of style. You have to love Lady Macbeth—she knows how to grab the power she deserves.”

“All a matter of taste.”

He laughs. “So sensitive about your books.”

I ignore him and divert my attention back to the fire. “I’ll say the incantation and we’ll be pulled into the soul’s memory. Gus said it will be organized like a hallway, with each room holding a different memory. Any memory touched by evil will make our amulets spark.” I pull the black chain around my neck until the deep violet stone falls out and over my collar. I hold the jagged, ombre purple stone out to my brother. “Do you still wear your amulet?”