The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(99)
An ordinary protection spell wouldn’t stop the wraith. The witch who’d become the wraith had fae in her blood, just like Blue. Spells that worked against the fae were far harder to produce, and Blue had little experience with them.
She paused before a shelf of carpa leaf, bergamot, and billy fern. Turning, she found Lucian balanced on a stack of wooden boxes as he reached for one of the old cauldrons that rested on a top shelf. “Careful,” she said softly, so as not to startle him into falling.
He grunted in reply as his fingers found the edge of the cauldron and worked it toward him. When he finally pulled it free in a shower of dust, he coughed and climbed back down, his prize in his hands. “I don’t know how you’re going to make a fire so you can do your spells properly, but now at least you’ll have a cauldron to use.”
“Thank you,” she said, giving him a small smile. “Lucian, how did Dinah catch you?”
He scowled. “I came here looking for you. Wanted to tell you that I’d heard about two other children gone missing. She invited me in. Said you were in the root cellar. Opened the door for me and said to be careful on the ladder as you were in the far end with your candle. Then she shoved me in and locked the door behind me. It’s lucky I didn’t fall and break my neck.”
Blue swallowed hard at that image, blinking away the memory of Mama so she could focus on the boy standing in front of her. “She recognized the ingredients for the spell Mama used on the lock in the Wilds. That means she’s studied either alchemy or witchery.”
“Nobody studies witchery unless they’ve got some fae in them.”
Blue nodded. It took a touch of fae in the blood to give one some magic. Which meant Dinah might have a bit of magic, just like Blue. Ordinary spells wouldn’t work as well on her, but the same spell she did for the wraith would work on Dinah. Unfortunately, Blue was fresh out of ideas for anything that could stop a monster like that. A protection spell wouldn’t be strong enough. A binding spell would require the monster’s blood, and even if Blue could get close enough to the wraith to get some of its blood, she wouldn’t have time to finish the potion before the wraith destroyed her.
That was the essential problem. Any spell used against the wraith would require Blue to get close enough to the creature to be its next victim. How had her mama done it? How had she come close enough to the monster to imprison it?
Blue lifted her hands and examined the blood that had dried on her palms. Her blood and Dinah’s. The same combination that had bonded Dinah’s blood to the volshkyn leaf in the kitchen.
That’s how Mama had done it. She’d bonded something to the wraith using Blue’s blood. Something that drove the wraith into the Wilds, where the lock was waiting to seal it away.
Maybe that’s why Blue’s magic had exploded when the wraith was near. She hadn’t been reaching for the monster. She’d been reaching for her own blood. For the magic that was compelling her to finish destroying the creature.
That gave her food for thought. She’d felt no compulsion to touch the dancing fern leaf that had bonded with the walla berry juice. No need to touch the gate where her blood had bound the spell that locked the wraith away.
What had Mama bound to the wraith itself? Something to weaken it so they could get it into the Wilds in the first place? Something to make sure if it escaped, Blue would be able to help track it down and deal with it? Whatever it was, Blue wasn’t going to ignore the magic that had ignited in her blood.
She had to trust that she held the key to destroying the monster. Now it was a matter of figuring out where the key was hidden. She turned to Lucian. “Help me gather a sample of everything that’s stored in here.”
“Everything?” His eyes widened.
“Everything. I need to make a potion to destroy the lock on the door, and I need to make a weapon to use against the wraith.”
They pushed the wooden chests in the center of the floor together to make a long worktable. Blue barely thought about where she was standing. She was far too busy cataloging her ingredients and putting them into groups—those that would bond well together and those that didn’t bond well with anything she currently had in stock. When it was organized, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work.
Hours passed. Blue’s stomach rumbled, a reminder that dinnertime had come and gone. She fought back a yawn as Lucian curled up to sleep on a stack of empty burlap bags. Blue couldn’t afford to fall asleep. Not when so many lives were at stake.
Blue’s eyes were gritty with exhaustion, and her muscles were stiff and sore by the time she had a potion capable of melting the door’s lock. She also had several other experiments resting in jars—bolla root and thresh with a dash of silver, carpa leaf and dancing fern with copper and fria stone, and a noxious-smelling stew of black moss, feringut, rose lead, and myrrh. All of them were decent weapons if she wanted to briefly paralyze the wraith or knock its power down a notch, but none of them would do what she needed.
None of them would kill the wraith.
“Is this ready?” Lucian held up the jar that contained the acid she’d made for the door lock.
“Put gloves on,” she chided. “And then yes, go pour it on the lock. Once the door opens, leave it open, but don’t go anywhere without me.”
The alluminae was fading, which meant they’d been trapped in the cellar for a full night and most of the following day. The wraith might already be ravaging the city, but Blue thought Dinah wanted something different than to use the monster to destroy Falaise de la Mer. She hated the royal family. Blamed them for imprisoning the wraith and somehow ruining Dinah’s life. Perhaps the fae in her blood had allowed her to use the wraith for her own ends. Perhaps she’d been a friend to the witch turned wraith. Perhaps she’d sacrificed too much to the wraith, but the creature had been imprisoned before it could uphold its end of the bargain with Dinah.