Turn 5 of 7

Julia suddenly dies

It happens without warning. Julia opens her mouth — maybe to say your name, maybe to say the new name she's been keeping ready — and her eyes go wide. Her hand flies to her chest. She makes a sound that isn't a word, something between a gasp and a hiccup, and then her knees buckle. She crumples forward onto the linoleum like a string being cut, her dark hair spilling across the chalk line, and she doesn't move.

Riley stops reading. The silence is so sudden and so total that it rings in your ears like a struck bell. The candle flames snap upright, trembling, and the chalk symbols flicker — not fading, exactly, but stuttering, like a heartbeat gone arrhythmic. Riley stares down at Julia, her dark eyes wide, the grimoire still open in her hands. "Jules?" she says, and her voice is small in a way it hasn't been all night. "Jules." She drops to her knees beside her, fingers pressing to Julia's throat, searching.

You can't see clearly. The world is still a soft blur without your glasses, and the circle holds you in place, and the cords pulse warm and confused against your wrists. But you can hear everything — Riley's sharp intake of breath, the way she says "no, no, no, no" under her breath like a prayer, the thud of the grimoire hitting the floor. "She's not —" Riley starts, then stops. Her hands are shaking. She presses harder against Julia's chest, and you realize with a cold wave that she's doing compressions, and the rhythm is desperate and wrong.

"Riley," you say, and your voice — that new, strange, warm voice — cracks on the second syllable. "Riley, what's happening?" She doesn't answer. The candle flames are guttering now, wax pooling fast, and the chalk symbols have gone from flickering to dim. Something in the magic's rhythm is breaking down. The cords around your wrists pulse unevenly, warm-cold-warm, like they've lost their conductor. The pressure in your skull has paused, frozen mid-transformation, and you're caught between who you were and who you were becoming.

Riley sits back on her heels. Her hands are in her lap. She's staring at Julia's face, and her mascara is running, and she looks very young. "She's gone," Riley says, and the words fall into the basement like stones into water. The silence that follows is the loudest thing you've ever heard. The chalk symbols die. The candle flames shudder and go still. And the silver cords around your wrists go cold.