Eli should have gone home hours ago–he knew it, be it in the jitter of his pulse or the strange stillness in the air as he followed the others past the chain-link fence and into the ruins of an abandoned house, deep in the woods. The place had been abandoned years back, gutted by fire and now a skeleton of blackened brick and broken glass, allowing moonlight to spill through holes in the ceiling where it cut across the floor like pale ribbons.
They, however, had been preparing all week.
A girl–Leah Harker–stood at the center, her thrift-store leather jacket glinting under candlelight, hair coiled up on her head like a crown, and around her, four others moved silently, placing mirrors against the wall, chalking out symbols on the walls and floor that looked older than English, and it seemed even to Eli that the space itself had begun to hum.
“You so sure about this?” Eli asked, swallowing hard, but not giving away much more clue to his nervousness.
“You said you wanted to see real magic, didn’t you?” Even half-lit, Leah seemed like the kind of girl people didn’t say no to–something both saintly and venomous, something that Eli knew he should have been wary of, but still, he gave a short laugh in pretend confidence.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think it meant–whatever this is.”
“This is power,” she said, shaking his head. “This is the truth beneath everything the grown-ups tell you isn’treal.” Meanwhile, someone had started playing music on an old tape deck, spooling chants written backward through cheap speakers, warping the sound which echoed through the space like a prayer trapped underwater, and each of the five took their place along the chalk circle. Candles flickered, the air thickened with incense, and the mirrors reflected their faces a hundred times over to create the illusion of a vast congregation–a church of endless selves, all staring inward.
Leah’s voice rose first, low and trembling with something either holy or infernal, while the others followed, words sharp, syllables grinding, producing a sound that made Eli’s vision seem to blur.
“Seriously, this is getting weird,” he said, already taking paces, slow, but deliberate, backward toward the open doorframe they had come in through, but it was Leah who stopped him, reaching up, brushing a hand against his cheek. He didn’t see the knife at first–a silver blade with symbols etched along its edge, gleaming like it had been polished for the occasion.
“It has to get weird before it gets real,” she said before her voice broke above the chant, barely above a whisper. “The doorway needs a key, the magic needs a vessel.”
“What are you–”
The rest of his sentence never made it out as his stomach dropped, blade entering just below his sternum clearly. The sound was small, wet, almost polite and Eli’s breath caught, the only sound heard was the pounding of his own blood in his ears. She caught him as he staggered, murmuring, pressing her forehead to his as if caring for someone ill. “It’s all right–you’re opening it.”
The circle itself flared to life, light bleeding from the chalk marks, crawling up the walls like veins of molten fire. The candles elongated, their flames stretching toward the ceiling as if gravity was forgotten, and the mirrors, humming, rippled with impossible reflections–skies that weren’t theirs, faces that weren’t human, and as his blood hit the floor, it moved, slithering toward the sigils as if magnetized. It pooled perfectly with the carved lines, igniting them in a violent glow, his own word strobing in flashes of red and violet.
Leah’s eyes rolled white, lips moving, but the voice that came out was no longer her own. The temperature plummeted, the walls stretching, breathing in and out like lungs–
–and then there was silence.
Every candle had gone out and, for a moment, there was only the sound of dropping–blood or rain, no one could tell, but Leah stared down at where Eli’s body had fallen, not warm, not alive, pupils staring out into the distance of nowhere, but nothing–no magic–seemed to come. It was the kind of quiet that felt wrong–too empty, too human.
“What happened?” Someone asked, looking over to their ringleader who, blade still in hand, stood there expecting something to happen and when it did, it was nothing more than another tripping over the player, tape spooling, twisting and stopping the player as it became jammed. “Leah, what the fuck–”
She didn’t answer, face pale, eyes locked on Eli like she was waiting for him to move, but nothing moved.
For a long time, no one spoke, expressions flicking between awe and disbelief and a rising, nauseating panic as the reality of what they had done wasn’t so sudden. It crawled up their spines, slow and cold, and it wasn’t long before someone–a boy by the name of Cameron–broke the silence.
“You said–you said there’d be something–”
“There was supposed to be,” Leah said, voice coming out hoarse, cracked. “We did everything right.”
“Leah, he’s dead,” another–Josh–said, fear setting in and then panic. “Oh my God, he’s dead! He’s just dead!”
“You stabbed him, Leah–” Cameron said. “You killed him!”
“Would you shut up,” she hissed, hand shaking before the knife slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the wooden floor. The sound was too loud, too final.
“We have to go–someone will find this. The cops–Jesus, the cops will find him and they’ll know. Oh my God, we’re so fucked,” Cameron said, Eli’s face already going grey, eyes half-open, lips parted as if mid-sentence, causing him to back away. They scattered except Leah who, for a long moment, just stood there beside him.
“I did it right,” she whispered. “I did,” but the only answer was the slow drip of blood, tapping against the scorched floor like a clock counting down to something, and when she finally rose, when she finally stepped beyond the threshold, it was her hope that no one–no one–would find out.
of all the people to have been hurt by magic, picking eli dalton was a bad idea. not just because he was an innocent kid, who'd never hurt anyone but because he'd met molly craft over a month ago. molly craft who'd been nursing a crush on him that she hadn't wanted to make a move on, who'd been his friend, and who is the daughter of one of the most powerful witches in town. and who could feel it, the moment the magic flared up. who could feel it when the knife drove itself into eli, who could feel the magic like a beacon as she sat up in her bedroom, shocked across town. not that she should have been doing anything except what her mother told her to: finish the spellcraft laid out for her, finish the endless chores she hadn't finished, to finally pick her way through the grimoire her mother had been pressing to her.
thing is, all she'd been doing was picking through cassette tapes, doing the illicit magic her mother had forbade her from, and thinking, mostly, about what to do when monday came. she'd just been thinking maybe she'd poke eli to skip class or she'd maybe go to the mall and pretend she fit in for just a little while longer.
instead, all mary can do is throw on her sweater, grab for the grimoire and make her way out of the house the instant the magic seems to peter out. that one flare up, that tear in reality... no witch worth her salt hadn't felt that.
including her mother.
mary moves as quickly as she can, and before she can talk herself out of her choice, her hands are on one of the older grimoires. it's one that's fashioned from human skin, dripping with powerful, ill intent. it's one of the ones her mother has told her not to touch, yet it's the one that calls out to her. it's the one she knows will understand as she grasps it's heavy form. the power there is deep, latching onto her almost instantly as she hisses out the words, "take me to him."
the magic seems to be pleased to be commanded. and so it does just that: in the blink of an eye, she isn't home. she's in the dilapidated house, hearing slightly familiar voices, arguing with each other. the scent of ozone is powerful as mary grasps the heavy book, moving towards the stairs of the wretched place. where the other kids would have been afraid of going inside, mary isn't. she makes her way through the door, blocking leah and the others immediately, a smoldering glare on her face.
"you did what right?" mary has no idea what she looks like, the mousier goth kid who never fit in, holding a book that is clear in it's malevolence. she has no idea that she looks more frightening than she ever has in her life as she summons her own magic, locking every door, slamming shut every window to block off their escape.
"what did you do to eli?"
Leah froze, knife still on the floor and crown of hair becoming far less regal and far more disheveled as she could feel the power radiating off Mary, knowing instinctively that this wasn’t just a weird girl with a grudge, but something else–something sharper. Cameron and Josh shuffled behind her, eyes darting nervously between the girls and the blood-slicked floor, moving as if to shield their crime–well, Leah’s crime–from Mary’s eyes though they both knew well enough that she was going to see him, she was going to find out, and something was going to happen.
Even the symbols on the walls seemed to twitch in response to the new presence, mirrors quivering, snapping, like something was alive behind them, watching.
Leah swallowed hard, voice breaking. “I didn’t–I did it right. It was supposed to open the doorway. The magic–” Her hands shook. “He-He was supposed to–”
“Would you shut up, stop talking like that,” Cameron muttered, gripping Josh’s arm. “He’s dead, Leah! You killed him! You stabbed him right in front of us!”
In response, Leah’s eyes snapped toward him, wild and frantic. “I didn’t kill him! The magic… it just–he wasn’t ready! It’s not supposed to–I did everything right!” She argued, shaking her head and taking a step back, hands looking for something that would stabilize her when her friends, clearly, wouldn’t. “I thought–I thought he was the key! He was the vessel! I followed the circle, the mirrors, the symbols… I did exactly what we practiced!”
Josh let out a strangled laugh, horrified even as she continued. “I didn’t mean for this!” She hissed, turning back to look at Eli’s lifeless body again–the pale skin, the darkening blood that had pooled, some of it still conformed to the sigils. “I wanted–I just wanted it to work! We… we didn’t know it would–”
The others cowered back, faces pale, lips trembling while Leah tried to explain her side of things, eventually landed on one mantra: “It was supposed to work!”
they're bickering between each other, trying to misplace blame and all mary can feel is that the magic here is brewing, off. it's malleable in her hands, and she can see that eli's eyes are open, staring into a void, a nothingness. as much as they try to obscure him, he's simply too tall to miss, and the smell of blood is too thick for mary to not notice. mary grips the grimoire tighter as they cower, as they repeat it was supposed to work. the anger in her eyes burns, reflected in the intense wash of heat that hits the room. "move out of my way."
the magic whips out around her, forcing the teens to hit the walls and shattered mirrors with painful, blunt force. there are shrieks and groans of pain, and mary advances, crossing the stained, etched lines.
the view she gets makes her chest constrict. she sets the grimoire down, reaching out to eli, touching his motionless face. that the skin is grey, cold to the touch isn't helping her as she looks at him, at the clear look on his face that said he hadn't known what was going on.
another mirror shatters and she moves his shirt, to look at the wound. the fresh, magical wound.
"where did you get this spell?" she demands, yanking up leah to float above her, her limbs forced to her sides. "what were you trying to do?" mary can feel tears slipping down her face in anger. "where is the knife!"
eah’s breath came in broken gasps as the invisible force held her aloft, her boots scraping helplessly against the air, hair fallen loose, sticking to the sweat and soot on her face. her eyes darted to the others, but they weren’t moving–cameron was slumped against a broken mirror, arm bleeding where a shard had caught him, and josh was curled near the door, murmuring something between a sob and a prayer. the temperature around them was climbing wrongly--not warm, but hungry, and the air pulsed with a pressure that felt alive and thick enough to taste.
her voice finally broke through. “it was supposed to open a way to the other side! we found it online–in an old occult forum, and it said it could show us what was behind the veil! just a glimpse! we didn’t mean to–he wasn’t–”
josh was pointing, trembling, motioning over to the circle where the knife lay. “there’s–it’s right there. by the chalk.”
“we didn’t make it–” leah immediately tried to cover her tracks as if it would do any good to spare her. “someone sent it after we posted the ritual! we thought that was a part of it, that it had to be used–” but no, there was something about it, something that they wouldn’t have been able to pick up upon, but had clearly carried the magic of the ritual and, as if triggered by something to do with it, eli’s eyes, still open, no longer seemed glassy–they seemed focused, faintly catching on something unseen, a tremor that rippled through the air, but still, there was no movement from him.
as if being held up in the air wasn’t enough, leah’s voice came out as a whimper, an odd rune unlike any of the ones they had drawn, burning onto the back of eli’s hand, but still–no movement from the deceased. “what’s happening?”
of course leah doesn't understand what she's done — that no opening is one way, ever. that it goes both ways, into places she can't see, that she doesn't know. it's one of the very first lessons a witch receives, and she glares at leah. "you were tricked by the easiest game!" she wipes at her face, going to the circle where the knife glimmers. carefully, molly picks it up in her shaking hands, able to feel the power int it, the power that still keeps it heavier than it should be. "you used something you never should have touched! you're fucking stupid for what you've done!"
the magic lashes out, and this time it tears at leah's skin, making her shriek as long cuts etch themselves on her face. blood runs down her face, and she starts to sob. "i didn't mean to, i didn't mean to!"
mary doesn't care. she slams leah into the ceiling, and then to the floor. mary turns with the knife, going back to eli's body, not seeing the bruning on his hand as she tries to look him over, missing the more concentrated look in his eyes as she sets the knife down, trying not to cry more. "eli? eli can you hear me?"
the air pulses again, and mary misses the sound of leah trying to get up, trying to invoke her own, small magic to attack.
leah’s voice cracked into something guttural as she dragged herself up on shaking arms, blood mixing with tears, breath coming out in wet gasps. the chalk circle glowed faintly beneath her palms, responding to her desperation, feeding off it like rot feeding on the dead. who was mary to talk to her like this? who was she to say such things?
“y-you don’t get to–” she sputtered. “you don’t get to tell me what’s real!” she yelled as readily as she could, watching mary next to eli, talking to him, trying to get him to respond while the symbols on the blade pulsed in rhythm with something unseen. the heat of the room wavered, the air flexing around them, reality itself holding its breath as the light around them seemed to flicker hard enough to make the shadows lurch.
and eli twitched–just once, small enough that anyone might’ve missed it, but not the magic which seemed to back lash against the one who had tried and failed to wield it, opening up a portal, but without considering that things went two ways. while they might have been able to see beyond, anything on the other side, watching and waiting, could come through. while they could reach across the veil, something else could reach back.
she was thrown back–not by mary’s magic this time, but something else, hitting her like a storm which flung her backward, slamming into the half-standing wall so hard, dust rained down from the rafters as a sickening crack was heard.
eli’s fingers curled against the floor, skin still grey, but something beneath it shifted as something akin to ink flooded the whites of his eyes, muting the deep brown, and when they flicked elsewhere, landing on mary, they clearly weren’t his.
there was no warning for her, that leah would try to harm her, no warning signal. fighting someone with magic hadn't ever crossed her mind; and certainly not from a novice. the moment if flares up and reality begins to twist, mary doesn't catch. all she can feel for a moment is the twist in the air, and then she's just as surprised as leah when she's launched back against the wall, with a strength that was uncontrolled. josh seems to come to himself then, shock on his face, while cameron seemed to freeze in terror.
the crack had been too loud for it to have been anything good, and yet mary can't bring herself to care as she whips around to look at eli. to look at... the something that is and isn't eli. something else had crawled through, and mary tries not to cry more, looking at his eyes. "i — i'm sorry. i don't know what they did but i'm sorry."
the magic twists between them, and she wipes at her face, trying to placate- it? him? "i can send you back if you want. i won't hurt you. i just — please don't walk out with his body."
eli–whatever was left of him–rose in one, slow, and deliberate motion, body not so much moving as it unfolded, joints creaking faintly like a marionette relearning its strings. the sigils on the floor flared, not in chaos now, but quiet order, rearranging themselves into symbols that hadn’t been seen in centuries. pools of black, starless and endless, were all that remained of his eyes, the veins in his skin darkening, ink-like runs towards his throat, where his voice came out low and smooth, familiar, but at the same time, not eli’s.
“how quaint,” it said, the cadence wrong. “children playing with stolen power. how far they’ll go.”
the air tasted like salt and rust, the faint scent of ash that always followed his presence creeping into the corners of the house. when leah whimpered from where she laid, crumbled, he turned his head toward her, the motion smooth and predatory. “oh, you--he wasn’t supposed to, what he? that’s the nature of belief, isn’t it? you reach and you never consider what reaches back.”
it wasn’t leah he walked towards though, focusing again on mary, each step bending the light and thinning reality around him. “you,” he said, tilting his head, studying in a way a god might study an insect that learned how to read, “didn’t summon me, but you felt it, didn’t you? the tear in this world and the heartbeat under he skin of things–you’re not like the rest of them.”
and he smiled, looking down at his borrowed hands for a moment, flexing the fingers as if fascinated by the mechanics of flesh.
“eli dalton,” he mused, “a kind soul, a soft soul, curious and someone who dreamt of meaning.” the mirrors flickered of impossible places as he spoke–a drowned city beneath a black sea, spires of bone and brass, shadows moving like sentient smoke amidst the stench of oceanic decay. “you care for him, don’t you?”
the thing speaking through eli is old — older than anything that mary has ever encountered or heard of and the panic she feels is real as she looks at those ink dark eyes. her mind races with the words, with everything it's saying. things like this were almost primordial, and to have one in a human body... she knows it's bad. she knows that she has to fix this some how, even if she can't bring eli back. especially if she can't.
he has family. he has people who care about him, love him. he has people who will miss him.
even if it isn't him anymore, his body—
the moment it addresses her, she wipes at her face again, trying to look brave. "no. i didn't summon you. i'm a witch, but even i would know better than to pull the attention of something like yourself." mary tries to stand up, even if she's hardly five feet tall, her magic leaving her open as she looks at him.
it has to be ancient with the way it moves his body, with how it talks. the mirrors almost pull her through them, almost beckon her elsewhere, but in the end she has to answer.
her mother would call her all manner of things for saying, "i do. he— he was always kind to me. he didn't deserve this and he means something to me." there's more steel in her voice than she intends it to be, her hand clenching. "they were toying with things they didn't understand. i do. if you want them instead of him, i'd give them to you."
he tilted eli’s head slightly as though admiring the sound of her defiance, still wrong in the smallest way, how he shifted, but not inhuman enough to look monstrous. to the trained eye, however, it might’ve made someone’s stomach twist. he regarded her a long, terrible moment in the kind of silence that felt like it reached between heartbeats, and when he spoke again, it was soft, conversational even, though it filled the space like a storm front.
“so,” he said, “all three, in his place.”
his words rippled across the floorboards, runes reigniting. leah whimpered, unable to do much else; cameron made a sound like a sob, knowing he was ill-fated; and josh simply froze, wide-eyed, shaking, unable to look away.
“i like your certainty,” he said. “mortals tend to beg for time, for meaning, but you–you’re simply trading,” he said, smile faint, and in that smile was the suggestion of something ancient and cruel. “very well.”
the words weren’t spoken as much as it seemed to carve through the air, magic reacting instantly–the mirrors shattered in sequence like a ripple, reflections splintering outward into countless horizons, each shard flickering with other worlds, other seas, faces too blurred ot name though he knew them all.
the boys, perhaps expectantly, screamed first and leah’s shriek followed, choked off as something invisible caught them all in place. their bodies arched, suspended midair like marionettes tangled, black veins blooming beneath their skin, tracing upward much the same as it had eli’s. their eyes rolled white, veins bursting and one by one, they went still. when their bodies fell, it was with dull, final thuds–no fire, no flourish, just an ending and, in short order, eli’s convulsed once and then twice, a far more human, far more gaping breath being drawn.
“he’s yours again,” said a voice as if out of nowhere while eli’s eye flickered brown, skin still pale, but alive nonetheless. “but he’s not only yours. there’s a door there now, so be sure to keep hold of the key.”
and then it was gone, leaving only eli’s ragged breath and three shadows burned into the floor. “what–wh-mary! what happened?”
if her mother could see her now: mary, bargaining with something older, stronger than her. mary not wavering a moment in front of the thing in front of her, unafraid at the offer. "all three. they don't deserve a moment's more here." her voice is hard, angry, and she doesn't flinch when the magic tears through the air. doesn't flinch when the mirrors shatter, doesn't blink when their bodies are all lifted through the air all at once.
there's a little fear when the bodies twist and arch. a little trepidation that the thing inside of eli would trick her, and would stay inside of him.
but relief takes root the moment eli's eyes flicker brown. that there's more to it, she doesn't care about as she pulls the knife to herself and goes to hug eli the moment it's presence fades. that he's taller than her making it hard to do, that his shirt is stained with his own blood, that there are dark shadows on the floor doesn't matter to her. what matters to her is that it's his voice as she holds him, and that his body is warm beneath her.
as for his question?
"we need to leave. right now," mary's voice climbs a little as she pulls away, wiping at her red face. "we need to go before anyone realizes." the knife gleams in her hand as she goes for the grimoire, pulling it to her. "i'll explain when we get to my place, okay?"
eli blinked slowly, like someone waking from a fever dream–his breaths ragged, uneven, as if relearning the act of being alive in clammy, however warm skin. his pupils still dilated too far, his voice when it came out was raw, trembling around the edges of disbelief. “mary…?”
and then she threw her arms around him. his body sagged into the touch, instinctively, like something deep inside him still remembered her even when everything else didn’t. he smelled faintly of smoke and salt and something that wasn’t quite human–something that had lingered in the air since the magic had cracked the room apart.
when she pulled back, his hand twitched at his side, fingers curling as though uncertain whose skin they belonged to. behind them, the remnants of the circle glimmered faintly, the sigils already beginning to fade into scorched wood. the air was thinner now, hollowed out where the others had been–their absence ringing louder than their screams ever had.
eli’s gaze darted past her shoulder, to the three shadows burned into the floorboards, then back to her. he swallowed hard.
“what—what happened to them?” his voice cracked on the last word, but she was already moving–swift, purposeful. there was a steadiness in her tone that didn’t match the wreck around them, that suggested they were to move without questions, and eli nodded once, too quickly, his hand finding hers out of reflex. it was warm. alive.
she yet, for the briefest moment, his his shadow didn’t move with him. it lingered a half-second longer, still facing the place where the others had fallen. when it did follow, it bent wrong, rippling faintly like a reflection disturbed by a drop of ink.
He didn’t notice.