Spliced

Wolf was nose deep in a book about dreamwalking and it’s historical uses when the door to his cabin swung open.

He didn’t immediately glance up. He was used to unplanned guests. They could wait for him to finish his paragraph.

The thumping of a bucket being dropped on the end of his long wooden table drew his attention however, and he glanced up to see Amanda tugging Lily behind her.

“What’s up?” he asked. From the look on her face he could tell that something was wrong.

Amanda hesitated.

That worried Wolf even more.

Finally she spoke softly to the girl. “Lily, show him your arms.”

Lily had kept her gaze downcast ever since they’d entered the room but now she looked up carefully at Wolf and she momentarily reminded him of another little girl. One he’d failed to help. It made him feel just a little bit angry.

Slowly Lily pulled back her sleeves and showed her arms to Wolf.

He could smell blood, not witch blood, nor rabbit, but something else, something he couldn’t quite place. The scent was rich and strange. Not like anything he’d ever hunted. Despite what he could smell, the girl’s arms and her clothes were clean. Her skin looked normal. But the scent was all over them, not just Lily but Amanda too, barely hidden under a layer of primrose soap, and suddenly he had a horrible sinking feeling.

He met Amanda’s soft brown eyes, ones that looked now so certain. With increasing dread he asked, “What have you done?”

She raised her chin ever so slightly and then she dropped it down and spoke to Lily. “Lily, why don’t you go and wait outside for a bit okay. Make a necklace from the wildflowers.”

Lily nodded. “Okay.” She gave Wolf one last wary glance and then she left out the way she came in.

Neither Wolf nor Amanda spoke until she was out of hearing distance. Then Amanda said, “I cast a localised rewind spell.”

“I thought we agreed no time travel?” Wolf replied between clenched teeth.

“It’s not.”

“It’s close enough.”

“It’s safer.”

Wolf shook his head. “It’s just as useless. And what did you sacrifice?”

He noticed Amanda’s jaw clench. She glanced toward the bucket. “I had to.”

“What’s in the bucket?”

“It wasn’t just for Lily.” Amanda reached for the bucket and sat in down within reach of Wolf. “Katrina found this.”

Wolf reached for the bucket and tilted it on it’s side so he could see the contents.

“Don’t touch it,” Amanda warned.

Wolf glanced at her questioningly.

“Katrina tried to use it, or read it, I’m not sure. Maybe all she did was touch it.”

Wolf frowned suddenly realising that her not being sure meant she hadn’t been able to ask Katrina. He knew Katrina and Amanda both well enough to know that if the something had gone wrong and Amanda had found out about it then the girl would tell her mother everything. “You don’t know?”

Amanda shook her head. “She’s unconscious.”

Wolf relaxed. It wasn’t just the words but Amanda’s rushed tone that told him the girl was okay, at least for now. There was an underlying urgency though that suggested there was something else Amanda was far more concerned about and once Wolf got past his fear for Katrina he found new worries seeping in.

Luckily for him Amanda continued quickly with the story. “When she touched it, or whatever she did to it, it...” she paused there, seemingly unsure how to explain. “It was like she was fading away. And when I touched it-”

Wolf had been studying the blue vase as Amanda explained but the moment she mentioned that she’d touched it too he glanced up and gave her a through assessment. She looked fine, normal.

“You touched it?”

“She was stuck to it. I was trying to knock it out of her hands. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t get stuck to it like she did though but I could feel it pulling. Like the feeling you get just before you teleport but slower, like mud.”

Wolf nodded and looked back at the vase. She’d mentioned teleportation but the rest of her description almost certainly ruled it out. Teleportation wasn’t slow. What made a person fade other than teleportation though? Worldjumping? He had no idea what that was like but the rarity of it was likely answer enough. There were spells that could produce that sort of feeling, sacrificial ones, energy suckers. That was far more likely but it didn’t tell him what the spell was for. There were other hints though. The nature of the item for one. It wasn’t always true but often enough for a reasonable guess. Time magic was typically infused into timepieces, glamour magic and shapeshifting into jewellery and clothing, firestarting into lighters, healing magic into pastes and balms and pills. People liked predictability, so then, given that line of logic what did one infuse into a vase?

“You want me to leave it with you?”

Wolf nodded. “Please.”

“Will it make a difference what it is if...” Amanda hesitated. “If I had to use the rewind spell to undo the fading? Will it last?”

“A localised rewind?” he repeated thoughtfully.

Amanda nodded.

“Which one?”

“The one in ‘A Warlock’s Guide, Sands of Time. I believe you have a copy?”

Wolf nodded. He did. He went to fetch it. The Warlock’s Guidebook spells were always over complicated. They added unnecessary steps, tasks complicated enough to keep the average person from trying. Those books were allowed to be sold as openly and as widely as they were precisely because the real methods were obscured, hidden in plain sight. The basic spells still worked for those who put in enough effort but it was yet another red herring. The more difficult spells Wolf had found purely by accident, were often written in code. Certain ingredients or combinations of them actually indicated things not mentioned at all. He’d never managed to figure the entire code out, just pieces here and there. He’d tried reducing some down to what he thought were their base components but it didn’t always work. Many of these spells were far beyond him or Amanda. Only a trained sorcerer or a warlock knew how they really worked. But it wasn’t for lack of trying and occasionally Wolf would give them another go and sometimes he’d manage to crack a new one. And once you got one working in theory it was just a matter of time and repetition to figure out what was essential and what wasn’t. The problem in practice was that not all component amounts were listed correctly and a half working spell could be very dangerous.

It had been awhile since Wolf had looked at this spell. Amanda had her own books and had likely done her own experiments over the years and he knew for a fact that she wouldn’t have had all of the listed ingredients. So the next question he asked was, “What alterations did you make?”

Amanda showed him and he compared with his own notes on the spell.

“And the sacrifice?”

“A unicorn.”

Wolf paused and had to look at her to check she was serious. Finally he turned back to his book. “I suppose that’s better than a person. Was it yours or a client’s?”

“A client’s.”

“Shit.”

“Yup.”

Wolf gave a bitter laugh. “Can you pay it back?”

With a clenched jaw, Amanda briskly replied, “We’ll figure it out.”

“That probably cost you more than what Coal paid for this entire job. How much was that thing worth? A couple, several months earnings? And all you’ve done is delay the change.”

“It wasn’t just for her. Katrina-”

“Right, because you just happened to have the spell ready to cast.”

Amanda didn’t reply to that and Wolf knew he was right.

But after a few minutes of silence as Wolf reviewed the spell Amanda asked, “I need to know if it worked. If it’s gonna stick.”

Wolf sighed. “How long did you cast it for?” He ran his finger down the table of calculations trying and failing to do the math in his head. The table didn’t list unicorn blood as an option and there were so many other variables.

“I don’t know. Until I felt the energy running out.”

“You can feel that?” Wolf looked up at her in surprise.

Amanda nodded. “I need to know if it worked for Katrina, and for Lily.”

“Lily’s death was months ago and she’s already been necro’d once. You can’t undo that.” Wolf got up and moved over to a stack of small wooden drawers. He started rifling through them. He picked out several small white and blue stones. “Maybe the necromancy worked. She hasn’t turned yet.”

Amanda was silent and Wolf didn’t think much of it until he glanced up and got a look at the expression on her face. Suddenly something clicked and he felt his blood chill. “Why’d you show me her arms earlier? Why’d you even bring her here with you?”

Amanda looked at him a moment as if considering something. Then she glanced away and focused her gaze on the table. “Because this morning the flesh on her arms was decaying, and now it’s not.”

Wolf’s lips curled up in a snarl and he dropped a collection of vials on the bench with a loud thump. “Then there’s no doubt. That girl will turn. The most you’ve done is buy her some time and I can tell you that without even doing this test.” He nodded at the vials and stones in front of him.

Amanda’s furious brown eyes pierced into him. “It’s still time we can guarantee that she won’t turn in. It’s extra time we have to think of another solution.”

“What? By killing a unicorn every few weeks, or months, if you’re lucky, and at increasing frequency at that. Even if you managed to turn the clock back enough before her death, which I doubt, even with unicorn blood, it can’t prevent a death and it can’t undo a poorly done necromancy. There are no do-overs, no second chances when it comes to necromancy. There is no other solution.”

“You don’t know that,” Amanda snapped back.

“No, I do know that, and if there were already signs then it’s not in question anymore. That’s a guarantee. She will turn. In which case, Coal is right. We should put a bullet in her skull right now and be done with it. Keeping her in the state she’s in, it won’t end nice, not for her, not for you. And you’re risking everyone’s lives.”

“She’s a child,” Amanda hissed at him trying to keep her voice low.

“No. She is a zombie.” Wolf met her eyes and didn’t back down.

“A zombie who we know won’t turn yet.” Amanda nodded at the components in front of him.

Wolf looked down at them and sighed. “You’re too close to her. We never should have let her stay at your place.”

“Mine was the safest.”

“I’m not so sure about that now,” Wolf replied in a mumble. He hadn’t changed his mind but he needed Amanda focused for this spell, besides she’d obviously made her mind up. Arguing with her was pointless. He cleared away space on his table and drew some circles in chalk. From another cupboard he fetched a ceramic teacup. It was decorated with pretty flowers and a gold trim. From a small fridge he grabbed a vial of dark red viscous fluid and placed it in front of Amanda.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Unicorn blood. A stranger left some here awhile back as collateral for a book that was never returned. I’ve never used it, never had a need, but I figured it was useful having it, just in case.”

“What was the book?”

Wolf shook his head. “Nothing particularly interesting, at least I didn’t think it was. Just some poetry, not even magic.”

“That you knew.”

Wolf sighed. “Well it’s gone now. Anyway, you remember that cook book Coal had us chasing down on behalf of a client last year for an enormous fortune. That turned out to just be a regular cookbook. Sometimes people get attached to things a little more than they should.” He glanced at her to check if she got his meaning.

She raised an eyebrow. “Lily is not a thing.”

Wolf took the vial back from her and cracked the lid. He recognised the smell now. There was some debate as to whether unicorn blood was more or less efficient than witch blood when used in spells. Usually it didn’t matter, witch blood was considerably cheaper, but Amanda wouldn’t have had enough of that and for some reason blood spilled at the moment of death was the most potent of all. But for his test now what he needed was the same as what she had used or at least close enough to, and who or what the blood belonged to mattered far more than its freshness.

“We’re going to redo the spell but at a smaller scale,” he explained. “What did you use for the infusement?”

“One of Katrina’s trinkets. Something she’d infused from Matthew’s magic. It burnt up when I cast the spell.”

Wolf sighed but it came out like half a growl. He pinched the bridge of his nose. He supposed he shouldn’t have expected much more.

“It worked,” Amanda insisted.

Wolf kept his mouth shut.

“You don’t need much,” Amanda continued, “It’s just a guide. It’s the blood that matters.”

She sort of had a point but she was only half right. The blood may have been the most important part, but it wasn’t the only thing that mattered. Wolf grumbled lazily under his breath. Their whole method was terrible. It always had been. It was amazing they’d both made it to adulthood. The one thing he couldn’t argue against though was that Amanda did seem to have a natural knack for magic. There was more to this than just the ingredients but he had never been able to figure out exactly what made her spells work so much better than his. “We’ll see.”

He looked down at the book once more. Third down the ingredient list, stated plain as mud was written:

1 minute bag

Also known to those with some experience as a sandman’s infusement, time travel magic which had been infused into a standard pocket sized bag of sand, available for purchase at any warlock’s store with appropriate ID or specific back alley shops in exchange for a healthy sum of cash. That sand didn’t come cheap. But since it was Amanda and since she’d used infusements from children then he probably only needed a few grains. For him the quality and quantity of the borrowed magic seemed to matter a lot more. Maybe because she was a witch and he wasn’t? But Wolf suspected it was more than just that.

As if fate were making a point, while Wolf counted out grains of sand, Amanda looked down at the pebbles he’d previously laid on the table with a frown and remarked, “You don’t need the stones do you? The sand is infused already.”

Wolf stopped what he was doing and looked at her with a puzzled expression. It had been awhile since they had done proper spells together but surely she hadn’t managed to perform a spell without a separate infusement component? Wolf had thought that impossible. At least it was every time he’d tried it. “You’ve done spells without infusements?”

“Well, no, just if I have an item. I figured since it was infused...” She shifted on the stool she’d sat down on. She seemed as surprised as him as his question. “You haven’t?”

“No.”

She was silent awhile and then she glanced toward the door. “Do we need Lily for this?”

Wolf sighed. He’d spent his life studying magic and so much of it still made no sense to him. The more he learned the more questions he had and the more exceptions there seemed to be. Did the sorcerer’s even understand it? He shook his head. “No, but she’s eavesdropping so you might as well call her in.” He could hear Lily’s shoes scuffling on the other side of the door. She hadn’t been there long. She’d probably gotten bored looking at the flowers and patting the horses they’d likely ridden over on.

“Lily?” Amanda called in a gentle voice. “You can come on in. It’s not polite to eavesdrop you know.”

Amanda gave Wolf a wary look. Perhaps she was worried he was going to say something to upset the girl or perhaps she was wondering if Lily had heard what he’d said earlier. Wolf knew the girl hadn’t been close enough then but he said nothing to reassure Amanda of it. He saw little point in sugarcoating things now. It would just make them worse later. But nor was he going to make the bitter truth plain to Lily. That was Amanda’s call.

Lily poked her head in the door. Amanda beckoned her over. Lily climbed up on a stool next to her. “What are you doing?”

“A spell,” Amanda replied.

Lily watched as Wolf drew patterns on the table. Then he handed Amanda a bowl of herbs and other things, as well as a dropper containing a very small, very carefully measured amount of blood.

“What do you want me to do?” Amanda asked.

Wolf held up one finger indicating her to wait a moment. He glanced about in front of him and soon located what he was looking for, a small digital timer. Then he picked up the pretty teacup and he smashed it right in the middle of the circles.

Lily jumped.

Amanda gave Wolf a look as she simultaneously reached over to give Lily’s back a comforting rub. The girl glanced worriedly at her.

Wolf started the timer right at the breaking. He watched the seconds tick for awhile then he said to Amanda, “Not yet but in several minutes and on my mark, I want you to cast the spell to fix the teacup. Use all the blood in the dropper. We’ll repeat it with different amounts, see how long it lasts each time, and extrapolate from there.”

“On the same teacup?” Amanda asked with a frown.

“No.” Wolf sat the timer down on the table and then he opened the same cupboard from earlier. He lifted out several more teacups, all a similar size and shape before returning to his timekeeping. It was going to be a long morning.

Wolf wanted the breakage to be far enough in the past that the small sample of blood he’d given her wouldn’t fix it for very long. The goal here was to fail and then repeat the process until they had a mathematical model of how fast the spell’s effects collapsed.

“Ready?” he asked as the seconds finally reached his intended starting mark.

Amanda nodded.

“Go.”