Lucy

Strange that Kat would reach out over the night log. Even if she didn’t have her number, it would have been easier to talk through Tom. Maybe she was trying to mend fences? If they couldn’t be friends anymore, they could at least be civil.

If it’s an olive branch, I’ll take it.

But if this was an olive branch, it was a good one.

There, at the little desk in her room, surrounded by obituaries and strange occurrences torn from the Observer, Lucy had an honest-to-god attempt at a binding spell.

It was pretty easy to identify, even from the poor drawing.

Kat didn’t say where she found the drawing, only that it was at the core of some research she was doing.

Maybe we’re more alike than I thought?

Still, it was curious. Under the steady yellow light of her desk lamp, Lucy traced the lines with her index finger. Shadows playing against the arcane script. The runes and symbols displayed an understanding of the arcane that greatly surpassed hers, and yet…

“This spell wouldn’t work,” Lucy said, not even glancing at her phone, propped up on a stack of ancient tomes.

“What do you mean?” Kat asked, slightly distorted over the video call.

“Well, a lot of this is wrong. It’s supposed to be a binding spell, and some of it is even elegant…but then bits of it are completely off.”

“Okay, keep in mind I don’t know what any of this means…”

Lucy sighed.

“Well. Say you knew a ghost or some other kind of incorporeal entity was about, and you wanted to keep it in one place—”

“Why would you want to do that?” Kat asked, interrupted.

“Loads of reasons: to limit its threat, to make it vulnerable…it depends on what you’re dealing with or what you’re trying to achieve.”

“Have you done that?”

“No, I don’t have the knowledge or power…though I could borrow the power from somewhere else…” Lucy mused before catching herself. “Really, this spell is beyond me, which is why it’s weird that it wouldn’t work.”

“Would it fail?”

“Spectacularly. This wouldn’t bind shit.”

“Okay, so they weren’t all the way there yet.”

“Seems that way, or someone else wanted to put them in danger.”

“How so?”

“Well, if you were at ground zero for this, you’d have one pissed-off, un-bound entity to deal with.”

“Would you say they weren’t working alone then? Like, maybe someone is trying to teach them?”

Lucy hadn’t thought of that.

“That would make sense; it’s hard to imagine someone would make this spell on purpose. But…”

“But what?” Kat asked.

Lucy wasn’t sure herself. But something was eerily familiar about all of this, and it felt dangerous to assume anything.

“Just promise you won’t try to perform this.”

“Oh, of course not.”

That felt familiar too, which was why Lucy knew she couldn’t trust that Kat was telling the truth.

There was an echo there, more than déjà vu. Something half remembered from a dream.

---

Want more? Sign up for the ARC Directive to get early access to chapters, unlock exclusive horrors, and step deeper into the dark — only on Patreon.