Cold Kiss

Sale Reject.
    I focus on a torn cardboard box spilling T-shirts and towels onto the faded floorboards. “I had to wait for a full moon. So I figured out when the next one would be and got everything I needed while I waited.”
    “What spell did you use?”
    I flick my gaze sideways. “I wrote it myself.”
    His eyes widen. “Seriously?”
    I shrug. “Seriously. I mean, I got my ideas from a few different books, but yeah.”
    His mouth is still hanging open a little when he makes a “go on” motion with one hand.
    “I needed some things I couldn’t find around here,” I continue, staring at the toe of my boot over my knee. “Mandrake root. A ritual, um, blade. They call them—”
    “Athames, I know. My grandmother had one she gave my mom when she died.”
    I swallow again. I wasn’t expecting that. “I wrote it all out, and collected the other things I needed—saffron, poppy, hemlock. I sort of scoped out the cemetery a few nights before the full moon, to make sure no one would be around. And to, well, get used to it, you know?”
    I shivered as I remembered those nights before the moon was due to rise full, and I sat near Danny’s grave, sometimes resting my cheek on the simple stone, tracing the letters of his name, engraved in the marble. DANIEL FRANCIS GREER. I had never known his middle name was Francis.
    “And on that night?”Gabriel sounds almost angry now.
    “I was there at eleven, waiting for midnight. I had a picture of him, and a T-shirt of his, and all the other things. I had already blessed the athame, too.”
    I can feel the slight motion as he nods. “Then?”
    I close my eyes to picture it. I don’t think about it much anymore—it was hyper real at the time, too many sensations, the chill of the earth even in late July, the damp kiss of the grass on my knees, the flat, chalky smell of the stone, the dark blanket of sky overhead.
    I had everything ready—a candle, a bowl and a small container of milk, the herbs, and the blade. I laid it all out, trying to ignore the way my hands shook, the faint crackling of squirrels in the trees, the grasshoppers’ steady hum.
    “At about five minutes to midnight, I poured the milk in the bowl and wrapped the mandrake root in Danny’s shirt. I put that in the bowl, submerging it, and then added the saffron and the poppy and the hemlock.” I glance at Gabriel, and his brow is twisted into a crooked, unhappy line.
    “I laid the picture of him on the grave,” I say, and my voice trembles a little then. It was a picture I loved—everything in it was perfectly Danny, from his Stooges T-shirt to the sun in his hair to the sleepy, soft smile on his face. “And I got out the knife.”
    “Shit, Wren.”
    I ignore him, plowing ahead, determined to get the rest of it out now. “I pricked my finger and smeared the blood on the picture. Then I cut my hand, here”—I hold out my right hand and show him the scar in the center of my palm—”and waited. As soon as it was midnight, I started the spell and squeezed my hand over the bowl.”
    I can remember the words even now, the smooth weight of them on my tongue, the sound of my voice in the silence. It had taken me almost a week to get it right, or as close to right as I thought it could be.
    This night I seek to rekindle Life’s bright fire
    Fire stolen too soon by the cold grasp of Death
    Untimely Death.
    Spirits bright
    Spirits dark
    Spirits undecided and in between
    Witness my invocation.
    Life taken from you, Danny, return!
    Love awaits you.
    Death has no hold on you.
    By candlelight By starlight
    By moonlight growing stronger
    I command this to be.
    With this symbol of Danny
    With my blood
    I command this to be.
    Return to life
    Return to me
    Return to life
    Return to me
    Return to life
    Return to me.
    Gabriel closes his eyes and scrubs a hand over his face when I repeat the spell to him, and I bite my lip. It sounds wrong here in this shabby room, on the sofa that smells like ancient must and smoke. It sounds crazy, wrong and crazy, but I have to tell him the rest.
    “I took the blade and drove it through his picture and into the ground, into the dirt.” My heart is pounding now, remembering the racing thrill in my veins as I waited, the air in the graveyard swelling, pushing out, and the cool breeze that licked at the candle until it guttered and went out.
    “And?”Gabriel says. He leans closer, folds his hand around my ankle again.
    My voice is nothing more than a whisper. “I