The Alchemy of Forever

book to my chest, I squeeze my eyes shut, a few tears escaping their corners as I say my final farewells—to my coven, the Incarnates; to Charlotte; to my mother, whom I never got to say good-bye to the first time. I savor the moment as the wind whistles through the crane like a hymn.
    I am ready.
    But before I can send myself into the air, I hear the squeal of tires shredding across asphalt and the sound of shattering glass pierces the night like a gunshot. A girl’s terrified voice screams out. I whip around. Only one thing makes these sounds: a car accident—a deadly one.
    Taryn.

eight
     
    The ensuing silence yawns around me, a dark formless presence that pushes me toward the ladder. I have to see if it’s Taryn, to see if my penance, my last act on Earth, has failed.
    Time is of the essence and my strength is waning by the second, so I throw the book in my bag and leave it on the crane, then begin to climb down. My sneakers slip on the rungs and my breath comes in ragged waves. I stagger toward the deserted streets.
    The smell of smoke and acrid burnt rubber assaults my nose, mingling with spilled gasoline. My pulse is rapid, my legs are shaky, and my vision is blurring again. I turn a corner and stumble over a pothole in the slick asphalt. My ankle buckles beneath me.
    “Damn,” I mutter. Ahead of me, I see the car. Flames lick through a gap in its hood, casting strange orange shadows on the rusty, rippled loading dock doors. The car is upright, but a spiderweb of cracks on its windshield tells me it flipped at least once before landing here. I smell a coppery wash of blood. Dizzying, overwhelming—it is everywhere.
    I grab the door handle, gather what little strength I have left, and yank. It won’t budge, and for a split second I have the sensation that I am not here, that I am dead, a ghost girl trying, laughably, to move objects in the physical world. I close my eyes, picturing the windswept crane, and steel myself for one final tug. Metal scrapes metal and sends a jarring reverberation up my arm the door finally opens.
    My breath catches in my throat, relief mingled with horror. It is not Taryn, but a young girl, maybe sixteen, with tangled blond curls and a silver bracelet around her tanned wrist. Blood runs down the side of her face, soaking the embroidered neckline of her white peasant blouse like a bloom of red flowers.
    She isn’t dead—a vein still pulses weakly in her neck—but she is close to it. Her right arm and leg appear to be broken, as does her neck, and blood seeps from a wound in her head. Up and down, up and down, her chest rises and falls, her breaths small and pitiful. She coughs, and a ruby drop of blood escapes from the corner of her lips. She takes another breath. And then, with chilling finality, she goes still.
    In a fog I hold two fingers to her neck. There is no pulse. A little voice in the back of my head tells me she is beyond help, but I wrap my arms around her waist and pull. I hear a metallic snap as I manage to get her out of the car and lay her down on the street, and I can only hope I haven’t broken something else in her. She’s small, but I am so weak that I nearly black out from the effort. Kneeling, I tilt her head back. I lay my hands over her heart, her blood sticky on my skin, and push down hard, pumping rapidly. Moving to her face, I pinch her nose closed, put my mouth over hers, and blow.
    I have every intention of saving her, however unlikely her recovery is, but the second my cold, dying lips touch her warm ones, the sudden urge to take her body overwhelms me, as strong as a riptide.
    No! I tell myself, jerking myself away from her lips and beginning to pump her chest again. But the smell of her jasmine perfume is so heady and I am so light-headed that when I lock my mouth back on hers, instinct takes over. Instead of blowing into her lungs, I hungrily breathe in again and again. Power surges through my veins, a feeling of simultaneous falling and rising up, like a playground swing. After a few minutes I taste something sweet: her life essence.
    I try to stop, but it is beyond my control. Tears stream down my face as I draw out her soul, her life force flowing through my mouth, its sweetness expanding, then finally beginning to wane as it makes its way into the ether. A sensation like thousands of static shocks pierces my body, small blue sparks dancing between her forehead and mine. I think of heat lightning, those far-off strikes in the night