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𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐍 : 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐍 

𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓

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When I opened my eyes, I recognized where I was but the way my father was looking at me told me this was not what he'd planned. His eyes were wide, an old book in his hands where he sat on the couch. Even Pandora, who was holding a bowl of popcorn, which I didn't know ghosts could eat, seemed shocked and frozen at my sudden arrival.

"Why are you here?" asked Pandora.

"How are you here?" corrected Cage with a frown now melting into his shocked expression. "I didn't summon you nor did I visit."

"This wasn't you?" I asked, pointing to myself as I slowly sat up. My clothes were stiff and the blood had traveled with me here. Or, traveled with my subconscious because I didn't seep into the ground this time. I wasn't dragged or taken anywhere besides into unconsciousness.

"Did you use a geata?" he asked and I shook my head. "Then how the hell are you here because you shouldn't be. I didn't summon you and you...it's like you're not really here. You're flickering, Blaire."

I looked down at my hands. It was as if I was blurry or a light was flashing over my skin. I didn't feel entirely there. It was a feeling I could only associate with being light headed. "I don't know why I'm here, I don't–I don't understand."

"I was planning on coming and speaking to you," said Cage as he closed the book he had in his hands and stood, "but not in this manner. I'd never use your body as a geata, I'd never purposefully drain you of life."

"Then who brought me here?"

"You could've brought yourself," he said with a frown, always frowning. "You could've pulled yourself away from the caster, believing you were being summoned by me like you have many times before. You're powerful enough to change course but, kid, it's not safe for you here if you're still bleeding on the other side."

I scowled, I knew that. "Then you better tell me what you need me to know before I crawl my way out of here somehow."

"It's about the spells you've been looking for," said Pandora, chiming in with a grim look. I never liked when she looked fearful, it made me want to be scared. "You've found the binding spell but there's one...well...we found one you'll want to use."

"One that's not going to result in me having to sacrifice myself?" I asked.

She nodded.

"It's a spell your mother created," said Cage, giving both of us two separate looks. "It only works once, so when you cast it, that's all you've got. One try, one chance. Do you understand?"

I hated when he spoke down to me, like I was a child. I nodded anyway.

"It'll bring you back when you die," he explained, grabbing his book from the couch and opening it to me. He ran his finger along the inside cover. "Your mother hid it here in her grimoire. We aren't exactly sure the parameters of the spell, if it can bring a..." He glanced at Pandora and she narrowed her eyes dangerously at him. "...we aren't sure if it'll be powerful enough to bring a demon back from the dead."

My brows rose. "You want me to...?"

"Use it on Crow?" offered Pandora. "Yes, because we know that's what you'll do. You'd never use this on yourself, Blaire. You've known from the start you were going to die and he was going to live, no matter the cost. Well, here's your cost. One little spell and he could be safe."

He could live.

That was all I needed to hear to know which way my heart would sway me towards. I would do anything for the people I loved, my greatest strength and weakness.

"What does it take? To cast?" I asked.

Cage closed his book with a sharp sound. "Your blood, that's all."

"It's that easy?"

He nodded. "Your mother wanted you to be protected, to have everything in your corner to keep you alive but...you've always been the self-sacrificing type. Never eating the last cookie, never taking what you want...you wait and wait so the others around you are happy before allowing happiness for yourself. It's how you've always been, it's how you'll continue to be." He sighed softly and I saw emotion creep over his hard face. "It's not a bad thing to be selfish every now and then, please, try to remember that."

I nodded, feeling my heart tug in my chest like someone was trying to pull it free from behind my ribcage. I placed my hand there and looked up, half expecting the great geata beast to come crawling down from a bloody ceiling but I saw nothing.

"How do I get out of here?" I asked. There wasn't exactly an exit sign or a door to go through, not even a bleeding hole in the ceiling to be yanked back through.

"You're already fading," whispered Pandora. "You'll be gone in seconds."

You'll be gone before you know it.

I watched my skin, translucent and pale, slowly fade into nothing and blackness swooped in like a long lost friend. Like a warm hug, bleeding and cruel. When I opened my eyes, warmth like sweat coated my skin and I coughed, air trapped inside my lungs finally and once again. I realized I was gasping, my body sitting up roughly and I felt like my skin and clothes had been peeled off the floor as I sucked in air and blinked through the bright lights.

I was back in the morgue, I could smell it all over. My mouth was dry like paper and my tongue was stuck to the roof. I tried to swallow, but it was sandpaper in my throat and my eyes were trying desperately to adjust through the dried blood coating my lashes. I could feel six pairs of eyes on me and I spoke in a rough voice, desperate for them to see that I'm okay as hands touched my arms and face.

"That–" My lips were chapped. "–was crazy."

Hands, so tender and warm, caressed my face and although it was still hard to see through my crusted eyes, I knew who it was. I'd always know.

"The geatas in the astral world work differently," I murmured, working through the roughness in my voice. "But this...this wasn't Cage. He's a blood geata and...and this wasn't him summoning me."

"Do you remember," murmured Crow, voice hoarse like mine and face splattered with blood like an oil painting, "that one evening I found you in bed covered in blood?"

I nodded. I'd had a dream about Ace that night.

"Someone is using the geatas to speak to you," he said, brows furrowed deeply as his hand stroked my cheek and flaked the blood away. "If it wasn't Cage, that means it was someone else."

"But you successfully redirected the connection," said Macabre. "Diverting the spell towards where you wholeheartedly believed it was coming from. If you and Archer are correct, then whoever tried to contact you through this method before could very well be doing it again now."

Was Ace trying to contact me? After all this time?

"They're trying to weaken you," he added, running a hand down his long face. He looked tired, they all did. "We need to counteract the spells, block them from touching you." He snapped his fingers towards Blondie. "Get the journals, we'll begin looking now while you get cleaned up."

"I should take her home–" started Crow but Macabre shook his head.

"Not until we find a spell to stop the magic attacking her." Crow took me under the arm to help me stand as the older man continued to speak, "Use the private bathrooms by the offices."

My legs were just as stiff as my clothes but I walked with the most normalcy I could. Slightly lightheaded but nothing worse for wear. Thank god for the magic necromancer blood in me. The stairs, which we took one at a time, were hard to navigate when my legs chafed against the dried fabric of my sweats. Crow's hand gripping my ribcage with his arm braced against my back to keep me as steady as he could also didn't help with the uncomfortableness within my own body. Yet, I couldn't shy away from how solid and warm he was, even after the events of the past ten minutes had played out.

I was beginning to feel more and more happy with how we were the only ones in the building as we walked down the hallway and crossed the church pews to get to the offices. If I'd had to pass by people, I wouldn't know if I could've come up with a good enough excuse to why my clothes were stained and wet.

As we entered through Macabre's very big and lofty office, which surprised me because he didn't seem the type, I muttered, "Find anything with the maps? Any hints to a location?"

Crow, knowing I was looking for a distraction, nodded. "Somewhere off highway forty-five, there's an abandoned mill near the site of an old elementary school that closed down in the forties. Both have been isolated and condemned for decades–"

"And it could be the perfect hideout," I finished for him as we opened the bathroom door and turned the bright lights on. Everything was white and blinding for one quick moment before my eyes adjusted.

"But there's a chance he could be hiding near Charlon."

"Where I met with Blood?"

Crow nodded as I sat down on the toilet seat. I needed to get out of these clothes but there wasn't anything to change into, unless Crow wanted me to wear one of the black robes used for services, but didn't that all seem a little blasphemous?

"I don't think he'd use the same area twice," I said, frowning. I needed to get my hands on a map, see if there were things I could see that the others couldn't.

Crow turned the faucet in the sink on, running his fingers under the flow and no doubt waiting for it to warm. "I want to suggest we go in two search parties, scope out either area, but I don't trust you enough not to go out on your own."

"Aw," I murmured with a sigh, "you just know me so well."

He rolled his eyes but not before I caught the slight smile pulling at his lips. He grabbed one of the hand towels and wet it under the water. I knew better than to argue how I could do it myself as he took it to my face. The white towel came off pink and then a vibrant red in seconds as he cleaned.

"I always hated Cage's awful little geata tricks," he murmured, shaking his head. "Always leaving behind a fucking mess."

"Wish it had been him this time," I said back, thinking of my father in his little world and with all the answers I'd needed for so long. Hiding away from me, from mom, from this entire world. I wondered if she ever visited him there, or if he was searching for her just as I was. "Would've just hopped down into his portal rather than this."

Crow's face was splattered red and I reached up to flick some of the drying blood off of his chin. I hated how red I'd made him, how his clothes were stained and ruined. He helped me with getting the blood off my arms and where it stained me under my bloodied clothes. But it wouldn't be enough until I was in the shower and in something fresh. Perhaps we'd have a lazy day around the cabin once we got home from all of this, but, even as I thought it, I knew we'd never get it.

I motioned for him to leave me, just for a second so I could use the restroom and splash water on my face without him worrying over me. When he reluctantly left, I did my business quickly and then cupped both hands under the water. Splashing my face a few times, my eyes squeezed so tightly I could see oranges and yellows behind my eyes, I felt something cold wash over me, just for a fleeting second. I opened my eyes and caught my reflection in the sink, but behind me, staring over my shoulder and into my eyes, was a face that had gone ashen and gray as if he were the one seeing the ghost.

I hadn't seen his face in many months, nor had I thought much about him since, yet Jeb Reed looked just as he did in life as he did in death. Pointy. Bird-like. And very much dead.

He was gone when I turned around. Nothing left with me except the sound of running water, my fever heartbeat, and the impatient tap of Crow's shoe outside the bathroom. I was alone. I ignored my swell of fear and turned the water off, readying myself to leave. But I couldn't help but think of Reed as I left and took Crow's big hand in mine and held it tightly.

There were things I'd been questioning, whose allegiance was with who. Reed, West, and Stone didn't appear to be working for John. They explicitly told me they worked for Crow and under the Morticianers title. Yet, they still came after me even when Crow had been on my side all along.

I swallowed and pretended it didn't bother me as we headed back down stairs. Blondie was the first to speak to us when we arrived, grinning and holding out my mother's grimoire.

"Found a spell to ward off geata use on your body," said Blondie and before I could ask a question, she quickly added, "And no, it won't stop your dad's geatas from contacting you. This will just stop them from using your body as the gateway for contact." Her eyes lowered, like she was just taking a little peek, and her cheeks flushed when she met my gaze again. I pulled my hand from Crow's, unaware that I'd still been holding on, and took the journal from her and acted as normal as possible. It didn't need to be a big deal, even if Blondie's face was going pink and her lips wobbled from not smiling.

"What do I need for it?" I asked, looking over the page. "Because, I'll be honest, I'm not feeling super confident about the 'carve into flesh' part here."

"It doesn't say what to use to do the 'carving' but it's better to use your special knife then the ones we got here now."

I nodded, crossing the room for my bag. I pulled Spiorad free and placed the journal on the table to read over the instructions. I contemplated what part of my body would be the best for this and where it wouldn't hurt as badly and decided on my thigh above my knee. I ignored the way I felt eyes on me when I slid my sweatpants down and sat on the chair to avoid the fact my ass was out. I adjusted my grip on my blade, and pressed the tip to my skin.

It was a star with three lines through the middle and I was supposed to recite the incantation as I drew it against my body.

"Hi spiritus arcent a corpore meo. Corpus meum ad usum meum. Sacrum corpus meum. Integer portae," I murmured, breathing deeply as the knife drew a thin line of blood through the drawing.

(ward these spirits from my body. my body for my own use. sacred body of mine. untouched by gateways.)

I repeated it a second time as I finished. The soft beat of magic hit my skin and the wound, still red and angry, burned golden before the wound healed and sealed itself. I ran my finger over the raised skin, now only white scars in a scratchy line drawing. I didn't feel any different as I slid my pants back on, nor did I feel more content than before.

With the journal still in front of me, I stood and closed it but not before running my finger along the inside cover. I felt it, a small bump in the corner where the paper had peeled off slightly. The spell would be under there, written against the cover and waiting for me to cast. I tucked the book under my arm and smiled towards Blondie and Crow.

"I don't know about you all," I murmured, "but I'm just about ready to call it a day." I patted the journal and said to Blondie, "I'm going to take this home with me for the night, see if there's anything I can use against John. I'll give it back to you tomorrow, yeah?"

She nodded, her eyes flicking between me and Crow but she still didn't say anything about it. Instead, she said, "Tomorrow's Sunday, should we meet here after morning services?"

Macabre nodded, folding his map on the table. "We'll resume training."

"Really?" said Winker. "I thought we would be done with all the running shit by now since..." He glanced at Crow.

"Training doesn't stop with me being here," said Crow. "It should increase your current efforts now that you have an extra sparring partner."

I rolled my eyes and grabbed my bag, slipping the journal inside. "We better not be doing another timed mile because," I put my fist to my mouth and faked a cough, "I could be getting sick, like, super sick."

"Knife training will begin tomorrow," said Monroe with a little grin as Eva packed her things. "We'll spar, dodge, then get dinner, and then return for more. It'll be a little treat."

"What will? The dinner or the inevitable way we'll be leaving here bleeding?" asked Winker, the two men heading for the stairs still chatting and grinning.

"Hey, Cass," I murmured, glancing towards the office, "help me get the rest of the journals while everyone heads up?" I eyed Eva and motioned with my eyes for her and the two remaining demons to head upstairs and she nodded.

"Come on, boys," she said, taking Macabre and Crow by the arms. "Let's stop Roe from getting that shitty Italian place again for dinner."

I watched them leave, Crow smiling at something Eva was saying before the trio vanished up the stairs. I didn't let Blondie speak first, motioning for her to join me in the office. Closing the door softly, I spoke with my back to her.

"I need you to help me find out if Michael West, Andrew Stone, and Jeb Reed were working for Crow or for John," I said before I finally turned. Her lips were parted and her brows were furrowed. It wasn't what she had been expecting me to say. "I don't think they stopped working for the Morticianers and I think..." I ran both hands over my face after dropping my bag in one of the chairs. "...I think I killed three innocent men."

Blondie's eyes found mine as if giving the other a tight embrace. She nodded and rounded Crow's desk. "Tell me about them, would Crow have made payments?"

I thought for a moment, hoping to remember any of my encounters with them. Stone's was the only one not fueled by fear. But Reed...he was there with me, in the bathroom, on the back of my mind as my first. He'd always be my first.

"He said he wanted his money," I murmured, nodding to myself like it all made sense. "That his boss would...give them a raise if they killed me."

"You think he was being serious?" asked Blondie, pulling open Crow's filing cabinet with what key to unlock it with, I didn't know.

I shrugged. "Could've been an easy lie, make me think they were all seriously after me." I didn't recall West ever mentioning money, just his disdain for me. I'd assumed he was there for the money, only because of Reed's word, but West didn't tell me otherwise when I tried to use it against him to make him angry. "I don't know how badly some of them would've needed to be persuaded, if they were all working with Crow to begin with."

"They would've known who you were and your purpose to them by then," added Blondie with a confirming nod.

She went through the cabinet, pulling files out, shaking her head, putting them back in as I rounded the desk to look through the drawers. Crow was organized but it was hard to find where it all began and ended. Yes, his drawers and files had themes but the dates were unorganized. It felt like his office at home, with the papers across the desk and half used and finished.

We searched for the next five minutes before Blondie turned to face me with a file in hand. Handing it over, I flipped it open and found exactly what we had been searching for. Only worse. Inside were papers written up in Reed, West, and Stone's names for money to be transferred to their account in their family members names and not their own. West had a joint account with a man named Luke and Reed seemed to have a daughter, now wife or partner listed. Stone had the name of a friend, no blood relation, named Sheila.

"Crow paid off their families," murmured Blondie, stating the horrifically obvious. "He never paid them like they said he would, he transferred money to the people they cared about most instead." She frowned, deeply. "What does this mean for you?"

I swallowed thickly and I tried to gather my thoughts the best I could before speaking. "Means they knew they were going to die, that Crow had to give money to the people he was hurting as compensation." I fell into one of the chairs and let out a ragged breath. "It means...they knew they were going to die before they even met me." I waved my hand as I covered my face with my other and asked, "Are there any contracts in the folder that state what was needed of them?"

Blondie ruffled through the papers, laying them out in a neat stack as she inspected them before holding one out to me. I took it with a weak hand and read over it quickly. I didn't like what I found.

"Does it confirm what you were afraid of?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Those guys you killed...they weren't bad, were they?"

"No," I whispered as I stood, placing the file back with the others and closing them all together. "No...they weren't."

"You killed innocent guys–"

"Yeah."

"–and Crow let you."

"Ye-p."

"God, that's fucked." She chewed on her lip. "Did he never tell you?"

I shook my head. "I had my suspicions and he never said it outright but...but I think we both knew the other knew."

"What are you going to do about it?"

I tucked the folder into my bag. "Confront him? Run away? Summon them?"

"Summon?"

I shrugged. "Better to get the answers straight from the sources, right?"

Blondie frowned. "I thought after you killed a demon with your special knife they just...didn't exist anymore."

"Their bodies don't but not their spirits," I said. "I wasn't entirely sure before but Amy has been visiting me ever since I killed him, so, safe to say, host bodies are destroyed forever but their spirits wander this plane like any normal one would after death."

"So..." There was a slight smile across her lips, one not of eager joy but a sneer slowly growing. "Even if we kill John, his ass will still be here."

"Unless we wipe him out for good."

"How do we do that? Banish him somewhere?"

"We...could."

"But...where?"

Blondie's smile mirrored my own. It was always about mirrors.

We knew exactly what to do next, what to prepare, it would only have to come tomorrow once we reconvened and had time to research but there was finally a plan. A plan better than finding John's location and better than finding a way to save myself. This was one meant to end the torment John had been reigning down on us since the beginning. Fate would finally meet her match in us.

~

Back at the cabin, I found it difficult to breach the conversation of the Morticianers. I didn't want to start an argument but seeming how I'd killed three innocent men under Crow's wrongful information and, well, you can see where I was finding it tricky not to take his head off with my own grief and regret. Our army could've been bigger if we'd had them by our sides.

That last thought alone sent me through a fury of ideas. None of them good and none of them safe without practice. But was I willing to let them be my practice dummies?

"If you've got something to say, just say it," said Crow suddenly from the stove.

"Huh–what? I don't–"

"Sweetheart, you've been glaring two holes into the back of my head for the past twenty minutes," he said, finally turning to face me. He was wearing a small apron and didn't look amused when his eyes found mine. "Out with it."

"You're not going to be happy, but, to be fair," I murmured, pulling my bag up to the island, "neither will I."

I slid the file to him across the counter and waited until his face and eyes knew exactly what I was giving to him. His first day back at Clandestine and I was already pulling his world out from under him. He pretended to open the files like he didn't already know what they were, rifling through the papers and keeping his face neutral even when his eyes found mine again.

"I don't want to be upset with you," I began, taking in a deep breath, "but I am. They were innocent and you let me believe they were–" I cut myself off to clench my hand into a tight fist, nails digging into my palm to keep from shouting at him. Everything has a purpose here, everything has been leading up to the final battle, as cliché as that may sound. "They were good men and I was coerced into believing they weren't. I was only given one option, to fight for my life, and I should've been given another."

He put the file done. "Blaire..."

"I know the whole prophecy, saving the world, bullshit had a specific timeline of me figuring it out on my own and blah blah blah, but they shouldn't have been tasks for me to complete. I understand...how badly I needed to be whipped into shape but they had families and people who cared about them," I whispered, feeling desperate for him to understand even though he already did. "We could've all worked together."

"It was the only way for you to get stronger, to sense the real danger you were in."

"There are always other ways."

"They agreed–"

"And I don't care," I said, shaking my head. I placed a hand against my chest. "It feels like I'm being strangled or–or crushed from the inside out over this. I...I don't wanna feel like this about them but I do. I don't like feeling like I took them away from someone. That they were only doing this for me but they didn't even know me."

He couldn't respond, there was nothing to really say.

"I want to bring them back."

This got a response from him. "What?"

"I want to at least try," I said. "We have a morgue full of bodies, we have the morgue at the hospital, there's gotta be John Doe's somewhere for us to use. It's the only way we can really know the process of bringing a demon back from the astral to here again. I can bring humans back but how much of a demon can I really bring back?"

"We have souls just like humans," said Crow slowly, as if taking it all in. "It would essentially be the same process, more consent from the two parties."

"Two parties?"

"If the human soul is still tethered to the body, there's a consensual process that takes place. We don't take on hosts unless we're accepted or the original host has already moved on."

"Then you agree," I said, "that we try."

"It won't make up for how you feel," he said truthfully, "but it's a start, isn't it?"

That pain of taking them away from their loved ones, destroying bodies they'd found comfort in and home inside, would follow me even when I looked into the eyes of their new hosts. Would it matter if they no longer looked or felt the same as before? Would they mind? Or would they be grateful to be back?

Or do they not want to come back at all?

"I'm going to leave it up to you for finding the bodies," I said, pushing my chair back to stand. "And once you have four viable bodies, we'll meet at the barn."

"Four?"

"I took four lives, Crow."

"Reed, West, Stone, and...?"

"Tobias."

He frowned quickly and shook his head. "He wanted you dead–"

"Probably not as much as he wanted John dead," I said with a shrug. "Meet me at the barn once you have what you need. How long do you think it'll take you?"

"I'm not sure," he said, scratching his head and looking back at the meal he'd been prepping. It didn't look like we'd be eating anytime soon. "Why the barn? Can't we do this at the church?"

"The energy is different at the barn," I said. "It's, uh, potent there, like a portal." It had always felt like my own personal hellmouth.

"We're doing this now?"

He didn't seem convinced but I nodded, bag strap already over my shoulder. "You lied to me. Manipulated me. So...yeah. We're doing this now as your way of making it up to me."

He didn't argue. He nodded, turned the stove off, and began to gather his own things. Phone already in hand and pressed to his ear, no doubt calling Macabre to pick him up as I took our only car. I didn't wait for him to say goodbye or give me any confirmation, I only took the keys and headed for the door because this was what would heal me tonight.

It wouldn't heal my soul and the permanent grief I always had upon my shoulders, but it would heal the external worry. The anxiety and regret that took these men from their families. Maybe...maybe each step to healing would be one more step to reconciliation with myself. I'd gone through so much change it seemed impossible to see myself when I looked in the mirror. How could I still be me after everything I'd done?

This wouldn't heal me of my past or my future but it could make it easier for me to breathe. I hoped.

I got into Crow's car and turned the key in the ignition, the car 's soft purr vibrating through my feet and legs. When I looked up from going through my bag, there were eyes staring back at me.

"Again?" I asked and Jeb Reed nodded.

There would be no escaping the ghosts and the barn until I died. Even in death, I feared I would see them both like two ominous points that were always connected, never far from the other when one appeared. Always mirrors, it was always mirrors.

shorter chapter bc filler baby!!!!! you know how much i love world/lore building in this story <3333

what r thoughts so far?? we've got a few names/ppl pop up here who havent been mentioned since act one!!!

crow:

quote that just makes sense for this story:

vote/comment pls pls!! everything counts/means sm to me <333 

this story doesnt get a lot of reads/hits because it isn't a fanfic and i appreciate everyone who has stuck by this so far <33 the ride is gonna get a little crazy as we near the end here. could be 4-5 more chapters left? maybe less. 

kisses!!!!! xxxxxday