"Will?" Mireya struggled to sit up, to see what he was doing. She knew the meaning of those words—it was, Will had explained to her once, the first incantation one made when constructing a sigil.
But why was he making a sigil? "Will? What are you doing?"
He shifted over to lay the paper on the nightstand, and took off his glasses—the ones he said he needed to "stop seeing sigils everywhere." He muttered to himself. Find. Outline. Substantia. He switched into Latin, and his voice fell until it was almost inaudible.
Only once he paused, and closed his eyes. Familiarus, he murmured, and his cheek twitched.
Familiarus? Mireya’s heart beat faster. "Will? What are you trying to do?"
She doubted he heard her. When he focused, he heard and saw nothing but his work. Under his fingers, the sigil writhed and contorted like a living thing as he added penstroke after penstroke.
When he was done, he laid the pen aside and dug at an eye with the heel of his hand. His face was a mask of anguish.
"Will," Mireya said again. "What are you doing?"
"The only thing that can save you."
"Funny," she said. "Dr. Gus—"
"It was his idea, but don't blame him."
"For what?"
Will didn't answer, but bent to the floor and picked up Mireya's rucksack. He rummaged inside it, and drew out a handful of bullets.
He's not going to answer, Mireya thought. He doesn't want to admit what he's doing. Her anxiety deepened to fear, but not fear for herself. He doesn't want to admit to himself what he's doing.
So she silently watched as he carefully broke open bullet after bullet and poured the powder onto the nightstand.
When he was done he looked around. "Naphtha," he muttered to himself. "Anything flammable." He looked around. "Kerosene? Petrol? Gasoline!" He picked up the paper and peered at the sigil. "Yes," he sighed. "Just like I remember."
Remember?
Now a memory stirred in Mireya. "Will," she said. "You’re not... You’re not going to...?"
For the first time since started working, Jeff looked her in the face.
"I wish there was another way, Yiya," he said. "But I understand Dr. Gus now."
"You aren't."
His expression was haggard, and his eyes filled with a horrified resignation. "If it means saving you... Yes I will, Yiya."
"But you hate that, Will! You said that it was like seeing your parents dead!"
"They're not dead." His voice was husky. "Dad's not dead, he’s just—" Jeff struggled over the word, as though trying to convince himself. "Sleeping. That's all, he's just sleeping."
His expression frightened her. But it was still not fear for herself she felt. It was fear for him. She felt as though she was watching a kind of murder: Jeff was slowly strangling himself, twisting and bending his own soul as he struggled to convince himself of the rightness of what he was proposing to do.
"Do you really believe that?"
"Dad’s not dead!" Will flushed, and his eye glittered. "And when I find the Summa, I'll be able to reverse the spell, and you and Dad’ll—!"
"Will." Mireya stretched out to grasp him, but he flinched. "Never mind me. Don't do this to yourself. I know what you're thinking, what you're feeling. I felt the same when it was my mother. But Mami’s gone, and I've accepted it. You have to accept this too," she pleaded as his flush deepened. "Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t destroy your life for a dream that’ll never—"
"I won’t give up. Not while there's still a chance."
There was a soft knock at the door, and Dr. Gus entered, carrying a cloth bag. "Did you find it?" Jeff gruffly demanded.
"Yes." From the bag Dr. Gus drew a bar of a pale, waxy substance, and a cake of a fragrant, glossy gum.
"And the aqua fortis?"
"That will require some of your particular talents, Mr. Harrison."
Jeff took a deep breath. "Give me an hour, then we'll move to the cemetery." He went to leave, but paused in the doorway. His eyes met Mireya's, but he flinched and looked away. "Try to explain it to her. Apparently I can't." He almost ran out the door.
Dr. Gus stared at the closed door for a moment before turning to Mireya with a grave countenance. She said, "You're the one that convinced him to do it."
"It is the only way. And he's the only one who knows the procedure."
From the nightstand he plucked up the sigil, being careful not to disturb the pile of explosive powder, and held it up to examine. The light of the lamp penetrated the thin paper, so that Mireya could make most of it out, though not in detail. "Masterful," Dr. Gus observed to himself. Her eye followed the paper when he set it back down on the nightstand, and for the first time Mireya got a good look at the sigil.
It was a wheel-like design, inscribed inside and out along the rim with arcane symbols. The line work was sharp and clean and precise—almost too precise to be believed—and there was an impression of three-dimensionality to it, as though the sigil were a ring or a sphere floating in space, and the paper was a window into that space.
"Mireya," Dr. Gus said, as though she had spoken. "I lost your mother. On her deathbed—" He took off his pince-nez and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I promised her I wouldn’t lose you either. I tried dissuading you from this ... hunt. And now that—"
Anger blazed within her. "Don't put the blame on me."
Dr. Gus regarded her. "You shoulder no responsibility for the present ... situation?"
"I do. For the hunt, yes, and the way it ended. So let me take responsibility for it, and end it the way that I—"
"No man is an island," he interrupted. "No woman is an island. Your story bleeds into others, as theirs bleeds into your own. Do you take responsibility for how you repaid your mother's wishes?"
Mireya said nothing.
"Then let Mr. Harrison and I take responsibility for what we do now. It is," he added, almost as an afterthought, "the fulfillment of my own promise to Dr. Maribella."
Mireya fell back upon the pillow and shut her eyes.
"And what will happen to me, exactly?" she asked. "Understand, it's not because I am afraid."
"Of course not. Judging by the case of Mr. Prescott, you will be in a kind of coma. Sleeping dreamlessly, perfectly preserved. Perfectly safe, safer I dare say than any of us, perhaps more safe than anyone else in the world. Waiting for the moment we can revive you."
Mireya opened her eyes. It was hard to read the doctor's thoughts or emotions, for his control over them was so complete. But she felt sure he was sharing with her his most honest belief.
"You made a promise to my mother," she told him, and nestled her head into the pillow, as though seeking sleep. "Will you make a promise to me?"
"Not a deathbed promise, Mireya," he told her.
"No," she sighed. "I trust you that it won't be that. But please, promise you'll take care of Jeff. Don’t let him make the same mistakes I did."
The doctor grasped Mireya’s hand. "Te lo prometo," he replied.
--
It was almost midnight when Jeff and Dr. Gustavo lowered Mireya onto the cold earth in the center of the graveyard. It was a dry and barren plot of land, and too much of it had been turned over too recently, to swallow too many corpses.
Dr. Gus had had to apply more shots to Mireya's wounds to keep her alive, and still she felt the venom creeping deeper into her. Now almost her entire leg had been swallowed by numbness, and she had grown so weak that the two men had had to carry her from the Jeep in a makeshift cot. Now she laid very quiet, without even the curiosity to watch as in a large bowl Jeff combined the various elements he and the doctor had gathered.
But she did stir when Jeff bent over her. "I'm going to take your clothes off, Yiya."
"What? Why?"
"They'll have to come off anyway, before or ... after." There was a deep pain in his voice. "It will be easier to do it before."
Mireya nodded, and relaxed her limbs. There was a pregnant silence before Jeff began to unbutton her things and tug them off. Soon—too soon—she was naked on the earth.
She opened her eyes again when she felt Jeff's breath on her face. "I'm sorry it had to be this way," he told her in a haggard voice.
"But you said it's the only way."
"I know. But you—"
"I accept it now, Will. I was never— I didn't argue for my own sake." She touched the side of his head. "I argued for yours. But if you are convinced—"
He kissed her. She felt the tremble in his mouth.
"It's still hard for me," he whispered. "Because what I have to do— The only other time it was done—"
"You're doing it to save me. No?"
"Yes. Of course!"
She smiled at him. "Then don't compare it to what was done to your father. That really was like murder. But this— This is like surgery. Isn't it, Dr. Gus?"
"Yes," said the doctor. He sounded surprised. "Yes," he repeated. "An apt comparison."
She heard Jeff swallow, and he kissed her again.
Mireya closed her eyes, and tried not to shudder as she felt something cold and sticky and noxious poured over her bare midriff, but she couldn't but flinch when she heard the crunch of a shovel and felt dirt piled atop her. I'm not afraid, she told herself. But she was not so brave that she didn't quail with the primitive fear of being buried alive.
There was another pause and she wondered at it, and she wondered again when she heard what sounded like the sputtering hiss of a match.
But the last thing she felt was something being pressed into her hand. She clenched it.
It was, she realized in her last moment of consciousness, a lock of hair.
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