The stormy clouds parted just enough for the afternoon sun to shine in Ana’s eyes and she winced, squeezing her eyes shut. No aspirin, no electrolyte drinks, nothing to make this hangover feel better. She would just have to deal.

She was supposed to work today, but called in sick at the last moment after waking up feeling like a horse kicked her in the face. She didn’t feel like dealing with Deacon, anyhow. He tried to call her three times this morning before she ended up blocking his number. What he said to her still made her feel sour inside, and she wasn’t ready to speak to him or hear any apology he might have in store. This wasn’t there first fight, and probably wouldn’t be their last. In a week or two, things would be normal with them again, as they always do.

Ana sat on a large, flat rock, drawing a circle with elaborate markings around the edge. She was in the forest, thirty minutes away from her house and surrounded by pine trees on all sides. She was most calm when she was surrounded by nature, no human in sight to bug or harass her. Except for Beau.

He appeared from the trees to her left, in the direction of her house. He was wearing the same jacket and gloves as before, but now wore black cargo pants. His hair was no longer tied behind him but was let loose around his shoulders. Despite the gentle breeze blowing against him, not a single strand of his black hair moved.

“I assumed you saw my note?” Ana called out from the rock. She didn’t realize how high off the ground she was until he came close to the rock. The natural platform was just over his head. He had to place his hands on the rock and pull himself up to see what I was doing.

“Taped to the front of your porch, for anybody including your father to see? Yeah. I saw it.” Beau replied, bluntly. Ana rolled her eyes. He looked at the circle she was drawing. “What exactly are we doing here?”

“You asked me to find another spell, and so I am.” She looked down at the drawing in front of her, and to the grimoire she was using for reference. “Arrow pointed to the north…” She glanced down at the compass she brought with her and drew an arrow on the right spot.

“We couldn’t do this at the hotel, or barn?” Beau asked.

“Didn’t feel like going to your motel, not if Judas is there. This spell requires us to be at a certain elevation, and you can’t enter my house.” Ana murmured in reply, making a few more markings with her piece of charcoal. “…There. Hop on this rock and sit in the middle. Use the one behind me to get up.”

She pointed to the lower, smaller rock behind her and he nodded. She moved to the side as he climbed onto the big rock and sat down, crossing his legs.

Ana flipped the pages and began reading the instructions for the spell. She already memorized the incantation for the spell this morning, which required further online research on how to pronounce Proto-Norse words, a dead language nobody has spoken in hundreds of years. That only left the instructions on the beginning of the spell to be deciphered, but they were in Old English, which she knew better. She blinked as the headache in the back of her eyes persisted, making reading the Old English words more frustrating than they had to be.

“You look ill,” Beau commented.

“Huh?” Ana glanced up at him before returning her eyes to the page. “Oh. I drank too much last night. Didn’t have anything to get rid of the headaches.”

A few minutes of silence followed her statement as she read the instructions. This spell is different than the last one we performed. This spell requires my blood, and lot’s of it. It needs to be placed on Beau’s forehead. Do I really need to touch him again?

“I know a spell…to get rid of the headache—if you want.”

Ana looked up at him. His face looked sincere, but nervous as he waited for her answer.

“You know a spell that gets rid of hangovers?”

“No—no, it’s only a spell for, like—for getting rid of distractions. It won’t heal you, just block you from feeling them.” He rephrased, squeezing his hands together out of nervousness.

Ana sighed and looked away as she thought. Well, he hasn’t killed me yet. He can’t seem to do harmful spells with those disfigured fingers of his. “Fine. Just make it quick.”

He seemed surprised that she agreed to it, but quickly hid it. He hesitantly took off his gloves and set them to the side. He took a strange, small, orange ball from his pocket and crushed it between his thumbs. The liquid inside spread across his thumbs but did not drip onto the ground. Instead, it wrapped around his thumbs like the slimy tendrils of an octopus. He raised his hands close to her face. “May I?”

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She thought for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of letting some strange orange substance touch her face, but eventually nodded.

“Close your eyes.” He murmured, and she did. After a few short seconds, she felt his thumbs press against the sides of her head, where the soft flesh was. Beau repeated a chant under his breath in a language Ana could not discern. She realized the orange substance was pure mageia as the strange, crisp smell flooded her nostrils and made her eyes water. Despite the uncomfortable feeling, it also felt..familiar. Nostalgic. She knew it from somewhere, but she didn’t know how or why. Where have I felt this before?

The spell finished as quick as it started, and Beau quickly pulled away from her. She opened her eyes and felt as if she could see and think clearly for the first time this morning. Her headache was gone, and she didn’t feel so groggy anymore. The spell really had worked after all. She stared at Beau, trying to discern where she had felt his mageia before. It must’ve been before the incident, right? It must have.

He nervously coughed and looked down at the book in her lap. “The…the spell? What do we have to do?”

She blinked. “Right. Uh…” She looked down at the page and started reading the pages. “We have to…I mean, I have to use my blood for this spell, and…put on your forehead? No, place my bloodied hand on your forehead….recite the incantations…focus my power…”

Her words trailed off as she, again, tried to decipher the ancient text. It was easier now that the headache was gone, but it didn’t make the old-timey words any less confusing. Medieval people and their fancy ways.

“Okay. I think I got it. Bleed thy hand, place on seeker’s temple. Focus mind’s eye.” She grabbed the ceremonial knife from her bag and opened her palm. She had bandaged it just before going to bed last night and there was now dark stain of blood on the bandage. She took it off and looked at the sealed wound grimly, a mark of failure from Marchosias’ summoning ritual that he never answered.

“…You went through with it?” Beau asked in a hushed whisper. Ana didn’t look up at him, not wanting to see what kind of emotion he had on his face. She didn’t want to know if he had any pity for her or not.

“No.” She bluntly answered. “I have to place my hand on your forehead. Is that alright?”

“Yes,” He murmured. “How exactly…will this help us? Help find my mom?”

“It will pull memories of your mother from your own mind as a sort of source for finding her, or something. I don’t know. It’s sort of gibberish to me, but it’s what we’re looking for.”

She pressed the blade to his soft skin, but Beau stopped her by placing his hand over hers. His gloveless, marred, hand. She glared, offended by any sort of physical, unnecessary, touch from him.

“Only the memories of my mom?” He looked uncertain, serious. His eyes hard and his mouth set in a thin line. Ana nodded once. He moved his hand away.

He’s afraid I’ll look for his memories of the incident. A tempting prospect, I’ll admit. But I can wait just a bit longer before he is finally ready to tell me. She pressed the blade into her skin, deeper than the last cut, and blood spilled from her palm. She winced, stopping the cry of pain before it could leave her mouth. This has to be enough blood for the spell, she thought as she watched the scarlet liquid drip down onto her pants.

“Ready?” She croaked. Beau nodded. With the blood pooling in her palm, she quickly placed her clean hand to the back of his neck and the bloody palm to his forehead. Before she closed her eyes, she saw Beau’s shocked expression as the blood spilled over his face.

She leaned close into him until she could feel his warm breath on her face. She began to chant the Nordic words she memorized for the past few hours, trying her best to remember the pronunciations of the ancient language. As she spoke, she focused hard on Beau’s Mom, Emily Ann Motloe. Emily Ann Motloe. Emily Ann Motloe. Let me see her. Let me find her.

She could feel her mageia spill from her palm and onto Beau’s forehead. He squirmed under her grasp, but otherwise didn’t move. Emily Ann Motloe. She could feel something now, a tingling. But that was it, a small spark of light in the back of her mind. It stayed that way for a few minutes. She began to feel weak and shaky, and knew she was using up her magic reserves for this one spell as she continued to repeat the chant over and over.

“Ana..you’re getting pale. If you can’t do this—”

She gripped the back of his neck harder, and he stayed quite. She continued the chant, pushing harder into her own mind and his. Emily Ann Motloe. Emily Ann Motloe. Emily Ann Motloe.

The tiny white speck suddenly grew bigger until it completely covered her, and she gasped. Her head was thrown back to the sky, her mouth agape. It felt as if her eyes were glued shut and she had no choice but to witness the images that were shown before her.

A kind, smiling woman. Hair as dark as chocolate, eyes as intense as an evergreen forest. Sharp tongue, fingers always manicured and smooth to the touch. Maternal, soft, love, warmth. But there was something else there. Pain. Betrayal of the whole family, and betrayal of her husband.

Ana realized these weren’t her memories, but Beau’s. Were these his last impressions of her before they got separated? She didn’t have time to think before she was thrown into another memory.

I sat on the floor of a bedroom, decoration and furniture around me a discolored blur as if I could not remember them properly or they just did not matter. My face was wet, as if I had been crying. But I never cry. I’m too strong for that, and as the eldest sibling I shouldn’t show fear. That’s how everybody else knows what we’re doing is wrong, even Father.

Another person sat down next to me, and I realized I was up against my bed, facing away from the half-shut door so nobody would see me crying. I turned to see Mother, Her usually perfect hair was a mess, and she hadn’t applied makeup that day. She was usually so clean and meticulous, and now she wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, hun. I know what this means for you.” She whispered, wrapping an around around my shoulders. I felt tears well my eyes, and I didn’t stop them. I couldn’t.

“I can’t do this!” I cried. “She doesn’t deserve this—She has nothing to do with us! I don’t care about what she stole from me—she didn’t—she didn’t…”

Mother pulled me into a hug, and the sobs were let loose. She always knew what to do to comfort me. “Oh, my little Beau…” She murmured, rubbing my back. “Your father knows what’s best for this family. He knows what he’s doing, and he believes you’ll feel much better once this is all over.”

I sobbed again. “It’ll kill her. I will kill her. I can’t do that…I’m not Judas.”

Mother flinched at the mentions of my little brother. She pulled me away, just enough to look me in the eye. “Don’t say that. This is for a good reason. You need the remnants of your core back, and this will sever the connection between Margaret and that foul demon. She is a good woman. She deserves to be free, and if Ana has to die for that to happen…then so be it.”

My sobbing stopped. I looked into my mom’s determined face. Yes, this has to be the only option. It has to be. The death for a girl for two positive outcomes. A human woman can finally be free of a terrible demon’s grasp…and a cambion girl doesn’t have to live with the pain of being the daughter of Marchosias. I really didn’t care about my core, but the thought of peace for two people made me feel a little better.

I have to believe there will be sunny skies at the end of this dark storm. I have to. Just for my mom. “Okay,” I murmured. “Okay.”

The memory ended, but Ana’s shock and pain wasn’t over yet. She was thrown into something else, but this time it was a yellow barrier. A shock of yellow hit her eyes, and she could not move past it. She tried to push herself through it in whatever corporeal form the spell had decided to give her, despite the pain it caused just behind her right eye, but she failed. She was about to give up when the yellow barrier formed into something else. Electric yellow eyes, sharp and brilliant makeup, a pale face, and black hair. “Now…who could you possibly be?” The smell of cypress and benzoin hit her nose just before she was thrown far, far away.