THE BOOK DIDN’T LOOK nearly as old as I’d expected. It wasn’t much more than a notebook worn shabby at the corners, and with yellowing pages. Whoever had written down the instructions for liberating the demon from the underworld hadn’t done it in the Dark Ages with a quill pen made from a sharpened crow’s feather, but very much later. It was maybe even written with a ballpoint, but I couldn’t tell for sure because of the candlelight. However, the seal holding the last pages of the book together did look pretty old. And appropriately enough, it was blood red, like the remains of the seals that had already been broken and were still clinging to the pages.
“It’s a copy made in the 1970s,” said Arthur, as if he had read my thoughts.
“Ah,” I replied. “And it was just standing around on the bookshelves of Anabel’s family home?”
“Of course not,” said Arthur. “She found it in an old desk. It was an heirloom.”
“Of course,” I replied, echoing him. In an old desk, surprise, surprise. No doubt in a secret compartment, along with a magic ring and a letter from Santa Claus.
“And … have you thought of your wish, Liv?”
The dearest wish of my heart, hmm, yes. I had to admit that this little detail of the whole conjuring-up-demons business was the part that I found really tricky. Over the last few days I’d tried to forget the story of Grayson’s wish about Huntington’s disease. But every time I saw Grayson himself, I remembered what he had told me, and then I always got goose bumps. Even if there was an absolutely watertight, logical explanation in the form of the calculation of probability, I still couldn’t …
“Liv?”
I hastily nodded. “Yes. I know what I’m going to wish for.”
As usual, Henry was leaning back against a bookcase with his arms folded. Jasper’s mother seemed to have a weakness for romance novels with pastel covers, and it intrigued me to read their titles right next to Henry’s head. Titles like Kiss Me, Rebel! and Let Me Die in Your Strong Arms. I’d better not go on looking at them.
The Grants’ living room was very tastefully furnished (apart from those books), at least when you imagined the furniture and rugs in their proper places—they had been moved over to one wall so that someone—Arthur?—could draw a huge pentagram on the dark wood floor. The mysterious and somehow angular sign framing the pentagram was nothing that I’d ever seen before.
The room was lit by candles standing on two chests of drawers, the sideboard, and the window seats, some of them rather too close to the curtains for my liking. Jasper and Grayson were busy lighting more candles and arranging them on the tables. However, it didn’t make the atmosphere sinister, although that could also have been because of all the framed photographs of a beaming Jasper and his also-beaming big brother as babies and toddlers. My word, they’d been so cuddly.…
“Think very carefully about the wording of your wish,” said Arthur, his eyes bent on the book. “Because it will be granted exactly as you put it. And the more complicated it is, the longer it will take. Maybe you ought to know that, too.”
“How long did it take for your wish to be granted?” Although I’d asked the question quite casually, I had the impression that all present in the room held their breath for a moment to look at Arthur.
However, he didn’t seem to notice. “We preserve silence on the subject of our wishes,” he said without looking up from the book. Ah, so he’d already switched into pompous, high-flown mode. Maybe someone ought to tell him that while he looked gorgeous in the candlelight, that tone of voice was absolutely not sexy. “It is solely an agreement between you and the Prince of Shadows.”
“I get it.” My glance wandered to Henry, but I had to look away again at once, because as his head was tipped to one side, I could read the pink letters spelling out Wild Desire. How I hated Mrs. Grant’s taste in literature! Why couldn’t she collect thrillers?
“The words you have to say are mostly in Latin,” Arthur went on. “We ought to go through their meaning, so that you don’t have to ask about it during the ceremony.” He lightly ran his hand over the cover of the book. “There’s not much of it. In essence, you swear loyalty to the Lord of Shadows until the last seal is broken, and you swear it by your blood.”
“In essence,” I repeated.
“By your virgin blood,” Arthur specified. “You confirm that you are a virgin and will be a virgin until the last seal is broken.”
“And when exactly will that be? I mean, the bit about the last seal?”
“The Commander of the Night will let us know at the right time.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Can’t he be a little more precise? I wouldn’t want to end up like my aunt Gertrude.”
I could have sworn I heard Henry chuckle, but when I glanced at him he was staring intently at his hands.
“I mean, it’s not that I’m in any hurry,” I was quick to say. “I just want to be on the safe side.”
“We think the last seal will be broken at Halloween,” Grayson replied in Arthur’s place. “On the day when it all began…” Oh, wonderful, now he was adopting that pompous tone of voice too. “Listen, Liv.” He reached for my arm. “If you take the oath, you’re promising to keep the rules and play the game to the end.”
Yes, sure, I was going to say, but his gravity and the look in his eyes held me back.
“I’d like to be sure you really understand.” He looked across at Arthur. “Arthur has forgotten this tiny detail, but if you don’t keep the rules and play to the end, you offer the de—well, the Lord of Shadows—a forfeit. You promise him the dearest and most precious thing you have, the thing on which your heart’s blood depends.” He looked at me as if expecting me to throw it all up at this stage and run for the front door.
“I didn’t forget,” Arthur defended himself. For the first time since I’d known him, he looked a little nervous. “I was just coming to that.”
Suddenly I was overcome by pity. That’s why they were all still here. Because they were really and truly afraid that the demon could ask for his forfeit if they simply walked away from the rituals.
“The dearest and most precious thing you have,” Grayson repeated. “So if you want to change your mind…”
I shook my head. I realized that Grayson wanted to frighten me, and he meant well, but if I backed out now, what good would that do anyone? Apart from the fact that then I’d never find out what was behind all this.
And as for the forfeit: Well, it wasn’t as surprising and despicable as all that. How else was the demon going to hold people to their word? After all, in return he offered to grant their dearest wishes and give them immeasurable power, and he was a demon, for goodness’ sake, not an angel—what did they expect? I’d have liked to say so out loud, but maybe that was going a bit too far. I wasn’t about to start defending a demon I didn’t believe in.
“Anything else I ought to know?” I asked instead. There were no such things as demons—that was the thought I had to bear in mind. Because demons didn’t exist, they couldn’t take anything away from you either, never mind what you promised them. So there.
Resigned, Grayson shook his head and let go of my arm.
“Then let’s begin. Everything is ready,” said Arthur unctuously, pointing to the little table in the middle of the pentagram. On it, neatly arranged, stood a chalice, paper, a pen, and a knife.
Rather a large knife, I thought.
Grayson, whose eyes had been following mine, said, “It’s Arthur’s father’s hunting knife. Handmade.”
“Three hundred and fifty layers of Damascus steel,” added Jasper who had so far kept surprisingly quiet. He hadn’t even mixed any drinks. “Sharp as a scalpel.”
I swallowed.
“The sharper the knife, the less it hurts,” said Henry.
I supposed that was meant to encourage me. “Did I ever tell you that I can’t stand the sight of blood?” I asked.
“Nor can I.” Jasper blew out the match he’d been using to light the last candle. “I always just shut my eyes. You’d better do the same.”
“Form a circle, brothers and sisters,” demanded Arthur.
I bit my lip. The last time I’d formed a circle was in nursery school. Ring-around-the-rosy, a pocket full of posies … But then I looked at the knife again, and the laughter that had been threatening to burst out of me died down.
“Five have broken the seal, five have taken the oath, and five will open the gate, as it is written,” said Arthur. “We have come together today to make the circle complete again and renew our oath.”
And then a funny thing happened. If anyone had described all this to me beforehand, I’d have sworn that I’d be rolling about the floor in fits of laughter. But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t know whether it was because of all those candles, or because it was all so solemn and serious, or maybe because of Grayson’s warning just now after all, but somehow or other I had a lump in my throat when I repeated what Arthur read out to me. I didn’t even try to translate what I was saying, I only knew that sanguis meant blood, and it was easily the word most frequently used, in all forms of its declension. Now and then the others also had to repeat something, in voices that sounded rather flat as they muttered it, quite unlike Arthur, who was intoning his part as clearly and with as much feeling as if he were onstage.
Finally I had to go up to the table and write my wish on the sheet of paper. Although I took rather a long time—I wanted to be quite sure of what I was saying—the others waited patiently until I had finished. I wish for demons not to exist, so that they can’t hurt anyone either. So maybe that wasn’t brilliant, but in the circumstances I thought it was quite clever. Because it was a paradox, in the unlikely case that the demon really did exist. And you could always outwit supernatural powers that wished you ill with paradoxes. I knew that from all I’d ever read on the subject.
Arthur held the folded piece of paper in the flame of a candle and read out a Latin phrase from the book while the paper burned and fell to the floor in ashes.
Then it was over, and much sooner than I’d expected we got to the uncomfortable part of the evening.
“So we swear our loyalty to you who bear a thousand names and make your home in the night,” said Arthur, solemnly handing me the dagger. “And we seal the oath with our blood.”
I held the knife uncertainly up in the air. Is this a dagger which I see before me…? Why did I think of Macbeth and all the nasty crimes he went on to commit at this point?
“Where, exactly?” I asked.
“The palm of your hand is best,” said Henry. “It heals up faster than a fingertip. But don’t press too hard; that blade really is infernally sharp. I’ll help you if you like.”
“No, it’s all right. I can do it.” I took a deep breath and pressed the point of the knife against the ball of my thumb. Blood immediately came out. Ouch. “Now what?”
“In here.” Grayson held out the chalice; it was already half full of wine. Yuck. I watched, queasily, as a little trickle of blood ran from the cut over my hand and dripped into the chalice: one drop, two, three …
“That’s enough,” said Grayson, and Henry gave me a handkerchief that I could press down on the wound. It stung slightly, but it wasn’t too bad. Not without pride, I handed the knife on to Grayson.
After they had all let their blood drip into the chalice—Jasper, as he had said, with his eyes closed—came the worst bit: Arthur swung the chalice around in the air for a while so that it would all be well mixed, and then everyone had to drink a mouthful and say sed omnes una manet nox, whatever that might mean. (“But all have a hand at night?” “By night all hands are one?” My Latin really was terrible.)
I was very careful to swallow the stuff without tasting it. I almost shivered when it had gone down. If that was red wine, I was never going to like it, even without an extra flavoring of blood. But at least it didn’t make me retch.
The others were obviously cooler than me; you could see they took all this as routine. And Jasper even had two mouthfuls, probably telling himself it would act as a disinfectant after the cut.
“Now the circle is complete again, O Lord of Shadows and Darkness,” said Arthur, looking satisfied. “We await your instructions for breaking the last seal and keeping our promise.”
“But don’t worry, you can take your time.” Of course it was Jasper who had to ruin the solemn conclusion of the ceremony. He began blowing out the candles. “What’s the matter with you all? It’s true. He might as well wait until we’ve won the qualifying games.”