“What do you mean, I’ll have to?” Carmel asks.
“Well, he can’t do it himself, and I’ll be in a trance,” Thomas replies like it should have been obvious.
“You can do it,” I say to Carmel. “Just think of how I embarrassed you on that date. You’ll be dying to stab me.”
She doesn’t look reassured, but when Thomas holds out his athame, she takes it.
“When?” she asks.
Thomas gives a lopsided grin. “I sort of hope you’ll just know.” The grin throws me a bit. It’s the first sign of “our” Thomas that we’ve seen since we got here. Usually, when there’s spell work to be done, he’s all business, and it occurs to me now that he really has no idea what he’s doing.
“Is this dangerous? For you, I mean,” I ask him.
He shrugs and waves his hand. “Don’t worry about it. We need to know, right? Before you get driven to the nuthatch. So let’s get going. Carmel,” he says, and looks at her. “If anything goes wrong, you have to burn the blood off of Cas’s athame. Just pick it up and burn it off the blade. Okay?”
“Why does it have to be me? Why can’t Cas do it?”
“For the same reason you have to cut him. Because you’re technically outside of the ritual. I don’t know what’s going to happen to Cas, or me, once this starts.”
Carmel is shivering, despite the fact that it isn’t that cold. Second thoughts are on the tip of her tongue, so before she can say anything, I take the athame out of my back pocket, pull it from its sheath, and set it on the ground.
“It’s a beacon, like Riika said,” Thomas explains. “Let’s hope Anna can follow it to us.” He reaches into his messenger bag and produces a small handful of incense sticks, which he holds out for Carmel to light and then blows them out before pushing them into the soft dirt around him. I count seven. Scented smoke curls up in light gray spirals. He takes a deep breath.
“One more thing,” he says, picking up the drumstick. “Don’t leave the circle until it’s over.” He’s got this “here goes nothing” expression, and I’d like to tell him to be careful, but my whole face feels paralyzed. Just blinking is a challenge.
He rolls his wrist and the drum starts; the sound of the beat is low and full. It has a heavy, echoey quality, and even though I’m pretty certain that Thomas has no formal drumming experience, every beat sounds planned. It sounds written. Even when he changes the tempo and the duration of the strike. Time goes by. I don’t know how much. Maybe thirty seconds, maybe ten minutes. The sound of the drum throws off my senses. The air seems thick with incense smoke and there’s a swimmy feeling sloshing around my head. I glance at Carmel. She’s blinking fast and there are a few beads of sweat on her forehead, but otherwise she looks alert.
Thomas’s breathing is slow and shallow. It sounds like part of the rhythm. The beat pauses and strikes. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Then it starts fresh, faster this time and lower. The smoke coming from the incense wavers back and forth. It’s happening. He’s finding the way.
“Carmel,” I whisper, and hold my hand out over my athame, resting in the dirt. She grabs me by the wrist and brings Thomas’s knife up to my palm.
“Cas,” she says, and shakes her head.
“Come on, it’s okay,” I say, and she swallows hard, then bites her lip. The blade drags across the meat of my palm, first a dull pressure and then a short, hot sting. Blood drips down onto my athame, spattering onto the blade. It almost sizzles. Or maybe it really does. Something’s happening to the air; it’s moving around us like a snake and over the sound of the drum there’s a screeching of wind in my ears, only there isn’t any wind. The smoke from the incense isn’t blowing away. It just swirls continually upward.
“Is this supposed to be happening?” Carmel asks.
“Don’t worry. It’s okay,” I reply, but I have no idea. Whatever is happening, it’s working but it isn’t working. It’s happening, but too slowly. Everything inside the circle feels like a thing trying to break from a cage. The air is thick and clogged, and I wish there were a moon so it wasn’t so freaking dark. We should have left the camping lantern on.
Blood is still dripping from my hand down onto the athame. I don’t know how much I’ve lost. It can’t be that much, but my brain isn’t working right. I can hardly see through all the smoke, but I don’t remember when that happened, or understand how this much smoke is coming from seven sticks of incense. Carmel says something but I can’t hear her, even though I think she’s shouting. The athame seems to pulse. The sight of it coated in my blood is strange, almost warped. My blood on the blade. My blood inside it. The drum beats and the sound of Thomas breathing rolls through the air … or maybe it’s my breathing, and my own heartbeat, pounding in my ears.