Twenty-Three
Tangier, Virginia, is a tiny island slowly sinking into Chesapeake Bay, home to just over four hundred residents in the Beforedeath—and who knows how many souls in the Afterlife, one of whom just happens to know the language of the codex.
I spent the better part of last year searching for someone who could translate the grimoire and eventually tracked down an early sixteenth-century Cornish peasant rumored to be part of the Cult of Persephone. Her name is only known to history because she wrote an herbal medicine guide and was promptly burned at the stake. Some sources say that after her execution, the townspeople found writings in a “strange demonic language” in her hut.
Ancestry records show that she had a many-times-great-granddaughter, Alice Pruitt, who lived on Tangier Island in the early twentieth century. She was known for writing in code, then died under mysterious circumstances after having a loud dispute with another woman. Locals say they were arguing about members of the Greek pantheon. She was found stabbed to death in her bed the next morning.
This is our translator.
The plan is simple: I’ll slip into the Afterlife and con Pruitt into translating the journal. I’ll pretend to be a descendant of one of her friends, say I found the journal in my attic along with some letters addressed to her. Maybe it’s my mom’s dying request that thejournal be translated. I’ll turn on the waterworks. Wobbly bottom lip. Something to really pull the heartstrings.
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Ezra says from where he lies on a thin blue couch under a collage of artwork with a distinct nautical theme.
There are a surprising number of Airbnbs for an island that’s a half square mile. This one is owned by a real estate investor who’s never set foot on Tangier. We conveniently arrived just as the cleaning crew was leaving. One quick lie about being maintenance and we have the place to ourselves until the next guests arrive in a few hours.
“This was your idea,” I say from a seafoam love seat next to a lamp made out of seashells. “I did very little talking.”
Ezra lifts his head as Tolliver hooks him up to the monitor. “Yeah, but I know how you work. You get into people’s heads and convince them to do your bidding.”
I put a hand to my heart. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
It’s just me, Ezra, and Tolliver this trip. Tolliver to administer Miracle Max, me to get the information from Pruitt, and Ezra because he’s curious.
“You don’t have to do this, dude,” Tolliver says as he sets up the equipment.
“And have gotten on that boat for nothing?”
Ezra did not do well on the ferry. He spent most of the ride with his head between his knees.
Tolliver grunts as he snaps some tubing into place, then connects a vial of Miracle Max to a vaporizer. We’re running on bare-bones equipment here, only what we could get on the plane.
We had a bit of a moment at the airport going through security. Tolliver had all the mist ingredients in his liquids bag labeled as things likeshampooandmoisturizer. I guess it was a littlesuspicious, as some of the components are solids and one looks a bit like weed. The TSA agent opened the tiny jar labeledsunscreenand sniffed it. Tolliver was starting to look panicked, so I stepped in.
I gave the clean-cut agent my most winning grin. “It’s an organic sunscreen that you have to triturate right before using. It’s very eco-friendly. Negative carbon footprint, in fact. Do you want to try some of our natural deodorant? It’s made from bacteria-fed fungi.”
We were waved through pretty quickly after that.
“Okay, so go over this again?” Ezra says, breathing heavily.
“Relax,” I say. “Tolliver will do me first.”
Tolliver blushes. Okay, that was a bad way to put that.
I clear my throat and point to the monitor. “You’ll be able to see my vitals here. If anything goes wrong, Tollie gets alerted and will bring me back.”
I don’t tell him that the vitals Tolliver is reading aren’t things like heartbeat and brain waves. What he’s really tracking is the magical connection between body and soul. But maybe if Ezra is more focused on the monitor, he won’t notice that I have no pulse and my skin has gone cold.
“Also, the book will disappear this time.” I hold up the journal, which I already doused in Soul Attaché.
Ezra tugs on his ear. “And this…potionis safe? It’s been tested?”
“Like a million times,” Tolliver says. “Safest Kykeon mist there is.”
I gasp, sitting up and pulling down my mask. “Ooh! Tell him about Force Ghost!”
“I don’t think that’s a good—”
“So, about ten years ago, someone came up with a mist that was supposed to be thenext big thing, basically make Miracle Max obsolete, but when they tested it, the soul left the body but never arrived in the Afterlife. It was just stuck in limbo.Forever.”