Delilah Devlin: Lost Souls

“Caitydid, quick! Get the bell jar!”

Annoyed at the interruption, the girl looked up from the homework spread on the dining room table to see her mother dart through the room, her flowered skirt swishing around slender legs. Mama was heading toward the kitchen, her hands cupped together.

The girl’s stomach tightened in a knot. She knew where this action was heading—yet another attempt by her well-meaning mother to bring her daughter out of her blue funk. “Mama, now? I have a test to study for.”

Laughter trilled. “It’s only math! Algebra can wait. Come, I’ll need your help.”

The girl sighed and set down her pencil. A basic understanding of math was needed—even for spell-weaving. Morin understood that. Morin also understood the need for grieving. The dead deserved respect. Her mother’s seeming need to inject happiness in their quiet house grated. As she followed her mother, she dragged her feet.

Lorene O’Connell’s face was animated, bright circles of color on her cheeks. She looked more excited than she had in weeks. The girl felt slightly ashamed of her resentment over how her mama was beginning to move on. She’d much prefer they hold on to their grief a while longer. Her daddy deserved an ocean of tears in remembrance.

Still, she went to the cabinet and stood on tiptoe, searching with her fingertips for the crystal bell jar. When she found it, she inched the jar off the shelf until it tilted, and then quickly grabbed the bottom rim before the glass fell to the floor.

“Hurry, Caitydid.”

The girl’s lips pressed together. She hated the childhood nickname, wishing her mama wouldn’t treat her like she was still five years old. She was Cait, not Caitydid, not Caitlyn. She preferred the stark, crisp version of her name. The single syllable made her feel older than her twelve years, something she wanted desperately to be, because if she were older, Morin might look at her the same way he did her mother.

With a smoldering heat in his eyes that never failed to get either of the O’Connell women warm and flustered.

She hurried to her mama as the older woman set her cupped hands atop the counter. “Place the jar above my hands. Be ready. I’ll slide my fingers free.”

Holding the jar so that it touched the tops of her mother’s hands, Cait waited as Mama’s fingers opened slowly and a butterfly emerged, flying with frantic wings, fluttering toward the top of the jar.

Her mama eased her hands from beneath the lip, and Cait dropped it down, trapping the butterfly inside. She eyed it, feeling a little sorry for the creature but not overly impressed with its appearance.

The insect was ordinary, bright yellow with muddy spots, a hint of black at the edges of its wings. Small. She glanced up, studying the banked excitement in her mama’s eyes. Excitement that Cait thought was overkill. The bug was hardly a treasure. Dozens just like it flitted about their backyard garden.

“Isn’t he lovely?”

Cait shrugged. “It’s a butterfly.”

“A clouded sulphur.” Her mother’s gaze left the butterfly to pin Cait with a frown. “You really should pay attention to your other lessons.”

“Is this something Morin taught you?” Cait asked, wondering how she’d missed it. Because for him, she remembered every single thing he’d ever said and never had to be scolded for daydreaming.

Her mama’s cheeks brightened. “Never mind. You can help me. But first, I need to gather some ingredients.”

Cait leaned an elbow on the counter and set her chin on her hand, her gaze studying the butterfly as it bounced against the clear crystal trying to escape.

Her mother bustled around her, talking to herself as she gathered the items she’d needed for whatever she was about to cook up. “Saffron, alcohol… Vodka should do nicely. Gum arabic for thickening…”

Cait turned her head to watch her mother bring her conjuring chalice to the counter and straightened. So, this was a serious spell.

Her attention caught, she followed her mother’s motions as she took saffron strands she’d already steeped in boiling water and left to cool, and placed them in the bottom of the chalice. Mama poured in the yellow water, followed by a generous dash of alcohol, and then added a sprinkle of the thickening agent.

She stirred the brew with her slender, double-edged athamé, and then set it aside, her gaze going to the butterfly again. “Here’s where I need your help, darling.”

Another thing she didn’t like being called, because her mother only used that endearment when she wanted something. Badly.

But her curiosity was caught. “What do you want me to do?”

“I need the dust from the butterfly’s wings.”

Cait swallowed. “Do I have to pluck the wings?” It was just a bug, but that still seemed unnecessarily cruel.

Her mama laughed. “No, silly. The butterfly must live. He’s precious.” Her head tilted, and a dreamy smile stretched her mouth. “You really should have paid better attention to your bedtime stories. Don’t you remember? Psyche was a mortal woman who loved Eros, the god of love. She traveled to the Underworld and performed arduous tasks to earn the right to stand among the gods and marry Eros. She became goddess of the butterflies.”

“That’s a story. A myth. There was no Psyche.”

Her mother’s dark brow arched. “Are you so sure? But there is a goddess, Gaia. And she has given you gifts. You mustn’t anger her with your stubbornness or she could take them away.”

The girl refrained from continuing the argument. She’d never win it because her mother wasn’t the most logical person on the planet. She believed the stars determined her fate. That the Goddess had a reason for the tragedy they’d endured. A wave of melancholy swept her at the thought of her papa. He’d been so strong and brave, and yet his will and fate hadn’t saved him from a tiny bullet.

A sigh burst beside her. She glanced up at her mother, caught the edge of sadness in Lorene’s soft brown eyes, and shrugged off her own emotion. She was her daddy’s girl. He wouldn’t like her to get weepy-faced. Not when her mama needed her to be strong. “What do you want me to do?” she asked in a gruff voice.

“Think about your papa, sweetheart, and put your hand beneath the jar. Let the butterfly brush against your fingers. I need dust from its wings.”

Cait expelled a breath and did as she was told, raising the edge of the jar then slipping her hand underneath. She held her fingers still while the butterfly flew around them, his frantic fluttering tickling the tips.

“That should be enough.”

Cait removed her hand and held her fingers to the sunlight streaming through the small kitchen window. Fine yellow particles clung to her skin.

Mama held out the chalice. “Swirl the butterfly’s scales in the liquid.”

Cait dipped her fingers into the chalice and swirled, thinking of her papa, of his dark auburn hair, his thick shoulders and chest, his dark uniform and towering height. When tears began to gather, she drew back her hand. “What did we just make, Mama?”

“Butterfly’s blood—an ink I will use to write a spell.”