Page 136 of Harnessed in Gold
“No. What?”
I point to the top of the page:Souls Contacted.
He squints. “How did I miss that?”
Together we scan the list: English names, Indigenous names, several unknowns simply labelledman,woman, orchild—all listed with dates.
Leo lets out a low whistle. “Browne was using scrying to talk to the dead.”
“Are these the dates they died?”
“No, I think these are the dates when he contacted them.”
“Wow.”
Turning ahead, we find another entry from about a month later. Several names on this list were on the first one, and in between are pages and pages of what the dearly departed had communicated to Browne.
“You’re right, Aaron,” I say.
Aaron jolts in the armchair, making me suspect he’d fallen asleep. “Of course I’m right.” He removes his glasses and passes a hand over his eyes. “About what?”
“Thomas Smart shot and killed one of the Indigenous Americans right before another one put a spear through his heart.”
“Thomas Smart’s?”
“Yup. According to his spirit.”
Avery emerges from the bedroom. “What’s this about spirits?”
When we fill her in, she waves us excitedly to the table and opens her laptop. “Let’s get back to decoding.”
While she brings up the Enochian alphabet key, I ask Leo, “Do you think that’s why I felt that icky hubris in his forge? Because he was talking with the dead?”
“I doubt it. Yes, alchemy and necromancy were considered blasphemy, but they were common.”
Avery agrees. “You’ve contacted the dead yourself, witchling.”
True. And both times it was potent and creepy as hell.
Ten minutes later, we’re all scowling at the journal, and Avery is rubbing her forehead. “This doesn’t make sense,” she whines.
“Maybe that’s supposed to be an I instead of a Y,” I say. That sloppy molly-wrench-looking squiggle could also be a J, as could the fishhook-y mark.
“Here’s an idea, scryer morons,” she grumbles. “One symbol per letter!”
“Hey, it’s not their fault,” Aaron laughs. “The angels made up the alphabet.”
She rolls her eyes. “Like hell they did.”
Amid our snickering, Leo blurts, “Holy shit.” But I’m too caught off guard by his sudden burst of emotion to praise him for swearing. “Browne tried to break down the bracelet,” he says, furiously scouring the yellowed page. “He wanted to get to the source of its power.”
“Hubris,” I breathe.
“Hubris,” he agrees, his eyes meeting mine. “Big time.”
The four of us scramble to translate the next several sentences, and the results leave us staring at one another in horror.
Apparently, Browne set out to dissolve, separate, and distill the bracelet into the Philosopher’s Stone, but never made it past step one. He got his bloomery furnace hot enough to melt the bracelet, but, in his own words, “dashed the cursed thing away before a single drop fell into the crucible.” The earth shook, and the fumes sent him into “paroxysms of ague” that pitched him to the floor.
