What I Would Sacrifice For You

He wasn’t supposed to stay dead this long.

I told myself it was only temporary. Just until I could figure out a way to bring him back. But now, I’ve spent the past year with a body in the freezer behind my cabin.

Guilt eats me alive some days, knowing that I’m the one preventing his family from getting closure. I picture his mother lying awake at night, praying for it, begging to find her son. She knows he’s likely dead, but without a body, there’s the torturous feeling of never truly knowing. It would be better to bury him, to have his ashes, than to hold on to false hope and spend her whole life unable to move on.

The phone burns a hole into my hands some days. I dial and redial her number over and over again. But if I did that, then I would be giving up on myself. Giving up on my magic. Giving up on him. And I would be going to jail. It would be pretty hard to explain that my boyfriend and I have both been missing for over a year, and I had his body because I’d been off-grid in the middle of the woods trying to resurrect him from the dead.

There’s only one person who knows where I am: Violet. She’s my closest friend. We started practicing witchcraft together when we lived in Yosemite Valley the summer we turned twenty-one. She’s the only person I trust, because she’s the only one who’s seen how supernatural this world can be. Together, we played in energy portals, cast spells, and gave each other readings. When we weren’t being witches, we were partying.

The first night I got here, I called her and asked her to go through her entire spell book with me. To tell me everything she knew. I was a good witch, but she was more advanced with physical spells. I wrote down every crystal, every candle, every piece of DNA that could be combined to bring life back into the love of my life. A true resurrection spell doesn’t exist, as far as either of us knew. It was my job to put the pieces together using what I did know.

The cabin has learned to be quiet. It doesn’t scare me anymore. I used to jump at every creak of the floorboards, every gust of wind, every footstep the rabbits made outside, terrified that someone had found me. I used to hate silence, but now it’s what I trust.

I pull open the shades to reveal the full moon, her body illuminating the sky and casting a spotlight on the forest floor. For minutes, I don’t move. I just stare. The moon has always hypnotized me, had some sort of control over me. I trust her. She always shows up on time. She always delivers.

We used to fight every time there was a full moon. I used to dread them. Now, I dread the eerie peace I feel when they come around. I would relive every screaming fight, every lesson, every tear shed a thousand times over just to spend one with him in chaos instead of alone in mourning.

“I trust you,” I say to her, my eyes still locked onto the sky. “I think I’ve figured out what I need to do.”

I grab my coat and walk out back to the freezer. I don’t have to hold my breath before I open it anymore.

“Hi, baby.”

He looks like a marble statue of the boy I love, his expression unchanged since the last time I saw him. He looks just like he did when he used to sleep next to me in bed. His full lips pushed into a slight pout, so perfect. They were my favorite part of his face, aside from his brown eyes, with the longest lashes I’d ever seen on anyone. They fan out below his eyes, nearly reaching his cheekbone.

He looks the same. Except his skin is blue, and his spirit is somewhere else.

“Don’t worry,” I whisper. “I think I finally figured it out this time. I’ll be right back.”

I kiss his icy cheek and close the freezer, forcing myself to let go. It’s time to get started.

I’ve done this ritual every full moon since he died. Or went missing, to everyone else. I’m the only one who knows he’s dead.

I take him out of the freezer carefully, like I always do, like he might wake if I’m too rough with him. His body is stiff in my arms, heavier than I remember. Or maybe I’m just weaker now. I struggle to drag him inside and lift him onto the table, the wood creaking beneath his weight.

I start the fire next. It crackles too loud at first, like it’s protesting, like it knows what I’m about to do. It has watched me lose my mind over this body one too many full moons, watched me cry and beg the universe to bring him back when the spell was complete and he was thawed out, yet still dead. I never had a large window of time before he needed to go back into the freezer. This only works if his body stays fresh. He can’t come back looking like something rotted.

I’ve learned what works. And what doesn’t.

I draw the circle around him with ash and salt, careful not to break the line. I made that mistake once. I lay everything out beside him, one piece at a time. My blood, still warm. His, taken before it all went cold. The molar I pulled from the back of his mouth, hidden where no one would notice. I remember apologizing while I did it. Dried bundles of belladonna and rosemary, tied together with oil-soaked thread. A piece of obsidian for protection. A shard of clear quartz for clarity. His necklace from his grandpa, the one he never took off. I place it over his chest like it belongs there, like he’s just sleeping.

I used to follow the instructions exactly. Word for word. Line for line. Old books that smelled like dust and rot. Forums buried so deep online I had to convince myself they were real. Violet’s book could only get me so far.

Every version of the spell said something different.

None of them worked.

The first time it failed, I thought I did it wrong. The second time, I thought I misread something. By the fifth, I stopped pretending. I remember dragging him back outside after, wailing and shaking. Screaming so loud I thought something in me tore. Pulling at my hair. Clawing at my skin. Begging for him to come back. For it to work.

But it never did. Not completely.

Because I was always missing something.

I dip my fingers into the bowl of my own blood and press them to his chest, right over his heart. My hand lingers there longer than it should.

“I’m so close,” I whisper. “I know I am.”

I think, deep down, I always knew what the spell was asking for. I just didn’t want to say it out loud.

“Maybe now you’ll see how much I really love you,” I whisper. “When you wake up. What I would sacrifice for you.”

A soul is a massive amount of energy. To get one back, you have to give one.

My phone rings. Violet must be close.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey! I’m almost there. These roads are so dark, I can’t believe you live out here alone. I would be terrified.”

I laugh. “We lived in a tent together in the woods, remember?”

“Yeah. Together.”

“Well, you’ll just have to come see for yourself. You might end up wanting to stay.”

I sit cross-legged on the floor, candles blazing around me, forcing my breath to slow. I have to stay calm.

Three minutes later, there’s a knock.

I open the door. She’s radiant, as always, her energy almost too alive for this place.

She smiles. Then she sees him.

The sound she makes isn’t a word.

“Maisy,” she breathes.

“I’m so sorry,” she says quickly. “I’m going to help you. I brought everything. I’m not leaving until we wake him up.”

I don’t know if she believes that. Something tells me she does. She doesn’t say things she doesn’t mean. That’s why I trust her.

We get to work. She moves around the room like she always does, incense in hand, something between a ritual and a dance.

“Will you come over here and bless the bowl?” I ask.

She steps up beside me, lifting the incense, circling it slowly over the surface.

That’s when I move.

I step behind her, wrap my arm around her, and press the blade to her throat.

I feel her body go still.

“Maisy,” she breathes. “There’s another way.”

“I hate this as much as you do, Violet,” I whisper. “But you know that’s not true.”

“My guides are strong,” she says. “This won’t end well for you.”

“You’ll go somewhere beautiful,” I say. “You’re not meant to be down here anyway.”

“You’re choosing him over me?”

“I don’t want to. I truly love you. But yes.”

I hold her over the bowl as her blood spills into it, dark and warm, mixing with everything else. I don’t have to force my tears. They fall easily, slipping into the mixture, part of the spell, proof of what this costs me.

When she goes still, I let her fall. I don’t look at her.

The last thing I do is strike the match and drop it into the bowl.

The moment it hits, everything disappears.

My vision goes black.

I fall.

When I wake up, the fire is still burning.

The cabin is quiet again.

Violet is on the floor.

I don’t look at her.

I can’t.

I turn to him.

Nothing has changed.

He looks exactly the same. Cold. Still. Empty.

“It didn’t work,” I whisper.

My voice sounds small, like it doesn’t belong to me.

I crawl toward him and press my head against his chest, the way I used to when he was alive.

“I did everything right,” I say.

My thoughts spiral.

What have I done.

What have I done.

And then-

I feel it.

A small, uneven movement beneath my cheek.

I freeze.

It comes again.

A slow, quiet thump beneath his chest.

Not strong.

Not steady.

But there.