Nico has not given a ton of thought to the dead wizard since he left his house.  He's been busy: picking the ritual site wasn't too hard once he stopped to review his map, but after that he had to place the cards around it in a 20-mile-wide ritual diagram.  Worse, he has to lay them down in the right order, a few at a time, so there's a lot of driving back and forth on New Hampshire's poky little highways, and a lot of pulling off into random fields and trekking into the woods to find the exact right tree.

Of the two henchmen he brought for the last stage of this scheme, he's decided to call down Christopher and leave Adam up at the lake.  Neither one will be any help in a direct confrontation -- part of the deal by which he poached them from their former employers was that he'd never ask them to hurt another human being -- but they're great for lugging ladders and plastic sheeting from a storage unit at 3am, and Christopher in particular isn't bothered by the supernatural side of the business.  He's not a smart man, exactly, but he has a calm curiosity that Nico respects: show him a bottle whose water doesn't sit level and he won't deny it or get scared by it: he'll start tilting it and shaking it, watching it resettle at various angles, and if you give him a few minutes he'll drink from it.

Reliable help is a rare treasure, to an alchemist, and Nico knows he's lucky to have one good assistant, let alone two.  Usually they don't take the alchemical parts seriously, and don't respect you -- or they do, and stop showing up for work after a while.  Or they try to kill you and steal your power; Nico's had a few of those, too.

First, the barrier.

It has to be wide.  The energies Nico's calling on need space to circulate safely, and it needs to comfortably encompass both the ritual site on Flint Hill and the setup around his real body, stashed near Pawtuckawy Lake eight miles north.  He's treating those two points, the two places where he's standing, as coequal poles (two, the organization of outpouring force, balanced opposition), and organizing the energy into a steady ellipsoid flow around them.  He wanted a figure-eight, an infinity, but didn't quite dare to try it; he doesn't see a way to guide the forces in and out again smoothly, not to mention what sorts of odd effects the crossing flows themselves might cause.  An ellipse will have to do.

The order matters too.  The Major Arcana encode a story, for those wise enough to read it: the Fool begins as pure innocent potential, meets with trials and shadows, is enlightened, and returns transformed and unified.  Nico's boundary tells a story too: the Nine of Pentacles (a constructed harmonious space, secure boundaries), the King of Pentacles (power and success within that space), Temperance (freedom from the constructed ego, what remains after the shattering transformation of Death), the High Priestess (the perspective required to peer into the veiled sanctuary), the Three of Cups (comingling, shared experiences drawing together).  He'll still reading them out of the corner of his eye, looking for them in the pack without ever taking any of them into himself completely.

For each card, Nico picks a spot off the road in the forest (there is always forest), then lashes the card to a likely-looking tree with duct tape and plastic sheeting.  The cards are laminated, and no rain was forecast anyway, but it would be annoying for the ritual to fail because some random bird decided to use the Nine of Pentacles as nesting material.

There's no need to search for them; the top card of the pack is always the card you want, every time. But they do have inertia, now; there's a real sense of effort in pulling each card away from its pack and fixing it to its tree.  Their attention is drawn like hot wire, crossing and recrossing rural New Hampshire.  It moves with you, now, whether you look at them or not, whether you keep them in your lead box or on your lap in the passenger's seat. But mostly they're watching each other, not you.  Mostly.

That sounds like the sort of thing that would happen just before a successful ritual!

He'll keep the cards (the Adam deck, his mind volunteers, even though he told himself he shouldn't call them that until after this worked) in their lead box anyway.  He hates to do it, but he'd hate it more if Christopher hit a pothole or something and the cards went flying all over the car.

Second, the power sources.  This was the first part he ever figured out, years ago, even before he'd made the Adam deck itself.  First, the four aces: Wands to the West, Cups to the East, Swords to the North, and Pentacles to the South.  This doesn't follow any of the usual associations between the suits and the directions, but that's OK.  Nico is setting himself against the natural order, today, and he wants power that's a little askew of its natural flow.  To fill in some gaps he adds the Three, Eight, and Queen of Wands, as well as the Queen of Cups.  All those cards have subtleties to them that won't be relevant today; all Nico needs is a connection to a steady outpouring of power, without being explicitly limitless or uncontrollable (looking at you, Four of Wands).

Nothing disrupts you in the second phase of your plan.  The sense of being watched is near-constant, now; you can't even tell anymore when Christopher turns to look at you, unless you happen to be looking at him.

By the time you've placed the last card it's almost four AM.  Your body is starting to flag for lack of food and sleep, but it's nothing you can't push through, you don't think.

He'll add Strength, Sun, and the Chariot around the actual ritual site, then, and send Christopher somewhere for takeout.  Can he get Burger King or something, at 4am on Easter Sunday?

Of course!

Thank you, America, for being what you are.

He'll try and set up the ritual tent on Flint Hill.  It's in about the right spot, and according to Maps' satellite view it's got a big open meadow with a stream running through it, but surrounded by trees with no nearby houses: isolated, aligned with all four elements, and open to the sun.  The closest building is a school, almost certainly deserted today, and even if it's not it's a quarter mile of hilly forest away.

Assuming there's no problem with that he'll set up the tent, eat his takeout with Christopher, and wait for the sun to peek over the trees.

No problems, per se, but it's a good thing you brought that tent: the wind is getting awfully gusty and it'll blow your french fries right over if you're not careful.

Argh, does it look like it's going to rain?

Nico will do it anyway if he has to, everything's already set up and the symbolism of calling up the souls of the dead on Easter Sunday is too strong to ignore.  But the Sun was in the South, the cards specifically told him to use daylight.  He's got gasoline and a lighter, maybe he can gather enough deadfall to make a bonfire, and the fire influence that way?  Probably a bad idea, he should just wait for a break in the cloud cover.

Well, from your clearing you can only see the sky right overhead, but it's clear.  The very first bits of pre-dawn light are starting to blot out the night sky.

That...sounds fine.  And the cards led him here.  Nico stated his intentions, asked his question in good faith with a whole heart, and the cards led him here.  Probably this isn't going to be a problem, and Nico's literal years of preparation aren't about to be blown up by a meterological accident.  Probably.  Almost certainly.

Nico and Christopher will start clearing a space by the stream, and gathering firewood, and then throwing plastic sheeting over top of it to keep it dry.  Just in case.

Meanwhile, at breakfast

Joanna (not Jo) loves the pancake breakfast.  The recipe is a legit secret; the old church ladies just memorize it and pass it on by word of mouth, they never write it down.  Joanna's pretty sure it's some kind of sin, to know how to make pancakes this fluffy and not share it with the world, but the old church ladies have all been going to church for like sixty years, they probably figure they don't have to sweat little sins like that. 

And it doesn't stop with the pancakes: the adults in her life usually have restrictive ideas about "reasonable amounts of whipped cream", but on Pancake Breakfast Sunday no one gives a shit.  If they did this after church on Sunday she'd go every week, really she would.

She's only got two more of these, before she graduates high school, moves to Los Angeles, and becomes an actress.  Mostly she doesn't think about what she'll be leaving behind, but with things that come once a year it's tough, because you can count them, you know? It makes her feel sappy, and she hates feeling sappy.

Luckily for her, her friend Sophie's looking kinda down, so she can focus on that instead of her own problems!  And she's perfectly set up to do it, because Joanna legit needs advice, and Sophie loves giving advice.

"So, who wants to hear how I spent my Saturday?"

*vague interested noises through an enormous mouthful of pancakes*

"You were going to the lake with that kid from gymnastics camp, the one who said he had something special planned."  Carol does her best to waggle her eyebrows suggestively.  She's pretty sure she's doing it wrong but she and Joanna have been friends since they were babies, it'll come across.

It does!

"He did, but I told him no funny business and he was a perfect gentleman."  She smirks, then sighs theatrically.  "And on the drive over he was really sweet and funny.  But when we got there..."  She pauses, letting the dramatic tension build.

Playing along with Joanna when she's in this sort of mood is a lot more fun than brooding.  Sophie obligingly picks up her cue.  "When you got there, what?  What was his big secret date idea?"

"Fireworks"

Carol wrinkles her nose.  "I thought this was in the afternoon?  Where was there a fireworks show?"

"It waaaaaaas."  She puts her face in her hands, careful not to let her hair fall in the leftover whipped cream.  "There was no fireworks show.  Just us, and some bangers his older brother bought him.  That was his date idea, standing by the lake with our fingers in our ears, listening to things explode."

Carol finished her breakfast already; she'll grab Joanna's plate and pull it over on top of hers, so there's room for Joanna to slam her head onto the table if she wants.  It would be kinda dramatic even by Joanna's standards, but it sounds like she's earned it.