His hair stood on end and every nerve tingled. Pearl went limp. Her knees crumpled and she sagged into him. Grey had to catch her, had to hold her against him to keep her from falling to the floor. Dear God, she wore no corset. Nothing to keep him from feeling her feminine softness.
She blinked up at him in a dazed wonderment, and it was all he could do not to steal a kiss. Apprentice, he reminded himself. Too bad he was utterly out of practice at listening to anyone, particularly his own conscience. It sounded too much like the duke. But she hadn't fainted. She was still conscious. He hadn't broken her. Was that not cause for celebration?
"Thank you," she said fervently.
For what? He hadn't kissed her yet. Had he?
Pearl pushed against his chest with her small hands. He opened his arms and let her step out of them. She turned her hands over, front to back, examining them. "What did you do?"
That dazed wonderment had all gone into her voice, and it slid low into his body from whence he could not drive it. He didn't try terribly hard.
"I thought sure my hands were burning into blackened claws, but look-" She held them up, pretty, pink and perfect. "They're not injured at all. No blisters. Nothing. What did you do?"
"I don't-" He didn't have a chance to finish admitting his ignorance.
"You took the magic." She shifted her shoulders, her eyes gone blank as if turned to look inside her. "I still have most of it, but you took the extra. What was burning me."
She looked up at him again, her golden-rayed eyes pinning him in place with the admiration in them. "What did you do?"
He shrugged, suddenly unwilling to diminish that admiration. But this was magic. Sorcery, which was all about truth. "I'm not sure." That was truth, wasn't it?
Grey took Pearl's elbow. If he didn't touch her bare hand, surely the magic would stay where it belonged. He guided her toward the open doors at the back of the cellar. Fresh air would doubtless be good for both of them. "You should rid yourself of as much magic as you can. So you don't overload again."
"Overload-is that what it was? I felt tipsy. Downright pizzled."
"Too much magic affects some people that way." Grey felt a trifle well-to-go himself, come to that.
"I don't feel that way now." Pearl took a deep breath and coughed. Fresh air in London wasn't exactly fresh.
"Nonetheless. You're still near your limit, I'm sure."
"How do I do it? What should I do?"
Time for theory extrapolation, assumption building, and conclusion jumping. "Basic magic theory. Magic, when gathered, requires either use or dispersion. Magic wants to be used. Not that it has a mind or will of its own, but like water behind a dam or steam in a boiler, it can build up pressure until it bursts. I can't have you bursting, Parkin. Burst apprentices simply aren't done. It would ruin my reputation with all the other magisters."
She laughed. Goal accomplished. It was more a chortle than that airy, carefree giggle, but delightful nonetheless.
"Therefore," he said, "you need to use this magic, or disperse it back to where it belongs."
"And where is that?"
Bedamned if I know. But Grey wouldn't tell her that. Not yet, anyway. Why had they allowed even the basic knowledge of how sorcery functioned to be lost? "Let's try using it first."
"How?"
"Questions, always the questions." His put-upon act was not entirely acting. "How did you work your ‘don't-look' spell?"
"I-" Pearl licked her thumb, then raised it to his face and pantomimed wiping it along his jaw. "Then I say ‘Don't look. Don't notice him. Pass him by.' "
He wanted her to touch him. He wanted her to lick his thumb. Or lick along his jaw there. That would do. Nicely.
Grey cleared his throat. "That's all?"
She nodded. He nodded with her as he began to speak. "I have seen Amanusa work spells. Not many, but a few. Powerful spells, most of them. She did say saliva could work magic, just not as powerfully as blood."
He paced as he tried to bring back every detail he could remember. "The spells I saw her work-she drew the blood. Then she drank it, or placed it where it was needed. Like your-" He gestured at his face, where Pearl had placed her spell. "Then she spoke. In English, I believe." Grey wished he could remember Pearl's touch on his face that night.
No, he didn't. They should probably avoid any more touching, in case more magic tried to jump between them.
He hid his turmoil in pedantry. "Words are often part of a spell. Not so much because the words themselves are important, but they help focus the will, and the will focuses the magic."
"Do I have to learn Latin?"
"Why ever should you?"
"Don't you use Latin in your magic?"
"Yes, sometimes, but that's because the really old spirits, the ones with great power-Latin's their native language. In conjury, the magician must communicate with the spirits. We speak whatever language they do. Old German is the very dev il of a language to learn.
"In the other magics, I'm not sure the language matters, though it's traditional for alchemists to spell in Latin and wizards to spell in one of the varieties of Celtic-Irish, or Cornish or Breton, or else in Romany, the gypsy language. But Amanusa spells in English, so I shouldn't worry about it, were I you. English obviously works."
"So how should I use it? Do I need to go collect blood from those victims and place it somewhere?" She broke off. "You're a conjurer. How would you know? I need to read faster."
"Yes, but I know magic. All magic has certain things in common, like the use-or-disperse rule. And I would say it is likely this innocent blood is already placed where it should be. A murderer is rarely untouched by the blood he spills."
Pearl's pink mouth made an O of understanding. It did emphatically not need kissing. "So the magic will know where to go-" She climbed the ramp a few paces, until her head rose above the slanting doors into the open air of the city.
"Blood of the innocent," she intoned, then looked at Grey. "I did read three pages. It said the blood should be invoked."
He nodded, motioned for her to go on, hoping that conversational asides didn't disturb the spell casting. He'd keep his own mouth shut, in case.
"Blood of the innocent," she said again, "carry justice against those who spilled it. Find the workers of these wicked deeds and harry them without rest. From their coming in to their going out. From their rising to their lying down, be always before them, driving them toward the justice they deserve." She stretched her hands out and stood, reaching, straining for a long moment, before dropping back onto her heels.
Grey winced, exaggeratedly. "Cold justice, that."
"But deserved. They shouldn't rest. They should be haunted." She wriggled her shoulders and shook out her arms as if flinging away bothersome insects. Or perhaps settling magic.
"How much did that use up?" he asked.
"Most of it, I think." She shook her hands again and Grey took the chance of capturing one.
Magic flared again, but briefly. It didn't leap between them, simply lit up, as if recognizing itself. Was there magic actually inside him? How was that possible? Ought he to get rid of it? How? No, it was not possible. It was his imagining, his irritatingly inconvenient desire for her lithe little body. Nothing more.
"Perhaps you should try dispersing it," he suggested.
"How? Where?"
Good question. But he thought he might have an answer.
"This cellar is filled with ghosts. Packed to the rafters behind the conjury wards." He pointed at the sigils painted on the basement walls meant to keep the ghosts under control. "Perhaps you could send the magic to the ghosts. It is their blood, after all."
"But how do I do it?" She sounded utterly frustrated.
So was he. "The same way you did the other," he assumed. "The blood is theirs, so its already placed. Speak the words. Send the magic home. I will help, if I can."
Pearl took a deep breath. "All right. If you think I can do it-if you think I really did something with that other spell."
"Good girl."
She glowered at him for that, and he laughed. He did know she was not a hound, to be praised so. "Good apprentice, rather."
"Better," she muttered. She stepped back down into the cellar, accepting his hand when she wobbled, and he knew she still held too much magic. She needed to be rid of it.
Back inside, she paused to look at Ferguson where he lay on the floor. She crouched to touch his forehead, feel his wrists. Grey's lips tightened, but he held back any other reaction. She stood again, apparently satisfied. Grey waited for her to speak, but she said nothing, simply moved a few steps away and stared at her shoes as if thinking.
She took a deep breath. "Blood of the innocents," she began. "Return to the souls where you belong. Give them peace. Give them the knowledge that justice is in hand and will be achieved. Take them home."
Grey gestured the sigil for peace and for grace and mercy, and whispered his own words of comfort. This time, he could feel the magic pour out of Pearl, for it was also somehow pulled out of him, filling the room like a faint scarlet fog. It filled up the ghosts, so much that they became almost solid. They smiled at him, glowing brightly as they slipped free of the horrors that had trapped them, and one by one, they faded away.