Heart's Blood(20)

He'd never thought of his hand that way, as he wasn't an overlarge man. He was perhaps a trifle above just-barely-large-enough, but with Pearl, he felt a hulking brute. A protective, possessive, roaring, hulking beast of a brute.                       
       
           



       

She looked from their clasped hands up to Grey's face and he dragged his thoughts from their primitively hulking tracks to look back at her. "It makes a difference, when we take hands," she said. "Why?"

"I don't know. Nor do we have time to puzzle it out now. Later, this evening, we can hypothesize to our hearts' content. Now, I have a ghost to conjure."

"Might I watch?" She squeezed his hand a fraction tighter, signaling how she wanted to do it.

"If I might watch your attempt to shield our young spirit."

"Yes, of course." She frowned. "How am I to-to apply the spell material?"

Grey blinked at her. "I suppose it would be difficult to lick a spirit. Where do you place it when you hide yourself?"

"I don't. It's inside me, so I don't have to place it anywhere. Only when I hide someone else." Her voice had risen from very quiet to normal, and Grey flicked his eyes toward Ferguson, who still reclined in the stairway, looking pale.

Pearl caught his glance, and softened her voice again. Grey had to lean closer to hear. He hadn't intended his look as a warning, exactly. But Amanusa had been so careful of her guild secrets, it made him nervous to hear Pearl speaking so casually.

"What if you place it somewhere on your person?" he suggested. This whole thing was by way of experiment, so why not add a bit more. "I worked a spell once with Amanusa where sorcery and conjury blended into something stronger than either by itself. That spell had the other two magics in it as well, but I believe we can blend just the two. The three magics we've had over the past two hundred years are often blended in every combination, so why not our two?"

"How?" She had the most beautiful eyes.

"Begin with a sigil. I would write it-" The thought made his throat go to desert sand in an instant, and he cleared it. Swallowed. "Upon your skin. Then you would apply your material, and work the spell."

"On my skin?" She blinked those eyes at him, thinking. She seemed to blink and think together often.

"I'd rather the spirit be stuck to you than to some random brick in this basement, if it turns out that way."

"Oh, yes, absolutely. A sweet little spirit like this one?"

Oi! I ain't sweet. I'm tough an' mean. An' I ain't so little anymores. Davy slid down from Pearl's head to her shoulder, making her wriggle, as if it tickled. But I gots to admit, I'd rather be stuck to th' lady than to the cellar, if I gotta be stuck.

"I agree completely." Pearl released Grey's hand, alas, and removed her capelet, draping it atop his coat, which she held over one arm. She tried to unbutton her cuff to little success. Not surprising, given how laden down she was.

"What are you doing?" Ferguson sounded queasy and scandalized from his post across the cellar.

"Rolling up our sleeves to get to work," Pearl said.

Grey scooped coat and capelet from her grasp and crossed the room in a few strides to deposit them in Ferguson's lap. "Make yourself useful."

When he returned, Pearl had her sleeve unbuttoned and rolled to her elbow, exposing a pale forearm utterly worthy of her name. And he was going to mar it with his scribbling.

"That chalk will rub off in a terrible hurry, won't it?" She stared at her arm, worry in both face and voice. "Will it even make a mark?"

"I have ink," he said. "Chinese block ink, and a brush. Works quite as well as a pen for marking sigils. Often better." When had he taken her hand? When had his thumb begun to slide across that pearlescent skin on her wrist? "It isn't half so scratchy. And-" He only now realized its greatest benefit.

Grey pulled out his case again and set the ink block in the lid on a corner of the table where Galloway lay. He was dead. They wouldn't disturb him.

"Spit," he said. "On the ink. It's how I usually wet it in the field. That way, we can apply sigil and saliva both at once, and perhaps it will also blend the magic from the beginning."

Pearl blushed. Grey understood. Spitting was not only impolite, it was utterly and completely unladylike, and Pearl had been at least raised a lady. But she did it. She spat on the ink. He rubbed it into the block with the brush, making the ink thick and dark, then he rolled the brush in the ink to make a point. If he had to mark up her skin, he would at least make it the prettiest, neatest mark he could.

He took her arm in his right hand to steady it, and poised the brush above the white skin with his other, visualizing the sigil before he drew it. The form took shape in his mind, the blocky lines to either side, the graceful swirl in the center. He filled the form with magic, with power, and then he poured it into the design he painted in the exact center between wrist and elbow, on the soft inner flesh of his apprentice's forearm.

When he lifted the brush and slid his supporting hand down to her wrist, he let go his breath. Pearl exhaled with him.

She peered at the black blemish on her skin. It wasn't large, perhaps two inches square. He could have made it smaller, but that would have meant less spittle for her spell. Still, he wished now that he'd tried.

"It's lovely," she said. "What does it mean? If you can tell me."

"It's one of the basics, available in any book of spells. It's the sigil ‘Safety.' You see? The walls of protection, and the spirit curled up safe inside?"

"Yes. Beautiful." She smiled.

Grey had to stiffen his knees. Then he had to catch hold of the table, his writing brush clattering to the floor, for she-

He didn't know what she did. It felt as if she reached inside him and touched his heart. Not the pulsating piece of meat, but his emotions. As if she strummed her fingers over them, leaving him quivering as she passed. Humming.

"Are you well?" She had hold of his arm, over his shirtsleeve, so that was all right.

He still gripped her wrist. He should release it, but he didn't want to. Didn't know if he could. He shook his head to clear it.

Pearl repeated her question. "Mr. Carteret. Are you all right?" She reached up, took his face between her hands and peered into his dazed and bedazzled eyes.

"Grey."

She held his face between her hands, and it hummed a little, this thing between them. Gave a little buzz of happiness. But she didn't touch the very core of who he was. Not this time. She stayed locked safely outside.

"What did you do?" he whispered.

"I invoked the spell. That's all." Her voice held more than a hint of panic. He removed one of her hands from his face and patted it in reassurance.

"What is going on?" Ferguson demanded petulantly from across the cellar. "What are you doing?"

"Just a bit of spell casting," Grey said, striving for airily. "Seems I'm a bit sensitive to sorcery as well."

The wizard slumped back into the stairs from his attempt to rise, and laid his head against the wall. He muttered something. Grey couldn't hear it clearly, but was certain it had to do with no flirting, and perhaps with the drawing of corks. Grey hadn't had his cork drawn in years.

"We still have a ghost to conjure." Grey let go of Pearl's hand. He drew in some of the ambient magic left behind by the departing spirits, and opened his second vision. Davy looked far less wispy now, strong and contented, spiraled around Pearl's forearm.                       
       
           



       

Pearl stepped out of reach and Grey frowned. He didn't like her moving so far away from him. He caught her elbow and drew her back, before it occurred to him to wonder why he didn't like it. Could there be something more to this than simple lust?

It felt anything but simple. He'd never felt so protective, so possessive, so hungry for a woman, or so annoyed by how she made him feel.

Then there was that rush of magic when she'd been overloaded. Was that how sorcery worked? Was that how it was supposed to work? Had the sorcery somehow created her ability to see and hear spirits when they touched? Was magic the-the sensation invoked when she worked her "don't-look" spell? Though sensation was a poor word to use for being turned on his ear and shaken apart with joy and sorrow and anger and delight and everything else all at once.

"No more experiments," he said. "Not until Amanusa comes back, or you get further along in your reading. This experiment seems all right, but we can't keep fumbling in the dark without knowing what it is you're doing with these spells."

"Yes, sir. Likely we shouldn't have done this one, except-" Her face crinkled in a mélange of worry and hope. "I do think our spirit is safer. I know it's stronger, and that can't be a bad thing, can it? I'm not sorry we did it, sir."

Sir. "Call me Grey," he snapped, turning yet again to the corpse of Angus Galloway.