"Neither is blood, but you work that."
"Yes, well-actually, no. Not yet. I've never drawn blood for magic, just put magic in the stains and used it to lay ghosts. Riding the blood sounds so . . ." She raised both her hands in a helpless gesture.
"Dangerous?" Grey wouldn't allow her to do anything dangerous. Not until Amanusa returned to supervise.
"No, not dangerous. The book was very clear on how to do it safely, for both the rider and the one ridden. It seems . . ." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Difficult. I'm not sure I can do it. Or that I can do it correctly. Get in and out and find what I'm looking for. Particularly if my very first attempt is searching a suspected criminal."
"Then your first time should be with me."
Blood rushed to Grey's head as soon as he spoke the words, and pooled in his groin as his body took another meaning from the words. He wanted that first time of hers to be with him. Given that she'd come to this apprenticeship from the streets of London's East End, her first time was doubtless long past.
But this first time, her first to "ride the blood"-that would be with him.
"What is required for this magic?" He concluded his meal with a last bite of cake, trying to maintain his normal facade.
"Blood, of course. Just a bit. And something to mix it with. Tea or wine."
"I vote for wine," he said quickly. "If I am going to have to shed blood, I want something to dull the pain."
She laughed, a light, breathy thing. "In the morning?"
"Why not do it tonight? We have the wine." He indicated the bottle waiting on the sideboard. "An excellent port, well able to disguise the flavor of a drop or two of blood. Which we have in abundance. A whole body full of it." He spread his arms in expansive invitation. "I am at your disposal." In any way she wanted to take that invitation.
"Yes, but I have nothing to use to get it out of that body." Pearl bit her lip. "Needles don't really work. Knives cut too broadly. I need a lancet. I'll have to purchase one tomorrow."
Grey drew breath. Now was the proper time. "As it happens . . ." He rose from his seat, drew a small box from a lower jacket pocket, and handed it to her with a little bow. "If you were a conjurer, your magic-master would present you with your first pencil case. As you are a sorcerer, the gift of your first lancet seemed appropriate."
"Oh . . ." Pearl stood as she took the box from him with wide eyes. Her lower lip trembled just a trifle, until she stilled it between her teeth.
He should have had it wrapped. No matter that it would have made the presentation seem more important. It was important. Momentous. It was the beginning of her practice of sorcery.
She opened the box and removed the steel instrument, its sharp point gleaming in the candlelight.
"I considered purchasing an antique lancet, like the one Amanusa uses, but I couldn't find one. Then I wavered between silver and steel, because silver is much more easily chased and inscribed. But steel is a modern, more sanitary metal and you are-or will be-a modern sorceress. And steel can be engraved."
The lancet followed the old-fashioned design of Amanusa's, long out of style among modern men of medicine. It had one end curved to fit around the tip of her finger, making the lancet into a sort of artificial claw. The ring did not close into a circle, so that it could be adjusted to fit her finger. Grey hoped it would adjust small enough to fit her. Most medical doctors were men, and larger than Pearl.
" ‘To Pearl Parkin,' " she read aloud, squinting at the letters engraved around the circular base of the lancet. " ‘Sorcery apprentice, from her magic-master, Grey Carteret.' "
"A lancet is quite a bit smaller than a pencil case," Grey said to fill the ensuing silence with words. It was not an awkward silence, but one filled with meanings and emotions he did not want to acknowledge, much less explore. "I had to pare away words and make the letters very small to make it fit."
She slipped her right forefinger into the ring of the lancet and held it up, turning it this way and that to admire it. At least, Grey thought she was admiring it.
"Let's have a look, then." He took her hand in his and brought her closer. So he could see how the lancet fit. "A bit loose, isn't it?"
The thing threatened to slide down to her middle knuckle. Grey held it in place and squeezed the sides together until they touched, without overlapping. "How is that?"
Pearl tapped the point against her sleeve and the lancet held firm. She held up her left hand and, before he could stop her, she stabbed the lancet quickly into the top of her tallest finger. A drop of blood welled up.
"Perfect," she said, as Grey caught her injured finger and popped it into his mouth, quite as if it were his own.
Which it was not. It was hers, his apprentice, and why ever was he doing such an intimate and improper thing with his apprentice's finger? He pulled it out of his mouth as hastily as he'd put it in, with an unintended slide of his tongue over the punctured tip.
Impropriety was something he was intimately familiar with. Intimacy, however, was a far different matter. Even on the occasions when he improperly accommodated those women who invited themselves into his bed-and they were far fewer than everyone assumed-it had not felt so intimate as this moment, holding Pearl's hand captive in his, having just removed her fingertip from inside his mouth.
It was the gazing deep into her eyes, he thought. He never gazed, into eyes or anything else. He always shut his eyes, precisely to prevent this sort of thing, this uncomfortable, unfathomable, utterly necessary intimacy.
He licked his lips, as if licking up any stray bits of her blood. This made it twice that he had ingested her blood. Three times, if one wished to count the mingling of blood at their bargain, and Grey rather thought it counted. Did it mean anything? If so, what?
He held up his forefinger, offering it to her dainty steel claw. "Blood," he said, "for the riding thereof."
She hesitated. He supposed it was worth hesitating over, something as momentous as this, the equivalent of calling her first spirit.
"Pour the wine first." She spun, her skirts bouncing off his ankles, and strode to fetch the bottle.
Grey followed. The glasses were on the sideboard with the wine. He took the bottle from her and held it over the delicate crystal. "One glass or two?"
Pearl bit her lip, frantically reviewing the pertinent pages, guild secrets uppermost in her thoughts. The outside world believed that the sorceress rode the subject's blood by drinking it, which contributed to the old beliefs that sorcery worked on stolen blood. Pearl had been shocked to learn the guild's deepest secret, that the sorcerer's own blood carried the greatest power, and that it was her blood inside the subject-inside Grey-that she would ride.
This made things easier in many ways. For one, now that Grey had put her bleeding finger into his mouth, she didn't have to worry about how to get her blood inside him. He'd done it himself. And Pearl could see how in general it would be much simpler to slip her blood into other people as opposed to having to steal a bit of blood from them. The issue now was how to keep that a secret from Grey.
The easiest way, she supposed, was to feed his assumptions and take a little of his blood to mix with the wine. She could also practice her sleight-of-hand bloodletting, if the finger she'd already punctured could be convinced to give up another few drops. The book had repeated a number of times that if the purpose of the ride was not justice, but simply information, or practice, that more blood should be used, not less.
The more of the sorceress's blood a subject held, the more the magic would identify the subject with the sorceress and make it less likely for her to do inadvertent harm. Pearl wasn't sure how much blood was needed to keep Grey safe, but when it came to Grey and safety, she would err on the side of more.
And he was waiting, bottle over the glass, ready to pour.
"One," she said.
He smiled, wicked, seductive, and more. As if they were the only two people in the world. Or the only two who mattered. He smiled as if he knew her and she knew him. Or if she didn't, he invited her to learn everything there was about him to know. If she would let him learn her inside and outside in return.
Grey set the bottle down and only then did Pearl realize he'd filled the glass. Too full, if she were to be the only one to drink it. "We both drink," she said.
He raised a brow in that fallen-angel guise of his. "From the same glass?" His lips curved in his patented smile that made her heart go into its useless gyrations. Before she met Grey, when Papa still lived, she'd seen the women he escorted to the opera and the theater, beautiful and glittering and perfect. Not like Pearl.
"How . . . intimate," he said.
Intimate. That was how he made her feel. Which lessened her guilt. Intimate had its innocent side. This was magic, nothing more. Magic could be intimate. Doubtless intimacy could be magical as well.
Grey offered up his forefinger again and Pearl shook off her strange mood. She took his hand in hers and brought it close. She inhaled deeply. This was difficult. She didn't want to pierce that perfect fingertip.