Heart's Blood(58)

"So give her private tutoring. There may be gaps in her knowledge. Things your students know that I didn't know to teach her. We can transfer the apprenticeship tomorrow. It was in our agreement, Pearl's and mine."

Mrs. Greyson gave him a peculiar look. "It isn't necessary. She can be your apprentice and still attend sorcery school."

"She is my fiancée," he said, "soon to be my wife. To be apprentice as well-I'm not sure it's proper."

Magister Greyson looked past him at Pearl, who looked away. She had agreed to the transfer of apprenticeship, if the sorceress was willing to take her. Could she make Mrs. Greyson unwilling? How?

"Grey, you can't-" Whatever the sorceress had been about to say was cut off by a question from her husband and quickly forgotten in the business of collecting baggage, acquiring carriages, and loading people and luggage into them.

Pearl and Grey rode back to Albemarle Street with Harry and Elinor, having been expertly managed by Mr. Greyson. Mr. Archaios was permitted in the carriage with the master sorceress since he also resided at Brown's. They would meet at Harry's tomorrow morning to go inspect the ragged-edged dead zones.

Pearl didn't even pretend an interest in getting out of the carriage at Harry's to go through to their rooms. When Elinor asked if she was coming, Pearl answered only, "No."

"You should," Grey said, but only after the carriage was moving the few yards down the street to Grey's house.

"No," she said. "I shouldn't." And she kissed him.

For the first time, Pearl kissed Grey, instead of waiting, hoping he would give her what she craved. If she was responsible for controlling her own desires, then couldn't she also be responsible for asking for what she wanted? For climbing into his lap in order to take it?

The carriage stopped before the kiss developed to her satisfaction, and she had to remove herself from Grey's lap. His reaction was quite satisfactory, however. He leapt from the carriage and swept her inside the house, up the stairs, and into his bed before she could catch her breath. It eliminated all possibility-and capability-of thought. Precisely what she wanted.

They stripped each other bare as Pearl continued to reach forth and take, stripping away civilization with their clothing. She reveled in the expanse of his golden skin, rubbing herself against him until he rolled atop her with a growl.

"Mine." He thrust, taking possession of her.

Pearl wrapped her legs around him, surrounding him, drawing him deeper inside her. "Mine."

"Yours," he agreed, beginning the drive toward their mutual pleasure.

Words were gone as her body demanded its due and the magic rose. It always did, bright and sensual and-Pearl wallowed in it, stroked it over and through Grey as she rose up that long, wonderful climb with him until it burst in glorious explosion. She cried out, or Grey did. She couldn't always separate them one from the other at that moment, just as she couldn't separate the magic afterward. It didn't seem to matter, so she let it settle where it wished.

"Monday," he murmured into her ear. "Seven more days until you're my wife."

"Monday," Pearl agreed, half asleep. She'd resigned herself to it now. He'd almost convinced her it would work.                       
       
           



       



THE DAY TURNED out gray and cloudy, but without either rain or fog, and warmer because of it. Pearl wore pink today in hopes of brightening things up. Magister Greyson brought all of her students along in their own oversized carriage. The students wore a sort of uniform, Pearl realized. White scholars' robes served as aprons, over plain pale pink dresses.

The boys at the academy wore uniforms and robes-in black or blue or green-so uniforms for the Female Magician's School made sense. Pearl supposed she would have to get one. She was only grateful they didn't make her ride with the other students.

Harry spent the ride through London explaining to the Greysons what he and Elinor had observed during the months of their absence, about the damaged and destroyed machines and the ragged boundary, and their theory that the murderer's intent in calling the demon was to somehow affect the dead zones.

"Have all the broken pieces been retrieved?" Magister Greyson looked musingly at the dead zone. The other magisters and their apprentices, and Mr. Archaios, of course, stood alongside her, with her students a step behind and between, so they could see past the taller gentlemen. Mr. Greyson stood just behind and to one side of his wife, an embodied shadow, as if he had always been there and always would be.

"We think so," Harry said. "Pearl went an' got a few samples for us, right after, but she couldn't stay long, an' she ain't 'ad time to look for us again. Don't suppose as you an' Jax would be willin' to look?"

"Of course. Then we must wall it up." Mrs. Greyson paused and tipped her head to think. "It might be interesting to see the demon's reaction upon encountering our wall."

"Interesting, perhaps." Grey's expression was pained. "But not something I would care to observe personally."

Nor would Pearl, not after Grey's description of demons. She tightened her grip on his hand.

"Ladies." The sorceress was removing her gloves as she turned to speak to her students. "You will accompany me and Mr. Greyson into the dead zone. We've talked about the zones, but I want you to know how it feels."

"I know how it feels, mum," Fiona, the oldest student, said with a thick Scottish accent. "There's one in Glasgow I've walked through."

"Nevertheless, we will all go. The instant any of you begins to feel short of breath or dizzy, you will please return to wait with the gentlemen." Magister Greyson turned to look at Pearl. "Miss Parkin, if you will take Magister Carteret's hand, I believe he might enjoy a look at the scenery from a clear perspective. No gloves, of course."

Exchanging a wondering look with Grey, Pearl removed her fur-lined gloves while he did the same. The lovely warmth spread between them as it always did when they clasped hands, and they walked together into the dead zone, following the Greysons and the other students.

Harry gave direction from the boundary, asking them to poke under rubble or look behind obstacles. The students spread out, but remained near the boundary while Grey and Pearl, the sorceress and her husband penetrated deeper and deeper into the dead zone. One by one, the students left the dead zone and still Pearl and Grey explored with the other matched pair.

"We haven't seen any machines," Jax Greyson said. "I wonder why."

"There's no machines," Grey shouted back to Harry. "Theories?"

"Maybe they withdrew because of danger," Archaios called back.

"Maybe so." Pearl pointed deeper into the zone. "Look."

A trio of machines stood as if at sentry posts, in a gap between collapsed buildings. They bristled with various grinding, stabbing, slicing instruments made mostly of metal. The rest of the machines had a motley composition, but their aggressive pieces were sharp and hard.

"Perhaps it is time we returned," Magister Greyson murmured.

"What?" Her husband pretended shock so obviously even Pearl who did not know him could see it. "Amanusa, showing discretion?"

She laughed and bumped him with her shoulder. "I can. When I have a good enough reason. I'd rather my newest student not get bit on her first deep excursion."

"So I am not reason enough, am I?"

The sorceress stopped and touched his cheek, gazing up at him with eyes so filled with love it made Pearl's fill with tears. "You are my reason for everything," she said, loud enough that Pearl heard, but only just.

The sorceress rose on her toes and kissed her husband on the mouth, right there in the middle of the dead zone. When the kiss ended-a kiss so sweet and tender, the emotion in it grabbed Pearl by the throat-he was looking back at her with the same love, great enough to move mountains or-or to seal off dead zones.

Pearl yearned. Her heart ached for that kind of love, for Grey to love her . . . as much as she loved him. She loved him. Finally she admitted it to herself. She had fallen in love with Grey Carteret.

Grey cleared his throat, loudly and ostentatiously, kicking the rubble around making even more noise as he advanced toward the alley where the others were waiting. Pearl, holding tight to his hand, went with him. The newlywed couple shook off their besotted fugue and continued along their own path, side by side now with conjurer and apprentice.

"This is astonishing," Grey said in blatant distraction. "I'd have taken an apprentice long ago if I had known it would convey such advantages. Why, all the magicians will be wanting one now." He brought Pearl's hand to his mouth and kissed it, his smile warming her through. They were almost at the edge of the boundary, where she would have to let him go.

Magister Greyson laughed, bright as silver bells. "It's not because she's your apprentice, Grey. You can roam the dead zone like this because you are her familiar."

"What?" He stopped cold. Cold all over, his face hard and set. Pearl shivered with his cold. What had happened?

The master sorceress turned, stopping beside them, a slight smile on her face. "It's because you're her familiar." She frowned. "But-you must have known, Grey. You had to agree to it, or it could never have happened."