Heart's Blood(59)

He was shaking his head no, his whole body shaking. He threw her hand away from him and immediately staggered. Pearl cried out, grabbed for his hand, as shaken as he, as if she'd been picked up and flung about and-and tossed aside.

"No!" Grey pushed her as he stumbled for the dead zone's boundary.

Pearl fell, cracked her head against a rock in the pile he pushed her into. "Help him!" she cried. "Elinor, Fiona, help!"

Her head didn't hurt nearly as much as her heart, her whole stunned self. The women and girls rushed into the dead zone and helped Grey the last few feet out of the deadly no-magic area.

The Greysons appeared and blocked Pearl's view, lifting her to her feet and assisting her back to the others. Grey was gone when they arrived.





22




"IGUESS WE ain't buildin' our boundary wall this mornin'." Harry peered down the alley after Grey, hands propped on his hips. "Bein' as we just lost our conjurer."

"What happened?" Elinor took Pearl's hands in hers and peered into her eyes, then felt her head where she'd hit it.

Magister Greyson sighed. "It seems we have a bit of a difficulty to sort out, and Magister Carteret did not react well to learning of it."                       
       
           



       

"Indeed he did not," Archaios said, full of affront. "No matter the provocation, a gentleman does not treat a lady so."

Pearl's heart twisted and she swallowed down a sob. "He didn't mean it. Although Grey would be the first to tell you he is no gentleman, it's not so." She looked over Elinor's head at the tall sorceress. "Did I really-? How is it possible?"

The magister nodded, sad and very gentle. "True, yes. How? That is what we must sort out. You did not know?"

"I had no idea."

"No idea of what?" Harry demanded, hands still belligerently propped.

"We're not quite sure," the sorceress said, earning Pearl's undying gratitude.

She couldn't bear for anyone to know how stupid and careless and ignorant and-she couldn't think of enough words bad enough for what she'd done. But . . . how?

How had she made Grey her familiar? What exactly did it mean? What happened now? And just how angry was he?

"Come." Magister Greyson took Pearl's elbow and urged her back down the alley toward the carriages. "I trust you gentlemen to see my students safely back to the hotel," she said. "Miss Parkin and I have much to discuss in private. Guild secrets."

"I didn't mean to do it," Pearl said when she was enclosed in the carriage with the master sorceress and her husband.

Grey hadn't taken any of the carriages. He was on foot in Bethnal Green, and she was worried about him.

"I don't even know what a familiar is, or how it works or-" She broke off when the magister shifted seats to sit beside her and laid a hand over Pearl's, twisted together in her lap.

"Pearl," the sorceress said, "I will call you Pearl, and you will call us Amanusa and Jax, because you are engaged to marry our friend and cousin-"

Pearl groaned. Would he still want to marry her? She didn't think so.

"And therefore you are also our friend. If you have already ridden the blood, you are a sorceress and may be assisting me in teaching and testing the others, so our relationship is already that of colleagues." Amanusa Greyson went on as if Pearl hadn't made any noise. "As colleagues," she said, "we must work together to discover how you have done what you have done."

"I never-"

"I know." The other woman squeezed Pearl's hands comfortingly. "But it has happened and we have to begin with that and move on. We must understand how such a thing happened by accident, so that it will not happen again to someone else."

Pearl took a deep calming breath, which didn't seem to calm much, and squared her shoulders. "You are right."

"First, have you and Grey exchanged blood?"

"Yes, but it wasn't very much. We swore our contract in blood, mixed it when Grey was in jail."

"In jail?" Jax Greyson folded his arms as he grinned. "Seems we've missed quite an adventure, Amanusa, my love."

"Is that all?" His wife ignored him.

"No. There was the time I caught a splinter in the warehouse where Angus Galloway was killed. And when he gave me my lancet. And when I rode his blood."

"It was Grey's blood you rode? That was your first time?"

"Yes. It seemed safer. Were we wrong?"

"No." The sorceress frowned as she thought. "No, it was certainly safer. But since your blood was already in him, and the first mixing was direct . . . Have you worked magic together?"

"That's how we laid the ghosts." Pearl described the visit to the morgue and the magic they'd worked so often since. "We've been able to do a great deal more together than either of us ever could alone."

Amanusa smiled. It was easier to think of her as Amanusa instead of Mrs. Greyson. Greyson was Grey's name. "That is the nature of familiars," she said. "To increase the magician's power. Both of them, if both are magicians."

Pearl glanced at Jax, who shook his head.

"I'm head blind," he said. "Got no magic sense at all, save what Amanusa shares with me. Lucky for me, she inherited me from the last sorceress, or she'd be shopping for a familiar among the great and powerful."

"Never." Amanusa gave her husband another of those looks.

Pearl studied the pattern of the lace trimming her skirt, too uncomfortable with the intensity of emotion to watch.

The sound of Amanusa clearing her throat had Pearl looking up. "This question will seem indelicate and definitely impertinent, but . . . Have you and Grey . . . had sexual intercourse?"

Ears burning as if they'd burst into flame, Pearl nodded. Then she shook her head. "We made love," she said. "It's not the same. Not that I have any personal knowledge of that, but-"

Amanusa was patting her hand again. "Yes, dear. I know very well." She frowned. "But, do you mean-Was Grey your first?"

Her face had to be as red as her ears. Pearl threw a mortified glance at Amanusa's husband, who pretended he hadn't heard a thing, and wasn't even there besides. She nodded, sitting up straight as she did. She didn't regret it, and she wouldn't be ashamed of it.

"Mmm." Amanusa's nod was her only response.

"What?" Pearl tried not to demand answers, but she needed them so desperately. "Was that bad? Was that what did it? But . . . sex?"

"Sex is as much a part of sorcery as blood or saliva," Amanusa said. "Consider-sorcery is worked with the human body and its various bits and pieces. Sex is very much a part of being human. A powerful part."

"Oh." Horror widened her eyes, made her heart race, her voice fade to a whisper. "Oh, my God-"

"When did it happen?" the sorceress asked.

Pearl told her.

Amanusa patted her hand. "Then that did not make Grey your familiar. Rose Bowers's body was only discovered last week. Grey was already your familiar at that point, or well on his way. But it bound you closer. Much closer, since blood was shed."

"It wasn't his fault," Pearl said quickly.

"It's not yours, either."

"Yes. Yes, it is. I'm the one who insisted we seal our agreement in blood. I blackmailed him into taking me as his apprentice. He wouldn't have done it if I hadn't threatened to leave him in jail without a way to get word to his friends." Tears rose, choking off her words, crowding into her eyes, insisting on release. They were very insistent.

"Oh, my poor dear." Amanusa put her arms around Pearl. "Do you love him so very much?"

"I di-didn't want to." Pearl fought valiantly against weeping. "I couldn't help it. He is so beautiful. And kind and honorable-for all he pretends not to be, he is. B-but he doesn't love me-" She did manage to keep from wailing. "He's in love with his familiar spirit. Or you."

"No, he's not in love with me." Amanusa's voice held amusement. "He is a great romantic, so I think for a time he fancied the idea of unrequited love, but no. Grey has never been in love with me. I know how it feels to be loved."

Pearl didn't look up from the white-clad shoulder where she began to win her war on weeping. She didn't have to, to know the sorceress and her husband were once more gazing at each other. "Grey said you were disgustingly besotted," she muttered, sitting up to wipe her eyes.                       
       
           



       

She looked up to see Amanusa's shocked expression and hurried on. "It's not-it's just that-It is so wonderful to see. It is such a beautiful thing, and . . . well, when one does not have that kind of love in one's own life, and one wishes that one did, and-It aches to yearn so."

Amanusa exchanged a quick glance with Jax and cleared her throat. "I am-While I do not know Grey's relationship with his familiar spirit, I am sure that he does care for you or he would not have been so angry." She hesitated briefly. "Is this spirit his familiar, as we are speaking of familiars, or is it a different sort of relationship?"