Heart's Blood(72)

"That's because they're not real magic," Grey muttered, more to himself than to Pearl, but she heard him.

She glanced up and frowned. "Don't antagonize him," she muttered back.

"Can you go invisible?" he asked her.

"What, here?" She frowned deeper. "It's harder when others already know we're here. But maybe if I do it slowly, over time. It's not really invisible, exactly. They just . . . don't notice us."

"What are you two talking about?" Ferguson turned a suspicious scowl on them. He yanked on the magic again, making it surge stickily against them.

Pearl stumbled, and rage flared so fiercely through Grey that it took him far too long to tamp it down again. Pearl was his. He would allow no one to harm her.

And yet he was the one who had hurt her most. His blows had struck deepest because she loved him. She truly did love him. He understood that now. Understood love perhaps a bit better. He'd always known his parents didn't love him. Not truly. Adela did. Mary did. Pearl did.

Did he love her? Grey wrapped the question up in his awareness of the truth and tucked it away deep, to be pulled out later to be examined and answered when the situation wasn't so urgent.

"We were speculating about the sort of magic that might be used," Pearl jumped into the awkward silence. "And what spells we know that could contribute. I assume you use warding spells for protection."

"Absolutely. Basil and rowan, as well as blue chalcedony, and smoky quartz for focus. And the sigils, of course." Ferguson turned to draw a sheaf of ragged papers from one of the cubbies.

The instant he turned, Pearl was making faces at Grey and mouthing words that said Where did you go? Pay attention! She rolled her eyes toward Ferguson, informing him where he was to pay his attention.

Ferguson had let go of Katriona to retrieve his papers. She set her candlestick on the massive writing desk and eased away from the wizard toward Pearl, her eyes wide and frightened.

Pearl held a hand out to her, and with a wild glance at Ferguson, Katriona reached out with both hands and rushed to clasp Pearl's. Was she not trapped in the tar magic? Grey would have tested it, but Ferguson turned back around.

He spotted the female huddle immediately and glowered, but apparently decided they were harmless enough. Grey knew better. Women wept, but the tears didn't make them weak. It washed out the pain and firmed their resolve.





27




"LOOK HERE." FERGUSON beckoned Grey over, ignoring the women completely. Foolish man.

Grey went, plowing sluggishly through the tar magic. No running away yet.

Ferguson spread his papers on the desk, shuffling through them until he found the one he wanted. "Look." He pointed. "You see? By modifying this sigil and properly charging it with blood-voluntarily given, of course. I have learned that much of sorcery. Then we mix it with a tincture of-"

The women's whispering had risen to a brisk sotto voce discussion and Ferguson broke off to scowl at them.

"She is still untouched," he called out. "I did not bring her to harm her, only to work magic."

Pearl looked up and nodded, her arm around the girl who had her face in her hands. "I know that. But she was in love with you and you deceived her. You have broken her heart, and that is a deep wound, slow to heal."

Katriona straightened, wiping away her tears to glare defiantly at Ferguson. "No' so deep as all that," she said. "You might ha' told me it was the magic you wanted and no' me. I'd likely ha' come away with you all the same. Though if I'd known about you murderin' those poor people-"

"It wasn't murder," Ferguson ground out. "It was a necessary sacrifice."

"O' course it was." Katriona's smile wouldn't have fooled a child.

It certainly didn't fool Grey. He wanted to crow and caper. That's it, girl, he thought fiercely. Show him what a strong baby sorceress you are.

But the smile, filled with righteous anger as it was, seemed to fool Ferguson, for he let her approach. Perhaps he thought to seize her again.

Katriona kept smiling. "Poor, misguided, foolish Jamie." She cupped his cheek tenderly in her hand. "Did you know, Jamie, that blood isn't the only thing that carries the magic of sorcery?"

He cleared his throat, beginning to look nervous, but he didn't push Katriona away. She wasn't much taller than Pearl, though more sturdily built. Likely he thought he could handle her. Or manhandle her.

One hand still cupping his cheek, Katriona licked her other thumb and made as if to wipe it along his jaw. He knocked that hand away, but not the other. Did the man not recognize his danger?

"Tears carry power, too," she said. "Especially the tears of a woman wronged." Katriona wiped her hand along his face as finally, Ferguson shoved her away.

She stumbled and fell. Ferguson gestured, apparently catching Katriona in the tar magic as well, for she struggled to stand, even with Pearl's aid. Grey could once more feel the floor against his feet. Holding three in the magic had to be straining the mad wizard's resources.

"Blood of my blood," Pearl was murmuring, so softly that Grey almost could not hear her, close as he was. "Blood of the innocent, of those taken too soon, those murdered, cut down in their prime. Blood of Angus Galloway, blood of Rose Bowers-"

There was a tiny smear of red on Ferguson's cheek, Grey saw now. Blood as well as tears. Pearl must have done it during that "unimportant" female huddle. Magic rose, thickened around them.

Spurred by impulse and instinct, Grey wrote a sigil in the air, and the spirit of Angus Galloway burst free of the protective warding around Pearl.

"Murderer." The accusation echoed around the room, audible to the ear, just as the spirit's tall broad form was visible.

"No." The word was a horrified whisper. Ferguson cowered against his desk. "No. The trap keeps you out. You don't know. You can't be certain."

"I canno' smell it on you, that's true." Galloway loomed over the wizard. "But I heard you admit it. And I know murder was done in this place. That I can smell. Justice will be done."

"No. Not yet! I need time." Ferguson sketched a sigil in the air and Galloway flew back, smashing into a support post, but his form didn't disintegrate.                       
       
           



       

Astonished, Grey watched as the spirit marched determinedly forward again. "How is he able to do that? Hold his form?" he whispered to Pearl. "He's only a few months old."

"Magic?" She gave a tiny shrug. "Justice being done?"

"Just let me finish!" Ferguson cried. "It's vital that the dead zones be destroyed. This will work. I know it will. Won't it, Carteret?"

Grey leaned a hip against the desk, settling in to watch. "Not if you're depending on demons, it won't. For the nine-hundred-fifty-seventh time, or thereabouts, demons cannot be either called or compelled by human magic."

"But they're not demons!" Ferguson shouted. "Stop him! Don't let that spirit touch me!"

"He's not what will harm you," Pearl said. "The spirit is a witness to justice, not the instrument. The blood is, and in this case, tears."

Ferguson scrubbed at his face where Katriona had left her tears and the tiny smear of blood, but it was too late. Magic seeped in slower through the skin, but it could enter, and it had. The knowledge came through the familiar's bond Grey shared with Pearl.

"Your blood?" he asked quietly.

"Mmm." It was an affirmative sound. She sounded distracted. Or busy. Calling distant magic, perhaps? He offered his strength and she leaned into it. Yes, she was calling up the magic stored in the innocent blood of Ferguson's victims from the stained clothing stored at Wych Street. She pulled it through the shields the wizard had laid around this place and poured it into him through the magic she'd maneuvered into his blood.

Ferguson's eyes rolled as panic hit him. "Belial!"

He fumbled for a pencil and scrawled a sigil on the desk, one that turned Grey's stomach worse than the one in the book. The altered twists and turns changed the magic that was infused into the symbol, perverting it from Protect to Destroy.

Grey wanted to leap, to smudge it out, but the sigil made no difference. The demon would come, or it would not, according to its own whims. He tried not to hold his breath, and hoped the demon was sleeping.

"Come!" Ferguson shrieked, jerking and crumpling in lurching waves.

"What's happening to him?" Katriona's eyes were wide with alarm again.

"What you sow, that shall you reap," Galloway said aloud. "He's only suffering what he did to those he murdered."

Ferguson laughed, sounding chillingly maniacal. "Do you think yourselves safe? Belial will come and he will destroy you."

"It," Grey corrected quietly. Demons did not have gender. Neither did angels.

Ferguson still laughed, though some laughter was difficult to distinguish from shrieks of pain. "Do you wait for rescue? No one is coming. Your spirit messenger? Caught in my trap. It's a very good spirit-trap, it is. Made the spell up myself. Catches all the nasty, nosy spirits and holds them fast. Just like it catches the nosy magic and keeps it out. Just like it catches you and holds you fast. I perfected it after you pushed yourself into my first spell, to keep you out. How did you get in?" Ferguson scowled. "You shouldn't have noticed."