Once everyone had been rescued, tended, and sent off to one hospital or another, all the magicians were sent home. The magisters and the wizard's challenger agreed to meet over breakfast the next morning, to pick over what happened and see what they could learn from it.
"You're coming, too," Grey said, when Pearl wondered silently whether she was invited. "You're my sorceress. I'd like to see them keep you away. Besides, you were there. When the demon came calling."
"I'd rather sleep," she said, behind a yawn.
"It will be a late breakfast," Grey assured her.
But she went home with Elinor to sleep, instead of with him, which did not assure Grey in the least. She'd asked him to marry her, and had seemed pleased when he accepted, but that was in the heat of battle. Now that the danger was over, did she still want him, or would she go back to insisting on breaking their familiar's bond?
He could sense only contentment through the bond. What did that mean?
He tried to count up the days since remaking the bond. Was Thursday only yesterday? He thought so. The battle had taken only a single night. Which meant tomorrow was Saturday, and he still had a day to convince her to keep him.
Grey feared tossing and turning all night, wondering. He didn't. He slept like a log, probably with accompanying sawing, given the taste of his mouth in the morning. Exhaustion apparently trumped the pangs of love. Or perhaps the familiar's bond had eased his worries. Grey wished he could sense her nuances better through it.
He sat at Harry's table, working his way through a plate piled with eggs, bacon, muffins, kippers, sausages, scones, and whatever else had been laid out on the sideboard, while he read lurid newspaper descriptions of Thursday night's . . . catastrophe? Adventure? He settled on "events." Harry sat around the corner of the table, doing the same with different sets of papers.
The ladies, Elinor and Pearl, walked in looking fresh and bright. The men stood, greeted them. Grey kissed Pearl's cheek, and her ears turned pink. Was she glad to see him? Embarrassed by the semipublic kiss? He riffled through the familiar's bond, but couldn't read it well enough to be sure. He and Harry seated the women and brought them plates of food piled nearly as high as their own.
"Magic must be fed," Grey said when Pearl protested.
"Yes, but I'm sure it isn't this hungry."
Further objections were circumvented by the arrival of Jax and Amanusa, along with Nikos Archaios, as representative of the International Conclave, and Katriona Farquuhar, as the one with the greatest knowledge of James Ferguson.
Once everyone was settled and had begun to be fed, Harry started his informal inquest. Katriona was coaxed to tell how Ferguson had seduced her into running away, and everything that had happened afterward, all he said and did. She obviously felt out of her element, uncomfortable with the older magicians, but she acquitted herself well. Grey could sense Pearl's pride in her student.
"I think Pearl 'ad it right," Harry said, after Katriona was allowed to escape and rejoin her fellows. "That the angel was 'olding back till we could protect ourselves. Ferguson's dead, so 'e ain't killin' anybody else. The demon's gone, an' the little dust-up the other night ought to keep anyone else from tryin' to call one again anytime soon."
"We still need to find Ferguson's book," Amanusa said. "The one he got his spells from."
"I've got Briganti on that now, both I-Branch and Enforcement Branch," Grey said. "We'll find it, and learn how he made that magic trap. That actually could be a useful spell, once we clear away the rot. We've also got a great deal of work to do clearing up the mess the man left behind in I-Branch."
He went on. "The fact that the demon couldn't do what Ferguson called it to do should also keep idiots from trying to call another one. We should publicize that."
"Do you think the angel could do it?" Elinor asked. "Destroy the dead zones? If it would? Its power was so much greater than the demon's."
"Why is that, do you suppose?" Pearl mused. "I mean, we often hear about balance, about how light and dark must be in balance, male and female, good and evil. If that's so, shouldn't evil be as strong as good?"
Apparently she felt secure enough to think about philosophy. Grey wondered if that boded well for him.
"Not at all." He was willing to play teacher. "Think. Light and dark aren't good and bad. They are both good, are they not? We need the light to see, for plants to grow, and we need the dark for rest and for-for privacy.
"Male and female are most definitely both good. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses that complement each other, and without the good of both, there is no new life. The balance between those things is between good and good, correct? Not between good and evil."
"Yes." Pearl frowned. "But-"
"Think about it," Grey said. "Evil does not exist in and of itself. Evil takes good and twists it. It turns love into hate. It takes the strengths of male and female and pits them against each other. Good can exist without evil. Evil cannot exist without good."
"This is all very interestin'," Harry said in an utterly bored drawl, "but wot about the dead zones?"
Leave it to Harry to turn things back to practicalities.
"Did the demon even try to affect the dead zones?" Amanusa asked.
"I believe it did." Grey leaned an elbow on the table. "Remember the torn apart machines, the ragged boundaries? I think the demon did that, more out of curiosity than anything else. I was given the impression that it had messed about with the dead zones, but had grown bored. Most likely because it hadn't been able to affect them in any major way."
"If a demon's power cannot destroy the dead zones," Archaios said, "how can we hope to?"
"But we did," Harry said. "We have. Or Amanusa 'as. The zones shrank the first time she worked justice magic."
"So why aren't they still shrinking?" Pearl asked. "We've been working blood magic right and left. More of us than ever."
"That was the first time, though." Amanusa extended her hand to Jax, who took it and squeezed. "The first in two hundred years. And it was a big spell. Enormous."
Grey wanted to take Pearl's hand. Would she let him? He was afraid to try.
"I still think we should ask the angel," Elinor said.
"If an angel was goin' to do it," Harry said, "don't you think it would've done it by now? Maybe taken care of it when it was 'ere, instead o' fillin' us up with power? No." He shook his head, his hair flying in all directions.
"No," Harry repeated. "The dead zones are our job. Just like cleanin' up after the demon fight was our job. We were given wot we needed to do it, an' left to take care of it."
"So we have already the tools we need to close up the dead zones?" Archaios tugged at an earlobe.
"Right," Harry agreed. He made a face. "If we just knew which ones they were an' 'ow to use 'em."
Elinor sighed. "We'll figure it out. But you'll have to wait till after this magister challenge, if you want me to contribute to the solving."
"Five weeks." Harry put out his hand and Elinor took it. The first time Grey had seen such contact between them, when there wasn't a demon also present. Interesting.
"We'll 'elp you any way we can," Harry told her.
"We have to have a wedding first," Pearl said.
And Grey's heart leaped right out of his chest to dance around the room with joy. It was all he could do not to follow it. She hadn't changed her mind.
"You're sure?" he asked, like an idiot. He should be running out the door to fetch the nearest vicar. Somehow, her hand was in his.
"Aren't you?" Pearl sounded worried.
"Absolutely." He stood. "Today?"
She laughed and the world went bright. Or was it the familiar's bond that brightened? Same thing, since he saw the world through it now.
"Today is fine," she said. "Or tomorrow. However long it takes to or ga nize everything."
"For you, I am an organizational genius." He pulled her from her chair and into his arms for a kiss.
Harry cleared his throat, and Grey broke off to glare at him. "Go find your own woman to kiss."
"I was just goin' to say, we'll all pitch in and 'elp organize." He stood, grinning like an idiot. "It'll be a relief to 'ave it settled, you an' Pearl. I can't take any more drama."
"You're just jealous." Grey looked down at Pearl, grinning even more idiotically than Harry. "You are mine, right? You do love me as much as I love you?"
"Forever." She grinned right back at him. "You do realize this makes you mine as well."
"It had better." He paused, cocked an eyebrow at her. "Where's my pearl stickpin? Wasn't I supposed to be labeled with a pearl stickpin?"
She laughed, and he felt her delight pulse through their amazing connection. "Will you settle for a wedding ring?"