A little more power.
"Rogan!" Rynda's voice spiked somewhere far away.
"You're distracting her," Cornelius said gently.
I crashed to the bottom, somehow landing on my feet. The hex glowed in front of me. It was an arcane circle, a dazzling, glowing creation of pure power woven into gossamer lace. Its complexity made me dizzy.
How do I pull it apart?
The magic flowed through the pattern, a complete circuit. Interrupt the flow, and it would collapse. What would happen . . . ?
It wasn't a single circle, but three, layered on top of each other. Within the second layer, nine triangles stretched toward the center. If I attacked, trying to force my will over Vincent's, the top circle would collapse onto the center, the triangles would point down, like dagger blades, puncture the bottom layer, and the power of the entire hex would then surge into the daggers. It would plunge down and stab into Vincent's psyche. It was a genius trap, impossible to disarm.
Breaking it was out of the question.
Could I shift the pattern? Maybe I could pull it apart . . .
Too risky.
If I broke the hex at any point, the collapse was inevitable.
When David Howling trapped us inside an arcane circle, Rogan had altered it. A hex was basically a circle. A really complicated, difficult to understand circle, drawn with pure magic in someone's mind. Could I draw on it?
A dull pain came from somewhere deep inside me. I had expended too much magic and I would likely need more.
"This is too much for her." Mom's voice. "You're asking her to take apart something that . . . woman built with years of experience."
"She's right."
Shaffer. Who let him in?
"I can feel the hex in his mind. It is exceedingly complex. It's a trap and she's too inexperienced to realize it." Shaffer again.
"But is it breakable?" Rynda asked.
"No," Shaffer said. "It's a perfect trap. Get her out of there before she overextends."
"She's fine," Rogan said. "She knows her limits."
They all needed to shut up.
The hex was too complicated to alter. There were loops within loops, twisting magic onto itself.
But I didn't need to alter it. All I needed to do was shield Vincent's mind from the daggers.
I pulled on my magic. It came from within me, stretching into a thin line glowing with silvery blue. I slipped it under the bottom layer and began to weave. A direct shield wouldn't work, no more than a blunt approach would've worked with Vincent's father. There was too much power in the hex. I had to redirect the energy of the spell away once it collapsed. I had to . . . Yes. That would work.
"If you want your daughter to live, you will stop this," Shaffer said. "Look at him. He doesn't care if she lives or dies, as long as he gets what he wants. I care. I want to marry her."
"Nevada knows what she's doing." Mom's voice. Cold. She didn't like him.
The pattern grew more complex, spreading under the hex like a snowflake, unfurling from the center.
An insistent pounding began in my head, a sure sign that my magic resources had grown low. I was walking a tightrope.
"Have all of you lost your minds?" Shaffer demanded.
"Will someone shut that weakling up?" Victoria snapped.
The last stroke of my bottom layer. It was all or nothing.
I molded my magic into a blade and severed the top layer of the hex.
The blackness broke. I was back in the room, with the glowing pattern in front of me. I had drawn it in chalk on the floor, a circle of rivulets with nine points within it locked in the spirals. The ghostly radiance of Victoria's hex flared above it, an echo of the real hex.
Someone gasped.
The top layer collapsed, flowing into the second, like sand or water spilling from a hole in the bottom of a vase. Its power flowed into the triangles, bending them down, feeding into them, stretching them into razor-sharp blades.
The second layer collapsed into the third. The daggers punctured through it and met the soft rivulets of my circle. Their points touched the nine spots where the lines twisted together. They flared with silver, channeling power out. The silver glow spread through the blue, overpowering it. The lines grew thicker, channeling the magic. The spirals I had made rose, fed by the hex's collapse, stretching higher and higher, glowing, beautiful, unfurling as they grew. An ethereal carnation bloomed in Vincent's mind, its nine petals delicate and shimmering with magic.
It glowed for a long moment and vanished, the hex's power expended.
A vicious sound echoed through the silence and I realized it was Grandmother Victoria laughing.