I decided to wait on mine. Time to get down to business.
“Look,” I said, taking a deep breath. “The rite. I don’t know what happened with everyone else. But I had a vision. I saw myself dead. Drowned. I don’t know why.” I walked past him to the tall French windows that led to his balcony overlooking the narrow street. “I don’t want to die. Not now, not ever. I want to be immortal, like you and the Treize. Teach me how to do the rite, whatever I need to do, to make it work.”
I looked at him, still standing by his drinks tray. What if he had changed his mind?
“I saw myself dead,” I repeated, trying to keep desperation out of my voice. “It wasn’t just a vision—it was real. It’s going to happen. I don’t know when, but soon. I have to stop it.”
I forced myself to wait, looking as calm as I could. I didn’t want to give him any more power over me than I had to.
Finally he spoke. “So you want to participate, to help raise the power and channel it, instead of merely watch?”
“Yes.”
His eyes narrowed at me, and his glance flicked down to my untried glass of port.
“Who sent you?”
“No one. I want you to teach me. Are you up for it or not? Do you haveanything you can teach me?” I injected just the faintest tinge of skepticism into my voice, figuring that his Y-chromosome bullheaded-ness would kick in.
It did.
“I’ve forgotten more about magick than you’ll ever learn,” he said, anger flushing his hollow cheeks.
I paused and took a sip of the wine. It left a trail of heat down my throat and into my stomach. I sohoped I hadn’t just done something stupid. “How pithy,” I said, watching him casually, as if he were a science experiment. “Did you make that up?”
His jaw set, and the way the light hit him just then made me realize that he looked frailer today than he had before the rite. Like Nan. Was he losing some of his power too? Then Daedalus seemed to get ahold of his anger, and he relaxed.
He smiled. “You’re tough, aren’t you, Clio?”
I stood there and tried to send out “tough” vibes.
“How tough, I wonder?” Daedalus said, almost to himself, and walked toward me.
I am immovable, I thought. I am a rock.
When he was close enough, he reached out one hand and gently placed three fingers at my temple. Too late I realized what he might do and jerked away, but he grabbed my arm tightly with his other hand and held me in place.
I closed my eyes, panicking, trying to shut my brain down, shut everything—
But it was too late, and he was too strong. In moments he had gained access into my consciousness, and then things became blurred. Second by second, I received lightning-fast patchwork impressions of a thousand different memories, over and over—for how long, I don’t know. Memories of my childhood, my first kiss, my first spell, being afraid, nightmares, being sick, feeling triumphant—a thousand pictures and emotions flashed inside my head like a film speeded up to incomprehensibility. I felt terrified, on a roller coaster of emotions from hell, and wished desperately that I hadn’t come. I had to get out of here, had to escape, had to—and then Daedalus turned me loose. I staggered and almost fell.
I caught myself on the back of a wingback chair, seizing the tapestry, rough under my fingers, and held on. I was breathing hard and felt like he had poured Drano on my brain and then caught my rushing memories in a steel basin. My other hand was curled into a claw, and I realized with amazement that I hadn’t dropped the port glass. Slowly, slowly I came back to myself, trying to contain my consciousness, to pin my fear beneath my heel. When I could, I raised my eyes and looked at Daedalus, unsure how much time had passed, what he had seen, how he had done it. I’d heard of people doing this, witches, and Thais and I together had done a mutual version of it to become closer. But I hadn’t realized that someone could do it so easily, at a moment’s notice. He really was much stronger than I’d realized. I was in over my head.
No, I wasn’t. I could do this. Iwas stronger than I realized.
I stood up straight, trying too late to look unaffected, to control my breathing, and took another little sip of port. It felt like drinking blood, warm, rich, heating my veins and filling me with life.
Suddenly I wondered if it was spelled. Oops.What the hell was I doing? If Thais was right about him, then I was being about as stupid as I could possibly be. But if she was wrong—
Daedalus was standing several feet away, watching me.
I tilted my chin a little, as if issuing a dare, pretending I wasn’t terrified that he might have just wiped my brain clean of all memories.
No. I knew I was Clio. I had a sister. We lived with our twelve-greats-in-a-row grandmother.
“You do want to learn,” he said.
“Yes.” My brain understood his words. Oh, thank God.
“You came on your own.”
“Yes.”
“Thais doesn’t know. She thinks you’re at Racey’s.”
Crap.
Would I survive if I threw myself out the window and over the balcony to the street below? How high was it? Eighteen feet?
Suddenly Daedalus turned away, all business. He put down his glass and smoothed his goatee in the empire mirror over the table. “Well, come here. Let’s see what you make of this.”
I followed him into his formal dining room, which had paneling below the chair rail and old-fashioned flowered wallpaper above. As in Axelle’s apartment, a heavy molding had been used for the chair rail, and more edged the high ceiling. Daedalus paused by a section of the wall and lightly drew his fingers across the wallpaper, whispering things I couldn’t hear.
I heard the faintest click, and then a small doorway, invisible before now, opened inward. Thais had told me about something almost exactly the same that Axelle had in her apartment. Did every witch have something like this? Just the Treize? Did Nan have one somewhere that I’d never found?
The interior of the space was dark. Daedalus picked up a four-armed silver candelabra and brushed his fingers over the candlewicks. They ignited instantly, and I thought, So effing cool.He went inside, gesturing to me to follow him.
In a movie, this would be the part where the audience is screaming, “Don’t go in!” And then of course the stupid heroine goes in, and then the ax murderer gets her. I stepped in, my heart beating in my throat, hoping there would be enough left of me to identify the body.
We were standing in a space about five feet wide and maybe seven feet long. The interior was painted black, making the space seem smaller. Everywhere were painted silver symbols, making borders along each edge, covering the walls. I saw a cornucopia spilling tears of blood that made me shudder, though I tried to hide it. There were words in Old French, most of which I knew. And of course there were runes—all the usual ones I recognized, and then some I didn’t. I tried to have no reaction when I saw the same symbols here that I’d seen on Richard’s walls, in his room at Luc’s apartment.
Come to think of it, there were a lot of similarities. Both had used silver paint on a dark background; both had these ubfamiliar symbols. What did that mean?
Black candles in small silver holders were everywhere, some new, some guttered. I looked down to see if they had dripped onto the floor and saw that the floor was also painted black, and a large silver-painted pentacle almost touched all four walls. For a minute I just looked around, hoping I wouldn’t see a shrunken head or a jar of newt eyes. And I’m a witch.
“How do you think immortality works, Clio?” Daedalus asked. On a narrow ledge, a large leather-bound book lay open.
“The Source,” I said, looking at him. “It was, like, the fountain of youth or something.”
“I’m not sure what the Source is,” he said, setting his candelabra on a very small, narrow table. He flipped through the yellowed, deckle-edged pages of his book. “I think it’s a power enhancer, whether it’s a life force or magickal power, nature, growing things.”
&n
bsp; “But it by itself isn’t a fountain of youth?”
“It might be,” Daedalus said. “But I don’t think so. I think it just lent us power to prolong our lives. And I think we need to find it again if we’re going to lend immortality to anyone else. But we can still accomplish a great deal without it. I can teach you how to get power from other things, and then, when we find the Source, you’ll be ready.”
That sounded like what I wanted. “What other things?” I pictured small dead animals and knew I just couldn’t do anything like that.
Daedalus looked at me, his blue eyes glittering. “Almost anything,” he said, his voice mild. “From fire, from water, from plants, from the ground itself. From animals. From people.”
I had a split-second image of Cerise, dead on the ground, followed immediately by an image of myself, also dead on the ground. Drowned. Was that what was going to happen to me? Would someone kill me to use my power? It wouldn’t make sense—there were so many people who were stronger than me and whose power would be more useful.
But those people were immortal.
Oh.
“I see,” I said, nodding. I had wondered whether to tell him about the awful, wonderful spell I had done on the neighborhood cats and decided not to. I didn’t want him to think I was more evil than I actually was. I mean, I’m totally not evil at all, but telling him about that spell might give him the wrong impression.
“I’m not sure you do see,” Daedalus said, “but I can show you. Let me walk you through a simple spell, teach you how to take something’s power.”
“You mean subvert its power?” Which was what I had done to the cats. Borrowed their power.
“No. Actually take its power. To keep.”
Please, Deésse, don’t let him bring out a live animal, I prayed, feeling my stomach tighten.
Instead he opened a wooden box, painted black and inset with a silver D, which seemed kind of prosaic—like, it should have been another pentacle or a rune or some other symbol instead of just his initial. He took out an egg-size chunk of smoky quartz, uncut, just an irregular, flawed hunk of crystal.
“Everything has energy, Clio,” he said softly, holding out the crystal. “Everything is vibrating, according to its nature. If you attune your vibrations, you can assume them. Then it will become part of you, and its power will be yours to use.”
A tingle of excitement stirred despite my nervousness and tension. I licked my lips, looking at the crystal.
“How do we do it?” I asked.
“Ce n’est pas facile,” he said, unexpectedly switching to French.
“Oui, comprends,” I said.
He gave a quick nod, then gestured to my purse, which I was clutching as though it were a lifeline. “Put that down and any electronic things you might have, like a phone or digital watch or a—what do you call it—a pager.”
I set my purse outside the door of the little secret room, fully aware that my cell phone was in it and that without it I was completely alone and unreachable. Daedalus waved his hand in the air and the small door silently swung shut. I could just barely make out its outline in the black wall, and I thought, Oh, frick. My heart started pounding so hard I wondered if Daedalus could hear it.
My whole life I’d lived with a witch, Nan, and around witches. Nan had always been much, much stronger than anyone else. I had been the second strongest. Now I knew it was because of our heritage, because of the Treize. Even so, I’d never seen Nan just wave her hand and close a door. She’d probably think it was tacky, I thought with rising hysteria.
I looked up at Daedalus, at his cold, unreadable eyes. He looked very intent, focused on me, and I hoped it was because he was glad to have someone who wanted to learn.
“Come,” he said, holding out his hand, and I stepped closer to the exact center of the silver pentacle on the floor. A long, slim black wand was resting on a shelf, and he took it and traced the pentacle’s circumference with it. Our circle was cast. Then he placed my right hand over the crystal in his hand so that we were holding it together.
“First we center ourselves where we are and get in touch with our own power,” he said softly. I’d never been this close to him before, and I was uncomfortable and unbearably tense. Suddenly I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to concentrate, that I would choke and look weak in front of him. I had to show him that I was strong, that I could do this.
Clio, do not screw this up.It felt like my whole future was in this moment, that whether I would live or die, literally, depended on the outcome of this situation.
I shut my mouth and breathed out slowly through my nose. Consciously I released all fear and regrets, just let them go and agreed to accept whatever happened.
Which, of course, is always the first step to getting in touch with magick.
“The first part of this spell binds us to the earth,” Daedalus said. “Even though we’re on the second floor.”
His eyes twinkled. I’d never seen any sense of humor about him before, and it made him seem a bit less scary—a tiny bit.
“The second part recognizes the crystal’s vibrations,” he went on in a soft, soothing voice. “And the third part aligns our vibrations with its. Can you tell me what the fourth part of the spell would be? The fin-quatrième?”
Spells were divided up into parts, sometimes as many as twelve or thirteen, depending on what you were doing. I knew that spells with even more parts or steps than that existed, but I’d never done any of them, never seen them done. Putting the prefix fin-in front of quatrièmemeant that the spell had only four parts and that the fourth part was the last.
“The fin-quatrièmewould be taking its power,” I said. I had no problem with taking a crystal’s power. It didn’t seem alive, couldn’t feel pain or fear. This was fine.
Daedalus started teaching me the spell. I knew the basic form, the grounding and centering, and I copied it perfectly. He seemed pleased, and I started to feel better.
The second part was also familiar—anytime you use anything whatsoever in a spell, you have to recognize it, learn it, identify it. The third part was a variation on what I had done that night with the cats, but it seemed less scary and dangerous. I concentrated hard, memorizing it, and almost gasped when I felt my vibrations subtly align with the crystal’s. My eyes were closed and I was breathing shallowly through my mouth. I felt the crystal practically burning between our hands—Daedalus and I seemed like one, and then we joined the crystal and it was like we were no longer two beings, Clio and Daedalus, but one new, alien life-form made up of our two vibrations plus this other, weird vibration of the crystal. You couldn’t picture it in your mind, and I can’t describe it. But that was what it felt like.
Then Daedalus started singing the fin-quatrième.I paid intense attention, though since we were linked, the words weren’t even words—they were images and emotions and meanings, and they went straight into my brain from his, and I started singing them too, though I’d never heard them before. It was a beautiful spell, elegant and precise, sparely written, with no extraneous showmanship or clumsy, unnecessary elements. It was actually a much better spell than I would have thought Daedalus might craft—but then again, maybe he hadn’t crafted it.
Suddenly the tone changed. I was in the middle of admiring the spell, memorizing it even as I sang it for the first time, and then it was as if the world went dark. I didn’t open my eyes, but a heavy gray veil suddenly seemed to drop down over everything, separating me and Daedalus and the crystal from the rest of the world. A tendril of fear uncoiled at the base of my spine, but I ignored it, concentrating on the spell.
The spell started to unravel the crystal, separating its vibrations and energy from its form. It wasn’t a clean break; it wasn’t as if you could simply assume its power and still be left with a whole crystal. With horror I realized that the only way to get power from something was to destroy it utterly. The vibrations were being dismantled, untwined from their hold on the crystal’s perfect, beautiful structure
of neatly aligned atoms. Like a storm pulling a rosebush off a trellis, the spell slowly ripped away the crystal’s energy. It was devastating. Then I was almost thrown backward as a sharp, clear burst of energy jolted into me, spearing my chest and filling me with light and fire.
My eyes popped open to stare into the glittering blue eyes of an ancient witch. His face was alight, younger, his cheeks flushed and not so sunken. An insane riptide of joy submerged me as I felt the huge, spiraling power within me, far more powerful than anything I’d felt before, either at a circle or with the cats. I felt like I was glowing in the dark, that I could walk down the street and bring trees back to life, heal children, wave my hand and solve any problem.
Daedalus smiled at the look on my face. I realized his hands were holding mine firmly, which was why I hadn’t been knocked out of the circle when the crystal’s energy entered me.
“Do you see, Clio?” His lips didn’t move, but I heard the words clearly. “Do you see how something’s power can become yours for the taking? Do you see what life can feel like?”
I nodded, speechless, my head buzzing with wonder, my knees shaking. If I opened my mouth to speak, white light would pour out, lighting this black room like sunlight at noon.
I was ecstatic, intensely happy, filled with light and love and power beyond all comprehension. It was the most incredible feeling I could possibly imagine—I’d had no idea such a thing was possible, and in one second I knew that I wanted it, needed it, had to have it all the time. What now, I thought eagerly—do we do another spell to keep it with us? How long will this last? Can I add to this?
With no warning, I felt it start to drain away.
Alarmed, I looked into Daedalus’s eyes and saw my knowledge confirmed there. He knew it was already fading.
“No, no,” I whispered. “Don’t let it go!”
He shook his head, and we continued to breathe slowly in and out in unison. The power leached out of me, like bones being bleached in the sun. I wanted to cry as I felt it leave me, felt my joy and passion and power and strength fade, leaving me diminished, heartbroken, a pale reflection of the glorious creature I had been only minutes earlier.