“And what exactly am I asking her if I see her?”Yo Béatrice, you involved in any terrorism plots lately?
Julien hesitated. “Darcy says you should just focus on making contact today. Seeing if you can actually find her there.” He clamped his lips together.
In the dining room, Darcy instructed Cinn to lie on the empty, dark wooden table, as if it were a makeshift operating theatre. He did so, feeling foolish, like a spectacle on a stage. After a moment spent staring up at the dark beams of the cottage’s ceiling, he sat up to find the others not focused on him at all—they were rushing about, lighting candles in an efficient, practiced manner.
“But what will the candles do?” Cinn asked.
“Oh, those are just for atmosphere,” Darcy replied, wiggling her fingers in the air.
Cinn resisted palming his face.
“But this isn’t,” she added brightly, waving something in his face. “This is aged white bark from a paper birch tree. Over a hundred years old.”
Cinn frowned at the gleaming white material. “Seems unlikely.”
“It’s infused with luminaquartz. We’re going to use it to link Béatrice’s magnet item to your body.” She broke off a small chunk of bark and ground it with a mortar and pestle.
“So… after we begin, will the shadowmotes suddenly appear?” Cinn was dubious.
Darcy flicked through a thick leather-bound tome. “I don’t think you’ll see the shadowmotes until after you slip. Also, in order to prevent you bringing anything back with you, Cinn, we’re going to draw on your body with some special ink. Usually we’d draw a protective circle around you on the floor, but my research suggests this will be even safer. Do you mind removing the top half of your clothes?”
Cinn stared at her. “You’re joking. What the fuck is this freaky, culty, ritual shit?”
Julien snorted, but Elliot scowled at Cinn, practically snarling, “Just trust her. She knows what she’s doing.”
Grumbling, Cinn shimmied out of his hoodie and T-shirt. Although he wasn’t shy about showing his body, he couldn’t remember the lasttime anyone had seen his naked torso, and he had to fight not to cover it with his arms. Already he could feel Julien’s burning gaze cataloguing the tattoos usually hidden under his baggy clothes. He prayed the colour of his cheeks wasn’t betraying him.
The last thing that remained was his new protective gold band. It would have to come off—the whole point of it was to stop him slipping. Noir had said for him to ‘tell’ the metal circle to release itself. Cinn sighed and gripped the shiny object tightly, enclosing it with his other hand. He focused all of his energy into imagining the metal was pliable under his touch. He imagined it thinning, widening enough to slip it off his wrist. The electric tingle dancing under his fingers told him it was working. When he pulled his hand away, the bangle was ever-so-slightly larger, and slipped off him with ease. He placed it next to himself, feeling slightly smug.
Darcy turned to Elliot. “Have you got the aethraven ink? One of you two can copy out the symbols, though. You know what my drawing is like. I’ll end up removing his liver or something.”
Elliot produced a small jar of thick black liquid and a thin artist’s paintbrush.
“I better do it.” Julien’s hands shot out, snatching both items from Elliot.
Elliot opened his mouth—to protest?—and then crossed his arms, stepping back from the table with a sulky pout. “You were happy to let me do it on the floor in the library,” he mumbled.
“That was because we were playing with toys. This is serious business.”
Julien certainly had aserious businesslook about him as he eyed Cinn’s exposed skin, which prickled under his gaze. Julien propped the book Darcy passed him on the table and studied it for a moment. He pressed one cool hand to Cinn’s bare skin as his other dipped the brush into the ink jar, then made feather-light, deliberate strokes, brushing intricatepatterns onto him that he couldn’t comprehend. Perhaps he’d have fared better decoding the symbols if he wasn’t finding Julien’s proximity, Julien’s touch, and the orangey scent of Julien’s hair so overwhelming that it was frying his senses, just like that moment on the garden bench earlier.
He closed his eyes, but that just made every sensation even more powerful, including the feel of Julien’s fingers pulling his skin taut—was he deliberately kneading Cinn’s muscles with his fingertips, or was Cinn imagining it?
Each wet stroke of the brush sent a shiver down Cinn’s spine, the cool ink tingling against his skin, leaving behind a trail of heat in its wake. Just when it was getting to the point where he was biting back inappropriate sounds, Julien announced he was finished.
“We’re going to use this treasured item of Béatrice’s as a ‘magnet item’ to help draw her to you.” From his pocket, Julien produced a silver locket—the oval type that often housed pictures inside—engraved with moons and stars. “She wore this every day.” He turned the locket around to reveal the other side was charred and blistered, once smooth metal now warped and blackened. “Until the day she died.”
Cinn flinched as Julien placed the cool metal onto his stomach, in the centre of the inkwork circle he’d created, looking Cinn dead in the eye as he did. Cinn swallowed, unsure of why this simple action was eliciting such an intense reaction from his body—so much so that he had the sudden urge to promise Julien he’d keep the locket safe for him.
Darcy held the mortar with the powdered luminaquartz in it, then spat in it.
Cinn let slip a sound of disgust. “Is that going on my body?”
“Preferably, yes.”
“Did you have to use spit?”
“Apparently, yes.”
