Hell’s bells.
It worked.
It could be done.
Lara and the Hunger opened their mouths and screamed. It came out a double sound, precisely in time, one voice human, agonized, one utterly alien, hair-raising.
I eased the focus of my will against the resistance of the Hunger. Slowly, I closed the fingers of my right hand, letting the magical energy fade as gradually and gently as I could. I could feel the strain of the spell translating to my physical body, felt myself beginning to shake.
As the resistance faded, the pale form of Hunger began to dissipate,to become smoke again, flowing across the strands of energy back to Lara’s body. I began to redirect the energy of the spell, sending the magic all flowing toward Lara, taking the Hunger with it. The flames of the candles began to die down again, as smoke swirled around Lara, the Outsider resuming its place within her, vanishing from the other side of the loop.
Lara let out another gasp, eyes flying open suddenly a deep, rich blue. As I closed my hand, tying off the energy of the spell, letting it come to a close, exhaustion hit me in a wave and I staggered. I dropped to a knee and slapped my hand across the nearest point of the circle, feeling the magic break and disperse.
Lara dropped to her knees, blue eyes unfocused, covered in sweat. She let out an unmistakable moan of pleasure and exhaustion. She fell forward onto her hands and then crumpled over onto her side, curling into a fetal position, body quivering with random spasms.
I slumped onto my ass, head bowed forward, just trying to slow my breathing. The candles sank down to pinpoints and went out.
We both stayed like that as, outside, fireworks began.
When I looked up, only the fireworks and the lights outside let me see anything at all.
Lara was staring at me in something between horror and awe.
“Did…” She swallowed. “Did it work?”
I nodded my head slowly. “Yeah,” I said quietly. I had to work not to stare at Lara. I wasn’t yet clear on everything that had happened just now—that would take some thought and review. But the basic concept had been proved. I could separate Thomas from his Hunger. “Yeah. We can save him.”
“Empty night,” she breathed. She shook her head, stunned. “Harry. I’m…I’m not Hungry.”
Chapter
Thirty
Fitz and I stood on the roof a couple of weeks later, looking out at the night. They were repairing things “from the middle out” in the city, but it was slow going—not for any lack of work or effort, but the surge in replacement parts needed for the city’s grid had caused a serious logistics chain issue, raised prices, and created bottlenecks. Still, we could almost see the glow of lights from several blocks away.
Fitz shrugged a little deeper into his coat. You could feel the extreme cold of the wind coming off Lake Michigan. I was wearing my duster, because it made me feel a little weird to be out in the cold in a T-shirt when other people were bundled up. I hadn’t been doing the regular upkeep on the spells that would protect me, and they were probably getting thinner than I should be comfortable with. Well. It was probably time to start talking to Fitz about how to do static enchantments anyway. I could work on my coat tomorrow and show him how to get started on his own first enchantment. We’d been working on meditating in the cold this evening. Fitz was developing discipline fast.
“So, Maggie is at school all week?” he asked.
“Be back Friday afternoon,” I said. “Goes back Monday morning.”
“And there’s a bunch of supernatural kid types there?”
“Mmmm,” I said. “And the Accorded nations agreed to leave the place alone a while back. There’s several beings there looking out for the place. Now Mouse is included.”
“The dog?”
“Foo dog,” I said. “Near as I can figure he’s at least half an angel’s worth of protection. Good guardian. Kept the svartalves from coming at Maggie in their own damned home, so he’s pretty solid. He once got hit by a car, got up, and hit it back.”
“Oh, wow. I just thought he was a really good dog.”
“He’s mostly that.” I blew out a breath and watched the wind carry the warmed vapor off. Mist was rolling up from the lake, as it sometimes did. The view from the castle’s roof would soon be dim shapes and grey background. “Could be that’s the more important, really. Most days, you don’t need a ferocious guardian. Hard to think of a day a really good dog wouldn’t add to.”
“Huh,” Fitz said. He squinted at me. “You watched pretty close the first time I met Mouse, I noticed. It was a test.”
I shrugged. “Mouse has good instincts for people. He thinks you’re okay.”
Fitz frowned.
