“Oh,” she whispered, enthralled.
“A significant difference, isn’t it?” His voice was nearly as hushed. “Now I’ll reduce the magic in my aura again. It’s a mentalpush. I could use the magic up by casting a minor illusion or other small spell, but in this case I’m only trying to cast it off, so ...”
In a handful of heartbeats, the itch flattened out into a tactile hum.
This trivial bit of magic affected her more deeply than all the spells she’d actually been able to see. This one felt like participating. Like being enchanted. She sat stock still, hardly breathing, as her left hand tingled everywhere his skin pressed against hers.
He cleared his throat. “Daggett ...”
“Mm?”
“Would you care to give it a try, or do you intend to simply sit here all night, holding my hand?”
That broke the spell. Figuratively speaking. She opened her eyes and found him considering her with a half-smile.
It was profoundly disconcerting in a way she couldn’t fully articulate.
She pulled free. “Of course I want to try. I’m just waiting for instructions.”
“Oh? All right. First: Give me back your hand.”
“We’re done with the show and tell, aren’t we?”
He elbowed her. “How do you think you’ll know if you’re pushing any of your anti-magic away? Wouldn’t it behandyto have a method for checking?”
Indisputable. Also a terrible pun. (Which, OK, she loved.) She suppressed a snort and slipped her fingers around his.
“Next,” he said, “you’re on your own. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to get anti-magic to do anything. Perhaps you’ll have more luck—it’s yours, after all.”
She focused on their entwined hands as she visualized the hum turning to nothing. He had very long fingers—pianist hands, her mother would say. She could easily imagine them racing up and down the keys, playing something stormy by Rachmaninoff.
Except that wasn’t what she was supposed to be thinking about, so she stared at the wall instead. What must it have been like for Hartgrave to find this room for the first time? He surely would have been—no, no, no, she had tofocus.
When she caught herself contemplating his head, thinking shaved-bald was a smart move if you believed in contagious magic and its precept that your hair in the wrong hands could doom you, she decided she’d better just close her eyes.
A long while later, she’d reached Hartgrave-level tetchiness. Nothing was working. If anything, the humming had advanced toward itching. Her back hurt, her hand was going numb, she was very aware of him sitting next to her—and she was starving.
“Thank you for trying,” she said, “but I think we’d better call it a night.”
“Giving up so easily?”
“No,” she said. “Giving in to extreme hunger.”
“All right, then.” He stood, stretching. “I could eat. Let’s go.”
Wait, did he just invite her to dinner with him? Was this some sort of surreptitious date?
“Well? Are you or are you not starving?” He raised a challenging eyebrow that in no way implied tender feelings.
She laughed at herself—picturing Hartgrave falling for her required a more active imagination than even she had—and followed him out of the Inferno.
Ashburn closed its cafeteria during winter break, and she’d heard that just about everything near the college was similarly shuttered—business was glacial when the students went home. But Hartgrave seemed to have a destination in mind, so she let him lead the way off campus.
They walked five blocks through empty streets before coming upon a hole-in-the-wall with a neon sign that, thanks to an unlit “d,” declared the establishment to be “Mexican Foo.” She’d passed by once before, perhaps a month prior to moving into the Inferno, and had managed a sort-of laugh at the thought that she couldn’t afford to eat there. Now she could. Not, of course, that she wanted to.
Hartgrave stepped up to Mexican Foo’s door and opened it.
Oh,no. Was he serious?
