“Iwillcall your mom.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “I’ll callmymom.”
Nick ate the second plate of roasted vegetables mixed with chunks of savory meat quickly. Like everything Laurel made, it was delicious, and by the time he finished, he could actually think in something more than fragments of sentences.
Parker was filling Laurel in on what was going on.
Her frown was getting deeper, and she said, “That’swhy. I sent everyone home when we got the shelter at home order, but I know a lot of other businesses who thought it was just a suggestion. But you guys figured out how to stop the parasite?”
“Yeah, but we aren’t doing it again,” Parker said sharply. “Look what it did to Nick. I don’t want him to do it again six times.”
Laurel nodded. “Your magic levels were really low.”
“I was overusing it yesterday. I think if I was at my usual levels, I would have been fine. It’s not complicated. It’s just detailed.” Nick picked at the potato wedges on the plate. His stomach said he wanted them, but he hadn’t done his run this morning.
“Eat them,” Laurel said, sitting down across from him. She narrowed her eyes at Parker. “You, too.”
“What did I do?” Parker asked, but he sat down and took a plate of the same vegetable and meat dish Nick had just eaten.
“My problem is that the anchor points on all three spells demand full capacity before I can even begin loading the other parts of the spell.” Nick bit into a potato wedge. It was savory and salty, with a hint of spice that lit up his mouth.
“So that forces you to put all your magic on the table first,” Laurel said. “Can you reuse the spell for the next person? Wait until you have enough now and then just do it once?”
“I thought of that,” Nick admitted. “But I just don’t have the capacity, and now the parasite knows we can hurt it. I don’t know why it hasn’t killed the other ten.”
“I don’t think it wants to,” Parker said around a mouthful. His expression was bliss, as though it didn’t matter that they were on a deadline with an unknown enemy. “Other than Gile, none of them have threatened us. In fact, even the one in Gile actually listened to me. It went where we told it, blew up when we asked… I don’t think any of them want to kill. Except maybe parasite prime. Whichever one they all came from.”
“You think that the further we get from the original parasite, the less they want to be doing this?” Nick said. “That makes sense. The others were upset; they didn’t want to hurt people.”
“‘I was made to hurt.’ Isn’t that what the one at the escape room said?” Parker looked down, his mouth pinching as his brows drew tighter. “Maybe if we kill the original parasite, we could just let the others go?”
“Go where?” Nick pointed out. “Right now, they’re occupying people’s bodies.”
Parker frowned. “I know, but this just feels cruel. They have some sentience.”
“So your main problem is that you need to lay out the power initially.” Laurel looked up at the ceiling. “What if we did something else?”
Nick immediately turned his eyes to her. “Like what?”
“Like when we designed the escape spell together.” Laurel grinned. “You’d still be able to do the alchemy interior, but I’ve been figuring out ways to get around anchor points. Then we’d be usingmymagic for the heavy lifting. And Ihaven’tbeen overusing my magic recently.”
Nick’s stomach clenched, and with the good food inside, he could feel it gurgle, could feel the anxiety shiver down his spine. Even now, after letting Parker power his spells, after working together with Laurel several times, mixing alchemy and witchcraft felt like the worst sort of perversion.
He’d always told himself he only did what was necessary, only did the worst sort of depravity when he had absolutely no other choice, but even he knew that wasn’t true. What he’d been taught his wholelifewasn’t true.
Itwaspossible to work with a witch, to work together and for it not to be evil or end in someone losing their magic. Moreover, when he saw the way Laurel worked with magic, it was often just as graceful and beautiful as the best alchemists.
Laurel took out a sheet of paper and drew out her spell, showing him how she could replace the anchor points and still have the spell function.
“And you’d be able to sustain it six times?” Parker asked suspiciously. “I’m not trading a magic-depleted husband for a magic-depleted sister.”
“Trust me, this is nothing compared to working the cafe at lunch hour.” Laurel gave them an amused look. “Have you tried to explain to twelve office workers who all want different things why it takes more than two minutes to get them their food?”
“We have to try it,” Nick said.
Laurel nodded. She cleared a space for them to work. It would take more than a good meal to get him back to full capacity and he hated that, but he wanted to make sure they could at least get the spell working. Nick wasn’t sure he could handle a failure again.
As she put together the framework for him, Laurel hummed a soft song, her voice rising and falling as she worked through the magic. When she asked him questions, he answered and they fell into the sort of collaboration that he missed from practicing alchemy with his family.
“If I add a bit here containing the spell and binding it, do you think that will make it too inflexible?” Laurel asked.
