Page 69 of The Witch They Fear

Not a spike. A flood. The warmth behind my sternum rips outward and the herbs on Odette's shelf rattle and the coffee cups vibrate against the table and the cat launches off its chair and Odette pushes back from the table and Nellie grabs my arm and says my name but I can't hear her because the blood is roaring in my ears and my vision is going white at the edges and I have to get out—

I shove back from the table. The chair crashes. I'm through the shop, past the shelves, past the crystals, slamming through the front door and onto the porch and the evening air hits my face and my magic is screaming—

"Use it!" I'm looking at Aamon. He’s next to me in an instant, his eyes blazing as he takes me in. "Use the fail-safe. Just do it."

He doesn't reach for his pocket.

"Breathe."

"I can't—it's—" My hands are shaking. The sparks are back, little arcs of light crackling across my knuckles, and I can feel the magic building toward something big—the same curve as the testing room, the same curve as the glass, the same curve that ends with people getting hurt. "Aamon, I can't hold it, just press it, put me down, I—"

"You can hold it. Look at me."

"I'm going to—"

"Look at me, Calypso."

I look at him. Hazel eyes, steady, close, cutting through the white at the edges of my vision like headlights in fog. He's not panicking. He's not reaching for the button. He's just there, solid and calm and looking at me like I'm not about to level a city block.

"You're spiraling. You know what that feels like. You've been here before and you came out the other side." His voice is low and even—not soothing, not soft, just certain. Like he's stating a fact about gravity. "Your magic wants somewhere to go. We're going to give it somewhere. On my count."

"I can't channel right now—I don't have the stone—"

"You don't need the stone. You have me."

He grabs me by the upper arms.

His hands close around my biceps—firm, cold, steady—and the mirroring activates on contact. I feel it immediately: my magic being drawn through his palms, out of my arms, into him.

But it doesn't go easy. The flood pushes back—a wall of heat shoving against his pull, my power fighting the redirect the way it fights everything. My body jerks. The sparks intensify. For three horrible seconds I think it's not going to work, that I'm too far gone, that the wave is too big for his hands to hold—

"Steady." His grip tightens. His thumbs press into the muscle above my elbows. "Don't fight the flow. Let it move through you. I've got the other end."

I stop fighting. Or my body stops—some deeper instinct overriding the panic, responding to his voice or his hands or the impossible calm radiating off him. The magic shifts. The flood reverses—the screaming pressure in my chest easing as my power flows through his hands and into his body, filtered, calmed, returned to me at a frequency I can process.

I'm staring at his chest. At the dark fabric of his shirt, three inches from my face. His hands are on my arms and my magic is inside him and I can feel his stillness—not the performed kind, the real kind, the deep structural composure of a man who is holding someone else's chaos inside his body and choosing not to let it shake him.

"Breathe in," he says. "Through the nose. Slow."

I breathe in.

"Hold."

I hold.

"Out."

I breathe out. The last of the spike crumbles. My shoulders drop. The white recedes from my vision. The roaring in my ears dims to a hum and then to silence and then to the sound of crickets and the distant bar music drifting up the street.

His hands stay on my arms. Three seconds. Five. His thumbs shift against my skin—barely, a slight increase in pressure that could be accidental but isn't, because nothing about this man is accidental.

"Better?" he asks. Low. Close. I can feel the word in his chest.

I nod. Can't speak yet. My throat is tight and my eyes are burning and if I open my mouth I'm going to either scream or cry and neither of those is happening on Odette Marchand's front porch.

I’m stronger than that.

He lets go. Steps back. The loss of contact leaves my arms tingling and the ghost of his cold grip printed on my skin. I wrap my arms around myself and rub the tingling spots.