The Undead Pool

In the center of the pentagram and the crucible was a pile of ash. For an instant, relief filled me. My control was fine. And then my mood crashed. Something from Loveland had caused the misfires. If it wasn’t me, what was it?

“Very good.” Book in hand, Al sat down before me in my usual chair, and I wondered if he’d been hiding behind me this entire time to avoid a possible burn if I did it wrong.

Peeved, I eyed him, the length of the table between us. “You’re such a chicken squirt.”

One eyebrow went up, and he pushed the oil across the table at me. “Anoint the ash with oil of marigold,” he said dryly. “Don’t ask me why, but it has to be marigold. Something to do with the linkages in the DNA allowing a hotter burn.”

Unsure, I picked the oil up. “How much?”

Al opened the book back up and peered at it over his blue-tinted glasses. “Doesn’t say, love. I’d use an amount equal to the mass of the ash.”

My palm itched as I broke the protection circle, carefully spilling what I thought was the right amount of oil onto the ash. This was kind of loosey-goosey for me, but demon magic had more latitude than the earth witch magic I was classically trained for, being a mix of earth and ley line and whatever else they cobbled together.

“Burn it using the same charm you use for making a light,” he said, and I touched the oil/ash mixture to make a connection to the slurry so the next curse would act on it and not, say, my hair. But when I reset my circle, he reached out and broke it, shocking me with the reminder that he was still stronger than me—unless I worked really hard at it.

“No protection circle,” he said, and I slumped.

“Why not? Something is causing misfires, and I don’t want to blow you up. I mean, you just got your kitchen looking halfway decent again.”

Al’s grimace as he looked over the space was telling. “Your magic is fine,” he said, but he was edging backward. “You can’t put it in a circle. If you do, then the color of the flame will be distorted from your aura.”

My fingers twitched. That was how it worked, eh?

“But I don’t think it matters,” Al said with a false lightness. “That ball was not charmed by anyone but you.”

Which would mean the misfires were responsible for it. Taking a steadying breath, I renewed my hold on the ley line. “In fidem recipere,” I said, smearing the ash and oil between my fingers for a good connection. One eye squinched shut, I finished the curse and made the proper hand gesture. “Leno cinis.”

The ley line surged through me as the oil and ash burst into flame, and I wiggled at the uncomfortable sensation. Almost two feet tall, the flame burned with an almost normal gold color, hinting at red at the edges, and black at the core. I cut back on the energy flow, and when the flame subsided to three inches, both Al and I leaned over the table to get a closer look.

There was the bare hint of a mossy scent coming from Al, so faint I thought I might have imagined it. I must have done something, because his gaze slid to mine, making me shiver at his eyes, again back to their normal goat-slitted redness thanks to a costly spell. “That’s your aura,” he said flatly, and I began breathing again. “Your aura alone, and very little of it,” he added. “You hardly tapped it, indeed. You say it made a crater?”

“And knocked me on my ass,” I whispered, wishing the black smut wasn’t there at all, but I’d become so used to doing curses that I didn’t even consciously accept the smut anymore. It just kind of happened. “This is dumb,” I said, depressed, and Al snuffed the flame with his hand. “What could you do just knowing the aura of a practitioner, anyway? Even if it did show something, I can’t comb the city with my second sight trying to find a match.”

Al took the still-hot crucible up in his bare hand. “You’re missing the point, itchy witch,” he said, tossing the entire thing into the fire. “Once you know a person’s aura, you simply tune yours to it as if it was a ley line and pop in.”

He was smiling with a wicked gleam in his eye, and I sat up, seeing the beauty in it. “That’s how you always find me,” I said, and his devious expression blanked.

“Stop!” he said, hand up. “Don’t even think to try it. You or your gargoyle don’t have the sophistication to differentiate between auratic shades to that degree. Line jumping is one thing, jumping to an aura is something else. It’s like saying the sunset is red when it’s thousands of shades.”

I could see his point, but hell, I knew Ivy’s aura pretty well. And Jenks’s.

“Student!” I started as his hand hit the table inches from me, and irate, I looked up. “What did I say?” he asked, leaning over me, his smile nasty.

“Not to think about it,” I said calmly, but I was, and he knew it.