Gotcha. Smiling, I sat before him with a little flip of my robe to make the sash bells ring. “I’m trying to see the inner shells of the aura.”
Hodin’s lip twitched, and what I thought was guilt crossed him. “I’m sorry, Rachel. Even if you could, it wouldn’t help Bis reach you through your adjusted aura.”
“That’s not what this is for.” I shoved the heartache down. I could feel Jenks looking at me, but I didn’t dare meet his eyes as I took Ivy’s vials from her bag and stood them up in a row on the table. “It’s for the baku. Zack said he could see the accumulated damage from the baku in Landon’s aura. Bis couldn’t see any evidence of its attack in my outer shells, but if it shows in my inner, and I can find the same damage in the people it attacked, then I have reasonable cause to blame the baku for the murders.”
“I can vouch that the baku caused their actions,” Hodin said, and I nodded, carefully opening up my scarf to show my snips of cedar, wintergreen, chicory, and tight dandelion buds.
“Fair enough, but I can’t prove it. This might.” I glanced at the ten-pointed star. “Or at least prove the accused were goaded into it, possessed maybe.” The memory of wanting to kill Trent sifted through me, and I stifled a shiver.
“This is what comes from trying to live within a human system,” Hodin said darkly. “You are a demon, Rachel.”
“So I should take and do what I want?” I said, weary of the good old boy’s privileged mind-set, and Jenks snickered. “This isn’t only for them. Landon is using the baku to get me to kill Trent, and though I’m sure all the demons would be thrilled,” I said with a bitter drama, “it would put me back in Alcatraz and Landon in power.” I arched my eyebrows. “Or rather the baku when it takes Landon over. All the progress we’ve made integrating demons into reality won’t mean goose slip. I like you all here. I don’t know why. All of you seem dead set to ruin it.”
Hodin frowned, slumped as he looked at the table. “I just told you you’re right. Why do you have to prove it?”
“It’s what we do here,” Jenks said. “All are innocent until proven guilty. Even demons.”
Hodin’s feet scuffed the old wood floor. “How . . . quaint.”
“And sometimes a pain in the ass, but it keeps me from being lynched.” I used my ceremonial knife to whittle a tip on the cedar stick and set it on the table. “Want to help?”
“Help you steal my work? No.” He pushed back into the chair, settling deeper into its sawdust-laden comfort. “But your efforts are sure to be amusing. You can’t open a decahedron. There’s too much distance between the All candle and the connecting threads.”
“Ass,” Jenks said, and I shifted my hair from my shoulder to lure him off the table.
“Then you won’t mind if I try,” I said as I took up my magnetic chalk.
“What’s your plan, Rache?” Jenks asked as he landed on my shoulder, a muffled swearing coming from him when he slipped on the slick pixy-dust silk and fell into the air.
“Playing it by feel,” I said, eyebrows rising when Jenks warily perched on the back of the couch instead. “I’m hoping that all I need is to double the candles and open a closed pentagon into a decahedron. If Hodin’s curse is worth the salt to circle it, it will function the same.”
“My curse,” Hodin said possessively as he looked sourly at Jenks, now four inches from his ear. Then he added, softer, “A double pentagram?” He shifted, either to get closer to the table or farther from Jenks. “How do you propose to get a ten-pointed star from a five-sided pentagon?”
“Like this,” I said as I drew a pentagon with the usual radiating lines from the center, then added five additional lines running through the midpoints of the walls. I guesstimated how far I needed to go for the proposed star points, and Hodin’s eyes widened in interest. “What were the words you used to open it?” I mused aloud, then brightened. “Obscurum per obscuris,” I said, strengthening my hold on the ley line and letting it fill the glyph.
I hadn’t set any candles, so I didn’t know what I expected, but with a thrill, I felt a drop of energy in me, and