finished anointing the rest. “Ta na shay, obscurum per obscuris,” I said again at the next glyph, feeling my hold on the line deepen. A faint tingling in my fingers gave me pause, but Jenks would tell me if it was the mystics, and I followed Hodin down the table, setting the candles he anointed.
Done, I exhaled, thinking this was either very clever or was going to hurt really bad. “Wee-keh Wehr-sah, ta na shay!” I said, clapping my hands and stumbling at the line drop.
“Watch it!” Hodin exclaimed, catching my elbow, and Jenks took off from my shoulder.
“Jenks, move,” I said as he hovered before me, presumably looking for swarming mystics. “I can’t see.”
“It worked,” Hodin said as he let go of my elbow. “Look at that.”
“Wow.” Sash jingling, I waved Jenks out of the way. All six pentagons had opened and twisted. All had the ghostly candles, and all of them had that same gap, some with two candles, some with three. Worried, I looked past Hodin to my own spread still glowing on the table by the couch. Hodin had said the damage wasn’t permanent, but it was like finding a hidden cancer, black and ugly.
“Interesting.” Hodin fingered his chalk. “Let’s see the aura spread from the people we know weren’t infected by the baku.”
Infected? Hodin quickly sketched six more pentagons on the other side of the table, this time using the anonymous donors’ blood to set the candles and his own to light them. Uneasy, I followed behind him, beginning the curse anew. With each “Ta na shay, obscurum per obscuris,” my connection to the line grew deeper with wild, unreliable magic. I was shaking by the time I got to the last. Jenks gave me a worried thumbs-up, and I took a moment to steady myself.
“Wee-keh Wehr-sah, ta na shay,” I said, locking my knees before I snapped my fingers.
My breath hissed in through my nose as the line surged and an unexpected warming wash of tingles cascaded through me. I blinked, shocked at the almost carnal sensation of pleasure rooting its way down and through me until it finally dissipated. What the hell? I unclenched my hands, gaze shooting to Jenks. Wings humming, he shrugged, but it was probably at my sudden flush rather than at any stray mystic. The Goddess, apparently, was pleased with me.
“Did it work?” I asked, wishing my ears weren’t so warm.
“Admirably.” Hodin crouched before the first. “They are perfect.” Smile rising up to include his eyes, he beamed at me. “We seem to have a working curse.”
“Good.” My arms went around my middle. It was what I had wanted. But now there was no denying that I’d been attacked. And if I’d been attacked, then Zack was probably telling the truth about Landon’s goal. The only difference between me and the poor slobs in jail was that I’d woken up.
Hodin’s thoughts must have been similar, his smile fading as he looked across the sanctuary to my own auratic spread. “You should be in seclusion.”
“I’m its target. I’m not sitting this one out,” I said, scowling. “As long as I don’t fall asleep, I’m good. You said the damage will mend. Let’s get on with this, okay?”
My words were confident, but I knew Jenks could see through them, making me flustered as I rounded the table to stand before the six spreads belonging to the incarcerated Inderlanders. “Some of them aren’t as bad. I bet you could put them in order of attack by the amount of healing already done.”
Interested, Hodin flipped through Ivy’s notes. “This is the earliest attack,” I said as I read them over his shoulder before pointing to a glyph with two candles showing black.
Head bobbing, Hodin squinted at them. “You can almost see a hint of color.” He rose, and Jenks, who had been hovering close, darted back. “This one here,” he said, pointing. “He was the last. Am I right?”
I looked at Ivy’s cheat sheet and nodded. “It’s healing?”
“Of course,” he said, and Jenks’s dust shifted to a relieved gold. “Auras echo the soul, and the soul is self-mending.”
“Or self-destroying,” Jenks said as he landed right in the middle of the spell and stared at the black-flame candle. “Tink loves a duck, that’s weird. Don’t go to sleep, Rache. You don’t want to lose any more of your inner shells.”
“Well-done,” Hodin said softly, almost to himself, and then his eyes came to me. “Well-done,” he said again, louder this time.
I flushed at the real