pleasure in his voice, and he studied the table. “It might need some tweaking, but I’d say there’re enough examples here to register it,” he said.
“Tweaking?” Jenks rose up from the table. “You mean like trying to get it to work without laying down some love on the Goddess? Good luck with that.”
Hodin gave Jenks an acerbic look, then waved a hand to lightly circle the entire table. “Register it, Rachel,” he prompted.
“Evulgo, Rachel Mariana Morgan,” I whispered, and then I shivered, feeling a slight tug on my chi as the curse registered. “I wish you were in the collective,” I said, and Hodin’s circle fell with a sharp, startled tug on my awareness. “So you could get credit for it,” I added.
“I did very little,” Hodin said, and Jenks flew back to his lamp, trailing a sour green dust.
“You stayed with me,” I said, and Jenks swore something inaudible. “It was your curse I modified. I could never have come up with this on my own, only build from it.”
Hodin was silent, and then I flushed, figuring it out. It had nothing to do with him not being in the collective. The curse needed the Goddess, and he didn’t want his name attached.
Suck it. Frustrated, I turned away. It was getting late, and I wanted to meet up with Trent before the day was over and he became a daddy again. Chin high, I strode back to the table where my own spread still glowed. “Ut omnes unum sint,” I said, almost shouting. “Ta na shay!”
With a tug on my thoughts, the not-there candles vanished. Hodin hadn’t moved, and I snatched up the candle, now little more than a stub. I waved it out, felt the wick, and dropped it into my bag. “You want this?” I said, pointing at Ray’s sketch pad, and Hodin started.
“If you don’t,” he said.
Not sure what that meant, I ripped off the pages in question and dropped them on the couch. I was cleaning. It was over. Time for him to leave. But he didn’t, and my jaw clenched as he scuffed to a halt beside a chair as I ran a cloth over the ash and chalk, blurring it into nothing.
“Ah, do you mind if I continue to study this on my own?” Hodin asked as he picked up the sheets and stashed them in one of his sleeves.
I slowed down, thinking about that as I shoved everything in my bag. If he was going to practice, he’d have to invoke the Goddess. Shoulders easing, I turned to him, seeing a soft panic in his eyes. “You know the words, right? To garner her attention?”
“Better than you,” he said, chin high.
“Then say it once for me,” I said. “So I know you can.”
His jaw tightened, then relaxed. He took a breath to say something, only to shake his head. “No.” And then he vanished, taking my confidence with him.
CHAPTER
22
“Hey!” Jenks rose up on a column of silver. “What about Ivy’s table!”
I sighed at the remnants of the curse: bits of the garden and slivers of wax. Hodin hadn’t been able to say the words to invoke the Goddess in front of me, but I was betting he’d whisper them when alone. “I’d dearly love to see what Landon’s spread looks like if he’s been hosting the baku in his thoughts,” I said as I reached for my phone. Three thirty? No wonder I’m hungry. “You know, maybe all we need to do is show it to him. He might kick it out once he sees what it’s doing. Maybe then we can catch it.”
“You want to show Landon a demon-elf hybrid curse?” Jenks said in disbelief.
My eyes flicked from my phone to Jenks now hovering over the curse-laced table. “It’s not a curse. If anything, it’s just . . . black,” I said, feeling kind of stupid.
“Rache, maybe you should close this down,” Jenks said, and I nodded.
“Um, ut omnes unum sint,” I said, adding a belated “Ta na shay” when nothing happened. With a tweak on my thoughts, the not-there candles vanished to leave the original.
“Jeez, jealous much?” I muttered as I hit the icon to call Trent. He picked up almost immediately, and I sat down as his melodious voice spilled out in a familiar “Hello?”
“Trent!” I exclaimed, my thoughts going back to what Jenks had said about me and Trent and thirty minutes of ley lines and garden dirt. “I got it to work. You’ll never guess what it