My lip had gotten between my teeth by the time I finished. The stomach-cramping fear that had gripped me while making my original scrying mirror was gone, and I smiled as I looked at the perfectly proportioned lines and felt the curse resonating in me.
“Symbols of communication,” I said to myself as I bent low over the smoked lines, and with the meaning of each simple glyph resonating in my thoughts, I sketched them at the points, starting at the lower left and rising clockwise. I took a slow breath upon finishing the last, cracking my back as I prepared to trace the first of two circles surrounding the pentagram. The inner one would connect the points of the pentagram, the outer one would encompass the glyphs.
Again the stylus touched the glass, and the power began to shift, filling the pattern and organizing into as-yet-latent action. I went point to point, smooth and unhurried. When the yew met the beginning point, a chime struck through me, shivering all the way to my core.
My breath came faster, and imagining I could already hear the half-heard whispers of the demon collective, I began the second, outer circle. Yes, I had been putting this off, but I missed the feeling of connection, the subliminal knowledge that others were going about their lives as was I, each to themselves, touching and moving on.
Heart pounding and fingers numb with tingles, I drew the outer circle. My reflection was lost in smoke and haze, but the way was easy. The salt was ready, and the wine was set. I’d have this done and most of my aura back in thirty seconds.
Again the line met its end with a satisfying ping, and I hesitated as the energy swirled, breathless. The curse was drawn, but not done, and the glyphs glowed with energy. A shudder rippled through me as, with the slow surety of a spring thaw, my aura began to leave the mirror and seep back into me, carrying the curse scribed on the mirror with it.
I forced myself not to move as it inched back with the sensation of pinpricks, hoping that the longer I could withstand it, the more aura would be returned to me. But when the prickling across my synapses became a harsh burning, I reached for the salt, spilling it from a shaky hand over the mirror’s entirety.
“Better,” I said, shoulders easing as the salt hissed down like cold sand on sunburned skin, balancing the energies and removing the excess intent. It had been Ceri who had poured the wine over the mirror the first time I’d done this, the wine serving to bind the salt and the glyphs to the mirror. But I was alone, and I did it myself, the tinkling sound of it on the glass and into the nearby bowl satisfying as the salt washed away to leave only sparkling lines amid a new ruby red, deep sheen. My body seemed to hum as the salt in my blood echoed the intent of the salt in the mirror as the last of the wine trickled across the scrying mirror and into a bowl. The singularly drawn curse now existed in two places, me and the mirror both.
“Ita prorsus,” I said, and then sealed the curse by touching a wine-wet finger to my lips.
Goose bumps rose as the curse set, waves of power seeming to echo out from me in ever-lessening waves. “I accept the imbalance,” I whispered, but my body, conditioned by two years of twisting curses, had already taken it, and the minute black wash of smut sank quickly into me like a second layer of protection.
My head lifted as I heard a faint bell chime from my distant church, and satisfied, I gazed at the thing of beauty in my lap, glittering silver and red from the salt and wine. The first time I’d done this, I’d been terrified, almost blind in fear, but today, being a demon didn’t feel so bad.
The soft sound of displaced air jerked my attention up, but it was only Bis, the craggy cat-size gargoyle now sitting on the counter just outside my circle. Red eyes blinked sleepily at me, and Bis stretched his wings, yawning until his white-tufted tail curved around his feet and he slumped. “I woke up,” he said, his gravelly voice mangling the vowels.
“Sorry.” I set the mirror down, the memory of Ceri helping me with this bird-eye bright in my thoughts. She’d never treated me the