sleeves with a gold cord he took from the robe’s pocket. “Do you agree, Bis, world breaker?”
“Agreed,” he blurted, now fully awake and eager.
Hodin eyed us sourly. “But there will be no instruction while you’re wearing that.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed, feeling Bis’s claws leave me an instant before I misted out, returning to find myself unmoved, but not unchanged. “Dude,” I said, my attention going from Bis, now perched on a nearby sawhorse, to myself. Hodin had dressed me in a smaller version of his own robe, and I quickly shifted the extravagant silk to make sure I still had my own clothes on under it. “Oooh, thanks,” I said as I felt the fabric between my fingers and let it fall. Mine had that same purple-to-black gradient, but it was lined with silver instead of gold. There were little stars on the hem, too, and I smiled.
“Sleeves?” Hodin directed, and I fumbled in the robe’s pocket, sash bells jingling as I found the silver ties and bound them safely back. “It’s a spelling robe,” he said. “It helps neutralize the effects of your aura when working in the higher magics. I’m surprised that Gally hasn’t given you one, but Gally was always a hack.”
My smile faltered. “I’m not your student,” I said, and on his perch, Bis’s nails dented the wood. “And I never will be.”
“We’ll see,” Hodin said, making me wonder if this was why he was being so helpful. If he snagged me as a student, the demons might tolerate him. I kind of thought that was why they tolerated Al. “This is a complex curse. Very little is in the collective. We start from a clean slate.”
Hodin pulled the basket closer, and I eagerly looked in to see the expected menagerie of supplies: snips, a ceremonial knife black with age, yellow wax the size of a golf ball, several bags tied with colored ribbons and tags. Taking out the largest satchel, Hodin threw it at me. I caught it by rote, used to having Al throw things at me.
“Circle, please,” Hodin said, surprised I’d caught it. “As large as you can manage.”
I stood, bells jingling. “Uh . . . ,” I said, guessing the bag held salt.
Hodin looked up from his row of tiny bags. “Can you manage the table at least?”
“I can close the circle at Fountain Square,” I said dryly. “If you really want one as big as I can manage, I need more salt.” Damn, I felt as if I could do anything in this getup, but that was probably the point. It even had a hood.
Hodin pursed his lips. “Then whatever size you want,” he amended.
“Sure.” Smug, I noisily dragged Bis’s sawhorse into my proposed circle.
“You good?” I asked, and Bis nodded, his eyes wide. I followed them to Hodin fussing with his little bags on the glass table. Then I did a double take. It wasn’t glass anymore but slate. Cool. The salt went hissing down as I paced an even circle to enclose the couch and two chairs.
“Bis,” Hodin said abruptly, and I jerked, needing to shove the salt back to an even line with my boot. “I’m satisfied that you’ve bonded to Rachel despite your youth.”
Youth? I thought. The kid had sung the end of one world and the beginning of another.
“Thank you.” Bis’s wings turned red and his white ear tufts vanished as he pinned his ears.
“I’ll need guidance to shift her soul’s expression. If we’re changing it to hide her from the baku, we may as well attempt to return it to her original. A demon reduced to public transportation is appalling. To do so, we will first separate her aura into its constituent parts, much as a prism divides a beam of sun into a rainbow. From there, you can advise me on what to change.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Bis shifted his wings, and the wood under his nails creaked.
Nervousness curled up through me like smoke as I sat down across from Hodin. Safety from the baku would be nice. Giving that same protection to Al would be even better. Regaining the ability to get around like a demon was frosting. “My only worry is the mystics might recognize me,” I said. “I’m not doing this if you can’t easily shift it back.”
“I can return it to its current hue,” Hodin said, sounding amused at my fear. “And despite your thoughts that you can waste the knowledge on that ill-begot, insufferable, low-life, poor excuse of a