Nodding, Hodin whispered a few more words, and my eyes widened as the colors shifted.
“How come I don’t have any silver in my outer shells?” I said, remembering that both Ivy’s and Trent’s auras had silver sparkles.
“Because you don’t know the worth of freedom,” Hodin drawled.
But Trent and Ivy do? I wondered.
“Rachel’s purple is more greenish, less intense,” Bis directed, distracting me. Lee’s primary color was purple, but it was still embarrassing, seeing as it was symbolic of a hefty ego.
“Pride is good in moderation. It keeps people from stepping on you before you have the strength to back your voice,” Hodin said, seeing my discomfiture.
Perhaps, but I still winced as he turned his attention to that candle, muttering phrase after phrase as Bis shook his head, not satisfied until it met some shade I couldn’t see. Slowly I slumped, and Hodin became smug. I could do the curse all right, but I didn’t have a clue how he was shifting the colors. Damn it, this wasn’t going to help Al at all, and I scowled across the table at Hodin. He’d known it all along.
“Her green covers a much wider spectrum,” Bis said, and at Hodin’s gesture, the last candle’s color deepened so as to be almost black.
“Too far.” Bis’s claws deepened their grip until I heard the suede tear, but they eased as did the candle’s tone, and Hodin quit muttering when Bis nodded, his wing knuckles rising high over his head. “Perfect.” The kid grinned at me, his black skin wrinkled in pleasure. “That’s your real soul song, Rachel.”
“Thanks, Bis,” I said as I offered him my hand and he sidestepped up onto my shoulder to where he felt right.
“Then let’s see if it takes,” Hodin said, writing a new line of Latin on the slate table again. “If you would?”
He pointed to the Latin, and I pulled myself straighter, mindful of the ever-shrinking All candle. “Ut omnes unum sint,” I said, silently translating it as They all may be one.
Both Bis and I jumped as the line energy flashed through us, and then I gasped, tears pricking as every last ley line above the horizon was suddenly ringing in my thoughts.
“It worked!” I wanted to grab Bis and throw him in the air, or give him a hug, or dance him around the hole in the floor. But I just sat there, touching his feet as tears silently spilled down my face. I had missed it. I had missed it like an arm or leg, and I looked up at Bis when his tail curved around my wrist. An oily tear brimmed and fell from his eye, and I reached up and wiped it dry.
“Yes, it did,” Hodin said softly, brow furrowed not in puzzlement but maybe in thought.
Embarrassed, I quickly wiped my face. But he hadn’t noticed my tears, his attention fixed on the pentagram. The lines of ash still showed where the candles had been, but the candles themselves were gone. It was only the central one that remained, the one that had never moved, again burning with my aura’s cheerful gold and red.
“Blow it out to seal the changes, Rachel,” Hodin prompted, and I touched Bis’s feet.
“Together?” I said, and his weight shifted as I leaned forward. “One, two—”
“Three,” Bis said, and together we blew at it.
The lumpy candle went out, and a thread of black smoke smelling of burnt amber rose.
“Well-done,” Hodin praised as he plucked the candle from the center and handed it to me. It was still warm, and I set it on the table. “Keep it safe,” he said, and I nodded. It burned with my aura and it could be used to target a spell or curse at me. A bullet with my name on it.
“Well, let’s see him do it,” Hodin prompted, and I grinned. I couldn’t help it.
Wings open, Bis eagerly hopped to the table. His tail smeared the pentagram’s lines, but it probably didn’t matter, seeing as Hodin was shoving things into his basket as he prepared to leave. “Make a circle, Rachel,” the kid said, and I nodded.
“Rhombus,” I whispered. The molecule-thin barrier rose up around me as usual, bisecting the floor and creating a sloppily made circle that was unlikely to stand anything that really wanted in, but that wasn’t the point. I nodded, and Bis extended a gnarly hand, finger pointed as he touched my circle . . . and passed right through without breaking