as good as it got, and I set the painstakingly scribed bit of paper beside the unlit candle and green bottle of aura, taking up Al's favorite scribing knife and the palm-size earthen bowl. The knife was ugly, the writhing woman on the handle looking like demon porn. Al knew I hated it, which was why he insisted I use it.
The gray bowl was rough in my hand, the inside inscribed with scratched-off words of power. Only the newly scribed name I was etching would react. The theory was to burn the paper and take in the man's name by way of air, then drink water from the bowl, taking in his name by water. This would hit all four elements, earth and water with the bowl, air and fire with the burning parchment. Heaven and earth, with me in the middle. Yippy skippy.
The foreign-looking characters were easier after having practiced with the parchment, and I had it scratched on a tiny open space before Al could sigh more than twice. He'd taken up the bottle of aura, frowning as he gazed into the swirling green.
"What?" I offered, trying to keep the annoyance from my voice. I was his student, sure, but he would still try to backhand me if I got uppity.
Al's brow furrowed, worrying me even more. "I don't like this aura's resonance," he said softly, red eyes probing the glass pinched in his white-clad fingers.
I shifted my weight on my padded chair, trying to stretch my legs. "And?"
Al's focus shifted over his glasses to me. "It's one of Newt's."
"Newt? Since when do you need to get an aura from Newt?" I asked. No one liked the insane demon, but she was the reigning queen of the lost boys, so to speak, and knew everything - when she could remember it.
"Not your concern," he said, and I winced, embarrassed. Al had lost almost everything in his effort to snag me as a familiar, ending up with something vastly more precious but broke just the same. I was a witch, but a common, usually lethal genetic fault had left me able to kindle their magic. Al's status was assured as long as I was his student, but his living was bleak.
"I'll just pop over and find out who it is before we finish this up," he said with forced lightness, setting the bottle down with a sharp tap.
I looked at the assembled pieces. "Now? Why didn't you ask her before?"
"It didn't seem important at the time," he said, looking mildly discomfited. "Pierce!" he shouted, the call for his familiar lost in the high ceilings coated in shadows and dust. Mood sour, he turned to me. "Don't touch anything while I'm gone."
"Sure," I said distantly, eying the green swirling in the bottle. He had to borrow an aura from Newt? Jeez, maybe things were worse off than I'd thought.
"The crazy bitch has a reason for everything, though she might not remember it," Al said as he tugged his sleeves over his lace cuffs. Glancing at the arranged spelling supplies, he hesitated. "Go ahead and fill the bowl. Make sure the water covers the name." He looked at the image of an angry, screaming face scribed into his black marble floor. It was his version of a door in the doorless room. "Gordian Nathaniel Pierce!"
I pushed back from the table as the witch popped into the kitchen atop the grotesque face, a dish towel over his shoulder and his sleeves rolled up. "I'd be of a mind to know what the almighty hurry is," the man from the early 1800s said as he tossed his hair from his eyes and unrolled his sleeves. "I swan, the moment I start something, you get in a pucker over nothing."
"Shut up, runt," Al muttered, knowing that to backhand him would start a contest that would end with Pierce unconscious and a big mess to clean up. It was easier to ignore him. Al had snared the clever witch within an hour of his first escape, the demon taking great pains to keep us apart during my weekly lessons until Al realized I was ticked with Pierce for having willingly gone into partnership with Al. Partnership? Hell, call it what it was. Slavery.
Oh, I was still impressed with Pierce's magic, which far outstripped mine. His quick one-liners, in his odd accent, aimed at Al when the demon wasn't listening still made me smirk. And I wasn't looking at his long, wavy hair, or his lanky