my fingers and twisted around my wrists just as Grace’s scream pierced the air.
I acted on pure instinct and rooted my feet into the floor. Water was all around us, trickling through deep arteries that crisscrossed the Bishop land. It was within me, too, and in an effort to focus its raw, elemental power I isolated the filaments of blue, green, and silver that highlighted everything in the kitchen and the stillroom that was tied to water.
In a quicksilver flash, I directed a bolt of water at the fireplace. A spout of steam erupted, coals hissed, and Grace hit the slurry of ash and water on the hearth with a thud.
“Grace!” Abby ran past me, followed by Caleb.
Matthew drew me into his arms. I was soaked to the skin and shivering. He rubbed my back, trying to restore some warmth.
“Thank God you have so much power over water, Diana,” Abby said, holding a tearful Grace.
“Is she okay?” I asked. “She reached out to steady herself, but she was awfully close to the flames.”
“Her hand is a little pink,” Caleb said, examining her small fingers. “What do you think, Matthew?”
Matthew took Grace’s hand.
“Pretty,” she said, her lower lip trembling. “I know,” Matthew murmured. “Fire is very pretty. Very hot, too.” He blew on her fingers, and she laughed. Fernando handed him a damp cloth and an ice cube.
“’Gain,” she commanded, thrusting her hand in Matthew’s face.
“Nothing seems to be damaged, and there are no blisters,” Matthew said after obeying the tiny tyrant’s command to blow on her fingers once more. He wrapped the cloth carefully around her hand and held the ice cube to it. “She should be fine.”
“I didn’t know you could wield waterbolts.” Sarah looked at me sharply. “Are you okay? You look different—shiny.”
“I’m fine.” I pulled away from Matthew, trying to draw the tattered remains of my disguising spell around me. I searched the floor surrounding the kitchen island, looking for my dropped weaver’s cords in case some surreptitious patching was required.
“What did you get all over yourself?” Sarah grabbed my hand and turned it palm up. What I saw made me gasp.
Each finger bore a strip of color down its center. My pinkie was streaked with brown, my ring finger yellow. A vivid blue marked my middle finger, and red blazed down my index finger in an imperious slash. The colored lines joined together on my palm, continuing on to the fleshy mound at its base in a braided, multicolored rope. There the rope met up with a strand of green that wandered down from my thumb—ironic, given the fate of most of my houseplants. The five-colored twist traveled the short distance to my wrist and formed a knot with five crossings—the pentacle.
“My weaver’s cords. They’re . . . inside me.” I looked up at Matthew in disbelief.
But most weavers used nine cords, not five. I turned over my left palm and discovered the missing strands: black on my thumb, white on my pinkie, gold on my ring finger, and silver on my middle finger.
The pointer finger bore no color at all. And the colors that twisted down to my left wrist created an ouroboros, a circle with no beginning and no end that looked like a snake with its tail in its mouth. It was the de Clermont family emblem. “Is Diana . . . shimmering?” Abby asked.
Still staring at my hands, I flexed my fingers. An explosion of colored threads illuminated the air.
“What was that?” Sarah’s eyes were round.
“Threads. They bind the worlds and govern magic,” I explained.
Corra chose that moment to return from her hunting. She swooped down the stillroom chimney and landed in the damp pile of wood. Coughing and wheezing, she lurched to her feet.
“Is that . . . a dragon?” Caleb asked.
“No, it’s a souvenir,” Sarah said. “Diana brought it back with her from Elizabethan England.”
“Corra’s not a souvenir. She’s my familiar,” I whispered.
Sarah snorted. “Witches don’t have familiars.”
“Weavers do,” I said. Matthew’s hand rested on my lower back, lending quiet support. “You’d better call Vivian. I need to tell you something.”
“So the dragon—” Vivian began, her hands wrapped tight around a steaming mug of coffee.
“Firedrake,” I interrupted.
“So it—”
“She. Corra is a female.”
“—is your familiar?” Vivian finished.
“Yes. Corra appeared when I wove my first spell in London.”
“Are all familiars dragons . . . er, firedrakes?” Abby shifted her legs on the family-room couch. We were all settled around the television, except for John, who had slept peacefully through the excitement.