it. I ignored them. Iris had the right idea. She could be trusted, at least more than my father.
I sat in the middle of the carpet, book laid out in front of me, Fluke and Gideon sitting on the couch watching curiously. Unless I was greatly mistaken, Gideon was ready to jump on me. His eyes were always intent, but they were darker than usual, and he was holding himself stiffly, like he wanted to move so much he could barely contain himself.
Maybe it was wishful thinking, but give a guy a break.
I’d been having a dry spell for the better part of a decade. My body was ready, and this was Gideon, the first man since high school I’d really wanted to break that dry spell with.
I followed the motions Gideon had guided me through over and over again. Open my mind, unfocusing it rather than focusing. Feel for the ley line. Reach out—slowly, carefully, not letting myself get pulled in by the current or the will of the convergence. Feel the magic flow through myself. Then came the focusing; redirecting the energy I’d taken from the convergence into the purpose I had in mind.
Corporeal Gideon. The pads of his fingers touching mine. His hand on my cheek. The soft look in his dark eyes.
As the magic flowed out of me, I opened my eyes and looked at him hopefully.
His answering gaze, while apologetic, was a definite negative. He held up his left hand, dipped it into the couch, then offered a little shrug and a wry smile. “Sorry. You did everything right. It’s advanced magic for the fact that you’ve been at this two weeks, Sage.”
I waved him off. I was not going to accept failure, not this time. Not even if it came with all the sympathy and kindness Gideon had instead of my father’s disdain.
If anything, that was worse.
It wasn’t about sex, not really. Okay fine, not entirely. Even if we didn’t touch each other, I was going to make him corporeal. Make the only man who had ever been real to me . . . well . . . real.
I was going to win, if only this once.
I didn’t think it would be permanent, or make him stay when I was finished training instead of vanishing back into the ether, but it would be something.
Fluke hopped off the couch and came to sit beside me, looking curiously at the book. Then he stood, turned around, and sat on it, facing me.
“Fluke—” I started to complain but cut myself off.
Fluke was my familiar. He could feel the magic as well as I could, but unlike me, Fluke wasn’t demanding anything of the magic. He was only observing. And for all that he was as much of a jerk as me, he was also the same brand of clever.
The book was made for intentional, rigid practice. For people who did things by rote, not feel. For people whose magic might come from living things, but was not in and of itself alive—not like the convergence was alive. The book was for mathematicians, and I was an artist.
I let go of the magic, took a deep cleansing breath, and started again. Unfocus, reach for the convergence, channel the magic into myself. This time I could practically see it: the soft, flowing lines of magic, reaching up inside of me, and also all around me.
No, not practically. I could see it.
The convergence was not a well beneath us as I’d assumed. The ley lines weren’t some underground phenomenon. They were all around us, like a river running straight through the middle of town. I could even pinpoint flows moving in opposite directions.
It was a convergence, after all—multiple ley lines going in different directions, crossing each other. They were so thick, so real, I could barely see Gideon through them.
Loosely, I shaped the spell from the magic before me. This wasn’t stone or metal that would be carved precisely. There were no hard surfaces and sharp angles in pure magic. There were only soft curves, like human skin.
Gideon’s skin. Fingers, toes, arms, legs, all real, all corporeal. All held into the package that was a human person, using the magic itself to seal it. Most importantly, there were the nerves that made him feel. The fuzzy couch under his hands. The way his hair was blowing, ever so slightly, in an unseen breeze. The warmth of the heating vent behind him.