“Of course it would”—he muttered to himself—“and you absorbed all that magic that Caul attacked me with …” He let his hand drop, releasing a heavy breath.
“What’s wrong?”
He seized her wrist, pulled the glove from her right hand. He looked at the stone, the muscles of his throat working anxiously.
“The color’s changed,” he said, turning her hand. “It used to be clear blue. It’s almost yellow now. And look at all those little black inclusions …”
“It’s been changing over time … I didn’t think—”
“Don’t you see? If this is a piece of the Mantic Anastomosis—and I now have no doubt that it is—it will behave like the Mantic Anastomosis. It will absorb and purify magic. And it will also segregate and excrete Black Exunge.”
Emily’s mouth went dry.
“That’s why Komé was trying so hard to turn back the magic we were putting into the stone,” Stanton said. “The more magic the stone absorbs, the larger it becomes …”
“The larger what becomes?” Emily said, softly. Stanton looked at her, his eyes holding hers.
“Komé was cradling something. Holding something black. I know what it is now.” He paused. “There’s a black bolus forming in the stone.”
Emily said nothing, but the horror of it grew within her slowly.
“You mean … in my hand?”
“It is the nature of the stone to segregate and excrete Black Exunge,” Stanton repeated carefully. “The stone is doing that. Those black inclusions—when there’s enough of them, they’ll become a bolus. When the bolus is large enough, the stone will expel it. There’s no way you could avoid coming in contact with it.”
Emily’s heart thudded in her chest, and she thought of the grasshopper, shrieking and crackling as it burned to death. Or the Aberrant raccoon, dripping with black slime. She looked up at Stanton, and she saw the fear on her face reflected in his eyes. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she clutched his lapels and hid her face against his chest, squeezing her eyes shut tight. At first, Stanton pulled back imperceptibly. But then he placed a warm hand on her head, stroking her hair for a moment, a gentling touch.
“I’m sure that Komé is helping,” he murmured. “I’m sure she’ll do everything she can. But we can’t let the stone absorb any more magic. If an actual bolus forms, she might not be able to control it …”
There was the sound of voices approaching—train passengers returning to the cars, chattering about flaming grasshoppers. Stanton seized her shoulders, put her at a manly arm’s length, and gave her a bracing shake.
“Buck up,” he said firmly. “It’s only a few days to New York. Professor Mirabilis will know what to do. You’ll be fine, Emily.” He paused, giving her another little shake. “You’ll be fine, I promise.”
The Aberrancy hunters finished their work, leaving behind a neatly capped Exunge pit, and the train got under way a few hours later. Emily and Stanton were both very quiet for the rest of the day.
If she hadn’t been “tormented” before, she certainly was now. She wished she could cut her hand off and run away. What had Stanton said about that man in Ohio? Fifty feet tall, he’d smashed up an entire township with his bare hands? And it took a whole detachment of military Warlocks to “put him down”?
She bit her lip hard and stared out the window. The sunshine of earlier in the day had vanished, replaced by brooding black clouds. In their depths, streaks of lightning flashed like distant signal flares. When the rain began, it came down in great gouty sheets that rattled against the windows like handfuls of pebbles. The temperature plummeted; passengers began pulling out shawls and coats against the cold. Emily just stared out the window, shivering.
Night came again, the lanterns were lit again, the conductor moved through the car to fold down the seats. Stanton and Emily took their now-accustomed places on the floor. But even with the coal stove on one side of her and Stanton on the other, she couldn’t stop shivering. She wrapped her horrible plaid coat more tightly around herself, listening to the rain lashing against the roof.
The longing to run never left her, nor the nauseating understanding that there was nowhere she could run to. She tried to comfort herself; Komé had protected her, and would continue to protect her. But what if she couldn’t? What if the Exunge in the stone was already on the verge of overwhelming the conscribed spirit’s ability to control it?