stored dweomer. There'd be. . .no tension on it. So if half the spell were on the paddereen, for example, and the other half—"
Sebastien could not blanch. But his brows drew together and he glanced over his shoulder. "The cat," he said. "When he was out in Sheridan's garden, anyone could have. . ."
She nodded. "It's the only other thing we brought here from Sheridan's house. And when you became exhausted you had been handling both the cat and the bead."
It was at times such as this that she was reminded of just how unhuman Sebastien was. The façades and japery fell away, his almost-perfect counterfeit of a mild-mannered, breathing, human man. A man would have drawn a breath, squared himself, steeled himself. He would have tensed and seemed to enlarge as he filled his lungs.
Sebastien, the predator, simply settled into himself and became profoundly still. "Well," he said, his eyes mad with red glints, "we know a wampyr can survive it. What if he were of the blood?"
Oh, God, Garrett thought. "Would he thank you?"
"He could curse me all his nights," Sebastien said. Garrett glanced down, not wanting to see the curved needle-sharp canines pressing into his pale lower lip. "He'd not be the first."
His voice, the scent of him, the blown pupils in the narrowed eyes—she quailed, as she had never quailed from him before. And somehow, nevertheless, reached out and put a hand on his steely arm.
"Let me try first," she said. "He's safe for a few hours. And I can treat the spell if I can discover the original casting. I need to construct an exact complement, which will absorb and neutralize the malevolent sorcery, and for that I need the spell itself. And better, the sorcerer. Because anyone this clever will have false trails and deceptions worked into the structure."
"Then we're no better situated than we were this morning."
"Did they find the envelope?"
"Since you ask, I'm just back from the Colonial Police. I helped question the servants. Sometimes I notice when people are lying, after all." That wolfish curve of his lips chilled her every time she caught a glimpse of it. "And yes, I have the envelope. It seems my skills were not needed; a downstairs maid had taken it for the paper. Apparently," he said, his voice rich with irony, "she fancies herself something of an artist, and she's covered the back with sketches."
Garrett winced. "That will muddle the correspondence, but I can work through it. Perhaps."
Sebastien glanced at the young man sprawled insensate on the rug. "What about Jack?"
Garrett said, "I'll see to him. Because now I have a spell cast by an unknown sorcerer. And I have a list of names. And that, my dear Sebastien, is all I really need."
He stared. And then he leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, his fangs scratching like thorns. "Lioness," he said. "Use whatever you need. I'm going to carry Jack to bed."
"Wait," she said. "There's something I need to tell you."
He did not stop working Mr. Priest's limp body into his arms. "Is it likely to result in our collective deaths in the next five minutes?"
"No," she said, as she collected the spilled contents of her carpet bag and stood. "Not in the next five minutes, no."
* * *
Again, Sebastien's dining-room table was pressed into service as a workbench, and again, Garrett improvised her altar from a linen handkerchief and whatever else she could borrow from the kitchen or dig from her carpet bag. Her hands shook as she lit the candles and poured the wine. Her hands shook as she laid out her tools, the paddereen and Mr. Priest's list of names.
Sebastien let her hear him coming, the careful scuff of his boot on the carpet as he paused where her line of salt would have been, if she had cast one. "Shall I roll up the rugs for you, Abby Irene?"
She straightened the black handle of her silver knife. "That would be very kind, Sebastien. Thank you."
She rummaged through the carpet bag and found the sack of sea-salt, gritty and gray-white, sticky-damp from the rain. She crunched it in her palm while Sebastien stripped up the rugs, and when he withdrew to a
corner of the room, she cast a circle around the table, only leaving open a
gap wide enough for one to pass. "Would you bring me the cat, please,
Sebastien?"
He arched an eyebrow, but sidestepped and vanished through the door. "You were about to tell me something," he called