bill—a shallow silver basin currently filled with brightly-coloured boiled sweets. I emptied the contents onto the side—it was kind of antisocial of me, in that I was probably making unnecessary work for a cleaner, but I was on a sacred mission here. Then I pocketed one of the yellow ones, because you never know when you might fancy a lemon sherbet.
I hurried back up to Nimue’s room. Well, I say hurried. I more moved as in a dream because that was very much the vibe of the evening. I set the eerie blood-magic dish down beside the bed, and looked somewhat expectantly at Michelle.
“What?”
“Well you’re the magician. I thought you’d do the …” I tried to mime bleeding an innocent girl into a ceremonial vessel but I wasn’t sure what the right gestures would even look like.
Michelle reached out a hand, and a flame danced into life in her palm. “Still all I do.”
“I always thought that the whole pilgrim on the burning road thing meant you had a whole philosophy that went with the fireballs?”
“Nope. We just burn shit. It ain’t fancy but it gets the job done.”
I gave her a cut me some slack here look. “Oh, come on, you must be better qualified to do this than me.”
“Sorry. I don’t fuck with blood magic. It’s creepy.”
From the expression on Elaine’s face, this conversation was filling her with the opposite of confidence.
“Fine.” I gave my most exasperated of sighs. “Tell me you at least have a knife I can borrow.” I’d have used one of my daggers, but I’d only got the gold and iron ones with me, and neither kept anything like the edge I’d want to use.
Michelle, true to what I assumed was form although I didn’t really know her that well, Crocodile Dundeed a problematically intimidating blade from somewhere about her person, spun it about to face hilt-first and handed it to me.
Elaine made an actual whimper.
“You can still back out,” I told her. “I appreciate that this shit has just got way realer than you probably signed up for.”
She shook her head. “No. No, I want to help.”
“Okay. Then I guess give me your arm. This will probably hurt a bit.”
“You don’t have a clue what you’re doing, do you?” The voice was gentle but mocking. Looking around I saw Sebastian Douglas lounging in the doorway, Hephaestion hovering behind him. His eyes were back to normal at least. I filed that under mercies, comma, small.
Holding the knife ready, I tried for as much defiance as I could muster. “You’re too late.”
“Child, you don’t even know what I’m waiting for.”
Elaine scurried to my side and in a frankly unwarranted display of trust, presented me with her bare arm. Without taking my eyes off Sebastian, I drew the knife as carefully as I could across her skin, being super, super careful not to go anywhere near anything that looked like an artery.
I wasn’t sure how much blood I was going to need, but I’d kept the cut fairly shallow. There was enough to form a veneer across the bottom of the bowl, and I hoped that was all it was going to take, because I wasn’t about to ask this kid for any more.
Douglas still wasn’t moving. Patrick, Michelle, and I all stood tense as harp strings waiting for him to try something.
He didn’t try anything. Elaine ran back into Patrick’s arms and he folded himself around her like body armour.
Still keeping my attention firmly fixed on the Prince of Wands, although given the time of night he could certainly act faster than I had any hope of reacting, I moved myself to stand by Nimue’s head. Michelle got out of her chair at last, putting herself between me and Sebastian, and he didn’t try to stop her.
If this doesn’t work, I told Nim in my mind, I am going to be so fucking pissed off with you. I dipped my fingers in the shallow bowl of fresh child blood. Yeah, no way this was going wrong at all. Then, letting instinct guide me, I anointed her on the forehead.
Perhaps I was imagining it, but I thought I saw her eyelid flicker.
“In case you were wondering,” said Sebastian Douglas in a maddeningly conversational tone. “That was what I was waiting for.”
And then he acted. Fast.
35
Smoke & Ashes
The good news was that without the stolen power of Apollo, Sebastian Douglas was far weaker than he had been the last time we fought.