Sonya came up as I was finishing and offered similar sentiments. “This could be so useful to us, Sydney.”
I glanced up briefly. “I know. I’m glad to help.”
Whatever she saw in my face took her aback. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I looked back down. “Just being at Court and on a weird schedule.”
“It’s more than that. Don’t you think I can tell?”
Yes, of course she could, I thought bitterly. She could probably read the distress in my aura because that’s what she did: peer into others whether they wanted it or not. Boundaries, I was learning, were a negotiable thing among Moroi.
“I saw you talking to Adrian,” she continued. “What did he say to you?” Her voice faltered. “Sydney, I’ve seen things with you two . . .”
I looked back up, and my earlier anger returned. “If you want to help, let me work and forget whatever it is you think you’ve seen.”
She flinched, and I experienced a small pang of regret. Sonya was my friend and probably did have good intentions. I just didn’t want them right now, and after a few more seconds, she backed off.
I completed the suspension and sat back to admire the vial I’d created. It was as perfect as it could get. The others returned, making me feel oppressed and trapped.
“That’s it?” asked Neil. “You can tattoo me now?”
“No.” I pointed to the untouched vial of blood, still in its silver-bound box. “My suspension needs to sit for a while before we can mix them together.”
Clearly, they hadn’t expected that. “How long?” asked Abe.
“A couple hours should do it.”
Sonya sighed in dismay. “Each hour, the spirit weakens.” She turned to Adrian. “Do you think there’s still enough in it to be useful?”
“There has to be,” he said enigmatically.
“There’s nothing I can do to speed it up,” I explained. “Unless you want to deviate from what we’ve done for hundreds of years.” I was being snippy but couldn’t help it. “I’m going to go back to my room and rest. I’ll come back when it’s time for the next step.”
“Do you want me to walk you?” asked Dimitri. My bad mood was coming through to all of them.
I stood up and carefully placed the duplicate ingredients back in the crate. “Thanks, but I know the way.” I preferred to take my chances walking through Court at night than deal with more good-intentioned counseling. “Although . . . Abe, if you’ve got a minute, I have a question . . .”
My soliciting Abe caught a few people by surprise, especially Abe. He hid it quickly, though, and his natural sense of curiosity immediately took over. “But of course. Here, let me carry that for you. Or, actually, if you just want to leave it, I’ll take care of them since you didn’t need the duplicate set.”
I held my chin up in an imperious Alchemist way. “These are ingredients used for one of our most important purposes. I can’t leave these behind.”
We walked out, passing Adrian and Nina near the doorway. His heart was in his eyes as he watched me, and he barely seemed to hear Nina worriedly telling him about how Olive and Neil had stayed out late together. I quickly averted my eyes from him, afraid of what I might betray.
The night was crisp and cold and dotted with stars as Abe and I walked out toward guest housing. “So,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
“The ingredients you got me. One of them was Moroi blood.”
“It was on your list, though it seemed strange,” he replied. “I mean, I understand that’s normally in Alchemist tattooing ink, but in our case tonight, we already had a specific blood sample to use. In fact, that was kind of the point.”
Clever Abe. Nothing slipped past him.
“Is it charmed?” I asked.
“No. You didn’t leave any other directions, so I simply obtained a plain sample. Again, since we weren’t making standard ink, I didn’t think it was necessary. I wouldn’t have known what kind of compulsion you wanted anyway.”
“Have you ever done it?” Here it was. No way would Abe think this was a hypothetical. “Done a compulsion charm for the Alchemists?”
Silence. Yes, he knew something was up, but he hadn’t put it together. “No, I haven’t. I understand the principles, though. A fairly straightforward compulsion spell encouraging discretion and group loyalty.”
“Fairly straightforward,” I repeated. That was an under-statement.
He chuckled. “For an earth user, yes.”
“So you could do it, even though you haven’t? You could do it to these samples?”
“I could . . .” My building was in sight, and he came to a halt. “Miss Sage, let me make sure I’m following correctly. You’re asking me to put a compulsion spell on the blood samples you have. And what you aren’t explicitly asking—but are wishing—is that I not tell the other Alchemists.”
I kicked at a tree branch with my boot. A recent storm must have knocked a number of them down because they were strewn about the quads and walkways. “You’re too smart for your own good.”
“So are you. Which is what makes this completely and utterly fascinating. And let me guess. You aren’t carting off the extra ingredients simply to make sure they return to righteous Alchemist hands.” His eyes were dark and foreboding in the dim lighting. “Who are you trying to compel? Some boy? Love compulsions almost never work.”
“No! It’s nothing like that. I just need an all-purpose, off-the-rack compulsion charm on it like you’d do for standard ink. I’ll take care of the rest.”
“You’ll take care of ‘the rest,’” he said, clearly amused. “The rest being where you activate the magic as it’s injected and are able to imprint your command on someone.”
“Can you do it or not?” I asked. The wind stirred, lightly scattering snowflakes down upon us from a nearby tree.
“Oh, I can do it right now,” he said cheerfully. “The question is, what do I get in return?”
I sighed. “I knew it’d come to this. Does there always have to be something? Can’t you do things just to be nice?”
“My dear, I do plenty of things to be nice. What I don’t do is let an advantage slip through my fingers. Do you think I’ve gotten where I am today by heedlessly giving away things that can result in power and knowledge?”
“Power and knowledge?” I shook my head. “You might be asking for more than I’m capable of giving you.”
“Explain to me why you’re interested in an off-the-record tattoo, and that’ll be knowledge. More than enough payment.”
I hesitated. Abe wasn’t going to sell me out to the Alchemists, but no way was I going to get into the backstory of Marcus’s rebel movement. This was a tightly guarded secret. “I’m not trying to control anyone. This is part of an experiment—purely scientific. That’s the truth. Beyond that, though, I can’t tell you. That’s the extent of the knowledge you can have. But if you want to haggle for some other payment, be my guest. Let’s just do it somewhere warmer.”
I shivered and tugged my coat around me as Abe deliberated. At last, he said quietly, “I’ve already gotten more knowledge than you might think. I know that Sydney Sage, do-gooder and darling of the Alchemists, is working on clandestine affairs that go against her order’s directives. That’s more than payment enough. Give me your blood. The samples, I mean.”
I knelt down on the ground and opened the crate. “What are you going to do with that knowledge?”
“I’m not going to announce it to the world, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He paused and laughed to himself. “But of course you aren’t. You never would’ve asked for this charm if you thought I’d give you away.”
I found the two capped vials of Moroi blood and handed them over. I needed only one but didn’t want the other to go to waste.
“No,” I agreed. “I didn’t think you’d tell on me. I didn’t even think you’d be shocked.”
“I’m not. Surprised, but not shocked.” He held up one of the vials, and I could see lines of concentration deepening on his face as he focused on it. I sensed nothing with my human skills, and this type of earth magic spoke directly to the substance of the blood, meaning there was no flashy burst of fire or water like you’d get with one of the other elements. “There.” He handed it back to me and focused on the other.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I reminded him.
“Because I don’t know,” he said several moments later. I accepted the second vial from him. “Ultimately, I imagine it’ll go toward serving the same thing it always does.”
“Yourself?”
“My loved ones.”
I fell speechless. That certainly wasn’t the answer I’d expected from Abe “Zmey” Mazur. He took a step closer so that he could look me more squarely in the eye.
“You think I’m so manipulative and scheming, Miss Sage? It’s all for them. For my loved ones first. My people second. And yes, I suppose I’m in the mix there too, but don’t think for an instant I wouldn’t sacrifice myself if it could save someone I love. And don’t think for an instant that I wouldn’t do terrible, unspeakable things if it could save someone I love.” When he backed up, I noticed I’d been holding my breath. “Good luck with your experiment. Let me know if I can be of any more assistance.”
I watched him walk off into the night, his words replaying in my mind. When he’d disappeared into the darkness, I returned to my room with the crate. And there, the ominous meeting with Abe vanished from my mind because I amazingly had bigger problems that came crashing back down on me.
Adrian.
Adrian, who’d withheld the knowledge that he’d taken advantage of a human girl.
Adrian, whom I’d trusted.
I threw myself on my bed and waited for the tears to come. They didn’t. The storm of emotions I’d felt earlier had simply gone numb. I was left with a cold, empty hole inside my heart and the gears of reason turning in my brain. Was Adrian right? Was it wrong to hold him responsible for something he’d done so long ago? We both were different people, and who was I to judge others when I’d orchestrated an act of revenge that had cost Keith his eye? I was no saint.
But Keith had committed a terrible crime, and the girl Adrian had drank from had done nothing except be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why did it have to be that? Why the blood? The thing that played the most upon my fears?
He texted me three times on the Love Phone, asking me if he could come over and talk. I didn’t answer. At least he had the sense not to barge on in. I spent my entire break lying on the bed like that, with Hopper curled to my chest in statue form.
When I returned to the palace later, I felt more in control, mostly because I’d shut down almost all my feelings. The scene I walked into was similar, though a few people had left for the break. Adrian and Nina were sitting and talking together. She looked radiant, and although he was smiling, I knew him well enough to recognize when he was faking it. Our eyes locked for a few brief moments and then I marched back up to my table.
The rest of the procedure was simple: adding the blood to the suspension I’d created. The liquid turned silver, earning a surprised grunt from Abe.
“Shouldn’t it be gold?”
I hesitated. “That’s the one part I changed. Silver’s more in tune with Moroi magic. I thought it’d be better.”
Sonya’s eyes widened in alarm. “The spirit’s leaking out now that it’s out of the case! Help me!”
Nina and Lissa hurried beside her, looks of concentration on their faces. They were using their magic to try to protect the vial, I realized. I didn’t know how successful they were, but I knew enough to realize we couldn’t waste time. “Hurry up,” I told Horace the tattooist.
He had a machine similar to Wolfe’s and loaded the ink into his needle. Neil sat down beside it, and Olive hovered near him. “Does it have to be the face?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. We just do that to identify ourselves.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Neil pulled off his T-shirt, revealing a well-muscled physique. He pointed to his upper left arm. “Here.”
Horace brought the needle down and then turned, puzzled. “What am I drawing?”
There were a few moments of comical silence. “Whatever’s fastest,” I said.
“I kind of wanted a cross,” said Neil wistfully. His stoic mask fell into place. “But do whatever you need to.”
“Do a cross with simple lines,” Adrian said unexpectedly. “I’ll design more art to go around it later, and you can just get regular ink to embellish it.”
Even I was surprised at the offer, considering how much Neil usually irritated Adrian. Horace was already at work. Even with a simple design, tattooing wasn’t something that could be done in a hurry. He was obviously moving as fast as he could, but I could tell by the spirit users’ strained faces that they were still losing ground. I grew so caught up in the drama that I actually forgot about Adrian. My world narrowed down to each drop of ink that went into Neil’s skin.
When Horace finished, everyone looked ready to faint from the exhaustion of stress. Lissa rested her head on Christian’s shoulder, and a paler-than-usual Sonya sank into a chair. “There was still magic in the ink when you finished,” she said. “But I don’t sense it anymore. I have no way of knowing if it worked—aside from the obvious.”