"Yikes. I bet. So when you did it, was there a lot of screaming and pointing? That's what happened to me."
He laughed. "Yeah, she was nowhere near as happy to be healed as I'd thought she'd be."
We were sitting so close that our h*ps touched. He smel ed nice, like freshly cut grass and sunshine. I wondered if he'd been outside already this morning, or if that's just the way Cal always smel ed.
I was about to ask him more about this mysterious "she"with the broken leg, but he changed the subject. "So you're learning to control your powers,"he said, studying me with those clear hazel eyes. "How's it working out?"
"Great,"I answered, before I remembered that Cal thought I'd just been grievously injured during one of those lessons. "I mean, it's real y hard,"I amended, "but I think I'm getting the hang of it. Sure beats the idea of going through the Removal."
"Does that mean the Removal is out?"
I ran my finger around the paisley pattern on the couch. "I think so, yeah,"I replied, leaning back against the cushions. The cut on my palm may have healed up, but I stil felt pretty wiped out.
"I'm glad,"he said quietly. The space between us suddenly seemed smal er, and when he covered my hand with his, it was al I could do not to jump.
It took me a minute to realize that he was just using more magic on me. I could feel the weariness running out of me as silver sparks ran along my arm.
"Better?"The sparks faded, but Cal didn't take his hand off mine.
"Much."Of course, al that tiredness had now been replaced by a weird jitteriness that had me shoving the blanket off my legs and standing up.
"What does it feel like, doing healing magic?"I asked, moving away to stand near one of the big windows. The early morning sunlight sparkled on the dew-covered grass.
"What do you mean?"
Rubbing my hands up and down my arms like I was cold, I shrugged. "It seems like it would be super draining, closing wounds and bringing people back from near death."
"It's actual y kind of the opposite,"he said, getting up off the couch. "It's like...touching electricity, I guess. You're handling someone's life energy, so it's intense, yeah, but there's like this charge from it."
"I'm not sure how I feel about you 'handling my life energy,'Cal."
He grinned, and I was taken aback by how different it made him look. Cal spent so much time being stoic and solemn that it was easy to forget he even had teeth. "I'l buy you dinner first next time, I promise."
Okay, the grin was one thing, but that had definitely been flirting. Then, like I wasn't thrown enough, Cal leaned down and picked up a potted African violet on the low table next to the sofa and brought it over to me. For a second, I wondered if this was his social y awkward way of trying to give me flowers, but he said, "Any Prodigium can do it, real y. Not on the same level I can, but stil . You just have to be patient."He pushed the plant toward me, and I noticed a few brown spots on its velvety petals. "Wanna try?"
I looked at the droopy violet and snorted. "Thanks, but that poor little flower looks like it's suffered enough."Wiggling my fingers, I added, "I'm way better at the blowing-stuff-up part of magic. Healing is probably beyond me."Sure, I'd managed to make water pink and change Nick's clothes yesterday, but healing seemed a lot harder than that. Not to mention that my mind was stil on that jagged piece of paper, and how Dad had covered up our stealing the grimoire.
Cal nudged my arm with the pot. "You said you were working on control ing your powers. No magic requires more control than healing. Try."
I thought about protesting that I was too worn out from the spel with Dad earlier, but the truth was, thanks to Cal's magic, I felt better than I had in days.
And I'm pretty sure he knew it.
I took the terra-cotta pot. "What exactly do I do?"
Cal curled his fingers around mine and raised my left hand to the brownish flower. There was a cal us on his thumb that should have been irritating against my skin.
"In a lot of ways, healing is like any other magic. You concentrate on what you want to change, and you make it happen."
"Or, in my case, explode."
Cal just shook his head and said, "But when you're healing something living, you have to take it into account, too."
"And I do that how?"
Cal's fingers tightened on mine, and my heart thumped in response. The library felt very quiet and very stil around us. "You'l feel it."
I swal owed, which was hard to do what with my mouth suddenly drying out. "Okay."
I closed my eyes and felt my magic traveling up from the bottoms of my feet. So far, so good. I thought about those brown spots on the petals, al the while keeping Mom's face firmly lodged in my brain. Heal, I thought, feeling too self-conscious to actual y say the word out loud. The flower stirred under my hand, but when I cracked my eyelids, it looked as brown as ever.
I closed my eyes and took more of those deep breaths Dad was so fond of, thinking that it was no wonder Prodigium were always getting their asses handed to them by humans. I mean, every time I had to do an intense spel , there was al this focusing, and relaxing, and picturing, and breathing.... It wasn't exactly the most effective battle strategy against something like The Eye.
I should've known better than to think about The Eye, though. As soon as the name popped into my head, my control shattered.
And so did the terra-cotta pot.
Black soil rained down on my feet, and the purple flower drooped even further. I could have sworn it actual y bobbed accusingly at me.
"Ugh,"I groaned, as Cal quickly scooped the jagged pot out of my hands. "Sorry, but I warned you I was destructo-girl."
"Don't worry about it,"he said, even as his hand curled protectively around the plant. "You almost had it."He glanced down, probably to survey the damage. "Oh, wow,"he said, surprised.
I wiped my dirty hands on my jeans. "That bad?"
"No, it's not that,"he said. "Look."
He held the pot out to me. The flower was stil awful y droopy, but just behind it were two other smal er, non-droopy flowers. And these were vibrant purple, without a brown spot to be seen. "Whoa. Did I make those?"I asked.
Cal nodded. "You must have. So much for destructogirl."
I gave him a rueful smile. "Yeah, wel , shiny new flowers or not, there's stil a broken pot, and a very sad old violet."
"Maybe,"he said with a nod. Then he paused, and I could tel that whatever he was going to say was real y important. There was even a chance he might use more than five words to say it. "Or maybe your magic isn't that destructive after al . The rain of Doritos, the bed thing, this...Maybe it's just that you create too big, you know?"
When I could find my voice, I said, "Cal, that might be the nicest thing anyone's said to me since we got here."
He twirled one of the nak*d roots between his fingers, and didn't meet my eyes. "It's true."Then he glanced up and gave one of those half smiles I was real y starting to like. "And it's also true that I need to find another pot for this guy. I, uh, guess I'l see you at dinner."
"Great. We can pick out our colors."
"What?"
"For the wedding. I'm thinking melon and mint. Supposed to be real y hot next spring."
Cal laughed out loud, the first time I'd ever heard him do that. "It's a plan. See ya, Sophie."
"Later,"I cal ed after him, suddenly struck by a pang of sadness. Archer had cal ed out, "See ya, Mercer,"at the end of nearly every cel ar duty. I'd never hear him say that again.
It sucks that we miss people like that. You think you've accepted that someone is out of your life, that you've grieved and it's over, and then bam.
One little thing and you feel like you've lost that person al over again.
I thought about him sitting in the corn mil , waiting for me. What had he wanted to tel me so badly that he'd risk his life to say it?
I tightened my fingers around one of the jagged shards of pottery so hard that I nearly drew blood. "It doesn't matter,"I murmured. The whole Archer thing was beyond done. And, I reminded myself with a glance upstairs, I apparently had way bigger problems than a messed-up love life.
Dad's office was actual y one of the smal er rooms at Thorne. Inside was pretty nice, though. There was a cherrywood desk and ivory carpets, plus comfortable leather chairs and sturdy-looking bookshelves. He also had nice view of the river.
Dad was at his desk when I opened the door, doing what al British people do when they're freaked out: drinking tea. I leaned against the door frame. "So...this sucks, right?"
He waved me into the office. "Close the door behind you."
Chapter 13
Once I had, Dad opened one of the desk drawers. The grimoire looked even worse in the bright light of his office, but there was stil a sense of menace coming off of it that made me want to cross my arms over my chest.
"I glamoured another book to look like the grimoire, and remade the glass,"Dad said to my unspoken question. "Stil , I'l need to get it back soon.
The glamour won't hold forever."
He threw the book onto his desk, where it landed amid al the paper. "I've looked through it three times already. The possession ritual isn't in here."
Gingerly, I lifted the book and opened it. I'd felt the magic coming off of it even when it was in its case, but I stil wasn't prepared for the wave of power that hit me. It felt like when you stick your face out the window of a fast-moving car. My lungs burned and my eyes watered just looking at it.
My stinging eyes scanned the first page, but there were no words I could make out, only strange and unfamiliar symbols.
Stil , I recognized one of them. It looked a lot like the mark Dad had put on the Vandy's hand when he'd banished her.
Before I could even turn the first page, I dropped the book back on the papers. "Holy hel weasel,"I breathed.
Dad nodded. "Now you see why I had to let you do the majority of the heavy lifting while opening the case. There was no way I could have used that much magic and had the strength to search for the ritual."
"Now you tel me."I sank down into one of the leather chairs opposite Dad's desk. "How did you even know what you were looking for? There aren't any words in this thing."
"It wasn't easy. Even I didn't realize how powerful this book is."He opened the front cover, and I winced; but since I couldn't see the pages, I didn't feel the magic this time. Dad, however, visibly shuddered. "This grimoire was written in the language of angels."
"Shouldn't that be, like, harp music or chanting, and not hard-core hieroglyphics?"
Dad either wasn't listening to me, or he chose to ignore that. "What I don't understand is why just that ritual was taken,"he murmured, almost to himself. "Of al the rituals, why that one?"
"And when did someone take it?"I added.
Dad blinked at me like he'd just suddenly remembered I was in the room. "What?"
"That book has been in that cabinet since, what, 1939? 1940? So did someone rip that page out sometime over the past seventy years, or was it torn out before the grimoire was even locked up?"