Heart's Magic (18 page)

"Wait." Pearl had to pause
and swallow. She pointed at Elinor who'd managed to stop herself.
"What are you talking about?"

"It was just a kiss.
Kisses." Elinor tried very hard not to wail.

"What?" Amanusa looked
surprised, but not very. And not shocked at all.

"Why?" Elinor drew back in
her chair, wary again. "What are
you
talking about?"

"Yesterday. When Harry
fainted." Amanusa skewered her with her gaze. "Have you and Harry
been kissing?"

Elinor stammered worse than
before, trying to find a way to deflect the question, but she
couldn't. "Well... Yes."

"
Just
kissing?" Pearl asked.

Elinor could not like the
mischief on Pearl's face. She also didn't see any sense in lying.
"Um--"

But it was so hard to admit.
Especially with Pearl twinkling at her like that. "We
didn't!
Not...intercourse.
Just a 'bit o' cuddling.'" She tried to copy Harry's accent and
failed miserably.

Amanusa blew a sigh out her
nose. "Well, that does explain a little more."

"Explain what?" Elinor
tried to pack away her shame and embarrassment, but she needed a
bigger mental box. Things kept squeezing out the sides before she
could get it shut.

"Yesterday," Amanusa said.
"When I was trying to push magic into Harry through the blood
donations, you were in the way.
You
were the one building his magic back up, not me. I
could, a bit, but mostly it was you."

Elinor shook her head,
rejecting the hypothesis. "I don't see how that's possible. I've
never done anything like that before. I don't know how. I
can't--I'm a wizard."

"And a very, very good
one," Amanusa agreed. "But yesterday, you worked sorcery. You
cannot deny it happened."

"I can--" Elinor caught
Amanusa's expression and subsided. "But I suppose I had better not.
How is it possible?"

"You've never even sensed
sorcery before?" Pearl asked.

"Not really." Elinor shook
her head slowly, trying to recall. "A bit, I suppose, when we were
in St. James's Park with--"

"With my friend's murdered
body." Pearl supplied the words Elinor couldn't. "Have you
ever
cuddled
with
anyone before?"

"
No!
" Oh, her cheeks burned. "Of course
not!"

"And after? Did you sense
magic after your cuddle?"

Elinor truly wished to sink
right through the floor. It was wood. Oak, she thought. Maybe her
magic would open it up for her. "I wish you would stop calling it
that. It sounds silly."

"You're the one who named
it that," Pearl pointed out. "But all right. So did you? Sense
magic? After your...?"

"Encounter." Elinor snapped
the word out, then could only muster a mumble for the rest.
"Yes."

"Is that the only
time?"

"No." A smaller, softer
word.

"Oh,
ho!
" Pearl grinned with absolute
glee.

If looks could kill, Elinor
would have Pearl lying on the floor, stabbed through the
eyes.

"Pearl," Amanusa's quiet
voice cut through the glee and murder. "Don't tease. Can't you see
she's embarrassed enough?"

"But why?" Pearl looked
bewildered, and Elinor didn't think she was putting it on. "What's
to be embarrassed about? Harry adores her. Elinor obviously adores
him back--"

"I do not!" Elinor put a
stop to the nonsense. Or she tried.

"Then why did you kiss
him?" Pearl wanted to know. "Why did you 'encounter' with
him?"

"He kissed me," Elinor
stated. "He--"

"You kissed him back.
Didn't you? You didn't stop the cuddling. Harry would have stopped
if you told him to. We both know that."

Was it possible to die of
shame?

Pearl reached across the
teapot and took Elinor's hand. "Oh, dearest. It's nothing to be
ashamed of. For honest and true. If you love him and he loves
you--"

"He doesn't. Nor do I,"
Elinor said again. "It's just--" She removed her hand from Pearl's
and used it to gesture. "Physical."

Neither Pearl nor Amanusa
looked as if they believed her. They looked at each
other.

"That's what did it, I'm
sure," Pearl said. "The desire. The 'encounter.' It woke up her
sorcery talent."

"And it created the
connection with Harry," Amanusa agreed. "So that yesterday, Elinor
was able to use the blood to strengthen him."

Blood.
The word made Elinor feel rather queasy. Yes, she'd given it.
She'd done it before yesterday. Given twice to help build the walls
around the dead zone in Paris and the zone in the East End. She'd
given blood again to help in the battle at Waterloo station against
the demon. She'd even painted it on her face that time. But she'd
always had to steel herself against the sight and the smell of
it.

Oddly, it wasn't so much
her own blood that disturbed her as other peoples', which was the
exact opposite of most who fainted at the sight of blood. She
didn't faint, though. And she hadn't lost her stomach in years. But
she still didn't like it.

She said so. "I don't like
blood."

"Then you'd better get
yours back from Harry," Pearl said, like a strict schoolmistress,
complete with frown. "You don't want to be accidentally making him
your familiar, like I did Grey."

That
was what had happened between them at the end of last year,
when Grey acted so horrible and Pearl was so miserable? It wasn't
just some lover's spat? Well, it had been, but--
Oh my.

"They haven't exchanged
blood," Amanusa said. "It won't be so easy for her to do it by
accident."

"Still," Pearl
said.

"How do I do it? Get the
blood back from him?" Elinor focused on the practical.

"It's easiest if he's
already got an open wound," Pearl said. "A healing scratch, or some
such. If there isn't one, you'll have to make one."

"Unless he's prone to
nosebleeds." Amanusa nodded, as if making someone bleed was
something she did every day. Which, of course, it was.

Elinor waved her hands to
move them past that part, swallowing down her reaction. "All right,
so then what? Once I have this scratch?"

"Then you find your blood
inside him and call it out." Pearl ate a cream bun. The lemon cakes
were all gone. "You blot it and burn it."

"Yes, but
how?
" Elinor let her
frustration show. Pearl made it sound as simple as reaching into a
berry patch and plucking out the fruit, but Elinor knew it couldn't
be as simple as that. Berry vines often had brambles.

The two sorcerers exchanged
a look and sighed in unison. "I need to call my blood back as
well," Amanusa said. "I will lance him and show you how. Then you
can do it."

"What about Dr. Rosato's
blood? He donated too." Elinor's curiosity had arisen, as it always
did.

Amanusa dismissed him with a
gesture. "He is wizard, not sorcerer. His blood has only the
magic
we
put in it.
It gave Harry the strength he needed, and when the magic went into
Harry, Rosato's blood--becomes not important. Maybe it dies. I
haven't studied it.

"But a sorcerer's
blood--the magic is part of it. The magic stays and the blood stays
alive. Or perhaps the magic moves to some part of Harry's blood
which then becomes ours." Amanusa waved her hand again. "I have not
studied this either. But this is how it works, and we must retrieve
it."

Elinor tipped her head, as
if that would tip her thoughts into better connection with each
other. "If the magic stays in the sorcerer's blood, then it's not
the blood you
take
that is used for magic, is it? Not primarily. It's the blood
you give. You don't ride the blood you take from others, you ride
your own blood inside them."

Amanusa held Elinor's gaze,
her expression solemn. "Your blood is sorcerer's blood also. This
secret of the sorcerer's guild is one you cannot reveal. You might
be magister of the wizard's guild, but by the magic in your blood,
you are also a sorcerer, subject to our laws. Our
secrets."

"Why not reveal it?" Elinor
didn't understand. "If people know that sorcerers won't steal blood
for magic--"

"So then these wicked people
who do not listen, but believe what they wish--" Sometimes
Amanusa's English took on strong overtones of her mother's
Romanian. "Then they can steal
our
blood for their magic?"

"Conjury can't call
demons," Pearl reminded her. "But that doesn't stop people from
trying."

"True enough." Elinor knew
the world was as full of idiots as it was of wickedness. She took a
deep breath and squared her shoulders, trying to accept what she'd
been told. "I'm a wizard
and
a sorceress?"

"Are there not singers in
the opera with a range of four or five octaves?" Amanusa stood and
dusted off her skirt, though she hadn't eaten anything to create
crumbs. "Come. We will test your talent to ride the blood and
record your name in the sorcery guild register."

"As apprentice?" Elinor
didn't think she liked that idea. It would be exceedingly odd to be
apprentice and magister both at the same time. She tidied up the
tea tray as best she could for whoever would come to fetch
it.

"I think student a better
designation," Amanusa said.

"Didn't you ever open the
old books in the library?" Pearl dusted a veritable storm of crumbs
to the rug when she stood.

"Harry nor I saw a need for
it. I was a wizard." Elinor found her jacket and shawl while the
others put on theirs.

"You learned magic from Sir
William, didn't you?" Pearl asked. "When you were a
girl?"

"Yes. Though I kept
studying when he tried to cut me off."

"So wizardry was the only
magic you were exposed to." Pearl followed Amanusa down the narrow
stair, Elinor behind her.

"It was." Elinor grasped
her meaning. "I had no idea sorcery even existed. Not then." She
blinked. "Are you saying I'm some kind of--of prodigy?"

"No, nor virtuoso. Not yet.
But you could be." Amanusa led the way across to the back garden
gate. "Your sorcery talent is sadly undeveloped. If you want to be
that virtuoso, you will have to work at it."

Elinor made a face. "I
don't know if I want to."

"It is for you to decide."
Amanusa shrugged. "But for my curiosity, why would you turn it
down? Isn't magic the thing you have fought to have your whole
life?"

"Yes, of course. But--"
Elinor shuddered in an exaggerated manner. "I don't like the idea
of magic--some foreign substance--being inside me. It disturbs
me."

"But it's already inside
you." Pearl stepped daintily across the mud puddle just inside the
gate, to the first stepping stone. "It's part of you. You have to
take out of you and put it somewhere else to work magic with
it."

"The--the spark magic
wasn't inside me," Elinor protested. "It was definitely outside.
Following me like a pack of puppies, wanting in."

"
Spark
magic?" Pearl was teasing again.
"I suppose it does feel a bit like sparks.

Amanusa hid a smile. Elinor
was certain she saw it. "The magic of desire," Amanusa said,
"begins within and blossoms without. It would not exist if not for
what is in here." She touched her heart, then smiled such a wicked
smile it shocked Elinor a bit. "And lower places in the
body."

"But what do you do with
it?" Elinor wanted to know. She did not want to know how to make
it. She'd made all she intended to ever make.

"What did you do with it?"
Amanusa turned the question back on her.

"I sent it away. Told it to
go do whatever it was meant to do." Elinor hurried to catch up,
walking through the damp grass beside the path, uncaring about her
hems. She wanted to see their faces. "What
is
it meant to do?"

Sure enough, the two
sorcerers exchanged another significant glance. What weren't they
telling her? "It's meant to create life," Amanusa said.

"Protect," Pearl said.
"Heal. Probably more things than that, but we haven't had time to
dig them out of the books or Jax's brain."

Elinor trudged on across
the garden, moving back to the path. Wet skirts were one thing. Wet
stockings entirely something else. "I didn't think it was for the
same purpose as innocent blood. I copied what you did there at Rose
Bowers' body. With alterations. Was that all right?"

"Very much so." Amanusa
stopped outside the conservatory door. "The decision of how much
sorcery you learn is yours, Elinor. But I must insist that you
learn some. Enough that your talent is not a danger to yourself or
those around you. So that you can deal with the magic flowing
through your veins. Everyone has some magic there--even the men.
But once you hear it, once you feel it, especially as strongly as
you do, a sorceress must learn to control it, or it will control
her."