Heart's Magic (24 page)

He had magic now, though,
and he would by God use it to make sure Elinor didn't die. Not ever
again. Not on his watch.

Harry tried once more to
rouse her, patting her cheeks, shaking her, not quite roughly, but
almost. He called her name over and over. Nothing worked. She lay
there in the dark, still as that word he refused to think, save for
the breath in her lungs and the beating of her heart. She was
alive. It was up to him to keep her that way.

The jailer Biggs as well,
if he wasn't dead already. Harry had finally recalled the man's
name. There were too many alchemists to recall all their
names--almost 400 in England alone, without counting Scotland,
Ireland, or Wales. But Harry tried to remember at least the ones
living in London.

Now, setting his worry
aside, he drew out his steel wand, the one he carried with him most
often, and stirred it through the air to see what magic he could
pick up.

Too little. The wards laid
through and around the tower stripped most of the magic out of the
air, locking it away from anyone who did not know the words and
gestures to unlock it--the keys to the warding. Still, Harry was
not an inmate of these stone and metal walls, with the magic locked
specifically against him. He ought to be able to gather enough to
get the cell door open.

Harry reached for the magic
in the stone floor. The warding flared. If he had been an inmate,
he would have been doubled over on the floor, puking his guts up
from the pain. As it was, he caught the edge of the ward. His
fingers went numb as his wand sparked and he dropped it on the
floor, fortunately right at his feet where he could find it
again.

Cursing, he sucked at his
numb but stinging fingers and contemplated his next step. Three of
the walls were metal. They'd have less inherent magic than the
stone of the exterior wall and floor, though they conducted it
nicely. The refining of the metal took some of the natural magic
out. The door itself was metal as well.

He eased a little closer,
extending his senses through his wand to test the door's
construction and magic reserves. Being the main point of access to
the cell, it was warded more heavily than the walls, but its
elements were earth and fire, the two elements that came easiest to
Harry's hand. Not that they all didn't come easy enough. With the
warding though, Harry would have to come at the magic
sideways.

He reached through the wand
and nudged a little magic from the wall into the door. Neither
seemed to object, probably since the movement only reinforced the
door. Carefully, and far too slowly for the urgency riding him, no
matter how firmly he tried to shut it away, he maneuvered the magic
toward the lock. He paused again and again to hold his breath and
the magic while the wards settled back from the edge of
attack.

When he finally had enough
magic poised and waiting, he spilled a thin trickle into the
locking mechanism, teasing the tumblers delicately into--nothing.
They refused to move.

Harry fed more magic into
the lock, packing it full. He
shoved.
And again, nothing.

He was almost out of the
magic he'd so painstakingly gathered. He was long out of patience
and frantic with worry over Elinor, who
still
hadn't moved. He shoveled in all
the magic he had, growling curses not quite under his breath,
somehow taking enough care that the wards were not triggered. He
poked the tip of his wand into the keyhole and let go. Best not to
be holding it for this.

The fire element in the
metal around him was old and weak, but it was there. Harry called
it up and with a word, smashed it through his wand into the lock.
The lock flared red hot and something went
bang!
The wand went shooting across
the cell, trailing white and gold sparks. And the door remained
fully and serenely locked.

Harry lost his temper. He
didn't do it often, because his temper was so bad it sometimes
scared him, the things he did when he lost it. He cursed and kicked
the door. He threw magic at it, hauling it out of the stones and
the air around him by brute force. None of it made any difference.
Except his toes hurt from kicking the door and his fingers were
numb and stinging again.

He didn't have the keys to
the warding. Nor was he at his normal strength. With the keys, he
could have brought the tower down. At full strength, without the
machine-inflicted injury chewing at him, he might have knocked the
door off its hinges, or at least blasted the lock. Without either,
he was stuck.

"Biggs!" He shouted at the
guard, trying to spot him through the grille in the door. It was
darker in the hallway than in the cell with the full moon's light
occasionally filtering through the cloud cover. He couldn't see
anything. "
Oi,
Biggs! Get your arse off the bloody floor an' make yourself
useful!" He hoped the man wasn't dead and not just because he was
their best hope.

He tried one more time.
"Biggs!" He gave a prayer-like thought for the guard's welfare.
Yeah, Harry believed. After Waterloo Station, who
didn't?

Harry turned back to the
cot and his main concern, the woman lying still as--not death.
Still as still on top of it. She was little more than a darker
shape in the thin light. He hurried as fast as he dared in the
darkness. He found her shoulder, then her neck, breathing a little
sigh of relief at the strong pulse beating there.

"Elinor?" He didn't know
what to do now that his attempt to break out had failed. He was an
alchemist, not a healer of any variety. "Damn it, Elinor, don't do
this to me, woman."

His hands explored her face
of their own accord. He certainly wasn't in control of them. Or
anything else. He felt utterly helpless, and he hated the
feeling.
Hated
it.

One of his fingers brushed
the lace ruffle at the neck of her dress. It seemed buttoned up
awfully tight around her neck and--was she wearing a corset? When
ladies fainted, doctors always said to loosen their
clothing.

Harry put his hands round
her waist. He had to slide his hands down a little in the dark to
find it. He couldn't feel whalebone, but the dress was heavily
layered and restrictive. He probably ought to loosen her clothing
anyway.

He pulled Elinor up off the
cot and propped her against his shoulder while he started to work
on the buttons down the back of her dress. The row of tiny buttons
on this dress drove him mad with lust every time she wore it,
making him think about undoing them one at a time, with a kiss for
every button as he uncovered more of her creamy skin. Now that he
was opening them, he couldn't think about kisses at all, he was so
cold with fear for her.

"Elinor," he said again,
murmuring in her ear as his hands worked their busy way down her
back. "Elinor, love, time to wake up. Time to come back from
wherever it is you've gone. Come on, Elinor. Things to be done.
Cells to escape from. Villains to catch."

He kept up his flow of
words, not knowing if they did any good but unable to stop them. At
the middle of her back, he discovered that yes, she did wear a
corset, but a small, light one, not one of those whalebone
monstrosities he'd encountered from time to time when undressing
one of his intermittent doxies. He unbuttoned her dress all the way
past the waistband of her skirt, then worked at the hooks of the
corset.

There was a moment's
hesitation when he wondered about Elinor's reaction when she woke
and discovered herself half dressed, before he shrugged
fatalistically. She would do what she would do. He had to do the
same--whatever necessary to keep her alive. He didn't know what had
happened or why Elinor had done whatever it was she'd done, but he
had no doubt whatsoever that this thing could kill her. Maybe not
in the next instant, maybe not even soon, but if it wasn't fixed,
and sooner rather than later, she would die.

So Harry would do what he
had to and face the punishment when it came. Right now, the
reasonable thing seemed to be getting her out of all these swaths
of petticoats and choking garments. He wouldn't strip her naked,
just down to her shimmy. Getting her peeled out of the sleeves and
the top of the dress was no real problem, now he had it unbuttoned,
but to get her out of the rest--the petticoats seemed to multiply,
tangling him up in their layers.

Harry finally resorted to
standing Elinor on her wobbly feet and shoving the mass of it to
the ground. Since she couldn't stand without her knees folding up,
Harry had to hold her up by means of one arm squeezing that lush
little body against his own, while the other fought with fabric.
And of course, he couldn't help reacting to the feel of her
practically naked in his arms. He was a man, for God's sake, not a
marble statue.

When the dress and all the
damned petticoats were kicked out of the way, Harry had a double
armful of woman pressed tight all along his front and he was
feeling so light-headed, he was grateful his head was securely
attached to the rest of him. "Elinor? You awake? You better get
back 'ere right quick, Elinor, 'cause I'm about to kiss you, an' if
you don't want me doin' it, well, you'll just 'ave to get back 'ere
and stop me."

He nuzzled her cheek,
rubbing his lips against her soft, soft skin, feeling guilty for
even wanting to kiss her when she was unconscious and incapable of
saying no. Then it hit him, the possible truth in what he'd said
without realizing. What if she literally needed to return from
somewhere else?

She'd been riding Cranshaw's
blood when he arrived, he was reasonably certain. What if it wasn't
Cranshaw's blood inside her that she was riding, but the blood that
was away inside Cranshaw? So that she in truth needed to come
back
here?

How far could the escaped
wizard have gone? Could Elinor cross such a distance? Amanusa and
Pearl had always been in close physical proximity to the one they
examined when they did this sort of thing--so far as he knew.
Surely she could return, though, if she was in fact
elsewhere.
This
was
her body, after all. A body she perhaps hadn't paid as much
attention to as she should have, given her reaction to his
love-making.

Harry sat down on the bunk
with Elinor in his lap. He intended to reacquaint Elinor with
herself, starting with a deep, slow, wet, sensual kiss.

Elinor was
sitting
rather glumly on
what she thought might be a scarred tendon in Cranshaw's arm. It
seemed to be drawn excessively tight, but maybe that was
nervousness, rather than injury. She didn't know enough to know.
And she hadn't given up on getting back where she belonged. She
certainly didn't intend on remaining here for the rest of her
life--however long that might be. She would think of something.
Soon, even. She simply needed a little more time to adjust to the
current reality.

Although-- At a rather
ridiculous distance, she thought she might be sensing--what? She
tried to focus. Senses--there were six. Sight, sound, smell, taste,
touch, and magic. All but the last were strictly physical, and
magic often interpreted itself in terms of those senses. This
sensation was touch. She was almost certain of that.

She moved...her lips. She
felt the sensation against her lips and she moved them.

"Elinor?"

She
heard.
Her name in Harry's
voice.

"Kiss me again, Elinor.
Kiss me now."

She felt his lips against
hers again, but they were motionless. Both sets. Harry's seemed to
be just--waiting. For something. For her to kiss him, he'd
said.

Lips--soft, damp, and
hot--weren't all she felt. She could sense--Elinor worked hard to
define the distant sensations. Hard muscle all along the front of
her body, a band of it--Harry's arm, both arms around her, holding
her in place. She could feel--waistcoat buttons? Yes, she thought
so. And the lips were moving against hers as Harry
spoke.

"
Elinor.
Get yourself back 'ere and
kiss me, damn it!" Harry didn't speak louder than a surly growl,
but the intensity vibrated through her.

All the way through her to
where she sat inside Nigel Cranshaw's blood. Harry's lips rested,
motionless again, the lightest of touches on hers, and it wasn't
right. Wasn't enough.

She'd been kissed. Rather
expertly, and by Harry himself. Those kisses hadn't been anything
like this one. This didn't deserve the name of "kiss." She wanted
one of those other kisses. The ones where she thought he might
consume her whole.

She struggled. If she could
feel his lips and her lips, if she could feel him pressed tight
against her, she ought to be able to kiss him back. She moved them
before. She knew she did. They were
her
lips. Hers to command. Hers to
kiss him with. And finally, she got them to move. She pursed her
lips, just a little, and parted them.

"Elinor?" Harry pulled away
to look at her.

She could see him looking,
but it felt distant and seemed to get more distant as seconds
passed.
No.
She
wanted to be there with Harry, not here where she didn't belong.
She strained to coordinate lips and tongue and larynx. "Kiss
me."