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put the matched, invoked charms with the rest, beside Jenks. He was sitting across from me, his head slumped onto the table while he slept. Doppelganger charm for Peter, doppelganger charm for Nick, regular disguise charm for Jenks.And two sets of inertia-dampening amulets, I thought, gentling the newest in with the rest. After meeting Peter, I was changing the plan. No one knew it but me. The clatter of the amulets didn t wake Jenks, and I sat back, exhaling long and slow. I was weary from fatigue, but I wasn t done yet. I still had a curse to twist. Pulling myself upright, I reached for my bag, moving carefully so I wouldn t disturb Jenks. He d sat watch over me while I slept, forgoing his usual midnight nap, and was exhausted. Rex was purring on his lap under the table, and Jenks s smooth, outstretched hand nearly touched the cup-sized minitank of saltwater containing the sea monkeys he d bought somewhere along the way. They re the perfect pets, Rache, he had said, eyes bright with anticipation with what his kids would say, and I hoped we all lived long enough to worry about how we were going to get them home. I smiled at his youthful face looking roguishly innocent while he slept. He was such an odd mix, young, but a tried-and-true father, provider, protector and almost at the end of his life. My throat tightened and I blinked rapidly. I was going to miss him. Jax could never take his place. If there was a charm or spell to lengthen his life, I d use it and damn the cost. My hand reached to push his hair back from his eyes, then dropped before it touched him. Everyone dies. The living find a way to assuage the loss and go on. Depressed, I cleared a spot on the table. With the extra sea salt Jenks had gotten with his new pets, I Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html carefully traced three plate-sized circles, interlacing them to make seven distinct spaces formed by three arcs from each circle. I glanced over the dusky room before retrieving the focus from my bag, which had been at my feet all night, safe from Nick. Jenks was sleeping at the table, Ivy was sleeping in the back room, having returned from her date shortly after sunrise, and Nick and Jax were outside making sure the air bag wouldn t engage when Jenks ran the Mack truck into it tonight. And the NOS. Mustn t forget the NOS that Nick had in his nasty truck, which would be rigged to explode on impact. I d have no better time than now to do this. I d like to say that I had waited this long so it would be quiet and I d be undisturbed. The reality was, I was scared. The statue s power came from a demon curse, and it would take a demonic curse to move it. A demon curse.What would my dad say? What the hell, I whispered, grimacing. I was going to kill Peter. What was a little demonic-curse imbalance compared to that? Stomach knotting, I placed the statue into the first circle, stifling a shudder and wiping my fingers free of the slimy feel of the ancient bone. Jenks had watched me do this earlier, so I knew what came next, but unbeknownst to everyone but him, it had been a dry run using the wolf statue. I d lit the candles but hadn t invoked the curse. The little wolf with its fake curse had been sitting on the table all night, Nick carefully avoiding looking at it. Another glance at the light leaking around the curtains, and I rose, going to Jenks s things piled carelessly by the TV. I plucked the totem from his belongings, feeling guilty though I had already asked to use it. Nervous, I placed his carved totem with the stylized wolf on top in the second circle. In the third, I placed a lock of my hair, twisted and knotted. My stomach clenched. How many times had my father told me never to knot my hair even in fun? It was bad. Tying hair into knots made a very strong bond to a person, especially when you knotted your own hair. What happened to the bit of hair I placed in the third circle would happen to me. Conversely, what I said or did would be reflected in the circle. It wasn t a symbol of my will, itwas my will. That it was sitting in a circle to twist a curse made me ill. Though that might be from the Brimstone,I thought, not putting it past Jenks, even though he d agreed with my decision to stop taking it. At least it had been medicinal grade this time, and I wasn t dealing with the roller-coaster moods. Okay, I whispered, hiking my chair closer to the table. I glanced at Jenks, then got my colored candles from my bag, the soft crackle of the matching colored tissue paper they were wrapped in soothing. I had used white candles the first time, picked up by Ivy out shopping with Nick, a bitter touch of honesty to the lie our lives had become. I set them down and wiped my palms on my jeans, nervous. I d lit candles from my will only once before mere hours ago, actually but since my hearth the pilot light on my kitchen stove was five hundred miles south of there, I d have to use my will. My thoughts drifted to Big Al standing in my kitchen, lecturing me on how to set candles with their place names. He had used a red taper lit from his hearth, and it would probably please him that I d learned how to light candles with ley line energy. I had Ceri to thank for that, since it was mostly a modified ley line charm she used to heat water. Lighting them from my will wasn t nearly as power-retentive as using hearth fire, but it was close. Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Ley line, I whispered, focus blurring as I reached for the line I d found halfway across the town. It felt [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |