Chapter 4 #2
Roslyn’s healing magic was clean. He’d noted this from the beginning, when the compass first pulled her in.
It was a bright, uncluttered kind of energy, lacking the muddiness of power amplified through artificial means, such as the bronze and garnet amulet currently in the McAllisters’ keeping.
That clarity, which made her such an effective healer, was also a problem, because it cut through the dimensional static with a distinctiveness that no amount of warding could entirely mask.
Every time she healed him, she was broadcasting a signal that said, in effect, a powerful healing witch is working here, and anyone with the sensitivity to detect magical presences would eventually notice.
The Gibsons were at the perimeter right now. If Roslyn continued the session, her magic would flare through the static, and the scouts would have confirmation that the house was not only occupied but contained at least two users of magic, one of them a healer of considerable strength.
“You need to stop,” he said.
Her hands didn’t move. “Stop what?”
“The healing. Now. Pull your magic out of my system, and stop using your gift until I tell you otherwise.”
A pause. He could feel the way she assessed his tone, the clinical evaluation she ran on every comment he made to determine whether it represented a genuine medical concern or was merely part of his ongoing campaign to reclaim authority over his own treatment.
She was, he’d learned, quite skilled at distinguishing between the two.
“No,” she said.
“Ms. Campbell — ”
“We’re past the point where interrupting your treatment is safe.
” Her voice was calm, almost quiet, which meant she was irritated.
He’d learned over the past five days that Roslyn’s anger was inversely proportional to her volume.
“If I withdraw my magic now while it’s actively engaged with the scarring around your heart, the tissue will contract.
You’ll lose three days of progress at minimum, and the setback will make future sessions more painful, not less. ”
He scowled. “The alternative is that the Gibson scouts will detect your magic and return with more witches and warlocks. The Gibsons do not negotiate, Ms. Campbell. They defend their territory, and their preferred method of defense is overwhelming force.”
This argument didn’t seem to have any real impact. “Then we’ll deal with that if it happens,” she said calmly.
He turned in the chair to look at her, which dislodged her hands from his temples and cost him a spike of pain behind his eyes as her magic disengaged from its surface contact points. She stood behind the chair, her expression exactly as composed as he’d expected, and regarded him steadily.
“This is not a negotiation,” he said. “I’m telling you — ”
“You’re telling me to damage my patient because you’re frightened.
” She still hadn’t raised her voice, mostly because she didn’t need to.
“I understand your concern, and I understand the risk. But I’m not going to undo days of work because a pair of scouts is poking at your fence.
If you have another way to mask the signal, use it.
If you don’t, then accept the risk, because the alternative is much worse. ”
He knew she was right. That knowledge irritated him, mostly because he wasn’t accustomed to being outmaneuvered in his own study.
He could have told her the truth, which was that the Gibson scouts were the least of his concerns about her healing sessions.
The real problem wasn’t tactical at all, but personal; every morning and evening, when she placed her hands on him and her magic moved through his damaged system with its warm, thorough attention, something in him came more undone.
Although he didn’t know if he could have named it when asked, he knew it was something that had been held in place by the same rigid control that kept his suits buttoned and his wards maintained, and that the whatever-it-was had developed cracks he couldn’t repair.
The force acting on it wasn’t hostile but gentle…
and he had no defenses against gentleness.
And he could have also told her that the prospect of her stopping — of the sessions ending, of the warm pressure of her magic withdrawing from his system and leaving him alone again in the cold fortress of his own power — frightened him more than the Gibsons, more than the Van Horns, even more than the slow degradation of his wards.
Of course, he told her none of this.
“Very well,” he said instead, and rose from the chair.
Moving hurt. The injured hip had improved remarkably over the past few days, but his body was still operating at a fraction of its normal capacity, and the act of standing bothered him more than he cared to admit.
Trying not to wince, he moved across the study to the bookshelf on the east wall, where, behind a row of leather-bound volumes on the history of cartography, a small drawer was concealed in the woodwork.
He opened it with a touch and a whisper of magic — the lock was keyed to his signature, a precaution he had taken with all of his personal storage — and removed a stone.
It wasn’t much to look at, only a piece of gray granite roughly the size and shape of an egg, polished smooth by what might have been a river current or might have been something considerably more deliberate.
Its magic was complex and layered, the work of a craftsman who‘d understood that the best cloaking devices were the ones that didn’t draw attention to themselves.
When activated, it would suppress magical signatures within a roughly twenty-foot radius, rendering anyone inside that field effectively invisible to external sensing.
He’d used it before, so he knew it was reliable.
It was also limited. A twenty-foot radius was enough to shield the study but not the whole house, and it required a trickle of his own magic to sustain.
Given the current state of his energy, maintaining it for more than a few hours would be an exercise in diminishing returns.
But it would buy them some time.
He activated the stone with a pulse of power that cost him more than it should have, placed it on the desk, and felt the cloaking field settle over the study like a blanket of static.
Within it, his magical energy and Roslyn’s were reduced to whispers, indistinguishable from the ambient noise of the collection.
“This will mask us while we’re in this room,” he said. “But it won’t help when you move through the house. The moment you leave the field’s radius, your signature becomes visible again.”
A single nod. “So I’ll stay in the study during your sessions and be careful the rest of the time.”
His lips pressed together. “Your version of careful and mine may differ.”
Blue eyes the color of desert turquoise met his. “My version of ‘careful’ has kept you alive for five days.”
He sat back down in the chair, and the effort of the last few minutes revealed itself in a tremor in his hands that he couldn’t hide.
The cloaking stone’s activation had pulled from reserves he couldn’t spare, and his body, which had been cautiously rebuilding under Roslyn’s care, didn’t bother to conceal what he’d just done.
She noticed it at once. Her gaze dropped to his hands and then returned to his face, and now the expression she wore wasn’t composed patience but something much closer to anger.
“You just used magic,” she said, brows drawing together in annoyance. “After I explicitly told you — ”
Calmly, he cut in, “The situation required it.”
“It made you burn through reserves we’ve been rebuilding for almost a week.”
She went to the front of the chair and took his wrist without asking permission, her fingers finding the pulse point automatically.
Her healing gift reached out through that contact, and he could feel it assess what he’d just spent.
The assessment, he could tell from the tightening of her mouth, was far from favorable.
“You’ve set yourself back at least a full day,” she told him, still frowning. “Possibly two.”
He shrugged. “A day’s setback is preferable to a Gibson incursion.”
Her mouth tightened. “And what happens tomorrow when they come back? Or the day after?”
She released his wrist but didn’t step back, and from this distance, he could see smudges of fatigue around her eyes that hadn’t been there five days ago.
She was tired, he realized then. Healing him twice a day was draining her.
Perhaps he’d been aware of this in the abstract but hadn’t, until this moment, considered what it looked like from the outside.
“Will you use another artifact?” she went on. “Are you going to spend another day’s worth of reserves? At what point does the cost of hiding become worse than the thing you’re hiding from?”
He didn’t have an answer for any of those questions.
Or rather, he had several, none of which would satisfy her, since they all amounted to the same thing.
He would spend whatever it took, burn through whatever reserves he had, use whatever artifacts were required, because the alternative — being found and confronted, being forced to defend a house full of volatile artifacts while operating at a fraction of his capacity and with a healer from a different clan in the crossfire — was unacceptable.
But he couldn’t say with a McAllister healer in the crossfire without revealing that her safety had become a factor in his calculations, and that would raise questions he knew he wasn’t prepared to answer.
“The Gibsons are methodical,” he replied instead.
“They’ll scout for three to five days before escalating to a direct approach.
The cloaking stone will cover that interval if I limit its use to our sessions.
In the meantime, the dimensional static continues to dissipate.
Another week, and the background noise will be low enough that your signature will blend naturally with it. ”