Chapter 10
The Gibson probe came two days after Roslyn’s trip into town, and it was considerably less subtle than Karl Van Horn’s.
Malachi sensed it during the morning session, when Roslyn’s hands were at his temples and her magic was working on the scarring around his frontal channels.
The probe hit the outer wards like a fist striking a table, not hard enough to breach, but hard enough to make a point.
It was blunt and had the unmistakable signature of a witch who wanted the occupant to know she was there.
Catherine Gibson, if Roslyn’s description had been accurate. The prima-in-waiting, making a statement.
He said nothing to Roslyn during the session. Afterward, when she was in the kitchen washing her hands — she always washed her hands after healing work, an old clinical habit that persisted even without a clinic — he went to the study and opened the bottom drawer of the desk.
Among other odds and ends, the drawer contained a stone.
It was roughly the size of a hen’s egg, smooth and dark, with a faint iridescence that shifted depending on the angle of the light.
He had acquired it six years ago from a witch in British Columbia who’d used it once and never wanted to use it again.
Fixed-point portal stones were temperamental objects that tended to exact a physical cost from their users, and the witch had decided that the convenience of instantaneous travel wasn’t worth the three days of nausea that followed.
The stone was currently keyed to Jerome, Arizona.
He’d set the coordinates himself during a period of contingency planning he preferred not to think about too closely, since the contingency in question had been his own death.
The logic had been straightforward enough; if the collection was ever compromised, if the wards failed beyond repair and the artifacts were in danger of catastrophic discharge, he would use the stone to transport the most volatile objects to the McAllister settlement, where witches of sufficient power could contain them.
That he’d chosen McAllister territory rather than Gibson territory or some uninhabited stretch of wilderness said something about his assessment of the various clans’ competence, although he most likely would have denied this if pressed.
In all of those contingencies, he hadn’t planned to use the stone to transport a person. But a person was what he needed to transport now, and the stone would serve.
He picked it up. The iridescence flickered against his palm, cool and inert, waiting.
A single activation, one passenger, destination fixed.
The passenger would arrive in Jerome — he didn’t know precisely where, because the stone’s targeting was approximate within a radius of several hundred feet, but it would place her somewhere within the town limits.
She would be disoriented, probably nauseous, but alive and among her own people, which was considerably more than he could guarantee if she stayed here in Astoria.
Victoria was coming, and the Gibsons were escalating.
His wards were strong enough to withstand a direct assault…
perhaps…but they wouldn’t survive a coordinated attack from two directions, and he knew his body wouldn’t survive the effort of maintaining them.
The equation was simple enough, and every variable he added only made the answer clearer.
Roslyn had to leave.
He held the stone in his hand and felt its weight.
He tried not to think about the study without her in it, or the kitchen without the sound of her moving through it, or the mornings without the quiet clink of a pot and the running of water that told him for the first time in more years than he wanted to count that he wasn’t waking up alone.
He decided to wait until evening to tell her.
This wasn’t cowardice, although it bore a resemblance to cowardice he found uncomfortable.
The delay was strategic, nothing more. He needed the afternoon session first because his magic was still recovering from the morning’s ward work, and he couldn’t afford to be weakened during the conversation that would follow.
He also needed time to construct his argument.
It had to be airtight, since Roslyn Campbell’s sharp, analytical mind would certainly find any holes in it.
She came into the study at seven with the tray — sliced bread from the grocery run, cheese, apples, a pot of tea — and set it on the desk with an ease that had become as much a part of their routine as the healing sessions themselves.
Her hair was down tonight, falling in loose waves over her shoulders, and she was wearing a ridiculous Astoria, Oregon, sweatshirt that she must have gotten while she was out.
He noticed her hair and then made himself stop noticing it as best he could.
Looking at those warm brown waves with their touch of sun led to remembering the way that hair had felt against his face when he’d kissed her, and that kind of memory was exactly the sort of weakness he couldn’t afford right now.
“We need to discuss your departure,” he said.
He might as well have set off a bomb in the quiet room. Roslyn, who had been pouring tea, put the pot down with an audible clank and stared at him.
“‘My departure,’” she repeated.
“Yes.” He reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced the portal stone, then placed it on the desk between them.
It sat there on the scarred wood, dark and iridescent, a small thing that contained enough power to move a person across a continent.
“This is a fixed-point portal stone keyed to Jerome, Arizona. One activation, one passenger. You will arrive within the town limits, probably disoriented but unharmed. Your family will find you soon enough.”
She looked down at the stone and then over at him. “You want me to leave.”
“I want you to survive.” He heard the sharpness in his own voice and contained it with an effort that might have impressed him under less fraught circumstances.
“The situation has changed. Victoria’s probe confirmed her location of this house, and the Gibsons have escalated from surveillance to direct confrontation.
Within the week, one or both of them will move against us.
The wards will hold for a time, but they won’t hold indefinitely.
When they fail, this house will become a battlefield. ”
Not even a blink. “I’m aware of that,” Roslyn said calmly.
“Then you must also be aware that you can’t fight.
” The statement was factual, not cruel, although the distinction between the two had never felt thinner.
“Your gift is healing. In a direct confrontation between the Van Horns and whatever the Gibsons decide to bring, healing magic won’t protect you.
Your only function in that scenario would be to give them a hostage they could use against me, and I will not — ”
He stopped himself there. The sentence had been heading somewhere he couldn’t allow it to go, and he clamped down on it with the same ruthless control he applied to a failing ward.
Now she was watching him with the expression he’d come to think of as her clinical assessment face, the one she wore when she was reading something deeper than what might reveal itself on the surface presented.
“You won’t what?” she asked quietly.
“I will not permit that to happen,” he responded.
That steady gaze hadn’t wavered for a second. “That’s not what you were going to say.”
No, it wasn’t. What he had been going to say was, I will not lose you, and the fact that those words had nearly escaped his lips, had been sitting on the edge of his tongue with the sort of reckless impatience that only came from holding something back for too long, frightened him more than Victoria Van Horn and Catherine Gibson combined.
“What I was going to say is irrelevant,” he told Roslyn. “What is relevant is the stone, and that it can put you safely in Jerome within seconds. You must use it. Tonight.”
She didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she picked up the stone and held it in her palm, turning it over with the careful attention she gave to everything she examined, whether it was his damaged magic or the contents of his pantry.
The iridescence played across her fingers, and in that moment, he realized she wasn’t going to do what he was asking and was taking her time deciding how to tell him so.
“No,” she said at last, and set the stone back on the desk.
“Roslyn — ”
“No.” Her voice was steady enough, but there was something beneath the steadiness he recognized. It was the same thing he’d heard in it three weeks ago, when she’d refused to stop healing him during the Gibson scout incident. Not defiance, just certainty. “I’m not leaving.”
He stood. The chair scraped back against the floor, the sound far too loud.
He was aware that he was using his height — such as it was, diminished by weeks of depletion — as a tool, a maneuver that should have been beneath him but apparently wasn’t beneath the version of himself that was losing this argument.
“This isn’t a negotiation,” he said. “Victoria Van Horn will come here with her best offensive talents — people with fireball talent, her uncle Karl with his sleep magic, possibly others I don’t know of, those who might have come to that kind of magic during the past seventeen years.
The Gibsons control this territory and can marshal a dozen witches and warlocks within an hour.
Between them, they will breach these wards, and when they do, anyone inside this house who isn’t me will be a liability. ”