Lila frowned. “I’m beginning to think you don’t want it back.”
“I don’t,” said Kell, and it was mostly true, though a part of him wanted nothing more than to hold it again. “But I need it. And I answered your question.”
Lila considered the stone. “A magic stone called magic,” she mused, turning it over in her palm. “Which leads me to believe that it, what? Makes magic? Or makes things out of magic?” She must have seen the answer in Kell’s worried face, because she smiled triumphantly. “A source of power, then …” She appeared to be having a conversation with herself. “Can it make anything? I wonder how it wor—”
Kell went for the talisman. His hand made it halfway there before Lila’s knife slashed through the air and across his palm. He gasped as blood dripped to the floor.
“I warned you,” she said, wagging the knife like a finger.
“Lila,” he said wearily, cradling his hand to his chest. “Please. Give it back.”
But Kell knew she wouldn’t. There was a glint of mischief in her eye—a look, he knew, he had worn himself—as her fingers curled around the stone. What would she summon? What could she summon, this gangly little human? She held both hands ceremoniously out before her, and Kell watched, half in curiosity and half in concern, as smoke plumed out between her fingers. It wrapped around her free hand, twisting and hardening until she was holding a beautiful sword in a polished scabbard.
Her eyes widened with shock and pleasure.
“It worked,” she whispered, half to herself.
The hilt shone the same glossy black of Kell’s eye and the stolen stone, and when she pulled the sword free of its sheath, the metal glinted—black as well—in the candlelight, and solid as any hammered steel. Lila let out a delighted sound. Kell let out a breath of relief at the sight of the sword—it could have been worse—and watched as she set it against the wall.
“So you see,” said Kell carefully. “Now hand it over.” She didn’t realize—couldn’t realize—that this kind of magic was wrong, or that the stone was feeding on her energy. “Please. Before you hurt yourself.”
Lila gave him a derisive glare and fondled the stone. “Oh no,” she said. “I’m just getting started.”
“Lila … ,” began Kell, but it was too late. Black smoke was already pouring between her knuckles, much more of it than before, and taking shape in the room between them. This time, instead of a weapon, it pulled itself into the form of a young man. Not just any young man, Kell realized as the features smoothed from smoke into flesh.
It was Kell.
The resemblance was nearly flawless, from the coat with its fraying hem to the reddish hair that fell across his face, obscuring his black eye. Only this Kell had no blue eye. Both glistened as hard and black as the rock in Lila’s hand. The apparition didn’t move, not at first, only stood there waiting.
The Kell that was Kell glared at the Kell that wasn’t. “What do you think you’re doing?” The question was directed at Lila.
“Just having a bit of fun,” she said.
“You can’t go around making people.”
“Obviously I can,” she said.
And then, the black-eyed Kell began to move. He shrugged off his coat and tossed it onto the nearest chair. And then, Kell watched with horror as his echo began to unfasten his tunic, one button at a time.
Kell gave a small, strangled laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Lila only smiled and rolled the stone in her palm as the Kell that wasn’t Kell slid slowly, teasingly, out of his tunic and stood there, bare chested. His fingers began to undo the belt at his waist.
“Okay, enough,” said Kell. “Dispel it.”
She sighed. “You’re no fun.”
“This isn’t fun.”
“Maybe not for you,” she said with a smirk as the other Kell continued his striptease, sliding the belt from its loops.
But Lila didn’t see what he saw: the once-blank face of the echo was beginning to change. It was a subtle shift in the magic, a hollow thing starting to fill.
“Lila,” insisted Kell. “Listen to me. Dispel it now.”
“Fine, fine,” she said, meeting the black-eyed Kell’s gaze. “Um … how do I do that?”
“You willed him into being,” said Kell, getting to his feet. “Now will him away.”
Lila’s brow creased, and the phantom stopped divesting himself of clothes but did not disappear.
“Lila.”
“I’m trying,” she said, tightening her grip on the stone.
At that, the phantom Kell’s face contorted, shifting rapidly from vacant to aware to angry. It was as if he knew what was happening. His eyes flicked from Lila’s face to her hand and back to her face. And then he lunged. He moved so fast, an instant, a blink, and he was upon her. The stone tumbled from Lila’s grip as the Kell that wasn’t Kell slammed her back against the wall. His mouth opened to speak, but before he could, his hands dissolved—he dissolved—suddenly back into smoke, and then into nothing, and Lila found herself face-to-face with the Kell that was Kell, his bloody hand raised to the place where the illusion had been, his command—As Anasae—still echoing through the room.
Lila swayed on her feet and caught herself on the chest of drawers, her brief possession of the stone clearly taking its toll, the way it had on Kell. She managed to drag in a single shaky breath before he closed his bleeding hand around her throat.
“Where is my knife?” he growled.
“Top drawer,” she said, gasping.
Kell nodded but didn’t let her go. Instead, he grabbed her wrist and pinned it back to the wall beside her head.
“What are you doing?” she snapped, but Kell didn’t answer. He focused on the wood, and it began to crack and warp, peeling away and growing up around her wrist. Lila struggled, but in an instant it was done. When Kell let go, the wall did not. He retrieved the stone from the floor as Lila twisted and fought against the makeshift bind.
“What the bloody hell … ?” She tried to pull free of the wooden cuff as Kell forced himself to pocket the stone. “You’ve ruined the wall. How am I supposed to pay for this? How am I supposed to explain this?”
Kell went to the drawer. There he found most of the contents of his pockets—thankfully she’d only raided the black coat he’d been wearing—and his knife.
“You can’t leave me here like this,” she muttered.
Kell refilled his pockets and ran a thumb over the familiar letters on his blade before returning it to the holster against his forearm. And then he heard the sound of metal sliding free of leather behind him as Lila fetched another dagger from a sheath at her back.
“I wouldn’t throw that if I were you,” he said, crossing to the window.
“Why’s that?” she growled.
“Because,” he said, sliding up the glass. “You’re going to need it to saw yourself free.”
And with that Kell stepped up onto the sill, and through.
It was a longer drop than he had hoped for, but he landed in a crouch, the air in the alley rushing up to ease his fall. The window had seemed the safest route, since Kell wasn’t actually sure where in Grey London he was, or even what kind of house he’d been kept in. From the street, he realized it was not a house at all, but a tavern, and when he rounded the corner, he saw the sign swaying in the evening air. It swung from shadow into lamplight and then back to shadow, but Kell knew at a glimpse what it said.
THE STONE’S THROW.
He shouldn’t have been surprised to see it—all roads seemed to lead here—but it still threw him. What are the odds? he thought, even though he knew that the thing about magic was that it bent the odds. But still.
Kell had a strange feeling about the girl, but he pushed it aside.
She didn’t matter. He had the stone.
Now he just had to figure out what to do about it.