“Good,” Nix approved quietly. “Good.”
Slowly, I lifted my gaze to the crate, trying to keep the magic together, contained, and began to pull the crate toward me. It bobbled, shook, lifted into the air with a lurch. Bounced against the tin ceiling, sending dust into the air.
“Focus,” Nix said. “Reel it smoothly.”
“If I could reel it smoothly, I wouldn’t need to practice reeling it smoothly,” I said through clenched teeth.
I guessed the angles, pulled it forward. It jerked three feet in the right direction, paused, shaking as it hovered in the air. I nodded at it, proud that it had mostly done what I’d asked it to do, and pulled again.
The crate zipped toward the mirror and, as I winced, paused right in front of the glass. The next bit would be trickier—back around the tree and straight toward home. I reached out a hand, imagined fingers grasping the string that connected it to me. I snapped it to the right, then pulled.
The crate zoomed past the Christmas tree, leaving the branches shaking, and whipped toward us like a wooden bullet.
“Shit,” Liam said, ducking as it whizzed over his head, only just missing the top of his dark crown of hair.
It flew toward me, and I flicked my fingers up, palm out, forcing it to a stop. It froze, shuddered, and dropped. About four feet from the spot I’d meant for it to.
I let the rest of the magic go, put my hands on my hips, and breathed through my nose, trying to get rid of the dizziness.
“That was not impressive,” Nix said.
“I got it here, didn’t I?”
Gavin came over, patted my back.
“And barely a concussion along the way.”
I glanced at Liam apologetically. “Sorry about that.”
“Job hazard,” he said.
“Technically, that’s not correct,” Gavin said. “You keep her from becoming a wraith, and you don’t have a job to do.”
And wasn’t that precisely the problem?
? ? ?
Nix made me immediately try casting again, “because magic isn’t always practiced under good conditions.”
And without good conditions, it took me twenty minutes to get a tiny dose of magic out of myself and into the box.
“You need to practice,” Nix said.
I sat back on my heels and wiped sweat from my brow. The heat had come back with a vengeance, and the second floor was even hotter than the first. I’d changed into loose cutoff jeans and a tank top, but that hardly helped. We’d opened the windows, but kept the curtains drawn just in case. Containment might not have been able to detect magic, but they’d certainly have been able to see it. Unfortunately, the curtains didn’t do much to help the already limp breeze outside.
“I’m not trying to avoid practicing,” I said. “It hasn’t exactly been a slow week. I haven’t had time.”
“She’s telling the truth there,” Liam said, glancing at me. “And she understands the consequences.”
“All right,” Nix said. “You have moved and cast. And now we bind.” She walked to the box, which sat on the floor.
“You’ve put magic into the box. But magic prefers to move. It prefers to live. You must bind the magic into the box, into the wood, or it will return to the world, only to be absorbed by you again.”
“Which would make all this work pointless.”
“Precisely,” she said.
“And how do I bind it?”
“You insist upon it.”
She stopped there, as if those four words completely explained the magical process she wanted me to try. Liam and Gavin watched with interest.
“I’m going to need more than ‘I ask it to.’”
“I didn’t say you asked it,” Nix said, walking around the box. “I said you insisted upon it.” She pounded a fist on the palm of her other hand. “You demand it.”
She reached out. “Give me your hand.”
I hesitated, then placed my hand in her palm. Her skin was cool, soft, and I smelled the green scent of new leaves as we made contact.
“Magic seeks a home. You only have to give it one.” She guided my hand to the box, pressed it there. “Feel what it wants to be, and send it home.”
I felt cool, lacquered wood . . . and I felt really, really silly about doing it under the stares of the Quinn brothers.
“You aren’t concentrating.”
“I feel like I’m in a fish tank right now. Lot of eyeballs, lot of pressure.”
“You want us to turn around?” Gavin asked with a grin. “We can do that.”
I glanced at Liam. “Can you please control your brother? He isn’t helping.”
He made a noise that didn’t sound especially agreeable. “I haven’t been able to control him before. I don’t see how I could start now.”
“And still, I get by just fine.”
“Yeah, we can all see that now, can’t we?”