“Of course I am. I always am.” But Lord, that sounds defensive even to me.
“I know what Stock’s been teasing you about. You must know it too.” Grace’s eyes roam my face, like she’s trying to figure out another way inside my mind. “Stock’s been whispering it to all of us, saying that you’re sleeping your way to the top of our troupe, trying to angle yourself as the star.”
My face grows hot, flushed. But of course this isn’t news—Stock’s been making little comments every chance he gets since he caught Gunn a few times entering or leaving my room. Part of me almost wishes it were that simple. “And you believe him?”
“’Course not.” But she doesn’t sound convincing.
“You’ve just got to trust me, all right?” I say quickly, tugging my shirtsleeves down farther, past my hands. My shirt hides my fresh, recent blood-magic cuts, I’m sure of it, but the tug still comes fast as a reflex. I lower my voice. “I swear to you, it’s not like that. I know what I’m doing.”
“Just . . .” Grace pauses, sighs. “Be careful, Joan.” Then she leaves, heads toward the double doors to the outside world.
If she turns around, I think in a desperate, impulsive moment, maybe I’ll tell her, about all of it, despite Gunn’s warnings. I trust her, after all. I always have.
But Grace doesn’t look back.
*
I’m halfway through his office door when Gunn says, “Spellbind the door. You know the underbosses are coming by, and we’re far from ready to show them anything.”
Without a word, I do what he asks, cross the hallway to the men’s bathroom on the other side and spellbind it with a linked trick, “Out becomes in.” As I walk through Gunn’s door, I complete the link with, “In becomes out,” so that anyone opening Gunn’s office will actually walk into the bathroom. And then I settle on the chair on the near side of his desk.
For weeks our meetings have started the same way: I brew twelve ounces of sorcerer’s shine into a bottle he stores under his desk. Then I conjure Mama’s caging spell again in front of him, the blood-magic spell I used to trap Stock and me in that glass cage during our final test in the clearing, and the same one I’m pretty sure I managed to perform the night of Mama’s death, to imprison my magic touch.
Now I place my newly sorcered shine on his desk. Gunn caps the bottle and hands me his letter opener without a word. I roll up my right sleeve to my elbow, expose ten tight, clustered cuts right at the center of my forearm. I lean my forearm over the capped bottle, and then, before I can flinch, I draw the blade quick and light across my arm once more. As the cut blooms red, and blood runs hot and fast over the cap, I recite clear and strong, “With purpose and a stalwart heart, a sacrifice. Less of me, an offering to cage for eternity. My wish, to cage this shine forever, or until I release it.”
The glass bottle coated in red simmers, dances, and shudders on the desk before it sighs and stops—signaling that the caging spell is complete. Effective.
Gunn pulls out his notebook, the leather-bound one he keeps locked in his desk drawer. “Run me through it again, exactly how it works.”