After our talk in my bedroom a few weeks back, after Gunn realized the secrets I was keeping, the deal between us has evolved. For my extra efforts and for the secrets of Mama’s magic, Gunn is making weekly payments on our Parsonage cabin, like he promised. But now Gunn’s given me another carrot, since he’s come to think that Mama’s caging spell could be a way to defy the laws of magic, a key to doing the impossible: creating a lasting sorcerer’s shine, one that doesn’t revert to water after a day. “All I have to do” is figure out a way around the spell’s limitations—limitations, I might add, that are the purpose of the spell itself—and Gunn has promised me 10 percent of whatever the Shaws manage to score for the product.
Of course I feel guilty, uncomfortable, hell, even traitorous, over what I’m trying to pull off behind this door. A powerful magic like Mama’s was never meant to get into the hands of a man like Gunn, which is why she swore me to secrecy in the first place. Blood-magic is meant to be a last-resort magic, a sacrifice of yourself for something extraordinary . . . not a potential way to work around magic’s limits so that a mind-bending drug can turn this country upside down. ’Cause if sorcerer’s shine becomes storable, like Gunn hopes? The law wouldn’t be able to control it. It would no longer be rare, or confined to shining rooms—it could be shipped into the hands of every Tom, Dick, and Harry across America. And I saw shine’s choke hold firsthand, how the more Uncle Jed downed his own shine, the more the real world lost its color. How, eventually, it was only thing that mattered to him. I’m seeing it a bit with Tommy, Stock, and Rose, even Billy—they’re more restless, less satisfied until that time of the night when they can lose themselves to shine on the show space floor. Families would be destroyed. Jobs would be lost. Hell, crime might shoot through the roof.
And yet.
I also think about what Gunn’s success could mean, for me, for what’s left of my own family. How floored Ben would be if I bought him his own Six Coupe, how Ruby would flip over an actual doll. I picture us, playing on a carpeted floor, with bright light streaming through curtained windows, and Ben laughing behind us, smoking a nice cigar. They’d never go hungry, never want for anything again.
I twist myself around completely each day about it, each time I’m sitting in this chair. But the cold, hard truth, the final say in the matter?
Even if I wanted to back out, it’s too late. I signed my name in blood under Gunn’s. And Gunn’s not the kind of man who lets you walk away from that.
“This caging spell is from a set of spells my mama’s female ancestors fashioned,” I answer slowly. “They’ve kept their blood-magic secret for generations, as it’s a dark and powerful gift.” A gift never meant for a man like you.
I keep my eyes trained on the desk, force myself to keep going, to share what I need to survive. There is no choice here. “The sorcerer focuses on what she wants to achieve, without regret or hesitation—with a stalwart heart—and sacrifices something of her own to achieve it.”
“You mean she offers her blood.” Gunn scratches notes into his notebook.
I nod. “Mama had a bunch of different blood-spells. Ones that used blood to track where we went. Ones that protected us from harm.” My heart stutters a beat as I picture Mama in our washroom again, painting my lips and eyelids with her blood, keeping me safe from the leering eyes of Jed, and I swallow before my voice can catch. “The one I just showed you, the caging spell, is traditionally meant to lock away an evil, by putting something symbolic in a vessel, like in a bottle or a jar. Then you lock and seal the vessel with your blood, say your intention, and the magic guards the stated evil and keeps you safe.”
But Gunn doesn’t care about the spell’s traditions. Just how he can exploit it now. “So this caging spell is teachable?”
“Yes. My mama taught me.”
He leans over, grabs my sealed bottle of shine to inspect it.
“The shine is now trapped by the caging spell.” I add. “It’s no longer governed by the usual limitations of pure magic. It will stay preserved in there forever, or until I release it.”
“Until you release it.” Gunn meets my eyes. “Which means no one else will be able to open it.” And of course, this is the dead end we’ve reached day in, day out. There’s no denying that Gunn is onto something: Mama’s caging spell does manage to defy the shelf life of shine. It’s a way to cage an evil in a bottle forever, which means it can prevent shine’s magic high from ever fading. But like I said, what Gunn wants—the linchpin that could bring a shippable shine to pass—it’s not possible. ’Cause once I seal the shine bottle with my blood, no one else can open it.
Not that Gunn accepts this.
He rests his forehead in his hands, leans his elbows on his desk. “We need to find a work-around, you understand? What I’ve been planning, everything I’ve been working toward, is finally coming together—but there’s no room for error, no time to slow down.” He stares at me. “This is the last piece. But this piece has to fall into place for the entire picture to come together.”
This is all I ever get from Gunn. Pieces. Pieces to some plan I barely know anything about. Pieces that he gives me sparingly, just enough to remind me that more than I realize is at stake, but not enough that I’ll ever be able to use the pieces to betray him.
“You need to figure this out soon, Joan.”
Make the impossible possible.