The rings felt heavy in my palm. "I think I can fix the line, but I need a spotter to pull me out if I get lost. And since the rings make a connection between two magic users . . ."
"An all-fire close one, I'd think," he muttered, his manner closed as he wiped his fingerprints off the oven door with the towel drying on a cabinet knob.
"Can you do it?"
His eyes flicked up to mine. "I'd rather kill him."
My sigh was heavy, and I waited. I needed his help, and I knew he wouldn't let me leave without it. I hadn't been able to love him, but he had loved me.
Head down, he gestured, and I jumped when a circle tinged with his green aura rose up around us. It was a great deal stronger than I remembered-his time with Newt had done him good. Perhaps I'd misjudged him.
"Does she often make her kitchen look like mine?" I asked as I came closer, the corner of the center counter between us.
"Only when you're on her mind. I'm powerfully concerned for you, Rachel."
I wasn't embarrassed by asking for his help, but it was hard knowing that I meant more to him than he to me. "Thank you," I whispered as I put the rings on the counter.
"The trick is to not flood them," he said, ignoring my guilty look. "You can't use a ley line. That would break them for sure. Even your aura is too much when it's all together, but if you splinter it . . ." He picked up the rings, positioning the smaller inside the larger. "Fill them with one resonance before allowing the rest in, you can make a pie of it."
He set the rings in my palm, cupping his hands about it. A shiver went through me, and he smiled. "It's much like a rainbow is the sum of visible light. You first put in the red, then shift it to orange, then yellow, then green, and so on until you finally get all the colors singing together and they melt into a white light and the charm invokes."
He was standing close; his warmth and the scent of coal dust and shoe polish were bringing back memories, good but uncomfortable. "Show me?" I asked, and we both looked at the rings in my hand, his cupping mine.
"Push your aura off your hand," he said, and my head snapped up. "That's why the circle," he soothed. "Go on, do it."
My face puckered up, but I imagined my aura going thin at my fingertips, peeling back from my fingers, soaking into my skin and vanishing to leave a huge gaping hole in my first line of defense. Cold pinpricks stabbed my hand. My aura wanted to return, but I held it off.
"Good." It had been a hopeful grunt of approval, and I caught back my adrenaline before I lost control. Before me, Pierce shifted his shoulders, clearly uncomfortable as well as he removed his own aura. The rings felt unnaturally heavy in my palm, and Pierce's loose grip around my hand, intimate.
"Now, I'm of a mind that your gargoyle, Bis, has been leading you in the practice of shifting your aura," he said, and I nodded, nervous. "Then simply tune the entirety of it to the clearest red you can imagine."
I met his eyes, seeing an unknown emotion. I couldn't see my aura, but he could, and flustered, I shifted it, knowing I had it right when he nodded. "Just so," he said. "Let a thin ribbon of it spill down into your hand. Mind you keep it a trace!" he exclaimed, and I backed off. It was hardly a whisper, but as it touched the rings nestled in my palm, I swear I heard them chime, like the ringing of a glass when you run your finger along the top. I could feel my aura like warm silk, tracing down the soft part of my arm and making a warm pool in my palm.
"You have a knack," he prompted, clearly pleased. "But even so, there's too much. It is an art, and you have to plan ahead such that it just fills the memory and no more."
I licked my lips, eyeing the rings and my aura echoing from them. "How's this?" I asked as I backed off until there was almost no "sound" at all.
"Perfect. But be of a mind that it's harder to remove it once given. Err on the side of hunger."
Smiling, I looked up. There was a happy contentment in his eyes. My smile faded. "Pierce, I can't do this."
"You're halfway there," he cajoled, and I shook my head, pulling my hand from his.
"No, I mean you! You're standing there, looking at me as if we just came out of that hole in the ground in Trent's woods. I can't do this! I can't ask you to help me when you think there might be a chance that someday . . ."
My words cut off. I was helpless to continue. Head shaking ruefully, he took my hand back in his own. "I know when I've been given the shrug," he said, tilting his head to keep me quiet when I rushed to explain. "You did well by me, and we both turned our attentions elsewhere. I'd be a cad to expect you to think of me as anything other than fondly. But a man can't help but remember. Now, hold the aura as it is and shift it to orange. What is needed of the red will remain within the charm. Easy now. If you can do this, then you can do the rest."
"Thank you," I breathed, hanging my head and closing my eyes because I couldn't bear to look at him anymore. Orange, I thought, shifting my aura as Bis and I had been practicing. This was easier than the melding of colors that we usually did, sitting at an outside cafe and trying to mimic the auras of people passing by, and Pierce's grunt of approval was like a wash of hope through me.
"Now to yellow," he prompted. "More than before since yellow is so thin to begin with."
I knew what he meant, and like hearing a partial chord of a song and knowing what came next, I layered another complexity over the rings, seeing it soak in as the excess orange melted away. The rings were starting to hum, taking on a note all their own.
"The blues and purples," he whispered, excitement in his voice. "You are a caution, Rachel. The demon you will be!"
I almost lost it, but caught myself, concentrating on the feel of his hands around mine as I added the last. Sweat trickled down, and I cracked open an eye at the funny tickle of feeling in my chi. My aura wanted to flood the rings with power, and I held it tight.
"My God . . ." Pierce breathed. "Easy, Rachel. Hint at a shadow of black. It should have invoked. It needs a harmony of something else, something dark. I've never charmed elven silver; it needs something else."
I was holding my breath, and I let it out as I turned my aura to an ultraviolet hue. It was as if smut snaked down my arm, but when it hit the rings, it pooled around them, refusing to join.
And then tiny cracks appeared in the cold, dead metal. Shit.
"Easy . . ." Pierce whispered as he stared at them. "Let it soak in."