D. Jackson - Dead Man's reach

Mariz blinked once, his brow creasing.

“Mariz?” Sephira said. Ethan sensed that she was seconds away from ordering Nap to pull the trigger.

“There are other ways for him to conjure. But the blood on his arm would have been easiest.”

Sephira appeared unconvinced. “Unless he wanted to hide what he was doing, isn’t that right?”

Mariz shook his head. “Even then I would see his guide, and feel his spell.”

“But you say that you did-you saw the ghost and felt a conjuring. That’s what you said.”

“I thought his guide had appeared. It was there, and then it was gone. I might have imagined it.”

Sephira frowned. Since the previous summer, when Ethan and Mariz had worked together to defeat a conjurer named Nate Ramsey, she had been distrustful of their friendship. Mariz’s uncertainty was only making matters worse.

“Why would I make Gordon beat the lad?” Ethan asked her. “I’m the sentimental one, remember? That’s what you always say. I was prepared to plead for Will’s life. It’s you who usually argues on behalf of vengeance for the client.”

She didn’t answer, but instead turned to Mariz once more. “How long will he sleep?” she asked, dipping her chin toward Gordon.

“Not long. But if we wake him, I can offer no assurance that he will not resume his attack.”

“I want him to tell us what happened.”

“He can,” Ethan said. “And we don’t have to wake him.” He and Mariz shared a look. “A revela potestatem spell would show the color of the conjuring that hit him.”

“It will show my sleep spell,” Mariz said.

“Aye, but if you word it correctly it will also show the previous conjuring.”

“What are you two talking about?” Sephira asked, the words clipped.

“You’ve seen the spell before; more than once. We can use a conjuring to show what spells have been used against him. You’ll see that I had nothing to do with what happened.”

She made a sharp, impatient gesture that might or might not have been meant to indicate her acquiescence. Ethan didn’t ask her to clarify.

“ Omnias magias ,” he said to Mariz. “All magicks. That’s the wording.”

“Yes, I know it,” Mariz said, and cut his arm. Blood welled; he put some on his fingertip and dabbed it across Gordon’s forehead and down the bridge of his nose to the base of his neck. When he had finished doing this, he spoke the incantation. “ Revela omnias magias ex cruore evocatas. ” Reveal all magicks, conjured from blood.

The spell rumbled in the walls and floor. Mariz’s spectral guide, a young man in Renaissance clothing who resembled the conjurer and glowed with a warm beige hue, appeared beside him. The radiance of a conjuring appeared on Gordon’s body, but in only one color: Mariz’s beige.

“What did that mean?” Sephira asked, sounding cross. Ethan knew that she neither understood nor trusted spells and spellmaking. And she hated being at a disadvantage when Ethan was anywhere near her.

“There was nothing,” Mariz said. “No color at all aside from mine. Nothing from Kaille, nothing from another conjurer.” He looked up at Ethan, the lenses of his spectacles flashing again. “Perhaps there was no spell after all.”

Sephira’s scowl had grown more severe. “So, now you’re not even sure that a spell was cast.”

“I felt something,” Ethan told her. He turned back to Mariz. “We both did. And both of us thought we saw something, as well-a light of some sort. It could have been the spectral guide of some other conjurer.”

“Or it could have been nothing,” Mariz said. “Lightning from outside, or the gleam of some distant conjuring.”

“Maybe. Has Gordon ever done anything like that before?” Ethan asked Sephira. “Has he ever taken it upon himself to beat someone without a word from you? For that matter, have you ever known him to ignore a direct order, as he did when you told him to stop?”

“No,” she said, and while she had sounded unsure of herself when speaking of spells, there was no hesitation in this response. “He may not be the smartest of my men, but he does as he’s told.”

“I thought as much.” Ethan looked down at Gordon, and then at Will, who had yet to regain consciousness. There had been something odd and deeply chilling about Gordon’s behavior. His attack on the pup had been savage, and yet devoid of provocation. And without any evidence to indicate that a spell had been cast, it was hard to imagine what could have caused him to lose control so suddenly.

“Perhaps Pryor said something we did not hear,” Mariz said, echoing Ethan’s thoughts. “Or maybe he made some rude gesture toward the senhora that we did not see. Gordon is very protective of her.”

Ethan frowned. “Yes, maybe,” he said, unable to keep a note of doubt from his voice.

Sephira said nothing, but she regarded Ethan, Mariz, and Gordon in turn, seeming in that moment to trust none of them.

Like Mariz, Ethan also feared that if they woke Gordon in the presence of Will Pryor, the brute might attempt to renew his assault. And though the room belonged to Will, it seemed easiest to move him rather than risk stirring Gordon. Not to mention the fact that with the possible exception of Afton, there was no one there who could lift Sephira’s man.

Ethan and Mariz draped the lad’s arms around their shoulders and bore him down the stairway to the icy street. There they both cast healing spells to repair some of the damage Gordon had done in his unexplained rage. Ethan mended Will’s broken ribs, while Mariz tended to the pup’s jaw and nose, both of which were also broken.

“How confident were you that you caught sight of my spectral guide?” Ethan asked as they conjured.

Mariz glanced his way. “I cannot say. When I saw it, I was quite certain. But in … What is your word? In retrospect, I am less sure. It lasted not even a second-the blink of an eye. Nothing more. I am sorry. I should not have accused you.”

Ethan shook his head. “That’s not why I was asking. As I said, I spotted something, too, and I’m not at all convinced that it came from the window.”

“Did you see a figure? A color?”

“No. I saw a flicker of light. That’s all.”

“Do you still believe it was a spell that made Gordon do this?”

Ethan didn’t know how to answer. Sephira’s man had behaved as would one under the influence of a control spell. But control spells were among the most powerful of conjurings, and Ethan couldn’t imagine how a conjurer might conceal one from an omnias magias spell.

The door to Will’s room opened and closed, and boots scraped on the landing outside the room and then on the snow-dusted stairway. Seconds later, Sephira joined them on the street, her black cloak draped over her shoulders.

“He’s awake,” she said.

What little light reached that corner of the street came from Will’s window, above and behind Sephira. It made a halo of her shining curls and left her face in shadow.

“And?” Ethan asked.

She shrugged. “And he seems perfectly normal, or at least as normal as Gordon gets. He remembers pummeling the noddy, but he can’t recall what set him off, nor can he explain why he wouldn’t stop. He keeps apologizing to me for ignoring my order to stop, but when I ask him why he did it, he merely shakes his head and tells me again that he’s sorry.”

Ethan wasn’t sure what to make of this, and to make matters worse, he wasn’t entirely certain whether he could trust what she told him. She had no reason to lie about the episode, but his mistrust of her ran deep, and old habits were not so easily broken.

“Do you think that if he saw Will, he would try again to attack him?”