“Be quiet.”
The sharpness of his tone was probably uncalled for, but right then, he didn’t have the bandwidth for courtesy. He extended what remained of his perceptual range toward the ward boundary and identified the signature, one he recognized from years of living in Gibson territory without their explicit permission. There were two signatures, actually, a paired team, which he supposed was the Gibsons’ form of playing it safe. They’d stopped at the property’s eastern edge, where the yard met the neighbor’s fence, and they were doing exactly what he would have done in their position, which was testing the wards’ density, looking for degradation, trying to determine whether the home’s occupant was present and, if so, how powerful they were.
His return through the void would have left some trace behind. The dimensional static he’d been shedding for days would have registered on at least their prima’s radar and possibly that of other witches and warlocks in the clan, depending on their level of sensitivity. The Gibsons, whatever their other failings, were competent enough, and they would have felt his arrival. The only reason it had taken them five days to investigate was probably that the static itself had been so disorienting, so unusual, that pinpointing the source had required time.
Time that had just run out.
“The Gibsons,” he said. “There are two scouts at the perimeter. Don’t move.”
He closed his eyes and focused on the study’s interior wards, which were the strongest in the house, layered over a span of years to mask the energy of whatever — or whoever — was inside. They would hold. His own magic, already weakened, would read as faint and ambiguous through those layers, and the scouts would have difficulty distinguishing it from the background noise of the collection contained within these walls. But there was a variable he hadn’t accounted for, and it was currently standing behind his chair with her hands on his temples.
Roslyn’s healing magic was clean. He’d noted this from the beginning, when the compass first pulled her in. It was a bright, uncluttered kind of energy, lacking the muddiness of power amplified through artificial means, such as the bronze and garnet amulet currently in the McAllisters’ keeping. That clarity, which made her such an effective healer, was also a problem, because it cut through the dimensional static with a distinctiveness that no amount of warding could entirely mask. Every time she healed him, she was broadcasting a signal that said, in effect, a powerful healing witch is working here, and anyone with the sensitivity to detect magical presences would eventually notice.
The Gibsons were at the perimeter right now. If Roslyn continued the session, her magic would flare through the static, and the scouts would have confirmation that the house was not only occupied but contained at least two users of magic, one of them a healer of considerable strength.
“You need to stop,” he said.
Her hands didn’t move. “Stop what?”
“The healing. Now. Pull your magic out of my system, and stop using your gift until I tell you otherwise.”
A pause. He could feel the way she assessed his tone, the clinical evaluation she ran on every comment he made to determine whether it represented a genuine medical concern or was merely part of his ongoing campaign to reclaim authority over his own treatment. She was, he’d learned, quite skilled at distinguishing between the two.
“No,” she said.
“Ms. Campbell — ”
“We’re past the point where interrupting your treatment is safe.” Her voice was calm, almost quiet, which meant she was irritated. He’d learned over the past five days that Roslyn’s anger was inversely proportional to her volume. “If I withdraw my magic now while it’s actively engaged with the scarring around your heart, the tissue will contract. You’ll lose three days of progress at minimum, and the setback will make future sessions more painful, not less.”
He scowled. “The alternative is that the Gibson scouts will detect your magic and return with more witches and warlocks. The Gibsons do not negotiate, Ms. Campbell. They defend their territory, and their preferred method of defense is overwhelming force.”
This argument didn’t seem to have any real impact. “Then we’ll deal with that if it happens,” she said calmly.
He turned in the chair to look at her, which dislodged her hands from his temples and cost him a spike of pain behind his eyes as her magic disengaged from its surface contact points. She stood behind the chair, her expression exactly as composed as he’d expected, and regarded him steadily.
“This is not a negotiation,” he said. “I’m telling you — ”
“You’re telling me to damage my patient because you’re frightened.” She still hadn’t raised her voice, mostly because she didn’t need to. “I understand your concern, and I understand the risk. But I’m not going to undo days of work because a pair of scouts is poking at your fence. If you have another way to mask the signal, use it. If you don’t, then accept the risk, because the alternative is much worse.”
He knew she was right. That knowledge irritated him, mostly because he wasn’t accustomed to being outmaneuvered in his own study.
He could have told her the truth, which was that the Gibson scouts were the least of his concerns about her healing sessions. The real problem wasn’t tactical at all, but personal; every morning and evening, when she placed her hands on him and her magic moved through his damaged system with its warm, thorough attention, something in him came more undone. Although he didn’t know if he could have named it when asked, he knew it was something that had been held in place by the same rigid control that kept his suits buttoned and his wards maintained, and that the whatever-it-was had developed cracks he couldn’t repair. The force acting on it wasn’t hostile but gentle…and he had no defenses against gentleness.
And he could have also told her that the prospect of her stopping — of the sessions ending, of the warm pressure of her magic withdrawing from his system and leaving him alone again in the cold fortress of his own power — frightened him more than the Gibsons, more than the Van Horns, even more than the slow degradation of his wards.
Of course, he told her none of this.
“Very well,” he said instead, and rose from the chair.
Moving hurt. The injured hip had improved remarkably over the past few days, but his body was still operating at a fraction of its normal capacity, and the act of standing bothered him more than he cared to admit. Trying not to wince, he moved across the study to the bookshelf on the east wall, where, behind a row of leather-bound volumes on the history of cartography, a small drawer was concealed in the woodwork. He opened it with a touch and a whisper of magic — the lock was keyed to his signature, a precaution he had taken with all of his personal storage — and removed a stone.
It wasn’t much to look at, only a piece of gray granite roughly the size and shape of an egg, polished smooth by what might have been a river current or might have been something considerably more deliberate. Its magic was complex and layered, the work of a craftsman who‘d understood that the best cloaking devices were the ones that didn’t draw attention to themselves. When activated, it would suppress magical signatures within a roughly twenty-foot radius, rendering anyone inside that field effectively invisible to external sensing.
He’d used it before, so he knew it was reliable. It was also limited. A twenty-foot radius was enough to shield the study but not the whole house, and it required a trickle of his own magic to sustain. Given the current state of his energy, maintaining it for more than a few hours would be an exercise in diminishing returns.
But it would buy them some time.
He activated the stone with a pulse of power that cost him more than it should have, placed it on the desk, and felt the cloaking field settle over the study like a blanket of static. Within it, his magical energy and Roslyn’s were reduced to whispers, indistinguishable from the ambient noise of the collection.
