Page 68 of Serpent and Shadow

“But you did, didn’t you?” Alaric asked.

When I glanced at Luc, he looked like he was barely suppressing annoyance.

I ignored it, turning to the others.

“Bones warned me how emotional the phasing is,” I explained. “He said that, even now, if he doesn’t very consciously aim himself, he’ll end up wherever he feels the strongest emotional pull… for good or bad reasons. That could be the one person or place where he most wants to be. Or it might be the thing he dreads most. His phasing ability can’t distinguish between intense positive feelings and intense negative ones. It simply sends him wherever those feelings are strongest.”

Thinking about that now, I fell silent. I didn’t bother to fill in the gaps for Luc or the others, but I had no doubt they understood me just fine.

There was no person or place I thought about more than Bones.

I dreamt about him every night.

I thought about him every day.

“Bones said it took him years to control it,” I went on, flushing a little. “So I expected that, frankly. I knew it would be unpredictable, and that it would be a long time before I could do it safely. But I also thought I’d be able to make better sense of where I landed.”

I opened my mouth, about to say more, then thought better of it, and closed it.

“Maybe it was the chimaeras,” Alaric offered quietly.

He perched on the edge of the couch on the other side of Luc, and peered around the red-haired mage to gaze at me, owl-like. His centaur slept on the rug by his feet, and Alaric gripped a mug of hot chocolate between both hands, as if the fire wasn’t blazing hotly behind Jolie and Nyx, and he desperately needed the extra warmth.

“I got through the chimaeras,” I said to him, puzzled. “Isn’t that the whole point of phasing? That it bypasses all of that?”

Alaric’s expression remained serious.

“Yes,” he said frankly. “In theory. Possibly. I’m guessing that’s true of any decently-sized chimaeric boundary, particularly anything meant to act as general protection around a large perimeter, like, say, the entirety of the Bones Estate. But what about chimaeras that aren’t simply boundary defense? What if they have some other purpose?”

Alaric cleared his throat, rearranging his fingers on the mug.

He glanced at the others, then back at me.

“It’s possible Malefic foresaw you trying something like this,” he went on, somewhat apologetically. “If Forsooth guessed you’d be sharing parts of your magic with Bones, it stands to reason Malefic would have come to the same conclusion.” He paused, giving me a pointed look. “Didn’t Bones tell you his father’s been positively obsessed with every aspect of his magic since he was a baby?”

My hands tightened on the leather couch.

We were skirting uncomfortably close to the caelum ignis conversation.

Alaric’s point made a frustrating amount of sense, though.

If Malefic couldn’t keep me off his property entirely, given the sheer size of the boundary the chimaeras covered, that didn’t necessarily mean he wouldn’t try to keep me out of certain areas that were significantly smaller.

“So you’re saying he might have put a chimaera around only the dungeon?” I asked. “Something specifically designed to lock me out?”

“Or prevent you from being inside,” Nyx interjected. “He could have built a chimaera that would do something to you if you appeared inside Bones’s cell. Maybe the part of you that can phase knew that, and just… avoided it?”

“Or got you as close as it could,” Luc muttered, glancing at Nyx.

“It could be targeting blood type,” Alaric added. “Or even specific Magical signatures. He wouldn’t need to do everyone, since most would be kept out the regular way.”

Everyone looked at Alaric again.

His theory made sense.

It also seemed to fit everything that happened.

Malefic would never risk that I might abscond with his favorite toy.