Page 45

“But, why when I transported here the first day to cursebreak the library did I transport to the front gate?”

Rolling his eyes, Frederick let out a longsuffering sigh. “For someone who is supposed to be so intelligent, I can’t believe I’m having to spell this out for you. So much of magic is about intent, remember? Did you feel welcome and wanted when you came here that day? It wasn’t that you didn’t have the magical permission to be here, it was your own magic holding you back.”

Even though Pearl knew in her heart that he was right, she transported away, stopping only long enough to allow Mercutio to jump into her arms, without dignifying his rudeness with a response. She was turning her office upside down with Mercutio attempting to help by jumping into boxes and rustling through paper as it was thrown to the ground when she heard loud banging on her front door. Waving it open from her office with a small burst of magic, she continued her search.

“What are you looking for?”

Pearl didn’t even spare Frederick a glance. “Why are you here?”

Frederick snarled his response. “Because my friend is dying, and you’re going to have my help whether you want it or not.”

“Ah, ha!” Pearl sat up in triumph holding the bottle of angry, malevolent magic she had pulled from the book when she had gone with Corvus to Paris. She could kick herself for not looking into it sooner, but she hadn’t a clue at the time that it would be a matter of life and death. “Frederick, how much do you know about familiars?”

Shrugging, he attempted to grab the bottle, but Pearl pulled it out of his reach before he could grab it. “You’re one of the only people I’ve ever known who has one.”

As though called, Mercutio popped out of one of her boxes in the corner, and yipped when he saw the bottle. He went to his mistress and put his paws on her leg. She squatted down and allowed him to climb on her shoulders.

“Familiars serve many purposes. Companionship, channeling magic, etc, but one of their most important roles in the past was protection. We don’t think about it much since it’s been over 200 years since the last magical war that was any more than a spat between families, but familiars are very in-tune to their masters' needs and care.” She thought of all the times Mercutio had pushed her towards Corvus, and how much energy she had put into ignoring the import of that. “When a familiar senses their master is close to death, they can give their life force to save them. What you see in this bottle is the corrupted life force of a familiar. It is old and powerful magic, and the author of the book must have captured it when a familiar gave his or her life to save a master, wove it into the essence of the book, and used it as the foundation for the counter curses. It’s marvelously clever, truly. But someone didn’t want the curses to be broken, so they put a weed of dark magic in it that has parasitically entwined with the benevolent magic. We’re going to have to split them apart if we want the counter curse to have any hope of working.” Quickly, she grabbed Frederick’s hand and transported back to the manor.

Pearl spent so much time trying to take magic out of books, it was more difficult than she cared to admit figuring out how to put magic back into a book. She’d done some basic work like this in graduate school, but it had been a while, and it had never been with magic this complex. Frederick had started pacing about five minutes ago, and she snapped at him to stop distracting her.

“Well, give me something to do before I go mad.”

“There is a withering curse woven into the fabric of the familiar’s magic. It’s one of the most clever pieces of magic I’ve seen. The familiar’s magic did an excellent job hiding the malevolence of the curse while it was in the book, and now even when they are fully exposed, it is incredibly difficult to see where one ends and the other begins. It wouldn’t be too terribly difficult to destroy both, but I have to separate them, and then I have to get the life force back into the book. I’ve…I’ve never done anything quite like this before, and the stakes are incredibly high if I get it wrong, so forgive me if I’m not terribly worried about soothing your feelings.”

Frederick said nothing in response, just paced by her again. As he walked by, she noticed the angry, red magic pulled towards him, and slightly eased its hold on the soft, gray magic of the familiar.

“Frederick, I have something for you to do.”

He rushed over, and the magic pulled towards him even more and confirmed Pearl’s theory. “This magic is designed to target the old families. Of course whoever tainted the magic intended for the countercurses to never be used. As you are part of one of the most prominent old families, it will want to target you rather desperately. In the book, it was intentionally much subtler so it could work its way through your system without you even knowing, but out in the open, it doesn’t have the smothering effect from the book.”

Another thought struck her. She plucked Mercutio from her shoulders and placed him on the opposite side of the vial. Sure enough, the gray magic pulled towards Mercutio. She could almost see the dividing line between them now. Mercutio yipped once again, as though pleased with this development. “The trouble is, as annoying as you can be, I don’t want you to wither from the inside out, and if this spell gets a hold of you, I don’t have the healing abilities to stop it. My focus is going to be on preserving the familiar’s magic, and with my attention split, it will be difficult for me to keep it from getting to you.”

Looking up at Frederick’s face with concern, he seemed deeply unbothered by what she’d just shared with him. “You do remember I was in cursebreaking class with you and Corvus, right?”

“I mean, just because you were in a class ten years ago doesn’t mean you know how to handle a spell like this.”

Frederick’s eyes were fierce and intense when he looked at her. “Ten years ago I had three older brothers. You know how inheritance is passed down in families like ours. Plus my father hates me. So yeah, I remember how to do it. Did you really believe that line that I became a magical doctor solely to spite my father? Although, I suppose I should be flattered by the fact that you thought I could really get an advanced degree without really trying. Education was my only escape then even if I didn’t want anyone to know how desperately important it was to me. When people know what you want, they can use it against you.”

Opening her mouth to argue, Pearl clamped it shut again. Never once before today in the entire time she had known Frederick had she ever had more than a glimpse beneath his flippant exterior. She hadn’t any idea he’d lost three siblings, nor that he ever paid enough attention in any class to retain the material, but Corvus didn’t have time for her to argue, and she simply nodded. “I’m sorry about your brothers.”

“Don’t be. They made my life miserable. Corvus is the only real brother I’ve ever had.”

Pearl studied the book intently, and ran several diagnostics to see how the magic was meant to infuse the book. When she felt confident, she directed Frederick to one side of the room, and Mercutio and the book to the other. She glanced towards Cecilia, but her eyes were trained on her son as though no one else was in the room.

As Pearl turned towards Frederick, he nodded to show he was ready. For the first time she realized she’d never seen his focusing stone. He must have seen her inquisitive sweep of his body because he tapped his ears. They were both pierced with diamonds, and she’d never once considered they were his focusing stones. She’d never seen dual focusing stones, but then again, most people hadn’t seen sea glass as a focus, so who was she to judge? Frederick smiled briefly, “My father hit the roof the first time he saw them, and he twitches every time I use them.”

Leave it to Frederick to wrangle a smile from her in such a tense moment. Pearl flared her magic into a bright green lasso in preparation and opened the stopper.

The room dissolved into pandemonium. The malevolent red magic sped towards Frederick, and double streams of white light surged from him, but she couldn’t give it her attention as the gray magic shot at Mercutio. Lassoing it like a runaway horse, she turned her magical line into thread, and using it to weave the magic back into the book. Mercutio placed his paw on the book, and the unknown familiar’s life force stopped trying to fight her, sinking placidly into the book as though soothed by a friend. She snipped off the last sliver of it right before it sank into the book and placed it into her bottle. Panting, she turned to Frederick, who gave her a thumbs up as though he hadn’t just taken care of a very difficult spell. Pearl laughed outright. They just might have a shot at this.

Pulling the book into her lap, it glowed with a healthy magical sheen. Before she could even touch it, the book opened as though by a gentle breeze, and the pages fluttered before settling on the countercurse she needed. Pearl read it aloud so that everyone could hear, and as the words spilled from her mouth, the room began to hum with magic.

Blood of friend, blood of family, blood of the one you love.

Ashes of an ancestor ground with deadly foxglove.

Say the name of the one who gave this curse its wicked start.