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“Nope.”
“I, er—shit, let me think.” Amaru popped a bite of bread into his mouth and chewed, brows beetling into a straight line.
Vasily ate with a sinking feeling in his stomach. If Amaru couldn’t figure out what spell elements to use to replace the ones they didn’t have, would that mean he couldn’t work?
Luka swallowed coffee before offering, “If you tell her the power levels of those elements, couldn’t you and Evora figure out how to substitute?”
“Well, yes, in theory, but there’s a reason we use certain elements.” Amaru rubbed his forehead.
“Right,” Evora agreed, matching his frown. “Not all elements have the right impact or result that we want. Otherwise, we could just use the same ten elements all the time and be perfectly fine.”
“Now wouldn’t that be nice?” Amaru rolled his eyes. “What I wouldn’t give for that to be the case. But in this instance, I need something with a malignant edge, and sound based, to offset the design. It was supposed to be sound-activated to begin with, so the wrong sound should trigger the fail-safes and wake people up.”
“Ah.” Vasily could follow the logic, but he had no idea what to offer. This was absolutely not in his department. His job was to safeguard things and kill the annoying ones.
“Rushing wind of a hollow cave?” Luka suggested.
Amaru shook his head. “Not powerful enough.”
“If Amaru’s looking for mystical things, then they must be at least a three or four in power,” Evora explained. “What you suggested is natural, so it’s a two.”
“Cackle of a drunken gnome?”
“Two power, and also the wrong resonance for what I need.” Amaru’s leg started bouncing, his agitation clear. “Scream of a banshee has the same problem.”
“Dammit, that was my next suggestion.” Luka joined the other two in frowning.
Look at him. Them, really. Vasily didn’t have a prayer of offering anything intelligent in this conversation, but Luka kept up just fine. Geek that he was, he knew enough to even suggest things. He and Amaru were so perfect together. He wasn’t sure who was more pleased, himself or his dragon. They were so cute in that moment he wanted to hug the stuffing out of them. It took willpower to restrain his hands, and he still had to sit on them.
On the other hand, Luka’s reaction to Amaru was now confusing him. He had been so systematically avoiding them up until this morning. Now he seemed glued to Amaru’s side. Was this a matter of his dragon not being able to stay away from Amaru for too long? Seriously, this was making less sense by the second. Vasily felt a headache coming on just trying to figure out what was going through Luka’s head.
Luka was still deep in thought, plowing through a stack of eggs, but Amaru noticed Vasily was acting weird. His hand came over to touch Vasily’s wrist, gripping there in comfort. Which did actually make him feel better. It did not solve the problem of Luka though.
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure this out. I always do. Oooh, maybe we can go hunt down what I need? Luka, what do you think? These creatures that I mentioned, they haven’t gone extinct, right?”
“Uh, no, they’re still very active.” Luka brightened, eyes coming up to meet Vasily’s. “We’re the trackers in the clan, too. We know the area very well around Brazil. How about it, should we take him hunting?”
Could his heart take being around them like that for days on end without respite? Vasily didn’t know. The cuteness might well kill him at this rate. “Uh, sure.”
“Let’s not jump to that quite yet,” Evora cautioned. “Hunting down the elements you need will take days, and I’m not sure if that’s time we have right now. Let’s leave that for plan B and discuss this a bit more. We can go through what we have in storage and see if there’s anything else that works for you. If it doesn’t, that’s when we come back to this idea.”
“Fair. I’ll do that with you after breakfast.”
“Then we take you shopping.” Luka nudged Amaru playfully, bonking shoulders with him. “Because you can’t keep wearing my clothes.”
Amaru blinked big brown eyes at him, the very picture of sadness. “I can’t?”
For a second, Luka almost faltered. “Uh…” Then he rallied. “You can’t. You must have your own clothes. Besides, don’t you want tools?”
“Mmm.” Amaru gave a dreamy sigh. “Tools. I want one of those small boxes too—the cell phones you all have.”
“We’ll get you one,” Luka promised with a chuckle. He was entirely amused by Amaru. “We’ve got a full day of shopping ahead of us. Vasily, who’s got a vehicle we can borrow?”
“Uh, I think Dimitri does? I’ll go ask.”
“Grab Gregori,” Amaru suggested brightly. “I know he wanted to take me into town too.”
Vasily was not quite sure why Gregori was suddenly brought into this or why Luka looked strangely satisfied? Seriously, there were too many parts to this that made no sense.
