Page 93 of Demon's Bluff
“Okay.” My eyes went to the unlit candle as I thought out loud. “The original curse is illicit not simply because it’s taking someone else’s aura and leaving them vulnerable but because it requires a hard linkage by blood, bone, hair, and three passions indicated by the first three auratic shells of the, ah, donor. Earth, stone, and water are handled by the hair, bone, and blood, and the last three aspects of fire, air, and ether are more spiritual. A six-themed curse or spell is complicated but necessary when dealing with stealing someone’s aura.”
Dr. Ophees’s lips parted in surprise. “You have taught before?”
“Not often, and not well, but I have a good instructor,” I said. “He rarely tells me everything unless I chatter my way through a lesson, so it’s kind of habit.” I hesitated, thinking of Al. He was out to abduct me at the moment, and I missed him. “We don’t need the precision of a six-themed curse, since the donor and recipient linkages are more or less voluntary here and can be worked right into the spell.” I lit the candle with a thought and set it aside. “A standard pentagram using the cave as a connection point will be enough.”
“You’ve never done this.”
I glanced up at Dr. Ophees, deciding to ignore that. “The parent curse utilizes a phrase to invoke aura movement,” I said. “I will keep that intact, seeing as the phraseology dictates where the aura goes. Once the link is made between the two pentagrams, the aura shift could go either way. A morally corrupt curse can be made into one that is less so if it leans to helping another voluntarily.” I turned to Elyse. “Good?”
Elyse shifted her chair back and forth, appearing bored. “Good.”
Dr. Ophees gave Elyse a sidelong look as if wondering why I cared what she thought. “There is no voluntary here,” Dr. Ophees said. “It’s a sack of blood and a jar.”
I bobbed my head, intent on cleaning both scrying mirrors of free ions. “I’m simply pointing out that in the original curse, apart from the less savory ingredients, intent plays a role in determining if it’s illicit or not.” Again I turned to Elyse. “Right?”
“Pretty much.” Elyse crossed one leg over the other, foot bobbing. “It’s still going to create smut, especially if you need hair, bone, and nail samples from the original blood donors to link the donation pentagram to the transfer pentagram.”
I set the mirrors down and arranged them just so. “I’m going to pare that part down. Connect them another way.”
“My God,” Dr. Ophees whispered. “You’re making this up as you go along.”
My brow furrowed as I met her horrified gaze. “If it doesn’t work, all you lose is your two-hour lunch break. I’ll buy you a bowl of Skyline chili you can take back to your desk.”
“You gave me the impression you had a working spell!” she exclaimed. “How much smut is this going to leave on my aura?”
“None,” I snapped. “I’ll take the smut, but ten percent of every aura you gather will go into the demon collective formyuse. Or is your ego going to get in the way of me giving you a shovel to dig yourself out of the basement?”
“No smut makes it very legal,” Elyse said when Dr. Ophees hesitated, the thought to walk out almost visible on her.
“Yeah, remember you said that,” I muttered. The candle had warmed enough that there was melted wax, and I began to spill it into an even pentagram on the first mirror.
“Ten percent goes to you?” Dr. Ophees’s attention flicked to Kisten and back again.
A drop of wax threatened to drip onto my first finished pentagram, and I caught it, feeling the hot liquid burn for a telling second. “Consider it a royalty. You want me to stop?”
“No.” Her gaze went to Kisten, and then she gestured. “Go on.”
Yeah, I’d give ten percent to get out of that basement, too,I thought dryly as I scribed the second pentagram, finishing it with an ease and perfection that I would have envied two years ago. I blew the candle out, watching the smoke curl as I wondered if making a permanent connection between the two mirrors instead of the pentagrams might streamline theprocess. The mirrors couldn’t be used for anything else, but the link would be ironclad. That, though, was for another day, and I turned to Dr. Ophees. “Is there a way to take a sample from a blood bag for testing? I need a drop in the jar.”
“To link it to the pentagram,” she said, and I bobbed my head. “Sure. There’s a port. You can decant what you want with a syringe.” She hesitated. “You didn’t ask me to bring one.”
“I have one.”Thank you, Ivy,I thought as I shuffled in my bag, glad that she had put it in there so I could fill my splat balls. The rasp of the protective paper seemed loud, and Dr. Ophees checked her phone as I settled the bag of blood in the cave of the first pentagram and fiddled with it to figure out how the port worked.Easy-peasy.Quick from practice filling splat balls, I pulled a cc out, then unfocused my attention to see if the aura was still present.
A haze of brown and green swirled like stardust against the darker blood. It was fresh, perhaps only a few hours out of a body. “If you don’t want to use the syringe, a yew stylus will work,” I said, mostly to pull Dr. Ophees’s attention from her phone.
I set the waiting jar in the cave of the second pentagram with a loud thump. Breath held, I decanted a drop halfway between the wall of the jar and the middle.“Juncta in uno,”I whispered, using the words to place-set the blood and join the jar to the pentagram.Yeah, joining the two mirrors would make this faster.
“What’s that?” Dr. Ophees scooted forward, probably thinking I was trying to hide something from her.
“Joined in one,” I said, translating the Latin. “Make a spiral of six dots for the aura to follow.”
She nodded, expression empty. Six dots linked it to the original curse, but I thought it important, and I set the last five with the same word. Each utterance in my mind brought a stronger connection to the ley lines, and I ran a hand over my hair when I was done, feeling it spark from mystics.
“Kind of loose, isn’t it?” Elyse asked, and I blinked to bring my thoughtsback from the Goddess. Invoking her presence seemed like overkill. The insane deity and her mystics didn’t recognize me anymore, but why take chances?
“It’s fine.” I didn’t like spiral magic, but auras did.
Dr. Ophees inched even closer. “Sympathetic magic is forgiving as long as your mind is not.”