The whistling of the kettle startled him. He poured out two mugs and handed one to me. “You look tired.”
“Things have been a little crazy,” I said.
The essence level in the studio changed, a brief dip in intensity before stabilizing again. I sipped the tea, thinking the stone had reacted to the presence of two druids—to say nothing of a Dead dog.
“Are you going to take it now?” Shay asked.
“I can’t, remember? You’re the only person I know who can lift it.” Shay qualified as a virgin on a technicality as far as the stone went. He had never slept with a woman.
He used a fingernail to worry at a chip in his mug. “But you need to move it, right? You want me to take it somewhere.”
“I was thinking that old squat you had with Robyn down off Pittsburgh Street, unless you think it’s not safe anymore,” I said.
“It’s safe. No one knew we lived there except Murdock. We never had a problem. When do you want me to move it?”
“I don’t want people to see us together, but as soon as you can after I leave,” I said.
A spike of pain lanced through my head. I jammed the heel of my palm against my eye trying to push back against the pressure. The black mass jumped. I’ve learned the meaning of its different reactions and movements, recognized patterns in the kinds of pain it produced. A dull steady ache was normal, daggerlike spikes meant a strong essence was nearby, and a squeezing sensation for when someone tried to read the future around me. Body-numbing pain happened when I was losing control of it because it wanted out. “Does someone in the building scry, Shay?”
He set his mug on the counter and placed a concerned hand on my arm. “Probably. There are a few fey here. What’s wrong?” he asked.
The pain ratcheted up, a great multifaceted spike that pounded against my skull as a dark haze drifted across my vision. “I have to leave. The dark stuff in my head is reacting to something.”
Shay jumped as Uno let out a piercing yowl.
“Meryl?” I called. I hurried past the bed alcove, my head pounding with heat. Meryl stood at the easel, white splatters down the front of her sweatshirt as she smeared gobs of paint onto the canvas. Next to the couch, the needlepoint rug hung askew, revealing where Shay had hidden the stone ward under an old table. Fierce white essence light jumped from the bowl, arcing into Meryl from across the room. Her eyes and hands glowed as she slapped at the canvas with her hands, the white painting burning with a rainbow of essence. Uno’s yowling scaled higher and more frantic.
I staggered under waves of pain. The vision in my right eye vanished, replaced by a darkness littered with jarring flashes. A black bolt leaped out of my chest and tangled with the white essence in the air. As if from far off in the distance, I heard Shay scream.
Essence seared into me, delicious surging essence. It splintered inside me, racing tendrils burning with energy. I had been fighting against the urge to absorb essence for weeks, keeping the darkness at bay, but the volume from the bowl was overwhelming. I couldn’t restrain the darkness. I dropped to my knees and shouted at the cold luscious pain. “Get it out of here!” I shouted.
Shay’s body signature radiated in a soft purple light. The stone bowl glowed like a brilliant white star as he lifted it. My body yearned for it, wanted to reach out and suck it in. Nothing but white light cascaded across my mind. The star rose in the darkness, obliterating any sign of Shay, then danced away from sight.
My vision muddied, the room becoming a blur of fading color shot through with streaks of light. Intense heat and cold warred in my chest as the dark mass pulsed against the essence that remained. Meryl swayed on her feet, her body shimmering with golden light. Behind her, shapes coalesced into almost recognizable figures, then broke apart in a maelstrom of color. The surface of the canvas spun like the eye of a hurricane, impossibly white, with a dark hole in the center.
The bands of shadow from my chest revolved around Meryl like predators, worrying at the edges of her body essence. Desire rose within me, a desire to goad the darkness forward, make it take what it sought. I struggled against it, fighting against the yearning. With a flash, essence rippled beneath my skin. Something snapped inside me as the light and the darkness met in a blaze of pain. I flew backwards with a force like a gunshot recoil. Meryl crumpled to the floor, the canvas awash with essence.
Spots danced in front of my eyes, blotchy smears of red and black that weren’t essence. I convulsed as my sensing ability broke off like a sudden dousing of the sun, and sweet, sweet numbness swept over me.
16
A steady throb pounded my temples. I forced my eyes open. From the ceiling, a wavy distorted image of my body lying on something white reflected from thick glass. Behind the glass, a dull gray smear indicated steel sheathing. Around me, the walls, floor, and lone door were lined the same way. Essence didn’t travel well through glass, and metal warped it back on itself. Putting the two together created an effective barrier against it.
I lifted my head from a pillow, my brain following the motion a second later. I sat up, holding my forehead to ease the rush of blood to my head. To either side, four-foot stone obelisks shimmered with a pearlescent glow. They reacted to my movement, flashing with a slow whirl that danced through the field around the stone. They were dampening wards to monitor my body signature and prevent the accidental or intentional use of essence.
I was on a bed in a containment room. Hospitals used them to protect patients from outside influences that might disrupt healing spells. Mental wards used them to keep patients calm and protect staff against unpredictable essence bursts. Prisons used them as holding cells. Mine was a holding cell.
The thick glass-coated door opened, and four Danann security agents entered. They fanned out, their wings rising and falling with sharp flashes of blue and white, their hands primed with essence and ready to fire. Briallen came in next, her face set with concern as she approached the bed. Outside the door, Joe fluttered in the hallway. He waved.
“Where am I?” I asked.
Briallen stopped at the foot of the bed. “Avalon Memorial holding area. Do you know who you are?”
I smiled through fatigue. “You know I’ve been working on that, Briallen.”
Tension eased out of her. Briallen had spent a good part of the last few years scolding me for whining I wasn’t the person I wanted to be anymore. She took my hand. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“What the hell happened?”
She placed her free hand on my forehead. She didn’t perform her usual probe but examined my body signature with the gentlest touch of essence. “I was hoping you could tell me. You had some kind of episode. Two agents who arrived on the scene were drained.” Her hand slid to my shoulder as panic ran through me. “I said ‘drained,’ not ‘dead.’ They’re fine. How do you feel?”
“Where’s Meryl?” I asked instead of answering her.
“Upstairs. She’s fine. Tell me what happened.”
I glanced at the guards. “Are they necessary?”
She examined the ward monitors. I wasn’t an expert on them, but I knew they measured things like essence outputs and fluctuation patterns. Are you in control of yourself? she sent.
My body was sore. My chest ached, and my face throbbed as if someone had punched me, but Briallen wasn’t asking about a physical assessment. The black mass in my head smoldered with a heated smoothness, not the jagged edges that appeared when it was agitated. The hungering sensation wasn’t there either. It was sated, for now. I nodded. With the flutter from a sending, Briallen dismissed the agents. Joe flew in over their heads as they filed out.