Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [38]
Finally he stopped, letting go of her arm long enough to open a door, then he ushered her inside and removed the blindfold. Her attention was snagged immediately by the large crystal to one side of the room that hummed with stored energies. Artifacts. Icons. Almost anything could hold current, but an object made expressly for that purpose, imbued with the creator’s own ability…like a Christian cross repelling a vampire, the emotional intent of the object intensified its effect.
Gods above and below, she thought wildly, fighting her body’s instinctive urge to flee. Too much. Too much power. It would consume her, overwhelm her. She tamped down on the panic as best she could, concentrating on breathing, building up her own defenses until the chaotic current-flows dulled to a distant roar.
A not-so-gentle cough from the client reminded her of why she was there, and the woman forced her gaze away from the seemingly endless planes and angles of the crystal and back to the job at hand.
Mage-sight wasn’t one of her strengths, but she had enough to get the job done. Settling herself into a light trance state, careful to work over her defenses rather than through them, she blinked, then looked at the plain gray slab of marble sitting by itself in a corner. Part of her mind found it ludicrous that such an ugly piece of nothing was treated as though it were a piece of artwork, but the majority of her awareness Saw the glitter of magic that permeated the concrete, and knew its value.
It looked exactly the same as it had when she worked the original spell to remove it; red in the middle, where the original activation spell still roiled about, then blue surrounding it, and a paler green on the surface, where the retaining spell was weakest, shining through the concrete plug. Sloppy work there: she would have reinforced it with something a little less porous herself, if she had been the caster. But it was intact.
She was about to break out of trance state and tell the client that he was safe as houses when there was a flicker of light to one side. Frowning, she walked over to get a better line of sight on it. A crooked line of gold ran zigzag through the green, like a Navajo sand painting she’d seen once on display in one of those little art galleries scattered throughout the city.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” she wondered, reaching out with one finger to test it. Even as that one part of her brain told her that was an incredibly stupid thing, she made contact.
A sting of lightning ran through the nerve endings of her arm, straight into her brain. She convulsed once, like a bad sneeze, and a wave of vertigo shivered through her. Then it was gone, and she was standing in front of a perfectly quiescent spellblock, red and blue and green exactly in order.
“What happened? Did it do anything? What’s wrong?” The client sounded like a rabbit, and the thought made her smile. The power still whispered through her, attempting seduction. It would be so easy to turn on him, take what was here and disappear…And then never work again, the practical portion of her brain reminded her. The Council already has its eye on you. Not smart.
Blinking out of trance state, she turned to look at the client. “There was a slight disturbance,” she told him blithely. “But I corrected it. Everything should be fine now.”
The client didn’t look completely convinced, but whatever she had done had apparently chased away the creeps, because he nodded, and offered her the blindfold again. She took it without hesitation, tying it around her own eyes. The less she saw, the better. She wouldn’t give him any reason to turn that craziness on her.
The door closed behind them, and the room settled into silence once again. But deep inside the stone, the red spell energy was suddenly shot through by gold streaks of lightning. The red solidified, pulsing in a fashion unlike