Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [97]
The reason they had left the spell was because they had kept the money the mage had been paid for it. “And you have been. For over fifty years—”
“It’s not enough,” she told him. “There is a risk now, and that is unacceptable. Clean it up, Oliver. Or we will be forced to clean up all of it.” The emphasis in her words left little question but that she included him in that mess.
He narrowed his eyes, as though gauging her strength, one jungle predator to another, then relaxed. The illusion was that he had made the decision not to challenge her, but it was only an illusion.
“It’s being handled,” he assured her.
“Good. Then we have nothing more to say to one another. Once you have the materials back in place, someone will be assigned to correct the breach and reapply the protection spell. We—however reluctantly in this instance—will honor our warranties.”
Frants stood to leave, holding one hand out to Denise. A heartbeat, and she took it, sluggishly, as though uncertain how to make her body move any longer.
“And Ollie,” the older woman added. “Don’t bring your toys here again. I don’t want that kind of filth in my presence.”
Frants merely smiled, and inclined his head to her as they left.
Seven candles lit the edges of the room, their flames oddly still, giving off narrow shafts of pale yellow light. Five of the wax pillars were white, two dark red. On the black marble slab in the center of the room, seven more candles, these black, with a harsher white light, illuminated a female: naked, painted with sigils and signs on every part of her body. A rope was loosely bound around her ankles, and a long, sharp blade was pointed edge-first into the valley between her breasts.
“Hear me,
With blood the line is drawn.
With blood the barrier is drawn.
Barrier of strength, which none may break.
Barrier of power, which none may annul.
A trap without escape, for malign intent.”
The blade cut into the woman’s skin, but she did not react. A harder push, and blood began to flow from the cut.
“Hear me,
With blood the line is drawn.
With blood the barrier is drawn.
Barrier of strength, which none may break.
Barrier of power, which none may annul
My will commands. My will commands.”
A pause. Another, longer pause. The candle flames didn’t so much as flicker, much less change color as they were supposed to do once the wards were in place.
“Damn it.”
The black-robed figure dropped his arms and strode to the wall, slapping angrily at the light switch with the hand that did not hold the athane. His bare feet peeked out from under the hem of the robe, and the neatly-trimmed, buffed toenails only added to the surrealism of the scene.
Frants put the knife down on the slab and shed his robe, tossing it aside without a thought to the cost of the material. Beneath, he was naked, his body graying and worn but still in reasonably good shape.
Despite the overhead light now flooding the room, the body on the slab of black marble still did not move. Only a shallow movement of her rune-dabbed chest, and the warm blood trickling over her rib cage, indicated that she was still alive. Her eyes were open, staring without focus up at the black-painted ceiling, and every great once in a while the lids would blink.
“Another worthless spell. Another damned worthless spell!”
He’d paid good money for this one, this and all the others he’d tried. Traditional magic, the way most people thought of it, the Voodoo and witchcraft and magics dark and light. Their methods might be sneered at by the mages and their oh-so-scientific “current,” but it worked. Magic was magic, it didn’t care what your philosophy was. And, more to the point, those traditional methods could be worked by someone other than a Talent. All you needed was to believe.
“I believe,” he said to whatever might be listening, watching. “I believe!”
He had to. It wasn’t as though anyone else was going to protect him, not with his so-highly-recommended lonejack hire screwing up the retrieval,