“Yes,” he rumbled, seconds from snarling at him. “Tell me what to do.”
“Catch her if she falls.” Linus tapped a pen across his desk. “Be prepared to call Abbott if necessary.”
Allowing his eyes to close, Midas absorbed his role with a terse nod, not trusting himself to speak.
Once upon a time, it worried me how quiet he got when his temper flared. But Midas didn’t hurt people to make himself feel better. He didn’t harm anyone at all unless it was required of him. His was a thoughtful upset that he crushed with measured breaths rather than lashing out at those around him.
“I love you.” I kissed his cheek, his bristles rough against my lips. “You got this.”
“Hey.” A laugh huffed out of him. “That’s my line.”
There was no time to reassure him, and I hated that, but the coven was right on our doorstep.
“Call on Ambrose,” Linus instructed me. “He knows what to do.”
Long before Ambrose became a ravening shade, he had been a powerful High Society necromancer.
For months after we first bonded, I researched his name in the Lyceum’s records in the hopes of identifying him. Names had power, and I wanted his something fierce. But there were no Ambroses of notable talent from Savannah, which meant he had given me a name of his choosing, one that would slide right off him.
If I’d had no other choice, I could have asked Ambrose to guide me through the process. I had before, for other small magics. The knowledge was there for the taking. That’s what made dybbuks so dangerous. When a necromancer struck a bargain with a shade, they received an infusion of power from the shade. As well as access to the entirety of the shade’s memories, talents, and skills.
All it required was opening yourself wide enough for their influence to trickle in.
Bonding with Ambrose had been a colossal mistake. I knew it the instant he sank his hooks in me. I just hadn’t cared then. I tasted the power he wielded, beheld the wonders of his talent, and became an accessory to the murders he committed, unable to act, to stop him, to do more than watch in horror.
After Linus crammed that murderous genie back into his bottle, aka my body, I made sure the cork never popped again. Over time, Linus’s tweaks to the binding tattoos he designed for me melded Ambrose and me into a creature dybbuk no longer described as well as it had in the beginning.
“Well?” I rolled my hand at the shadow. “What are you waiting for?”
Quicker than a bullet to the brain, Ambrose shot himself into my temple. As usual, information poured out of him and into me. But unlike usual, he didn’t leave. He sat inside me, his energy throbbing in time with my heart.
“Frak, frak, frak.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “That hurt.”
A line formed between Linus’s brows, and he leaned forward, startling his hat. “Are you all right?”
The parakeet farted out a noise, which Linus silenced with a slice of apple that Keet picked apart with glee, leaving bits of fruit scattered in his hairy nest.
“Direct downloads from Ambrose are worse than brain freezes,” I grumbled. “They give me such a headache.”
Confident I was steady, Linus resumed his instructions. “Do you understand what you have to do?”
“Yeah.” I reviewed what Ambrose was broadcasting. “I’ve got the blueprints.”
This would be the first time Ambrose had pumped this much power through me, and of his own free will too. This experiment was breaking new ground left and right. I just hoped it didn’t shatter me in the process.
“Midas.” Linus steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. “Get ready.”
Already, he stood behind me with his arms outstretched to catch me if I began to topple over. “Ready.”
“Draw on your connection with Ambrose,” Linus coached. “Use his power to activate the ward.”
The sensation of fullness was sickening. I wasn’t meant to contain so much energy. Usually, I channeled his power, tossing it away as fast as I got it, flushing it out of my system as soon as it hit. This required me to hold Ambrose’s essence in the forefront of my mind, along with containing his vast power, and then expending it into the sigil.
Ally or not, that was yet to be determined, but Ambrose remained a dark stain that sizzled across my nerve endings. As I swirled the last sigil onto the baseboards, linking the design over and around the door and windows, I touched it with my finger.
Power exploded out of me, ripping Ambrose from my body and flinging him into the chain of sigils. He zipped around the room, energizing them, then blasted through me, closing the loop, with the might of a freight train smashing a pumpkin.
The burst must have knocked out the power, because the next thing I knew, the lights went out.
Six
Abbott was leaning over me when I woke, his nose an inch from mine as he tugged on my eyelids. Midas stood beside him, gripping the bedrail, his knuckles gone white. Linus’s face glowed out from the phone they had set on the mattress beside me, and I noticed his hat had gone to sleep during the excitement.
Though I shouldn’t have been surprised, I was oddly touched Linus decided to stick around until I woke.
A cold glass pressed into my hand, and I sipped until I could unstick my tongue to ask the most important question. “Did it work?”
Fingers curling into his palm, Midas stood over me, ready to refill my water. Or maybe dump it over my head for asking after the wards rather than my health.
“Bishop is impressed with you,” Linus answered when Midas remained silent. “He’s less thrilled with the consequences.”
“He’s not the only one.” I chomped on the crushed ice. “I can’t do this a dozen more times.”
A hard breath punched out of Midas. “I can’t believe my ears.”
“Hey.” I shook my cup at him. “I can be smart about things.”
No one in the room spoke up on my behalf.
No one.
Not a single person.
Grr.
“You always push yourself to the limits,” Linus chided. “I wouldn’t have encouraged you to try if I had guessed the toll it would take on you.”
That made two of us. Midas made three. Abbott made four. Bishop made five…
Okay, I was going to stop myself right there before I teared up from counting the people who would care if I pulped my gray matter. Not so long ago, I would have stopped at one: Boaz.
“Abbott.” Linus interrupted my thoughts. “Can we have a moment alone with Hadley?”
“Of course.” Abbott sighed at me then shook his head. “Please, Hadley, for my sake, be more careful.”
“How do we do this?” I used the rail to pull myself into a seated position. “We have to move fast.”
Ambrose walked across the wall until he stood beside Midas, then he made a heart shape with his hands and beat it once against his chest.
“No.” I jerked the link between us, ripping him across the room. “We’re not using Midas as a battery.”
“That’s not possible in any case,” Linus assured me, then he read my wary expression. “Is it?”
The plan had been to wait until the dust cleared and then break it to Midas that our bond wasn’t a divine blessing bestowed upon two fated souls but a parasitic thread choking our mating bond in its stranglehold.