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She was close to it now. Jane wriggled down inside the jacket so she could bury her face in the collar. She breathed in the smell of leather. Puck's scent imbued the jacket. It rose most strongly from the armpits but the tang of him was everywhere. She was slippery with sweat herself. Their smells mingled and rose in an alchemical marriage, forming something rich and wild. She took the jacket between her teeth and bit down hard. She was going to come.
Sex energy was most accessible at the moment of orgasm. This was why adepts were usually female. Where a witch might have a string, a series, an archipelago of orgasms to work with, the warlock was (usually) limited to one. Males tended to gravitate to the necromantic arts, it taking no special talent to kill things. Jane knew, though, she'd have to work with the one. Inexperienced as she was, it was first time or never.
Marshaling her resources, she concentrated on identifying, isolating and distancing herself from the power rising within. Her mind closed about it like two hands trapping a thrush. A perfect and universal stillness seized her. Briefly, she was free of all bounds.
Forcing herself—this was the hardest part—to expect nothing, she opened her eyes.
She was sitting on a stool in a crowded lunch counter. Her mother looked up, startled, from a cup of light brown coffee. One of her mother's elbows brushed against an ashtray, knocking it off the counter. Butts and ashes went flying. Heads swiveled.
Jane held the fluttering source captive in her mind. This must surely be what it felt like to be a sorceress! The exultant power filled her entire being, like light in a crystal figurine. It struggled to escape. It was a bird, a force, a sphere of light. She willed it up from within and down along her arm. Her hand tingled with fierce power. It was growing more intensely real, as solid as anything in the room.
Now!
She slapped her hand down on the countertop. The coffee cup jumped, and she snatched up what lay beside it. Her mother's mouth was opening to form the begi
Before anything could be said, the power outflowed and dispersed. The instant ended. The restaurant and her mother both were gone. Jane was back in Billy's bed again. He was lying motionless atop her. She reached up and, wincing, untangled the shades from her ears. "I can't breathe," she said.
With a slow groan, he rolled off.
Jane stared at the spoon in her hand. It was there and it was real. Jane ran her thumb over it and over it. It was made of unplated steel. A simple string of stamped circles bounded by two thin lines looped around the edges of the handle for decoration. She turned it over and read the inscription on its back:
IKEA
stainless
Made In Korea
Strange runes, and perfectly meaningless to her. But full of hope. Their larger portent reassured Jane. They were tangible proof that her power was growing. Anything was possible. All it would take was luck and lore. She could raise the money for her tuition and enough to buy an exemption from the Teind as well. And one for Sirin while she was at it—why not?—and another for Puck Aleshire.
Her life was a complete mess, true, but it could be straightened out. All it would take was money. Money could straighten out anything, if you had enough of it.
She knew where to get that money, but until tonight she hadn't the nerve to try. Now she had proved herself. It was time.
"Wow," Billy said.
"Oh, shut up."
— 17 —
TO MAKE A HAND OF GLORY REQUIRED FIRST OF ALL A HAND cut from the corpse of someone who had died violently. The shock of sudden death was necessary because it flooded the flesh with endorphins and endorphins were essential to the spell's puissance. Luckily, Jane had access to the anatomy morgue. She smuggled the hand out in her purse and pickled it in a solution of salt and nitre in a jar at the back of her closet. Drying it in the sun would have taken weeks, so she flash-froze it and sublimed the ice in a vacuum chamber.
The City was bright and hard through the windows and radiated cold into the lab. The last pale lights of a dead sunset flickered like corpsefire on the horizon. Jane sat cross-legged atop a high stool, lashing candle stubs between the fingers of the hand. She hadn't turned on the lights for fear of discovery. But in what light there was, she could see that the hand was coarsely proportioned and that its former owner had been a nail-biter.
The blue hour was the best time for this sort of work, for the influences of sun and moon were roughly equal then and would distort the results least. The candles firm, Jane took out a penknife. Carefully she carved runes between the second and third joints of every other finger, a sfwa on the thumb, ya on the middle finger and sig on the pinkie, so that together they spelled out the hidden name of the Goddess in her aspect as Assigner of Dreams.
All that remained, then, was to rubber-band one of Galiagante's credit cards to the palm.
When the work was done, Jane dumped the ball of twine into her equipment drawer and hopped down from the stool. The hand of glory she dropped into her knapsack along with the pry bar, the suede gloves, and the flashlight.
She'd chosen her clothes for indistinction: black hightops, black denim jeans, and Puck's leather jacket to top it off. Her knapsack was by good luck a dingy gray. She slung it over her shoulder and pulled on a wool watch cap. It was not so striking an outfit as to draw attention to itself; in it she would be as close to undetectable as made no difference.
Her mother's teaspoon she had drilled a hole in and hung on a cord around her neck. Now she drew it from under her blouse and kissed it for luck.
Time to hit the street.
It was a bitter cold night. A sharp wind picked up bits of trash and made them dance in circles. No one was about. She hurried down streets that were empty and silent, past Branstock, Pentecost, and Lonazep, ducking briefly into Anowre's lobby to warm up her cheeks and ears and the fronts of her thighs, where the cold denim stung them, then trotting quickly by Cadbury and Sewingshields, Lombard, Worm, Altaripa, and Melvales. The occasional dwarf or night-gaunt that she saw was huddled and anxious to get back inside, as much in a hurry as she herself. At last she came to her destination.
Caer Gwydion.
She stared up at its bright glass walls, its smoothly gleaming surfaces rising up forever into the night, and for an instant her spirit quailed. It was a citadel, unassailable. She was so small and insignificant before it! Then, squaring her shoulders, she ducked into an alleyway and went around to the rear.
The back of the building was totally unlike the front, a stained cinder block wall with loading dock, dumpster, and an incinerator gently smoldering. It was as if an enchantment had been removed from Caer Gwydion, revealing it as it really was. Jane lit a cigarette and faded back into the shadows, watching.
Time passed. An ogre emerged from a service door, lugging a trash can. He emptied the can into the incinerator and scuttled back inside. The door swung to after him.
Jane lit another cigarette to give the custodian time to find work elsewhere. She smoked it slowly, savoring its warmth, and ditched the butt with regret. Then she pulled on the gray suede gloves and got out the hand of glory. Holding it by the wrist, a disposable lighter ready in her other hand, she went to the service door. She pushed it open. Barrels, brooms, cleaning supplies. Old rags. The custodian was nowhere to be seen. From the gloom, a black iron monster of a furnace hissed at her. "Hello?" she said. "Is this where I'm supposed to come to see about work?"
No one answered.