Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(20)

He slowly shook the paint can and squinted at me. “I think it’s time we did a little experiment to see the real you, and those sigils are going to be your safety net.”

“Hold on. You want me to—”

“You can’t hide from her forever,” he argued evenly. “If she wants you so badly, and she’s powerful enough to murder an Æthyric demon like Chora, she’s going to find a way to get what she wants. Either you stand by and let it happen, or we find out what weapons you have against her. If you transmutate—”

“I can’t transmutate without getting her attention.”

“So says Priya. And he’s only basing that on what he’s seen in the Æthyr when you’ve done it in the past. He doesn’t have all the answers, Cady. I know you’re fond of him, but I’ve talked to him several times while you were in the hospital. And he’s trustworthy—I’ve got no doubts about that—but he’s . . .”

“What?”

“There’s an innocence in him. A . . . youthfulness. And his instincts lean toward passive. He’d encourage you to hide rather than fight, because that’s all he knows.”

“Not everyone can be a fighter, Lon. He’s a messenger. An adviser.”

“And you aren’t,” he said firmly, offering the can of spray paint.

“You’re suggesting . . . what, exactly?” I asked.

“Transmutate inside a protective ward.”

“So you basically want me to put up a flashing sign in the Æthyr to let her know I’m awake, so she can start hijacking my dreams.”

“No, I want you to see if you can tap into your power quietly, without getting her attention. And if she notices, then she does. We know she uses moon energy to connect to you, and you’re sleeping in the day, so she can’t get inside your dreams. If she’s found a way to cross the planes, she’d have already done it.”

True.

“You can’t learn something without practicing,” he said. “Better you master it while you can. And maybe you’ll find that you don’t have to light up the Æthyr when you shift. Just because I transmutate, that doesn’t mean I instantly turn on my knack.”

This surprised me. “You mean, you can shift and not hear my thoughts?”

“It’s like a radio. I can choose to turn it on or off. Turn it on just loud enough to hear, or crank it up to full blast. Maybe it’s the same for you, too. Maybe you can shift and refrain from—”

“Burning you to a crisp?”

He pointed a finger at me and winked. “That, for a start. If it’s possible, then it would allow me to get a look at your shifted form.”

He’d only seen it once, from a distance, outside his house while I was tearing the transmutation spell out of his ex-wife.

“You might have markings that would help me better identify what your parents were trying to create when they conceived you. I wouldn’t suggest this if I wasn’t confident that it was safe.”

I thought about the ward on the ceiling of his bedroom. I knew that magick well, and he was probably right.

“Look,” he said. “Afterward, you can call Priya and see if he ‘felt’ you connecting to your demon side in the Æthyr, just to be sure.”

“I’m not a demon.”

Lon pressed the paint can into my palm. “You damn sure aren’t human. Might as well face that fact and make the best of it. We aren’t all bad.”

True. In fact, I’d say when it came to good and bad, humans and demons were pretty evenly matched.

Lon unfolded the tent tarp and spread it over the carpet. It looked as if we were psychotic serial killers, readying the room for bloodshed. Seemed somehow appropriate when dealing with matters related to my mother.

“Well, what do you say?” he asked when he was finished.

I tossed the can onto the bed. “Plastic paint isn’t going to hold a charge for shit. I have some red ochre chalk in my purse.”

I spent the next half hour or so carefully constructing a ward on the tarp with the heavily pigmented chalk, then blowing off the excess dust to prevent me from smudging it when I stepped on it. Pig’s blood would have been better, but a town that didn’t sell beer certainly didn’t have a late-night butcher. When I was done, I had a ward with a nine-foot radius, give or take. Now for charging it. I dug my portable caduceus out of my overnight bag.

“No,” Lon said. “Let me do it.”

“You barely have any Heka stores.”

“I don’t like you pulling a lot of electricity if you don’t have to. It’s dangerous.”

What in the living hell was he talking about? “It’s only dangerous without something to even out the release.” I held up the caduceus. “I’m prepared.”

He hung his head and muttered a string of obscenities. “Just don’t use any more than you need to, please. It might have a negative effect on . . . your memories.”

“Why would you think—”

“Christ, Cady,” he barked. “Can’t you please trust me, just this once?”

“All right, jeez. No need to shout.” I grumbled silently as I knelt by the tarp.

“Please be careful,” Lon mumbled.