Odd that you mention a daughter rather than a son. Belle’s thought whispered into my mind, her mental tone sleepy enough to suggest she’d been taking an afternoon nap. While she was telepathic, I actually wasn’t. The ability to share thoughts as easily as speaking out loud was one of the many benefits that came with her being my familiar. It’s not like he’d be treated as any less of a science experiment.
Yes, but I’ve just got an inner feeling my firstborn will be a daughter. It certainly wasn’t the first time the certainty of a daughter had risen, though usually it rose in conjunction with the desire for a more permanent relationship with Aiden, and was swiftly followed by the acknowledgement that that would never happen. When it came to witches and werewolves, we were a fun time, not a long time. The fact that my relationship with Aiden had lasted over five months now was something of a miracle.
I hope my frustration wasn’t responsible for waking you.
No, I had the alarm set. Kash and I are heading down to some fancy new restaurant his mate is opening in Argyle tonight.
I thought you’d stopped dating Kash because you were getting bad vibes about his interest in your grans books?
I did, but he’s no longer working on the books and he keeps flinging interesting enticements my way. Her amusement echoed down the mental lines. Besides, the man is good in bed, and it’s not like I’m getting a lot of action elsewhere at the moment.
Only because she wasn’t trying all that hard. Hell, she was just over six feet tall, with ebony skin, long black hair, eyes as bright as polished silver, and a build that was Amazonian. To say she attracted adoring male gazes wherever she went was something of an understatement.
“I get the feeling,” Monty said, “that your attention is elsewhere.”
I blinked and refocused on him. “Sorry, Belle was chatting to me.”
“I don’t suppose she came up with a solution to our current problem, did she?”
“No—”
“Then tell her to shut the hell up, because we need to pin this spell down.” He paused. “Be polite, of course. I don’t want my future wife getting annoyed with me.”
Belle’s snort echoed so loudly down the mental lines that I winced. He is persistent, isn’t he?
You’ve only yourself to blame. You did go to that premiere with him.
And I have absolutely no regrets—it was a brilliant night, and he was, for once, most charming company. Shame he reverted to his usual annoying self the next day.
“Do I want to know what she’s currently saying?” he asked, amusement twitching his lips.
Say anything, and you die, Belle said.
I grinned and risked death. “She called you extremely annoying, but I reckon if you were to get premiere tickets for the latest incarnation of Evita, she’ll get over that opinion real quick.”
I’d normally threaten to kill you right now, but you speak nothing but the truth.
Of course I did. I was privy to her thoughts, after all, and knew she liked Monty far more than she was willing to admit.
“I expect dinner to be included in the deal, given how hard those tickets are to get,” Monty said.
If he gets tickets to the premiere, dinner will be on me. Fair’s fair, even when it comes to Monty.
I passed this on and he grinned. “Challenge accepted. Now, can we get back to the business at hand? Because, seriously, we have no idea how long we actually have before Clayton appears, and if it’s tomorrow, you’re in trouble.”
I was in trouble anyway, and we all knew it—especially if my father decided to accompany Clayton. We’d had no word that he’d left Canberra, but that didn’t mean anything. Not when he had the means and the power to stop any unwanted attention.
I tried the spell again. The result was exactly the same.
Perhaps, Belle said, the problem is the teaching method.
Meaning Monty?
Her laugh echoed through my thoughts. No. I meant the formality of the spell. What you’re both forgetting is that we’ve spent the last twelve years reorganizing various spells to suit ourselves. Why would this be any different?
I repeated her comment for Monty’s sake, and his eyebrows rose. “You know, that’s a possibility I hadn’t considered. And while I don’t usually condone stuffing about with the semantics of spells, it’s definitely worth trying in this case.”
Any other suggestions, Belle?
She hesitated. What you’re trying to do is cloak the wild magic’s output by putting an internal barrier between it, your own natural magic, and the world in general. So perhaps imagine that from the get-go rather than trying to drag the shield inside after formation.
I took another useless deep breath and then began the spell yet again; this time, rather than imagining a shield, I created a wispy, silvery curtain that filtered down through the inner me, forming a barrier that covered me from the top of my head to the very bottom of my feet, and through which only my natural magic was visible. I tied off the end of the spell very carefully, using the wild magic deep within as a power source so that it didn’t draw too much on my own strength, and then activated it.
Monty sucked in a deep breath. “Whatever the fuck you just did, it totally worked.”
Relief surged so fiercely that it left me shaking. I licked my lips, trying to keep calm, and then said, “Is there any magical output at all?”
“There’s a faint bleed of your natural magic, but that’s it. How long do you think you’ll be able to sustain it?”
“I don’t know.” I wrinkled my nose. “What’s the usual time span for these sorts of spells?”
“Generally, twelve to fifteen hours, depending on the strength of the practitioner and how long they’ve been shielding. It gets easier the longer you do it.”
“Yours isn’t on full time, though.”
“It’s always partially on—I generally only fully mute when I’m in the presence of unknown witches. I
