Allie Beckstrom 09 - Magic for a Price Read Online Free Page B

the simplest of magic?
    “Now,” she said, “cast Light together.”
    Terric looked at Shame. “How do you want to do it?”
    “Quickly, so I can get a drink.”
    “Cast, then combine?”
    “And hope we don’t blow up the place.”
    “Let’s hope for a little more than that,” Terric said.
    The faint pink Disbursement spell was still wrappedaround Terric’s wrist from his last cast. Shame was holding a thin tether of Disbursement for Proxy on his wrist too. The price of this spell would be paid by someone else.
    When Shame and Terric stood this close together, the glow around Terric seemed to dim to a more normal level. He was still radiating charisma, but it wasn’t so strong, so alluring. Shame looked more normal too. The darkness around him thinned to flickering tendrils of smoke that drifted gently around him.
    Terric drew Light.
    And so did Shame.
    Then they pulled magic up into the glyphs. Just as before, Terric’s Light spell was a soft lacy orb, and Shame’s was a ball of flame.
    They each sent the spells closer together, their movements in perfect synch. The two spells joined and the orb flickered with orange flame. A beautiful combined spell of Light.
    “Very nice,” Maeve said. “Now make it smaller and larger.”
    Terric pulled magic up from the ground. It leaped to his hands like lightning, and burned there, a crackling stream of pure white light snapping with gold.
    That was a lot of magic. Too much magic for such a small spell.
    Shame drew on magic. It burned upward into his hands like black fire, a ragged river of black heat. Hard, strong.
    Magic is invisible to the bare eye. Shame and Terric could not see what the magic looked like as it poured into their hands. But I could.
    White and black magic arced between them, light and darkness biting, clashing, and finally, blending. Shameand Terric didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to. Soul Complements knew what the other was thinking. Or at least Zayvion and I did. Even if Shame and Terric couldn’t read each other’s minds, they were certainly working magic as if they had an intimate knowledge of what the other was going to do.
    It was more than a little hypnotizing to watch them work magic together.
    I licked my lips, and wished I were standing next to Zay. Wished he and I were joined together, lost in the magic between us.
    Hot white magic jumped from Terric’s hand to Shame’s, becoming ebony flame that dripped from Shame’s fingertips back into the ground.
    With his other hand, Shame pulled magic out of the ground. It leaped to Terric’s palm and melted into gold and white drops that slipped through his fingers, falling back to the ground.
    Within that loop, that infinite band of drawing on the magic given and releasing the magic taken, the Light spell changed and changed until it crackled with unmatched brilliance.
    Then two sets of hands adjusted the spell and the light grew smaller and smaller until it was only the tiniest speck, like the glitter of a single star resting in the space between them.
    That kind of work, that kind of finesse in joint-spell manipulation, took a hell of a lot of concentration.
    Without any outward signal I could see, the light began to grow. Shame glanced at Terric with a satisfied smirk. Terric chuckled as he exhaled slowly, sharing some silent, private connection that made me ache again for Zayvion.
    Terric and Shame threw their hands wide.
    The loop of magic between them spun into a spiral around them, the symbol for infinity. The Light spell grew larger until it was big enough to engulf them. Then it pushed outward, lacy orange fire reaching up to the huge crystal chandelier and setting it to glow, with diamonds and firelight covering every inch of its surface.
    “Beautiful,” I said. And beautiful didn’t even cover it. The magic danced through every crystal, as if winged creatures out of some kind of fairy tale fluttered there.
    Zay lifted his hands, waiting, ready to Ground if the magic