The Courtship of Julian St. Albans Read Online Free

almost imagine a
man who might kill for a chance at that end.
    ~ ~ ~
    “Cecil Mandeville was from a very
respectable family, though fallen on less than financially secure times,”
said Alex, pacing his own rooms. He’d grown used to talking to himself as his
way of thinking things through; somehow making the sounds was what made his
brain work, just as sound was what made his magic work.
    He paused, then let the thought drop and went
instead into his workroom, as neat as the rest of his house was messy.
    There he took the hairs he’d stolen from
Lapointe when she wasn’t looking, and added them to the dish at the very end of
a neat row of bottles, boxes, and other oddments he’d laid out on his work
table. She might not want him to make her the expensive quit spell, but he did
his best thinking while he was working, and he didn’t have anything else ready
to go. He could always argue that since he no longer created such things on
request, it had no actual price tag attached.
    He did an inventory of the ingredients in front
of him, and then set up the crucible where they’d be combined.
    First thing in was the pure silver, already
measured. He was using fresh metal rather than recycled, and the little pellets
were nearly white with no copper to deepen the colour.
    He then picked up the next three objects in
quick succession and struck them, fitting a vibrating tuning fork into holders
at each corner of the crucible’s triangular metal stand. Different magicians
would use incense, candles, phials of fluid or any number of other things —
he’d even met one man who used various colours of laser pointers — but Alex
had always resonated with sound, hearing rather than seeing or sensing the
magic.
    That done, he lit the burner beneath, adjusting
it so that the ingredients would all be combined with the proper timing,
watching as heat shimmer made the silver pellets seem to shift and move. Then
he double checked to be sure the mould would hold up — he’d chosen a very
simple design for her amulet, a smooth swirl of metal to represent both the
smoke she was giving up, and the pure air she was giving herself in exchange.
    Or would, if he could get
her to use the damned thing.
    Alex put that out of his mind and turned back
to the row of objects, six in all now.
    The first thing he added was a puff of smoke
captured on a whim one day when she’d been sucking on the foul things at every
possible opportunity. He used a little hint of his own power to send it curling
down around the silver pellets rather than floating up to pollute the air of
his little sanctuary, humming softly to himself to keep it there until the
spelled crucible allowed it to mix with the melting metal.
    The second ingredient was a tiny piece of dry
ice, added with tongs, that hissed and steamed and mixed with the smoke in
eerie, ghostly tendrils. Alex gave himself exactly thirteen seconds to watch
the mesmerising patterns before he moved back to the line. He pushed each
container back as he emptied it, forming a second line a few inches back from
the first, and the miniature cooler that had held the dry ice went neatly next
to the now-empty glass globe.
    Next was a tiny phial of the purest water he
could acquire, filched from the crime lab’s supply. It, too, bubbled and
steamed when he poured it into the now-molten puddle, but instead of completely
boiling away, it mixed with the slowly swirling liquid. Darker and lighter
streaks now showed in the metal where it had taken in the properties of the
other ingredients, and once again Alex allowed himself time to watch the
patterns before moving on.
    A sealed plastic box contained a new green
leaf, from a white lily grown in a hothouse with air filtered of any
pollutants. It added a soft green swirl to the mix, melting rather than burning
up in the shimmering heat from the crucible.
    The fifth was another bowl of metal pellets,
exactly seven copper bits to add strength to the piece, and to the