Page 57 of Salt Magic, Skin Magic
“You would. I was horrible. A stuck-up little snob. You might’ve fucked me though.”
“You can’t talk like that. Mr Grey could come back any moment. And they’ve sent for a doctor.”
“A doctor!” He lurched up, nearly knocking their heads together. “I’m not seeing any doctors! I don’tneeda damned doctor!You’rethe one I need. You have to get me out! I don’t care how. Do whatever you like. Use that sigil the spancel told you. You wouldn’t experiment before. But it’s going to get worse and worse.”
“Don’t ask me to do that.”
“But I am. I’m begging. John, can’t you see I can’t take it any more? It’s not the cuts, it’s afterwards. That—that choking dark. I can’t take that again. If I stay any longer I shall go mad.”
They stared at each other.
“Please,” Soren whispered, voice trembling.
Finally, John said, “You do as I tell you. If I say we’re stopping, we stop. And if I tell you to run, you run.”
“Yes, of course.” His voice was still a whisper.
“All right. We can’t stay here. Someone could be back any minute. Can you walk?”
For answer, Soren stood up and tried to limp across the room. His knees nearly gave way. John took his arm and put it over his own shoulders. He led Soren to his own room, instinctively heading to his materials. But once there, he realised that when the doctor came, this was one of the first places they might look.
John sat Soren on the edge of the bed while he recovered his salt, then put an arm around him again. He considered the things in the trunk. What might he need? There’d been something missing from the sigil the spancel had given him. It was something potent. But what? He could hardly take the whole trunk. He had the basics in his pockets—he never went anywhere without them. He sat there, his arm around Soren’s shoulders, Soren’s cold hand in his. He could feel the salt pulsing in his pocket. The spancel seemed to be slithering around in there too, like a live snake. Impossible. It was imagination. Nerves.
Or was it?
He could feel something emanating from the materials in his pockets, some kind of message. A warm tension was growing the pit of his stomach, almost a sexual thing, as if Soren might kiss him at any moment. He wouldn’t of course; he was white as a sheet, with his eyes closed, and was clearly concentrating on staying upright. But the feeling gave John heart; there was potential here somewhere. The materials knew it. Best to go somewhere close by, but deserted; the west wing.
“Come then,” John said, and they left his room, left his trunk, and made their way along the passage to one of the many empty rooms.
***
Thornby half-lay ina dust-sheeted easy chair, watching John, who was kneeling on the floor a few feet away, his materials arrayed in front of him. A long, listening silence filled the spare room. It was so profound, Thornby could almost see it thickening the air, swirling like turpentine; he could almost feel it, soft against his skin. John began to arrange things; the spancel in a large circle, the glass eye there. He began to lay the salt in one of those odd patterns of lines and circles, then half-way through he stopped, and there was another long pause.
In the past, when John had done magic, Thornby had watched him interestedly enough. It wasn’t every day one saw a magician at work, but he’d felt nothing more than a natural curiosity. This time was different. This time there was a strange smell in the air. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but it was pungent, sharp and sweet at the same time, like vinegar shot with vanilla. There was something bracing about it. His head began to clear. He leaned forward in the chair, feeling more alert.
It wasn’t just the smell; John looked different too. Shadows seemed to be gathering around him, as though he was sucking the light out of the air and putting it into his salt pattern. But the strangest thing was how everything in the room seemed to be aware of John. Somehow the door, the walls, the window, the rolled-back carpet, the bed and all the holland-sheeted furniture seemed to be listening to John the way a crowd listens to a fire and brimstone preacher.
John was adding more loops and lines to his pattern. Then he took out his pocketbook and removed from its pages the single gold-brown hair they’d found in the secret compartment in the trunk. He put the hair in the middle of one of the circles of salt. Thornby remembered what had happened to the cigar cutter. They had one chance. If John got it wrong they’d lose their single clue.
Thornby found he’d risen unconsciously from the chair and backed away. Of course, he’d asked John to do this. Of course, he trusted John. What choice did he have? Anything would be better than staying trapped here at Father’s mercy. Or being sent to a lunatic asylum. But he could not stop his teeth chattering, nor his legs trembling, nor his breath stuttering in his throat.
John looked up, eyes unfocused, mouth grim, the way it went when he was concentrating. “Something’s missing,” he said. “What? What is it?”
Thornby knew the question wasn’t being asked of him. But it was unnerving to know there was a silent conversation going on, right in front of him. John was staring at nothing, fingertips touching the spancel and the salt, that intent, listening look on his face. After what felt like forever, John blinked. Then he looked at Thornby with a strange, speculative expression, as if he’d been told some shocking rumour about him, and couldn’t quite believe it.
“I see,” John said. Then he smiled and held out his hand. “Come here.”
His voice had the tone he used during sex—brooking no refusal, but intimate, subtly acknowledging the game.
Thornby stepped carefully inside the spancel and knelt in front of him. John put his arms around him, and Thornby almost sobbed with relief, because although everything else was terrifyingly different, John felt just the same. He had the same warm solidity, he gave the same sense of reassurance. And underlying that vinegar and vanilla pungency, he smelled the same as well.
All the same, when John began to kiss him, undoing Thornby’s breeches as he did so, Thornby was so surprised he froze.Now? At a time like this? John undid his own fly, took Thornby’s hand, limp but unresisting, and put it on his cock, which was already hard. Thornby did not take his hand away, but neither did he wrap it around John’s stand. His own cock was entirely soft, balls shrivelled with fear and pain. He wanted to say, “Are youserious?” but his voice seemed to have deserted him.
John was murmuring in his ear, “Come on, now. This is part of it. This is what was missing: you and me.”
Soren found his voice. “John, I don’t think I can.”
“The magic’s calling for it. Can’t you feel it? It’s some sort of hybrid; human magic, with that hair, and you and me mixed in. It’s bloody strong. It’s affecting me.”
