I settled myself cross-legged on the floor. I focused on my breathing, but my thoughts didn’t slip away as easily as they usually did. I wondered if I’d be able to transfer what I’d done with the crystal to fire. Whether this time I’d be able to control the vision.
“Morgan?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I got distracted. Let me try again. You want to see where Killian is right now?”
“That’d be a start.”
“Okay.” Again I focused on my breathing. This time I felt my mind quieting and the tension draining from my muscles. I stared at the candle’s wick, thought of fire, and the candle lit. I let my eyes focus on the flame, sinking deeper into my meditative state until the coffee table, the room, Hunter, even the candle itself faded from my consciousness. There was only the flame.
Killian. I let a picture of him as he’d been at the club fill my mind—confident, cocky, laughing, with that heady mix of danger and delight in his own power.
I focused on the fire, asked it to give me the vision that I sought, to show me Killian as he was right now. I asked it to let me in, and I sent my energy toward it. I couldn’t touch it the way I’d touched the crystal. The fire would burn me. But I let my power flicker beside it, calling to its heat and energy.
Something inside the flame shifted. It danced higher, blazed brighter. Its blue center became a mirror, and in it I saw Killian in profile. He was alone in a dark, dilapidated room. There was a window across from him, casting reddish light across his face. Through the window I could see some sort of gray stone tower, partly cloaked by a screen of bare tree branches. Killian seemed frightened, his face pale and drawn.
I sent more of my power to the flame, willing more of the vision to appear, something that would give a clue to his location. The flame crackled, and Killian turned and looked straight into my eyes. Abruptly, the connection was severed. I pushed back a surge of annoyance and focused on the flame again. Again I asked for the vision of Killian as he was now and sent my energy to dance with the flame.
This time there was no vision. Instead, the flame winked out, almost as if someone had snuffed it. I blinked hard. The rest of the room came back into focus.
Hunter was watching me, his eyes inscrutable. “I saw him,” he said in an odd tone. “And I wasn’t joining my power to yours. I’ve never been able to do that before, see the vision of the one who’s scrying.”
“Is that a problem?” I asked uncertainly.
“No,” he said. “It’s because your scrying is so powerful.” He pulled me up on the couch beside him and wrapped his arms around me. “You are a seer.” He kissed each of my eyelids. “And I’m awed. Even humbled—almost.”
“Almost?” I couldn’t help being thrilled that I’d managed to pull off a feat of magick that had stymied Hunter.
“Well, you know, humble isn’t exactly my style,” he confessed with a grin.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Nor is it Killian’s,” he said, his tone serious again. He blew out a breath and leaned back against the couch. “At least we know he’s alive. He didn’t seem hurt, either. He looked scared, though. That room he was in, do you have any sense of where it is?”
I shook my head. “None.”
“I wonder,” Hunter said, “why the vision was snuffed out so quickly and why it didn’t come back. It’s almost as if someone didn’t want you to see.”
“Maybe Killian himself,” I said. “He looked at me, remember? Maybe he felt me scrying for him. Do you think he’s got enough power to cut off a vision?”
“I’d guess that he’s not lacking in power,” Hunter said with a sigh.
“There’s got to be a way to find him,” I said.
“Hang on a minute,” Hunter said. “The window across from him. Did you notice the church steeple you could see through it?”
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “That’s what it was.”
“Yes. And there was reddish light on his face, so I’m pretty sure the window must have been a westerly one. Also, wherever he is must be far enough west that the sunset isn’t blocked by lots of tall buildings.”
“Wow.” I was impressed by his deductions.
He looked intent, eager. “I’m thinking maybe I could find a building that satisfies those conditions—far west, with a westerly window, opposite a gray stone church.”
“That sounds like a lot of legwork.”
“Maybe tomorrow I can come up with a way to narrow the search. Listen, there’s one more contact I want to try to track down tonight. I’m not sure when I’ll get back.”
I glanced at my watch. It was six. “Are you telling me not to wait up?”
Hunter looked genuinely regretful. “I’m afraid so.” He put on his jacket and scarf and kissed me. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Robbie was the first to show up at the apartment. After we’d split up, he’d gone down to the Village, where he’d dropped in on one of the chess shops near Washington Square Park. “Got beat by a seventy-year-old grand master,” he reported with a satisfied grin. “It was an education.”
Bree, Raven, and Sky showed up a few minutes after Robbie—Raven must have hooked up with the other two at some point during the afternoon. Bree was irritable and out of sorts, but Raven and Sky seemed to be getting along again. We ordered Chinese food, and then Raven and Sky went out to look up some goth friends of Raven’s while Robbie, Bree, and I watched a Hong Kong action movie on pay-per-view. An exciting Friday night in the big city.
Whenever it was that Hunter returned to the apartment, I was asleep.
On Saturday morning I woke up before Bree. Raven wasn’t in the room; extending my senses, I realized that she was in the study with Sky. Quietly I pulled on jeans and a sweater. I found Hunter in the kitchen, washing up a plate and cup. “Morning,” he said. “Want me to make you a cup of tea before I go?”
“You know better,” I said, and reached into the fridge for a Diet Coke.
“Ugh,” he said. “Well, I’m off on a long day of looking for gray stone churches and westerly windows.”
“It sounds like it could take you a week,” I said. “There must be hundreds of churches like that in the city.”
He shrugged, looking resigned. “What else can I do? Whether Killian is hiding his own tracks or someone else is doing it for him, I’m not getting anywhere trying to find him by magick.” He picked up his jacket. “What are you going to do today?” he asked.
I helped myself to one of the Pop-Tarts that Bree had thoughtfully stocked up on and tried to look nonchalant. “Robbie and I thought we’d wander around the city for a while.” It wasn’t a lie—I knew better than that with Hunter. But it wasn’t the whole truth, either.
Hunter gave me a searching look but didn’t question me further. “I’ll see you this evening for our circle,” he said.
“We’ll be the perfect young couple,” Robbie said as we walked down Forty-ninth Street. “I mean, you’ve got a ring and everything.” He glanced at the fake diamond ring we’d just bought at a tacky gift shop and shook his head. “Whoa. It’s a little freaky to see that thing on you.”
“Yeah, well, imagine how I feel wearing it,” I said.
Robbie laughed. “Just think what a promising future we’re in for, starting out in a tenement apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.”
“That’s all Maeve and Angus started with in this country,” I said. I felt suddenly very sad. “The entries from her Book of Shadows at that time were all about how she couldn’t bear living in the city. She thought it was full of unhappy people, racing around pointlessly.”
“Well, it is, sort of.” Robbie gave me a sympathetic glance. “And didn’t they come here straight after Ballynigel was destroyed? Of course she was depressed. She’d just lost her home, her family, nearly everyone she loved.”
“And she’d given up her magick,” I added. “She said it was like living in a world suddenly stripped of all its colors. It makes me sad for her.”