Ruler [Blood Magic, Book 3]

Chapter 61: The Suite Life of Mills and Keel

It exploded inside of me, a hot and terrible detonation, and I gasped, my back arching involuntarily. I didn't fall, however, my hand was stuck to the book's cover, as if it had been glued there and the tome had suddenly transformed into granite. Opening my eyes and my mouth at the same time, I was confronted by blackness and the scream died in my throat.

Keel, Kristiana, the penthouse suite, the coffee table, the chair I'd been sitting on - all gone.

And yet, I couldn't move my hand. Beneath it, I still felt the book's supple leather, even if the volume itself was gone and in this place my hand pressed against nothing.

Don't fight it. The words drifted out of the dark, the female voice unfamiliar.

Fight what? I wondered. Was I fighting?

Another voice. Male. Just an echo. It's the one spell we never could test.

A spell?

Don't fight it. The woman again. The book's a grimoire but also a gateway, for the right magician.

A gateway? What the hell did that mean?

Given that I appeared to have gotten myself stuck somewhere, I didn't see what choice I had but to follow the advice of disembodied speakers. Don't fight it. Okay, I'd try that.

I shut my eyes to the nothingness around me, concentrated on the feeling of the bond magic tome beneath my fingers and steadied my flow of magic, before slowly opening myself back up to the energies around me. As soon as I did, I began falling. A current of fear buzzed through me and I stopped dead. Oh. That's what she meant by fighting. The next time I opened myself to the darkness, I embraced the descent.

For a long time, there was only the book beneath my hand and the steady downward motion. Then, in an instant, the book was gone, but not gone. Rather, it was all around me. Its pages fluttering against my clothes, its ink staining my skin, and then even the feeling of the book was gone, and I found myself lying on a rough-hewn wooden floor.

"Welcome, magician."

I lifted my head towards the voice. I recognized it. It was the woman from the darkness. But here she was made whole.

In her late thirties maybe, her blonde hair streamed down her back in unruly, cascading locks. She appeared to have made some attempt to pin it up and back, but it had broken free like some kind of living beast. Her clothes were simple, a tunic and a long skirt, all tans and faded browns; as simple as the room we occupied with its wooden furniture, jars and pots, books and candles. I recognized her by the ring around her eyes. It matched my own.

"Cella?"

She nodded. I turned to the man beside her. Tall, lean, bald, clothed in equally simple clothes, though his were several shades darker that his wife's. His eyes, too, gave him away.

"Rook?"

He didn't nod, so I turned back to Cella, who seemed the friendlier of the two. "How is this possible?"

"A spell," she said. "Each of us sacrificed a portion of our life force and our magic to this book, so a part of our essence lives on inside of it."

"I've never heard of such a spell."

"Bond magic allows for casts that other schools of magic do not."

"Not much is known about bond magic where I come from," I admitted, wondering if I should have changed that "where" to a "when."

"Not much is known about it where we come from either," Cella said. "That is why we studied, wrote this book."

Now it was my turn to nod.