“Wow. This is incredible. I bet your last lover had to ink formulas onto her breasts just to get your attention.”
The scribbling in the notebook starts up again and my fantastic insult is wasted. “Please tell me what you discovered.” I am tapping my foot on the floor and about ready to pinch his arse to make him spill it out.
He whirls, and I fall back a step.
“Caught you enjoying the view again, did I?” He winks, and heat shoots to my core.
“Dammit. Just tell me your stupid results!”
“No need to shout, lovely scary witch. Ooo, your nostrils are flaring. How would you like to punish me for making you wait?”
I tug at my neckline. “Keep dreaming, Minotaur.”
“The residue has the same exact properties as the khymeia.”
“I love being right.”
He smiles and lifts his notebook so I can see a graph. His writing is neat but has a rushed quality to it. Like he’s always too excited about findings to take his time recording them.
“That graph makes no sense to me. I’ll just have to trust you.”
He shrugs and sets the notebook on his desk. “So what is your idea?”
“Since the khymeia’s magic works by draining the environment, we cast a spell with them and use the action to drain the mirror of power.”
Blinking, he studies my face. “That’s genius. But how do we manage to control it like that?”
“We need a place to work the spell where the only thing the khymeia can possibly pull from is the mirror,” I say.
“But we’ll have to be with the mirror in whatever place we set up, right? Won’t the khymeia attempt to drain us?”
“I don’t think so. They pull from inanimate objects. Organic, yes, but not from creatures.”
“You’re sure?” he asks. “Because if you’re not, then maybe we should try some other ideas first? Or can one of us cast with the khymeia from behind a wall?”
“It’s possible we could build a structure of stone that doesn’t hold much energy.”
“Right.” He is pacing now, walking back and forth between the door and the end of the bed. “No granite, of course. No soapstone since that tends to gather the sun’s heat…”
“No basalt,” I say.
“Oh, because of the white hydrogen often hidden inside.” He shakes his finger at me and smiles over his glasses. Gods, why are the glasses so hot? “Yes. Good one.”
He rattles off a few types of stone that could work—mainly ditchite, a worthless material I have heard of, but know little about.
“There is a quarry of the stuff near my hometown,” he says.
“Where are you from?”
His gaze cuts to me and his eyes narrow. “If I tell you, will you keep it to yourself?”
“Why don’t you want anyone to know? Did you get kicked out because you were overcharging for your pretend illusions?”
“They aren’t simply images of my imagination, you know. The khymeia accesses my memory when it creates those images. I use a memory spell to cast those.”
I frown and cross my arms. “I did notice a memory type rune on them. Do you combine the memory spell with a will to share?”
“I think so? It’s one of the open spells.”
