Riordan lacked words to describe the sounds Quinn was making. His voice resonated and echoed, more than one note emerging from his throat at once in a dissonant and unsettling melody that made the very air in the room shiver with waiting energy. The slow draw of power from Riordan to the shielding circles on Mark vibrated, a shivering sensation rising up that thread and into Riordan’s well of power. The flow of his energy shifted with the vibrations, orienting towards that voice and leaving Riordan both entranced and shaken.

The active spells on Mark moved to the haunting music as well, the magic components separating like rocks rising out of shaken sand in a sifting pan. The shaking intensified, rising towards some unknown peak that set Riordan’s teeth on edge. Just before the sensation crossed from unpleasant into downright unbearable, Quinn’s hand twitched, making a neat cut in Mark’s skin with the little blade. The wound was short but at least half an inch deep, crimson blossoming in the middle of the death mage’s magic circle.

Immediately, life magic clustered near that small injury, Mark’s shifter regeneration rushing to heal him. Quinn’s voice shifted from the two-toned wailing to a rhythmic chanting. He recognized the language as Latin, but Riordan didn’t know enough to figure out what he was saying. From the way Agent Ahlgren was acting though, he either spoke Latin or recognized the spell. Riordan suspected the agent would stop Quinn from casting anything unknown.

Along with the chanting, Quinn’s long bony fingers moved through a series of very precise movements, most of which looked like he was beckoning someone closer. After a second, Riordan realized that was almost exactly what Quinn was doing. As he watched the little wound, he could see the life that was in Mark’s blood transforming to death energy right before his eyes, the small death of blood cells and tissue from the injury combined with the strong life energy of a shifter, even stronger than the normal effect of doing this conversion on a human.

The new blood magic energy, that swirling mix of life and death, twisted and danced in the air, flowing towards Quinn’s beckoning fingers. With little twitches, small micro-gestures, Quinn fed the magic into the crystal bowl, a drop of Mark’s blood moistening the safflower and flaring to life with potent attractive magic.

The spell cursing Mark’s blood moved. Like a strange pied piper, Quinn guided the spell out of Mark’s blood and into the bowl, his chanting voice making the magic dance to his arhythmic tempo. Once the flow started, it continued rushing forward without more prompting as if a suctioning vacuum pulled it straight to Quinn. His hands switched to a new pattern of movements, weaving and folding the emerging spell into the crystal bowl.

Riordan had seen enchanted items before, but he’d never seen anyone doing the process of enchanting. Material casters were supposedly the best enchanters, able to bind the magics to physical objects more tightly. Everyone else had to find a way to connect the object and the magic somehow and then fold the magic around the object like an intricate shawl. The object served more as a way to transport the magical anchor rather than being important in and of itself.

Shifter shaman rarely bothered with more than either simple enchanted tools or the major ritual workings, discarding everything in between as not needed for their way of life. Mages were more prone to enchanting. It seemed to stem from a combination of increased reliance on pre-cast spells, smaller personal wells, and their own cultural habits. Whatever the reasoning, Quinn folded the spell with great skill and care, pooling it into the crystal bowl as it streamed out of Mark. The magic traveled through the safflower powder and then trapped itself in the crystalline structure, dying the tiny bowl red with the powder.

Quicker than Riordan would have expected, the last threads of the blood spell poured out of the cut into Quinn’s waiting grasp. The man twined the ends around his fingers, drawing it out of Mark entirely and letting that connection snap. Aside from a subtle change in magical sensation and the lack of black magic all over Mark, the only change was that the cuts on Mark’s arms finally began to heal, both the one made by Quinn and the original slice made by Helena. With how fast shifters healed, the minor wounds were thin pink lines in seconds and then gone entirely.

Quinn took the last strands of the spell and wove them around his enchantment, binding the last of it together in a way Riordan didn’t pretend to understand. He could feel the spell settle into the bowl, dormant and just waiting to be drawn back out again to fulfill its purpose. How Quinn had managed to not only draw the magic out of Mark, but to keep the spell intact and usable in some fashion, Riordan would never know. The death mage looked way too young to be that skilled, even if his exact age was hard to pin down with his unnatural paleness and the dark circles under his eyes obscuring any potential wrinkles.

The chanting drew to an end and Quinn gave a satisfied hum, plucking up the tiny crystal bowl to examine. “That went well.”

Riordan would have agreed, but his attention snagged on Quinn’s hands again. Or rather, on the thin smear of death taint slowly sinking into the man’s flesh there. The amount was almost insignificant, rapidly vanishing into the sheer darkness lurking beneath Quinn’s skin, but the sight reminded Riordan that Quinn wasn’t a mage skilled at dealing with death magic. He was a death mage himself. And every spell he cast cost him, both in terms of a well that didn’t refill without further sacrifice and in the taint that built up like poison with each casting.

With a flex of internal will, Riordan looked past Quinn’s corrupted body into the state of the man’s spirit. To his great surprise, the traces of death taint on his spirit were minimal, almost as if he had only just become a death mage. Somehow Quinn was damaging his body instead of his spirit. Riordan was reminded of Frankie’s lesson on the spirit realm and how she’d mentioned that the physical body provided some shield for the spirit on the material plane. To protect his spirit so thoroughly though, Quinn must have done it intentionally.

No wonder he was the Department of Magic’s top death magic specialist. That mostly uncorrupted spirit made him trustable in a way most death mages just weren’t.

Quinn’s grey eyes caught on Riordan’s and one dark eyebrow arched upward. Riordan realized he’d been staring and glanced away, uncomfortable. Fortunately, Quinn didn’t call him on it and turned towards the others, saying, “The spell is off of him. It is a compulsion spell, keyed to the caster, that would have made your friend dazed and inclined to follow suggestions from that person. From what you described, she had to quick cast it and that meant it wasn’t as strong as it could have been.”

“Would it have faded on its own?” Lucinda asked, “Or could he have resisted the effects?”

Quinn held a hand out, see-sawing it in a clear maybe. “No spell lasts forever. It would have run out of power eventually. Resisting it or fighting it would drain the spell faster. However, blood magic is insidious stuff. You said he had been fighting it off with his own spell and you saw how strong it still was. Not strong enough to break your wards, but it would have still been enough to make him compliant once he stopped having strength to fight it. And then there’s the side effects of blood magic.”

Riordan frowned, not liking the sound of that at all. His eyes dropped to Mark, worried. “Side effects?”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry, since I pulled it out whole,” Quinn rushed to reassure them. He wiped the plate he’d used off, cleaning off bits of powder and possibly blood, and handed it back to Maudy to re-bin. “Usually death magic that invades the body leaves these traces. Not quite like the corruption that comes from casting, but it makes it easier for future spells to follow the same paths and some people think that it inclines people towards craving that sort of power themselves. I’m not sure about that, but it’s still messy. Fortunately, that spell wasn’t bonded to your friend’s blood, so I could clean it all up with minimal damage.”

“You are finished, then?” Lucinda asked. “We are clear to remove the wards safely?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn nodded and hopped off the edge of the bed with a flourish. “He’s all yours. He’ll be tired, of course, but that should be about it.”

Riordan was definitely impressed. He and Lucinda hadn’t had the first idea how to remove that spell safely and Quinn did it in a matter of minutes with maximum efficiency and care. If Riordan wasn’t mistaken, Quinn had even come out ahead in the amount of magic he had, having used the cut itself as a small blood sacrifice to trigger the initial attraction and then storing the spell instead of dissipating it. He was reminded of the oily taint clinging to Quinn. No matter how effective Quinn’s methods were, there were definitely reasons that Riordan and Lucinda never considered them.

Lucinda moved into the space beside Mark that Quinn had vacated, looking at her fellow apprentice for a moment before turning back to the table of supplies. Riordan fidgeted slightly, unsure of the next step. “So, as a secondary caster, is there anything I need to be doing to end the wards?”

After the stressful day they were having, Lucinda clearly struggled not to get frustrated at Riordan’s ignorance. Perhaps it was also a matter of pride. He wasn’t part of her pack, but he was a shifter and very technically a shaman and he was making them look bad. Fuck that. Her annoyance actually bolstered him, a frisson of anger running down his spine as he straightened. He’d done nothing wrong and wasn’t going to apologize for his current skill level.

She must have seen the challenge in his stance and let it go with a huff of breath. Lucinda grabbed a square of cloth out of the bin and gestured towards the bathroom at the back of the motel room. “Can you get this wet? Cleaning the circles off gently will weaken the spell before we end it and reduce any potential backlash.”

Most spells didn’t have much risk of backlash, but the chance was always there with joint casting, given the flow of magic between multiple people. It was easy enough for someone to drop their part of the spell too quickly and send the rest of the burden surging up the connection to the other casters. For a spell like their shields, the backlash would be unpleasant but not truly damaging. Good practice was to avoid any backlash at all and he should start as he meant to go along, even if he hated everything about the idea of being a shaman himself.

It didn’t take long to return with the damp cloth. Riordan watched Lucinda clean the dried paste off of Mark’s skin and felt the draw on his well increase to compensate. The circles had stabilized the spell and drawn in ambient magic as well. Now only Riordan and Lucinda were providing power.

“Alright,” Lucinda nodded, satisfied with her cleanup. “Think about easing back on your contribution to the shields. Lower it slowly until you feel only a weak thread of connection left. Don’t let that snap until I’ve also lowered it to that level. Once we’ve both reached minimal contribution, cut off your connection. If you had more practice, there are ways to do that in a gentle and synchronized manner, but it won’t be a problem for this, so long as we are both feeding only the smallest amount of magic to the spell when you cut it.”

That sounded easy enough. Riordan might not know shit about active casting, but he was getting a hang of intention. He’d always had a strong will and could visualize what he wanted and how to get there. Usually he used it for simple survival, thinking about food, travel, fights, whatever was challenging him in a given day, but the skill translated to magic surprisingly well.

He counted in his mind, sensing the thread connecting him to the spells. He could feel Lucinda’s connection as well. She was speaking in Ojibwe again and he could feel how the flow from her eased off in a measured pace, careful not to unbalance or disrupt anything. Riordan didn’t have a chant of his own, but he just willed his connection to follow pace with hers. He wondered why more people didn’t do it that way, hoping it wasn’t because of some horrible unknown side effect that would change him yet again. He couldn’t handle too many more blows to his world view in such a short time without something snapping.

Thinking about snapping brought Riordan’s attention back to the task at hand. Lucinda was still chanting, but her link maintained a stable weak strength. Riordan’s own link mimicked it, as he had intended, but it occurred to him that she must be waiting for him to sever the connection first. That made sense, given she was the primary caster, plus she could handle any backlash better. With a deep breath, Riordan pulled his power out of the spell, trying to visualize it.

Instead of seeing it as scissors cutting a thread, leaving bits of his own magic behind, he thought of the way Quinn had cleaned up every bit of the blood spell. The situation wasn’t quite the same, but Riordan wanted to leave as little potential damage as possible. The image that came to mind was vines tangling together, wrapped around a tree. He gently disentangled his vine of magic, easing his roots out to keep from tearing up the tree that was Mark or from disturbing the other vine.

As his last imaginary root slipped free, his connection to the spell broke, the shock minor but disorienting after maintaining the drain for so many hours. Some corner of his mind screamed that he needed to keep shielding Mark to keep him safe, but he knew that was just the crisis stress, not a rational thought. Riordan pulled himself back together, shoving all his uncertainties and his eventual crash back under the surface until a safer time. Lucinda finished pulling her own power out a moment later and the wards dissolved completely.

Mark gasped suddenly, his brown eyes flying open as he jerked awake. He glanced about, clearly not seeing his surroundings properly for a few seconds before Lucinda stepped forward and his gaze settled on her, clearly slowly.

“So,” the young apprentice croaked quietly, “what did I miss?”