“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care.”
Lila frowned. “I’m beginning to think you don’t want it back.”
“I don’t,” said Kell, and it was mostly true, though a part of him wanted nothing more than to hold it again. “But I need it. And I answered your question.”
Lila considered the stone. “A magic stone called magic,” she mused, turning it over in her palm. “Which leads me to believe that it, what? Makes magic? Or makes things out of magic?” She must have seen the answer in Kell’s worried face, because she smiled triumphantly. “A source of power, then…” She appeared to be having a conversation with herself. “Can it make anything? I wonder how it wor—”
Kell went for the talisman. His hand made it halfway there before Lila’s knife slashed through the air and across his palm. He gasped as blood dripped to the floor.
“I warned you,” she said, wagging the knife like a finger.
“Lila,” he said wearily, cradling his hand to his chest. “Please. Give it back.”
But Kell knew she wouldn’t. There was a glint of mischief in her eye—a look, he knew, he had worn himself—as her fingers curled around the stone. What would she summon? What could she summon, this gangly little human? She held both hands ceremoniously out before her, and Kell watched, half in curiosity and half in concern, as smoke plumed out between her fingers. It wrapped around her free hand, twisting and hardening until she was holding a beautiful sword in a polished scabbard.
Her eyes widened with shock and pleasure.
“It worked,” she whispered, half to herself.
The hilt shone the same glossy black of Kell’s eye and the stolen stone, and when she pulled the sword free of its sheath, the metal glinted—black as well—in the candlelight, and solid as any hammered steel. Lila let out a delighted sound. Kell let out a breath of relief at the sight of the sword—it could have been worse—and watched as she set it against the wall.
“So you see,” said Kell carefully. “Now hand it over.” She didn’t realize—couldn’t realize—that this kind of magic was wrong, or that the stone was feeding on her energy. “Please. Before you hurt yourself.”
Lila gave him a derisive glare and fondled the stone. “Oh no,” she said. “I’m just getting started.”
“Lila…,” began Kell, but it was too late. Black smoke was already pouring between her knuckles, much more of it than before, and taking shape in the room between them. This time, instead of a weapon, it pulled itself into the form of a young man. Not just any young man, Kell realized as the features smoothed from smoke into flesh.
It was Kell.
The resemblance was nearly flawless, from the coat with its fraying hem to the reddish hair that fell across his face, obscuring his black eye. Only this Kell had no blue eye. Both glistened as hard and black as the rock in Lila’s hand. The apparition didn’t move, not at first, only stood there waiting.
The Kell that was Kell glared at the Kell that wasn’t. “What do you think you’re doing?” The question was directed at Lila.
“Just having a bit of fun,” she said.
“You can’t go around making people.”
“Obviously I can,” she said.
And then, the black-eyed Kell began to move. He shrugged off his coat and tossed it onto the nearest chair. And then, Kell watched with horror as his echo began to unfasten his tunic, one button at a time.
Kell gave a small, strangled laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Lila only smiled and rolled the stone in her palm as the Kell that wasn’t Kell slid slowly, teasingly, out of his tunic and stood there, bare chested. His fingers began to undo the belt at his waist.
“Okay, enough,” said Kell. “Dispel it.”
She sighed. “You’re no fun.”
“This isn’t fun.”
“Maybe not for you,” she said with a smirk as the other Kell continued his striptease, sliding the belt from its loops.
But Lila didn’t see what he saw: the once-blank face of the echo was beginning to change. It was a subtle shift in the magic, a hollow thing starting to fill.
“Lila,” insisted Kell. “Listen to me. Dispel it now.”
“Fine, fine,” she said, meeting the black-eyed Kell’s gaze. “Um … how do I do that?”
“You willed him into being,” said Kell, getting to his feet. “Now will him away.”
Lila’s brow creased, and the phantom stopped divesting himself of clothes but did not disappear.
“Lila.”
“I’m trying,” she said, tightening her grip on the stone.
At that, the phantom Kell’s face contorted, shifting rapidly from vacant to aware to angry. It was as if he knew what was happening. His eyes flicked from Lila’s face to her hand and back to her face. And then he lunged. He moved so fast, an instant, a blink, and he was upon her. The stone tumbled from Lila’s grip as the Kell that wasn’t Kell slammed her back against the wall. His mouth opened to speak, but before he could, his hands dissolved—he dissolved—suddenly back into smoke, and then into nothing, and Lila found herself face-to-face with the Kell that was Kell, his bloody hand raised to the place where the illusion had been, his command—As Anasae—still echoing through the room.
Lila swayed on her feet and caught herself on the chest of drawers, her brief possession of the stone clearly taking its toll, the way it had on Kell. She managed to drag in a single shaky breath before he closed his bleeding hand around her throat.