He laughed loud and raucously, dropping the paper on the worktable well out of her reach.

Honestly, it was the last worry on her mind. She scrambled over to the cot and wrapped herself up in the thin, smelly blanket. It was vile, but she was freezing. It took twenty minutes before she brought her shivering down to a small tremor. Then she fixated on the roll of paper on the table. Checking the door carefully, she slowly picked up the Amulet, wrapping her hand tightly around it.

“Build a bridge. Build a bridge,” she whispered to herself fiercely. She was still cold so it wasn’t very easy to focus, but she was very motivated. Not to get the paper, but to see if she could harness this power and do something with it. Anything. Maybe somehow she would be able to get herself out of this mess.

“Build a bridge …”

Suddenly something bright and hot and white seemed to light up her mind. It was nothing like the first time she had tried it. This was ten times more powerful. She looked down at the Amulet, stunned to think so much power was stored inside of something so relatively small. Then she looked up, looking for the roll of paper. Maybe if she could levitate it … maybe even bring it to herself … maybe then she could try and focus the power into doing other things. But instead of fixating on the paper, she realized something on the workbench was glowing a bright, fluorescent pink. It brightened and dulled in throbs, almost like a pulse but much slower. She narrowed her gaze, trying to make out what it was … and that was when it began to lift up off the table.

“Holy shit!” she whispered softly, carefully to herself. She didn’t want to disrupt herself. Didn’t want to ruin a good thing. Once it was in the air she tried to concentrate on bringing it to her, but hard as she tried she couldn’t make it move in any direction except up and down. She narrowed her eyes on it, trying to see what it was. After a moment it began to tumble over slowly. Once it did she could see it was a bangle bracelet.

Well, shit. Another piece of jewelry? What would happen if she put that on her wrist?

No sooner did she have the thought than the bracelet whipped through the air and thrust itself onto her hand. The minute it was around her wrist it settled down and the glow disappeared.

“Ah crap,” she said softly, a sigh escaping her. She knew even without trying that this one wasn’t coming off her, either. On the plus side … way pretty. And it had diamonds on it. What girl didn’t like diamonds? She hadn’t owned a single diamond in her whole life because diamonds were purported to look best in sunlight and the idea had just been too depressing. But now, she was thinking anything that looked this good under fluorescent lighting was worth having no matter what. But now she was stuck with two pieces of jewelry and had no idea what to do with either of them. But there had been a very different feel to the energy she had just used and she suspected it was the bracelet and not the Amulet that had supplied it. She wondered if this Panahasi even knew what he had in the bracelet. Did he even realize it was powerful?

And it was powerful. Her arm was literally humming with it.

“A nik,” she whispered softly, turning it around on her wrist slowly, looking at all the perfect rows of gems. It seemed like a fairly new design, unlike Adoma’s Amulet, which had a more beaten look to the metal and a rougher polish to the onyx stones. Is it possible for new objects to be imbued with power? Well, of course they could, she thought, rolling her eyes at her own flaky brain. New or old it was the power of the maker that imbued them and if there were powerful Bodywalkers in this time then it was possible.

But who had made this one?

“What’s your name, pretty little thing?” she murmured. Then a sound outside the door made her start. She hastily yanked the manacle down over the bracelet and then her shirt cuff after that. She moved back to the cot and wrapped herself in her blanket, doing everything but whistling innocently.

“Well, I see you are comfortable,” Panahasi said, moving to his worktable. Her heart lurched up into her throat at the idea of his discovering she had pilfered the bracelet, but as he settled in to work at his books, he kept his back to where the missing piece of jewelry had come from. He began to flip through pages from a very old-looking book that had to be the biggest and thickest book she had ever seen.

“Are those spells?” she asked, trying not to sound too interested. She rolled her eyes inwardly at herself. Just how does one ask a question without sounding interested?

“Yes, and if you don’t mind they are very old and very complex so I would appreciate you not interrupting my concentration.”

“Sorry.” She paused a moment or two. “Can anyone learn how to do a spell?”

He sighed. “Humans such as yourself can try, but it very often corrupts those of weaker spirit. It poisons you. You are better off not trying it.”

“But it doesn’t corrupt you?”

“I suppose it could if it was the right spell done for the wrong reasons. But most of the magics I use are …”

“Wimpy?” she suggested.

“No! Just more benign.”

“Oh, are you not powerful enough for the big guns?”

“No! Will you shut up?”

“Sorry.”

“If you know what’s good for you—” he warned.

“Yeah, yeah, otherwise you will have to kill me … like you’re not planning it already. What’s wrong? Can’t figure out what to do with the body? I hear lye is a good way to go.”

“Enough!” He slammed down his pen and pad of paper and rushed up against the bars. “I can get rid of you in a second, missy, and wouldn’t care about the body. Or didn’t you see the remains of the last person who crossed me hanging from the rafters?”

That made her heart miss a beat. But when it came down to it, she’d been afraid of something a lot worse than dying for the whole of her life. The sun. A burning ball of pain and death that filled the sky hour after hour, trapping her within the walls of her home. To her, this man was nothing. He was small. And with that thought all of her remaining fear simply vanished. She was not small. She was powerful. She had two objects of power right there on her body, untapped resources that, if she could just learn to control them might possibly get her out of this situation. But, she realized, she would be wise to stop poking the bear.

She affected the fear he was looking for. The fear that would make this small man feel big. She cowered down under her blanket and spent the next hour very quietly watching him toil over his notes and books. Over time she got the picture that a lot of what he was reading was escaping his understanding. He kept running his hands through his hair then brushing away the bits as they fell onto his work. It explained why his hair was thinning in places. After all, what Bodywalker would choose a balding man when a handsome head of hair was just as easy to come by? But he was so thoroughly aggravated by his hardship of understanding that it was affecting him physically. This was supported by the red patches around the fingertips clutching his pen. He had chewed his nails down to the nubs, leaving only the cuticles to work on. Apparently he did it so frequently even his Bodywalker body didn’t have time to heal from the abuse. She watched him gnaw and spit more times then she cared to count over the next hour.