Page 88 of Alchemy of Souls

“It’s getting late,” Eloise says, staring at the papers spread all over the coffee table. “We should try one of these spells.”

We’ve spent the entire evening working on the poem and coming up with magical combinations to call the Key. But I’ve been skirting around the casting part because I know we’ll have to touch. And touching Eloise while doing magic is unavoidably intimate.

“Are you hungry?” I ask, and she gestures to the tray of empty plates.

She stands, stretching her arms above her head, revealing a thin strip of skin between her shirt and pants. We’re already off to a bad start.

“Maybe…,” I say.

“No more delays, Grayson. Let’s just try a simple spell. This one,” she says, pointing to a scrap of paper.

She rubs her hands together and starts humming, a joyful song that lights up her eyes and makes her smile. She pulls from the wooden table to form a tiny vase that floats down to land in the palm of her hand.

That’s my cue. I immediately bloom a single stem covered with brilliant fuzzy orange petals—lion’s tail.

I lower it into her vase and she offers me her hand. Herlioness eyes meet mine just as my fingertips graze her palm. I can still feel the remnants of her magic flowing through her soft skin, like an echo of the song she was just singing. Light and buzzy and entirely distracting. My eyes flit to the corners of her bowed lips.

I was right; that kiss was a mistake, mainly because of my annoying inability to forget it.

I step closer. Or maybe she does. But for the first time in my entire life my stomach does a damn flip on me.

“Grayson, look!” she exclaims, her voice upticking in excitement, and I do, just in time to see the air shimmer next to us.

It doesn’t shimmer for long and the Key never appears, but it’s definitely something.

“Do you know what this means?” she asks.

That I’m done for? That she’s going to want to tell my uncle, which I can’t have.

“The Key comes even with simple magic, as long as we’re touching, and we’rebothcasting,” she says, squeezing my hand. “Let’s go again. Let’s try another spell.”

She makes a wooden glass and I fill it with water. She makes a dagger handle and I make the blade. On and on until her magic starts to wane. The Key never fully appears, but we get sparks and shimmers, and her enthusiasm over it is infectious.

“I honestly can’t believe it,” she says, putting down her water glass on the table. “That we’re actually figuring this thing out. We’re doing the impossible, Gray.”

I pause. “Did you just call me Gray?”

She laughs. “As in your name?”

My lips quirk up. “Last time I checked, you’ve never called me anything other than Grayson. And you add Stone to it when I’ve annoyed you.”

“Which is always,” she says, but she’s in such a good mood it sounds like a compliment.

“Would you rather—”

“No,” I say too quickly. “I like hearing you call me Gray.” My voice comes out a little rough, and pink starts to creep along her cheeks.

“Then I guess I’ll call you Gray,” she says.

I clear my throat. “There’s a guest room two doors down that you can stay in,” I say, calling it quits on all this magic touching. “And a bathroom in the hallway.”

“What about your seduction story?” she asks.

“I’ll figure something out. I’m not going to make you uncomfortable just to keep my uncle from getting angry.”

Her eyebrows pinch together and she considers me. For once I’m not sure what she’s thinking, and I really wish I knew. But her scent is giving nothing away.

“I don’t mind sleeping in here if it’ll help,” she says with a little shrug.