Page 93 of Alchemy of Souls

Bastard.

Eloise looks down at her hands and back up. “We were, um, dancing?”

“Are you asking us or telling us?” my mother asks, and my uncle smiles.

Eloise exhales, her cheeks going pink and her scent laced with worry. “We were actually kissing.”

My mother laughs. “Interesting.”

Eloise’s embarrassment tumbles off her and I glare at my mother.

“What methods have you tried thus far to call the Key?” my uncle asks, and now I do tense.

Eloise can’t lie. Moreover, why would she even want to?

“First, we tried heightened emotion. We thought the Key might respond to need, but that didn’t seem to work,” she says as calmly as she can.

“How can you be sure?” my uncle asks. “You just said it appeared when you were kissing. Does that not count as heightened emotion?”

Eloise chews on her lip. “Well, yes. But days before, Grayson threw me off a five-story tower onto a glass platform. My emotions were flying and there was only a shimmer of the Key. It never fully materialized.”

My uncle’s eyes flick to me. I never told him about the shimmer.

“What else?” my uncle asks, and I brace for the inevitable.

Here it comes.

Eloise glances at me and back at my uncle. “And, um, we tried Grayson doing a spell and then me. We tried casting at the same time,” she says. “But nothing made the Key materialize the way it did at the party.”

Hang on, am I hearing this correctly? Did Eloise just…omitthe touching part? The twenty shimmers we conjured last night? Is shehelpingme?

My uncle pauses and I swear I can hear my own heart beating in my temples, but remarkably there is nothing in Eloise’s scent that gives her away.

“And the cobbler?” my uncle asks.

Eloise freezes. “He, um, he…,” she stumbles, and I’m about to interject when she says, “He was actually really grumpy. He told us to get out when we asked to talk.”

I release my breath. Maybe we’ll get through this. Maybe Eloise is a better omitter than I’ve given her credit for. If she can just keep talking around things for a little while longer—

Eloise reaches toward her teacup, but her fingers miss its handle. She tries again, but she fumbles it and tea spills on the table. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s…”

“Wrong with you?” my mother offers with a perfect smile.

I stare at the pair of them, suspicious. “What did you do?” I say carefully, but neither of them answers.

“Grayson?” Eloise says my name like a question and her look is equally perplexed.

I grab Eloise’s teacup off the table. There’s no residue in the bottom and no noticeable scent. She tries to grab the arm of the couch for balance, but once again she falters. Yet her skin looks rosy and she’s not gagging or coughing.

“Slurring syrup?” I guess—the magical equivalent to being drunk. Short acting and leaves you with a nasty headache.

“Very good, Grayson. A-plus,” my mother says with a little clap.

“Give me your hand, Eloise,” I say in a tight voice, standing to help her up. “I’m getting you out of here.” In fact, I can’t believe I brought her into a room with these two in the first place.

But again, my uncle uses a command on me. “Sit,” he says, and my body is forcefully pushed down to the couch with a wind spell.

I start to weave a spell of my own to counteract it, but before it’s halfway formed, he says, “I’d like to show you something, Miss Belrose,” and flicks his wrist.