Tempt the Stars

and never answer back—
    My hands tightened over his, and the torrent suddenly stopped. And then increased, a hundredfold, a wall of babbling, half-mad terror hitting me all at once. I gasped, and opened my eyes to find myself bent over him, sick and dizzy and quietly sobbing, my tears splashing down onto the ruined chest . . 
    And changing.
    Like a drop of rain falling into a lake, the eddies rippled outward, disturbing the flawless flow of the skin, revealing small blemishes in the instant they passed over: a hair, a freckle, a scar. I let go of his hands in surprise, and the skin retained the imprint of my hands for a second. And it, too, looked different, with the knuckles clearly visible in the instant before that eerie nonflesh washed over them again, erasing them as smoothly as footprints in the tide.
    It was so quick it made me wonder if I’d imagined it. But no. I scowled at the too-perfect flesh, because I
had
seen it, if only for an instant. I had seen Jules, inside the body bag his flesh was busy crafting for him.
    And somehow I had to find a way to get him
out
.
    I vaguely registered Marco pulling everyone back to the lounge—the witches, the Circle, everyone except for the vampires. This wasn’t for outsiders, if they couldn’t help. This was about family.
    Someone dimmed the lights; I don’t know why. Maybe to give the gawkers less to stare at; maybe because it just felt like the right thing to do. And vampire eyes didn’t need the light. Mine didn’t, either, with a diffuse beam leaking through from the lounge, illuminating Jules like a spotlight.
    It was enough. It was more than enough. I pressed my hands against him, both of them, palms flat and fingers outstretched, gripping hard enough to make indentations in his skin.
    And then I swiped down, revealing pink nipples, hard abs, a concave stomach, and the brief indentation of a naval. It looked like a plasterer had taken a trowel to a wall, scraping away the surface to reveal what lay beneath. And what lay beneath was Jules.
    He was still in there, somewhere.
    But a second later, the healthy skin had been washed away, replaced by the pale, poreless perfection I had already come to hate.
    Someone put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged it off. And tried again, but it was the same. Wherever my hands rested, and for a small space around them, the skin looked normal, and the body was whole, straight, perfect. But as soon as I took them away, or tried to move onto another spot, it was as if whatever magic was there simply vanished.
    And I didn’t know how to make it stay.
    “No,” I said, helplessly. “No!”
    “Cassie. Come away.”
    I looked up to see Marco staring at me, dark eyes troubled. “Come away? I’m trying to help him!”
    “I know. But there’s nothing you can do. We . . . we’ll call someone—”
    “Who?” I demanded. “We already tried Augustine, and if the maker and a senior war mage can’t remove it, do you really think—”
    “What I think is that you’re exhausting yourself for nothing. You need—”
    “Nothing?” I stared at him. “Don’t you
see
it?”
    “Don’t I see what?”
    I looked back down, at where my balled fists were resting on the pink and perfect skin of Jules’ stomach. It looked like some kind of modern art installation, where a white painted mannequin is punched only to reveal part of a living person beneath. Only Marco didn’t see that person. Marco, I realized blankly, didn’t see anything.
    I blinked at him, confused. I’d thought maybe I’d inherited some of Roger’s skill, that maybe that was why . . . but was I imagining things? Was this necromancy or just wishful thinking? Or something else entirely?
    “Come on, girl,” he told me gently. “You’ve got raccoon eyes. You need rest—”
    No! Let her try!
    God, Marco must be right; I must be tired, I thought, rubbing my eyes. Because that had sounded like Jules. A lot like, I realized, as the voice came again.
    Please, Cassie, please! Oh God, you can’t—don’t leave me like this! I can’t bear it. I can’t! I can’t! I—
    I was hallucinating; I had to be.
You can hear me?
He sounded almost as shocked as I
    was.
You heard that?
    “I—no. No.”
    “Don’t lie!” And suddenly, the tiny sound at the back of my mind that I might have been imagining was a full-blown voice, and there was no question this time. It was Jules. And he was talking a mile a minute. “Nobody could hear me! I’ve been trapped