The black ledgers throbbed like a stab-wound here inside his tower. Poisonous. Infected. He’d need to bring them along, at least one, for the specifics of the spell and reversal.
He had not mentioned the other problem, the one involving that reversal. Henry had not seemed to know; no reason he should, Theo supposed. A cost had been discussed, but Henry—amid the joy of herbs, earth, woods, and Theo’s bed—had not seemed to be thinking of that. But then Henry was a soldier and an earth-magician, not a historian nor an expert in sinister outlawed cultists’ texts.
The reversal, the cost, would involve sacrifice, of course.
Nearly all of them did, at least the outlawed forms. That was entirely in character: those decades-ago practitioners had wanted to ensure none of their work would be undon
