Persuasion by Martina Boone Page A

the low hedges of the maze, and whimpers sounded in the wind, barely audible and more felt than heard.
    “You’re hurting them. Stop it!” Pivoting back to Obadiah, Barrie grabbed his finger, pulled it toward her, and let go only when the air stopped churning.
    “They’re a nuisance. Now, are you going to help me?” Obadiah flicked a piece of shell from a crease in the dark fabric of his suit. There was a hard edge to the way he watched Barrie that turned the question and the motion into a threat.
    It struck Barrie then how helpless she was. In the face of Obadiah’s power, how could she stop him from doing anything he wanted?
    As if he’d heard the thought, Obadiah extended his finger and tilted her chin up to make her look at him. Her fear fled and left her blinking.
    Why would she want to argue? She should want to help Obadiah. Feeling disconnected from the movement, she found herself nodding.
    “That’s good. There, you see.” Obadiah smiled darkly. “I have no need or wish to harm your pets, little one. You come with me to find the lodestone. I remove the Colesworth curse, you keep the Watson gift, and everyone is happy. Then you can choose whether you wish to find the lodestone at Beaufort Hall.”
    There was something off about the logic, something wrong. It niggled at the back of Barrie’s brain the way a tickle in the throat demands that you cough, even when you can’t. But it was hard, impossible, to think through the sludge of hot insistence that overwhelmed her objections. Of course she had to protect the yunwi and the Watson magic. That was herresponsibility. Giving Eight the chance to live without the Beaufort gift was an added bonus.
    Relationships never came with any kind of guarantee, but Barrie couldn’t imagine that she would ever feel indifferent to Eight. There would always be warmth or pain, and having to live with the Santisto between them would be either too much distance or too little.
    “What if I— we , because this isn’t my decision alone—tell you to go ahead?” she asked. “If you remove the Beaufort gift, is there any danger to Eight and Seven?”
    “Think of all the magic here like it’s a layer cake. It’s harder and more dangerous to remove the middle or bottom layers than it is to remove the top. I need to break the Colesworth curse before I can safely reach the Beaufort gift. Of course, I’ll also need the Beaufort lodestone, but it must all start with the curse.”
    Barrie glanced across the river, first at Beaufort Hall, and then at Colesworth Place. “I’ll talk to Eight, but first you have to promise you won’t put anyone in danger. And no matter what happens, you don’t get to take my gift,” she said. “You don’t get to touch the yunwi or the Fire Carrier or anything or anyone at Watson’s Landing. Not ever. Those are the terms.”
    Obadiah changed. Not a change of expression: a more fundamental, physical transformation of features into someonekinder and more familiar. Someone beautiful. He looked . . . not like himself.
    Rationally, she knew it wasn’t real, but he looked like Mark.
    Mark, who would never, had never, hurt anyone in his life.
    “No harm will come to you or anyone you care for, but there is no ‘we’ in our bargain,” he said. “This is between you and me and the Colesworth girl. Leave Eight Beaufort out of it.”
    Barrie looked up sharply. “You never mentioned Cassie.”
    “The curse is bound in blood. It requires blood to remove it. A prick of the finger, no more than that.”
    “Take mine, then. I’m a Colesworth, too.”
    “That wouldn’t satisfy. You aren’t bound by their curse.” Obadiah’s smile dropped away. “Listen, petite . Nothing is sure in life except for death, and even that isn’t as certain as you might think. You don’t know me well enough to trust my promises, but I’ll give one to you anyway. Keep your bargain, and I’ll keep mine. The last thing I want to do is add more blood or pain to the