The Dreamer's Curse (Book 2) by Honor Raconteur Page B

Jacen,” Sevana greeted with an evil smile.
    He shot her a dark look. “What, you couldn’t prevent him
from doing this?”
    “We weren’t actually sure it wasn’t you,” Sarsen apologized,
putting the last of the remains of the door into a trash bag. He actually did
regret it, unlike Sevana, who found the whole thing funny. “It’s hard for us to
tell the difference between you and Jensen right off.”
    Jacen waved this away, as he’d heard similar things many
times before, and turned to brace his back against the wall with a soft thud.
“So what did he do?”
    “He knocked whatever potion you had brewing with shiranui
fire over,” Sevana told him benignly. “Or so I assume, judging from the
spectacular fireworks we saw of blue-green fire.”
    If it were possible for one personality to strangle another
one, Jacen would have done it at that moment. He looked ready to commit murder,
anyway. But he blew out a deep breath, letting go of his anger, and asked
instead, “How long have you two been here?”
    “About three hours,” Sarsen answered, finally setting the
cleanup work aside. “We actually came for your expertise.”
    “Oh?” Jacen’s eyes stopped roving over the half-destroyed
room and finally settled on his two guests. “That sounds intriguing. You came
across something from the old magicks?”
    “Something that is still active and causing trouble,” Sarsen
confirmed with an unhappy stretch of the mouth. One couldn’t really describe it
as a smile.
    Jacen, conversely, perked up with true interest. “It’s rare
that anything from that time is still functional, much less capable of
activating itself. What is it doing? And where is it?”
    Sevana mentally resigned herself to explaining all of this again (since Jacen hadn’t heard it the first time) and started from the top. As she
explained the situation, Jacen interrupted her with questions now and again and
even dove for his protected bookshelf at one point and grabbed an empty
notebook to take quick notes in. She catalogued that reaction for future
reference. If this situation ever came up again, the surefire way of knowing
the difference between Jacen and Jensen would be that Jacen would ask
questions.
    By the time she finished, Jacen worried at his bottom lip
with his teeth, staring at the notebook in his hands with unfocused eyes.
“Sevana…I don’t like this picture you’re painting.”
    “What, you think I do?”
    “I can see why you’re worried. In fact, I’m worried.”
He finally put the notebook aside so he could look at her directly, expression
and voice intense. “I have never seen an artifact from that time rated so high
in power. For that matter, I’ve never seen one that will use magic constantly
like this, unchecked. They will occasionally activate themselves, certainly,
but it usually only happens once. Mayhap twice. And you say this has been going
on for months? ”
    “About five, I believe.”
    He scrubbed at the back of his neck with an open hand,
turning so that he could pace the width of the room in an agitated stride. “Are
you sure that the shield’s power rating isn’t skewing the overall reading?”
    “Positive. The shield itself is an eight in power.”
    He stopped abruptly, facing his bookshelf, and stayed like
that for several taut seconds, thinking so hard that it seemed he barely
breathed for a moment. “I think I know what this is.”
    Sevana let out a pent-up breath. Best news she’d had all
week. “Go on.”
    “Magicians of that time often made tools and such for people
that had either no magical ability or were still in the learning process.
Gadget magic is what they were called, or gadgicks for short. ” He shot them
both a crooked smile. “Rather like we do today with our charms and bottled
potions. But their inventions were on a much more powerful scale, and with a
more…hmmm…how to say this? A more intuitive approach. The devices were designed
to pick up the intent of the user more