“Yep. An’ it gets worse. ’Cause I kin tell whoever’s out there, if he ain’t a Master, he’s damn close.” He picked at the edge of his blanket. “Still, Rosie, yer right. We cain’t go makin’ no plans without knowin’ who’s behind all this, how strong they are, an’ maybe, iff’n we’re lucky, what their plans are. An’ the good news is I bet they might go guardin’ ’gainst Fire, Air or Water scryin’, but they ain’t gonna ’gainst Earth.”

“The Earth doesn’t like them,” Rosa muttered, after a long moment; her face was screwed up in concentration. “There is someone in this group that the Earth is powerfully revolted by.”

“That there’ll work in our favor.” Cody leaned forward earnestly. “Rosie, I gotta say somethin’, cause this ain’t the first magical fight I been in. I know y’all reckon I’m a flibbertigibbet, an’ maybe sometimes I am, but look here, the strongest thing we got workin’ fer us right now is thet we trust each other. We gotta make sure whoever’s out there cain’t work on thet an’ break it. Savvy?”

Rosa nodded, slowly. “Absolutely. I think . . .” She looked around at all of them. “I think we need to make a blood binding among us. Kellermann too,” she added, and the impresario looked startled. “It won’t take a minute. All I need is a pocketknife, a cup, and a hot coal.”

“Pocketknife’s here,” Cody said, fishing in a pocket of his trousers and bringing one out, handing it to her.

“There’s cups downstairs in the kitchen,” said Giselle. “I’ll get a coal.”

She already had a little brazier she used for incense that required a hot coal to burn up here in her room; the sylphs loved all sorts of incense, and she had brought it in from her vardo. She fished a coal small enough to fit in it from the stove with the tongs and dropped it in, carrying it over to the group. Rosa had directed them to sit on the floor in a circle.

“Put the coal there,” she said, pointing to the middle. As Giselle did so, and took her place in the space left vacant for her, Rosa stabbed her thumb with the smallest blade of the pocketknife and squeezed out a few drops of blood into the cup Kellermann had brought up. “Now all of you do the same, going clockwise around the circle.”

They did. When the cup came back to Rosa, she took it carefully in both hands and looked at them all earnestly.

“Are we all resolved to be of one mind in this undertaking?” she asked them solemnly.

They all nodded.

“And are we all resolved that we shall let no difference of opinion, no perceived insult, and no grievance break our bond?”

“Yes,” Giselle said firmly, prompting the others to answer likewise.