“She confuses me, too.” Rachel rubbed her forehead as if in concern. “The candle makes a great source of active energy, but we need something for the core. Peri, do you have anything that embodies great power, sort of like the sun? A battery, maybe?”

“Have to be one big-ass battery,” Jenks muttered. “We want to make a magic rock, Rache, not a flashlight.”

Peri’s brow rose. “I’ve got a stone from Bikini Beach,” she said, rising as a flash of memory came and went of her and Jack firebombing a mutated mold from the walls of a cave. “It’s where they tested some of the first nuclear bombs,” she added at Rache’s wondering expression. “The thing is still radioactive, which is why I have it in a box.”

Peri rose, returning with the tiny lead tin set behind a vase of faded paper flowers she got in Mexico. “I set off about three different detectors trying to get it through customs until I wrapped it in wet towels and a lead bag.”

Peri put it on the table, and Jenks walked over, his wings a blur of motion. “Trent told me about this,” the small man said, arms crossed his chest as he bent over it. “He said if they could figure it out, it would be like catching the power of the sun.”

“Do yourself a favor,” Peri said as Rachel opened it up. “Don’t figure it out.”

Rachel hesitated in her reach for the flat-black stone, and Peri took it from its foam-fitted, lead-lined box and dropped it into Rachel’s slim, pale hand. “It’s hot, but a small exposure won’t hurt you.”

“Shit!” Rachel exclaimed, flushing as she dropped it and it hit the table with a thunk. “Jenks, come feel this,” she said, clearly embarrassed as she carefully picked it back up.

“You can feel radiation?” Peri asked, but it was obvious by Jenks’s screwed-up face and bright coppery dust that they were sensing something.

“We have our center of power,” Rachel said, shuddering as she put it back in the box and shut the lid with a snap. “Now all we need is something that embodies communication.”

“Peri’s phone,” Jenks said, his feet a bare inch above the table as he spun to her.

Peri reluctantly put it on the table. “And some magic words, I suppose?” she guessed, and Rachel started, looking at Peri as if she were stupid.

“Not for earth magic,” Rachel said.

Peri eased back into the chair, wishing Jack was here. He might be able to figure this out, she thought, then was glad he wasn’t. Maybe she was going crazy, the first signs of overdrafting.

“Wax would be a good inert media.” Rachel carefully pried one of Peri’s tea lights out of its metal base and dropped it into the bowl.