Underneath the agony, she vaguely understood that she could thrust the borrowed elemental power away and allow her magick to re-adhere itself around the elium. It would stop the pain, but she wanted the elium to lose its hold on her own power so badly that she held on to the bait and endured the separation. The pain was so great she couldn't even cry out. Her mouth opened in a soundless gasp of unbearable anguish.

Adam was there, but even though her eyes were open, she couldn't see him clearly. Claire saw only a dark shape. Strong hands eased her down onto the bed, stroked through her hair. He said things to her—soft, quieting, reassuring things—but it was like another language.

Darkness closed its fist around her. House-blessed nothingness… She sank into it willingly.

The special woodsy clean scent of soap and shampoo teased Claire's nose—the smell she'd come to identify as Adam. Her eyelids flickered open and Adam's face came into view. He'd bundled her in a blanket on the bed and tucked her against his body. She should have been toasty warm, but her whole body quaked with chill. The center of her chest throbbed dully and she remembered the peeling away of the magicks and shuddered.

"Hey," Adam said softly. "Okay?"

"I think so." She tried to get up, but he held her tight against him.

"Just relax a minute. You scared the shit out of me."

She frowned. That had to be just an expression.

"I was across the room and your entire body went tense. You tried to scream but couldn't and all the blood drained from your face." His voice took on an awed quality. "Your magick, Claire, it pulsed like the explosion of a tiny nuclear bomb. I absorbed the shock of it clear across the room. It shook the fucking walls. I got to you and a second later you were out like a light. What happened?"

She sighed, trying to organize her thoughts. Within her, her magick pulsed, just as it had done every day of her life before Rue had imbued her with the elium. A little to the left and up lay the elium itself in a hard little ball of ultimate power. A cancer within her. It was still connected to her power by snaky, sticky tendrils, but less than before.

"I pulled energy from the elements around me to coax my magick away from the elium." She swallowed hard and trembled, remembering the agony. "It worked better than I anticipated. It was fast and very painful."

"You've got your mojo back. I can feel it."

She concentrated, drawing the moisture from the air around her until she had a ball of it. "Yes." She smiled. "It is back."

"Fuck, Claire," Adam breathed, staring at the small, condensed orb of water floating above her hand. She kept it suspended there using air magick. "You're an earth witch. How the hell are you doing that?"