“You need to practice,” Nix said.

I sat back on my heels and wiped sweat from my brow. The heat had come back with a vengeance, and the second floor was even hotter than the first. I’d changed into loose cutoff jeans and a tank top, but that hardly helped. We’d opened the windows, but kept the curtains drawn just in case. Containment might not have been able to detect magic, but they’d certainly have been able to see it. Unfortunately, the curtains didn’t do much to help the already limp breeze outside.

“I’m not trying to avoid practicing,” I said. “It hasn’t exactly been a slow week. I haven’t had time.”

“She’s telling the truth there,” Liam said, glancing at me. “And she understands the consequences.”

“All right,” Nix said. “You have moved and cast. And now we bind.” She walked to the box, which sat on the floor.

“You’ve put magic into the box. But magic prefers to move. It prefers to live. You must bind the magic into the box, into the wood, or it will return to the world, only to be absorbed by you again.”

“Which would make all this work pointless.”

“Precisely,” she said.

“And how do I bind it?”

“You insist upon it.”

She stopped there, as if those four words completely explained the magical process she wanted me to try. Liam and Gavin watched with interest.

“I’m going to need more than ‘I ask it to.’”

“I didn’t say you asked it,” Nix said, walking around the box. “I said you insisted upon it.” She pounded a fist on the palm of her other hand. “You demand it.”

She reached out. “Give me your hand.”

I hesitated, then placed my hand in her palm. Her skin was cool, soft, and I smelled the green scent of new leaves as we made contact.

“Magic seeks a home. You only have to give it one.” She guided my hand to the box, pressed it there. “Feel what it wants to be, and send it home.”

I felt cool, lacquered wood . . . and I felt really, really silly about doing it under the stares of the Quinn brothers.

“You aren’t concentrating.”

“I feel like I’m in a fish tank right now. Lot of eyeballs, lot of pressure.”

“You want us to turn around?” Gavin asked with a grin. “We can do that.”

I glanced at Liam. “Can you please control your brother? He isn’t helping.”

He made a noise that didn’t sound especially agreeable. “I haven’t been able to control him before. I don’t see how I could start now.”

“And still, I get by just fine.”

“Yeah, we can all see that now, can’t we?”

Nix, her hands still in mine, chuckled as the argument heated. “If you hoped to distract them, that was probably the fastest way. Now,” she said, pressing my fingers harder against the box. Don’t feel the box. Feel what’s in the box. You can close your eyes if it helps with the distraction.”

I rolled my shoulders and tried to settle into my hips. I closed my eyes, made myself aware of my fingertips, the sensations of her cool fingers, the wooden box.

At first, there was nothing. It started slowly, a slow vibration beneath my fingers that felt like the humming of a machine. I thought it might be a nervous shake or some sort of trick of my nerves, something I should ignore while I reached for something deeper.

But the sensation only grew stronger, from a soft hum to a vibration that pulsed like a heartbeat.

“Good,” Nix whispered softly, like she was trying not to startle me, not to spook me like a nervous animal. “Good. You can feel the magic in the box, in the wood. To bind it, you must unite it. Use your magic to coax it. To push it.”