lash envelope

"Move," I murmured. "Before I move you." Then I paused and said, "Wait a minute. What am I thinking? It isn't as though you can stop me." Then I simply stepped through Lasciel's image to the table, and reached for the white envelope.
The white envelope began to spin in place on the table, and abruptly became dozens of envelopes, each identical, each whirling like a pinwheel.
"But I can," Lasciel said quietly. I looked up to find her standing on the opposite side of the table from me. "I witnessed the birth of time itself. I watched the mortal coil spring forth from perfect darkness. I watched the stars form, watched this world coalesce, watched as life was breathed into it and as your kind rose to rule it." She put both hands on the table and leaned toward me, her blue eyes cold and hard. "Thus far, I have behaved as a guest ought. But do not mistake propriety for weakness, mortal. I beg you not to oblige me to take further action."
I narrowed my eyes and reached for my Sight.
Before I could use it, my left hand exploded into flame.
Pain, pain, PAIN. Fire, scorching, parboiling my hand as I tried to hold it back with my shield bracelet. The memory of my injury in that vampire-haunted basement came rushing back to me in THX, and my nerve endings were listening.
I fought down a scream, breathing, my teeth snapping together so suddenly and sharply that a fleck of one of my molars chipped away.
It was an illusion, I told myself. A memory. It's a ghost, nothing more. It cannot harm you if you do not allow it to do so. I pushed hard against that memory, turning the focus of my will against it.
I felt the illusion-memory wobble, and then the pain was gone, the fire out. My body pumped endorphins into my bloodstream a heartbeat later, and I drifted on them as my focus started to collapse. I leaned hard against the table, my left hand held close to my chest in pure reflex, my right supporting my weight. I turned my attention to the envelopes and forced my will against them until the illusions grew translucent. I picked up the real envelope.
Lasciel regarded me steadily, her beautiful face unyielding, determined.
"Sooner or later I'll push through anything you throw," I panted. "You know that."
"Yes," she said. "But you will not be able to focus on the divination until you are quit of me. I may force you to exhaust yourself resisting me, in which case you will not attempt the divination. Even if I only delay you until dawn, there will be no need for you to attempt it." She lifted her chin. "Whatever happens, the divination will not be successful."


Proven Guilty Chapter 33, Page 264