Dark Heir

* * *

I entered the park off of North Rampart Street, rushing up to the iron fence and leaping, grabbing the cross piece at the top, below the stylized, blunt spikes that pointed to the sky. Using my momentum, I levered my body up and over, landing silently on the grass in a crouch. The place smelled like water, grass, flowering plants, pesticides, and other poisons, but not crowds of people. There hadn’t been an event there that day, and if one had been one scheduled for that night, it had been canceled due to the vamp affair and citizen safety. The only sounds were the traffic, the splashing of the fountains, and the movement of the breeze.

I pulled on Beast’s sight and let her night vision, which was so much better than mine, take over. The world turned into greens and silvers, shading off into gray and blue. No reds, not much in the way of yellow, but everything sharper and cleaner and clearer. There was also something I was learning to recognize might be hints of ultraviolet or fluorescent colors—letting big-cats see body fluids the way a crime scene tech would under a black light. Though I had to work to see them, they were occasionally present in night vision, even in human form.

On the breeze, I smelled witch magic.

Keeping to the shadows and downwind of the scents, I followed the magic smell, moving across the grounds and the narrow walkways, across bridges over pools of water that had been sculpted to look natural, until I reached the redbrick main building. One side had shutters closed over the windows, a space between the building and a wide pool, and an open lawn with few trees and no privacy, except the shimmering of the magic that hid the gathering. It wasn’t an invisibility charm—there was no such thing—but the obfuscation charm made it hard to focus on the women in the circle. I was supposed to be in the park at sunset to be enclosed in the circle with them. Yeah. I was late. I wondered how much butt kissing I’d have to do to make up for being so rude.

Poured on the grass with what smelled like powdered chalk was a circle; I stood outside it, watching, waiting. Inside the circle, which, in my Beast-sight, flowed up from the ground looking like a wall of pale white wind, were five witches, sitting equidistant from one another. There was no chalk pentagram or pentacle, but I could picture an imaginary star from their positions. I didn’t understand witch workings, though I had learned that there was nothing inherently evil about the star shapes. Pentagrams and pentacles were simple geometry through which energy could flow without stopping, just as it could within a circle, but with points at which the energy could be drawn off and used in a working. A star was a way to control power, like a resistor or regulator.

Molly had once told me that magic users could have used squares, equilateral triangles, or a golden rectangle (a Greek mathematical concept), but the five points of a star—the shape taken from the shape of the human body, just as Leonardo da Vinci had shown with the Vitruvian Man—had proven to provide the best geometric and mathematical stability for a working, and was best when five magic users came together to work energy to a purpose, what laymen called a spell.

The woman I identified as Lachish, an air witch, was sitting at the east and was directing the energies of the working. Molly, an earth witch, was sitting to her left, with Sabina at the fire point, and two others at the moon and stone points. I recognized the last two as Butterfly Lily and her mother, Feather Storm, not their real names, but the only names I’d ever gotten, the two wearing similar flowing skirts and feathers in their hair. The two witches had only weak power and were used by other local witches as routing stations, or bodies through which the workings of energy could flow.

It would be rude, and possibly dangerous, to interrupt a working, and since I was late, I dropped to the grass, crossed my legs guru-style, and pulled patience to me like a cloak. My crosses had started to glow in the presence of the vamp, and I tucked them beneath my shirt to both preserve my night vision and avoid offending Sabina. I could be patient. I could. If they’d hurry up. Within ten minutes of my arrival, Lachish dropped her hands to the ground, bringing down the wall of energy. A slow breeze escaped and tugged at my braid before dissipating, and the tingle of faint magic danced across my exposed skin.

Lachish held up her hands when Molly would have stood to greet me, and my friend settled back to the ground, her expression guarded. “You are Jane Yellowrock,” Lachish said.

“I am. I . . . uh . . . I come in peace.”

Molly rolled her eyes and even Lachish looked amused. She looked a lot like the photo I had seen, though her face was more lined and sun damaged than the picture had indicated. She looked like a farmer, with short, stubby fingers and blotchy, grooved skin. She smelled of horses and chickens and green hay and strong magics.

“No. Seriously,” I said. “I’m not currently working as the MOC’s Enforcer. I come as a partner in Yellowrock Securities, and, yes, we have a contract to do upgrades on the MOC’s properties, but I owe the vamps only the loyalty to keep Leo and his properties safe, not to take on other duties like causing trouble for witches. Oh. And I have a letter for you.” I reached to my side and pulled the envelope from the gobag. It looked rather the worse for wear, the paper creased and scuffed, but the blob of wax that held it intact was still doing its job.

Lachish motioned me in and broke the circle by dusting away the chalk. I stood and stopped, glancing to Molly. “Weapons?”

“Silver and steel must be left outside the circle,” Lachish said for her.

I grunted in dismay and started stripping off the weapons and crosses, my belt buckle, harnesses, and anything else that might interfere with the magic they were working. I kept the ash-wood stakes, but against a master vamp, they were likely worthless. I was about twenty-five pounds lighter, and considerably less secure feeling, when I was done. Leaving my weapons outside the chalk, I stepped through the opening, approaching Lachish across the grass. She snapped her fingers and I felt residual energy spin from the circle, and a tiny flame of witch-light appeared at Lachish’s side. It took serious control to create a witch-light from damping energies, and even more to keep it going and stable. Lachish was showing off and letting me know that she was not someone to be trifled with. And she kept seated, another show of being in control while I came to her.

I lowered the envelope and the leader of the New Orleans coven took it, broke the seal, and removed the letter within. She read while I waited, sneaking a look at Molly’s face, which was asking me what the letter was for. I shrugged back, also with my face, pulling all the muscles down to indicate that I had no idea. Leo could have given the letter to me earlier, assuming it was written then, or could have given it to Sabina to bring, but he hadn’t, so this was an addendum, or . . . whatever. I was a glorified messenger girl. Sabina—vamp face like a white plaster statue—looked neither surprised nor expectant, so that was no help.