Shadow Rites

As if a dam had broken, the green power of the working boiled up from the floor and walls and raged higher in the room, falling from overhead, from the height of the doorway, rising again on the floor. Filling the ballroom like a deluge, expanding like the sea through a broken dike, flowing through the doorways, down the walls, a waterfall of power that eddied and shifted into whirlpools of rainbows. The vapor magic flowed into the working at the back of the room. Quickly the magics were waist high. A witch inside started to scream and writhe, slapping at her own skin as if bees were stinging her. Lachish’s huge protective ward began to crack.

To the side, Molly whispered, “Carraig,” in the lilting tone of her family’s oldest wards, in Irish Gaelic. Her own ward hardened yet again, but it wasn’t the same power signature as the one Evan had made in the yard. They had little air left. Several of other witches knew a working to keep out air, but not enough of them and the circle at the back thinned. More witches fell inside the ward.

The protective circle fell with a shower of sparks and a sizzle of power that was instantly swept up by the green misty flames.

Doors slammed shut throughout the house, a resounding multidimensional whamwhamwham of sound and vibration. In Beast-sight, the entrance to the ballroom and every doorway leading out, now glowed with black-light magic. Exactly like the magic Angie Baby used. Frustration and fear gathered in my throat, wanting to be screamed out. The Nicauds had just added their own wards to the one the Witch Conclave had created. If I had wanted to escape, I should have done it before now.

The witches broke up and raised smaller wards, in small groups. Or tried to. The green mist began to suck the energy out of them. All but Molly’s ward.

“Molly?”

“Got this,” she said.

“Good to hear.” I lifted my arms. The green magics were up to my chest, and ankle high on Eli. He might not be able to see the magics, but he had deduced how they worked. The flaming pool was now tipped in black, stinging, burning my hands.

Molly pressed her fingers through her ward, toward the dancing witches, saying, “Múchtóir dóiteáin. Múch.”

Marlene staggered. Tau threw out her hand at Molly and said, “Confuto. Retardo.”

Molly’s offensive working exploded in a scattering of scarlet sparks. Molly dropped like the dead. Evan caught her and her reinforced hedge 2.0 brightened over them, glowing red and blue. Half of it was now Evan’s magics. Dang. One more use of magic and he’d be permanently out of the closet. My godchildren would be forevermore in danger.

“Jane,” Eli demanded. “Options.”

“Eli,” I whispered. “Take the shot.”

He fired. But the weapon clicked oddly. Misfire. With his off hand, and a second weapon, Eli took another shot. It too misfired. The spells of the green mist were multilayered and multipurpose. Eli cursed softly and, in a single motion, pulled a knife, throwing at Tau. The whirling blade stopped in the air and fell with a sound of shattering steel.

The Nicauds turned at the sound. Marlene snarled when she saw the broken blade. Ignoring the human on the bar as useless, she looked at me and said some word I didn’t recognize. “Now, my daughter,” she said, and whirled something around her head. In Beast vision it looked like two electric stones tied together with a length of black magic rope, a spelled bolo, one of those things horsemen used to trap horses, if they didn’t care if the horse broke a leg. It whipped through the air. Once . . .

Tau danced to Grégoire on the floor.

Twice . . . The bolo spell whirled.

Marlene aimed her gaze at me.

Someone called my name, the voice broken, full of pain.

Three times . . . Marlene released it. The magical rope slid from her fingers.

“Jump!” I shouted.

Time slowed down, that situational awareness that sometimes gives battle the consistency of taffy. In a single motion, I caught my breath, set the weapons on the bar, and again dove through the fog, sliding under the piano. My hands caught on fire again. My face burned. My hair smoked. But as I slid through the mist and into the blue magics of Gee’s personal protection, the flames on me were snuffed.

The bolo hit the bar, just behind where I had stood, wrapping around it and through it, cutting the antique burled wood into four equal-sized chunks of smoking kindling. At my shout, Eli had leaped and landed on top of the Trueblood’s hardened ward. That was close.

Marlene screamed in fury. Whirled to follow my movement. And threw a second bolo spell at me.

Still sliding across the floor, I bowled into Girrard DiMercy, picking up his slight form as I rolled over my burden and to my feet on the far side of the piano. The bolo was wrapped around nothing but air, about a foot away from my skin. It fell to the floor in a shower of blue as I placed Gee on top of the piano. We were both coughing and full of the stink of burned hair, skin, and feathers. His voice a pale imitation of its usual power, Gee said. “I didn’t know if you would hear me. Not after—”

“I heard.”

Eli jumped back onto the broken bar. And threw another knife at Tau, who ignored him and his broken blade. But trying to buy me some time.

Marlene threw another spell at me. It spat when it hit Gee’s magics and fell. Marlene screamed in fury. With her attention on me, conclave witches were abandoning ship, turning their attention to getting through the black, woven wards on all the doors. It was just occurring to them that they were trapped. Tau hit one with a knockout spell and the woman simply crumpled to the floor. Tau laughed and hit another.