The six of us race forward as one.
The wrongness of the air thickens as I push through the tree line, branches scraping at my arms. Sebastian is the one who has been here before, but we don’t need him to show us the way.
The sheer magnitude of the energy hemorrhaging ahead draws us in. The tear looms larger with each step. It’s like someone took a knife to the thick tapestry between realms and hacked the shit out of it. Purple-black energy bleeds out in waves, and the ground beneath my feet trembles.
But there’s something else...
In the distance, there are voices. Chanting. Casting. Calling forth Wiccan energy.
We burst through the last line of trees into a clearing and stop short.
“Wow, I didnotexpect to find them here.”
Wylder steps in beside me and looks relieved. “I told you the coven wasn’t all bad.”
Yeah, well, the jury is still out on that one.
Laurel stands at the epicenter of the vortex of instability, her long silver hair whipping around her face in the torrent of power. Jane flanks her left, her hands raised, her amber eyes blazing as flames dance across her fingertips.
Stuart, the elder with the silver hair from the meeting last week, has his palms pressed to the earth, and roots surge up from the ground, weaving themselves into a lattice across the base of the tear.
A dozen other witches form a loose circle around the rift, each one channeling their power into the collective effort.
Relief wars with skepticism inside me. “I can’t believe they’re getting their hands dirty after all the fussing about demon issues being beneath them. Why do you think they are here?”
“At this moment, it doesn’t really matter.” Sebastian presses a gentle hand at the small of my back. “Jump in and help.”
I stride forward, pulling on the well of spirit magic that’s been growing stronger every day since my block was removed.
Laurel’s gaze snaps to me and for a heartbeat, I think she’ll tell me to leave.
Instead, she dips her chin and tilts her head toward a girl with teal blue hair, and amazing purple and green highlights. “Northwest quadrant. Mica needs support.”
I hustle off to help as Orion steps in beside the redhead, Jane, and Rowan goes to help Stuart. It doesn’t take long to see they’re trying to knit the tear shut from the tattered edges, but the veil is shredded, leaving very little to work with.
I position myself beside the girl Laurel called Mica, plant my feet, and reach for my magic.
It rises like a tidal wave.
Spirit energy floods my palms, blue-white and crackling. I push it outward, threading it through Mica’s silver energy, reinforcing it with spectral light that holds where the physical can’t.
Mica glances over at me and smiles. “That’s working, ghost girlie. Keep going.”
Wylder appears on my other side, his magic surging to life with the scent of pine and green growing things. He doesn’t look at me. His signature scowl is locked on his stupidly handsome face and, as bizarre as it is, I wonder if that’s about me.
Is he pissed because I didn’t tell him about the demon contract or is his frowny face a result of us being in the middle of a magical crisis?
Maybe I’m projecting and he’s too busy to be angry.
It’s beyond vain to think it’s about me when the world is in chaos, but yeah, that’s how it feels.
Sebastian joins the circle across from us, his spirit magic so much more powerful and substantial than mine. No surprise there. He has more than a decade of experience with his and mine has been damned up.
But boy, it feels nice to let it loose.
I glance across the circle to check on my friends, and it seems everyone is doing well. Rowan has her hands raised, her shadow manipulation creating an inky blanket holding back anything that might try to sneak through from the hellscape beyond.
Even Asher finds a way to contribute, standing at the outer edge of the clearing with his phone raised. He’s recording this and yeah, maybe we can use it to learn about the demonic energy that’s been released.
