“I ate a huge breakfast. I’m fine.”
Maeve and Siobhan were sitting on either side of Riona’s bed when we walked in. Siobhan smiled at me. “She’s doing much better. She might even be released tomorrow. Keeps talking about all the calories she gets to eat to make up for the starvation diet she was on.”
Her eyes gleamed with tears and she blinked them back. Maeve reached across the bed and squeezed her hand.
Riona’s eyes opened, bleary and confused. She scanned the room and her gaze landed on me. “Hey,” she croaked out. Siobhan handed her a cup of water and helped her adjust her bed until she was sitting up.
“We have a few questions if you’re feeling up to it. If you’re not, we can come back tomorrow.”
“No. No, I want to get it over with.” She glanced at her mom and sister. “You guys don’t need to hear all this again. Why don’t you go down to the cafeteria and grab some food?”
Maeve looked like she wanted to argue and Riona smiled. “I’d love it if you could bring me back something sweet.”
“Of course, darling.” She kissed her daughter on the forehead, smiled at me, and walked out.
Siobhan hesitated. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”
“I’m good. Promise.”
She nodded and followed her mother. Riona reached for the controls to her bed and sat up a little more.
Kyla and I took the chairs on either side of her bed.
“I walked in on the spell. I was answering a text when I opened the door, paying no attention. Stupid.”
“You housesit for their friends a lot, right? You had no reason to believe anything bad was going on.”
“Yeah. I guess they’d gotten wind that Mary and Jim would be out of town. They would’ve drawn attention in an apartment, and they needed a human neighborhood so no paranormals would figure out what they were doing.”
“Whatwerethey doing?”
“They had everything they needed for a Spell of Three,” she murmured. The blood drained from her face. “I saw it. I walked in, and it was all right there, by the front door. I smelled the blood.”
My mouth went dry. As if we didn’t have enough problems right now.
“What’s a Spell of Three?” Kyla asked.
“It’s one of the most dangerous– and deadly– spells in existence,” Riona said. “It’s been banned by every law enforcement agency around, along with the leaders of every magical faction in our world.”
I nodded. “The spell gained popularity after the Decade of Despair. And unsurprisingly, it turned out that no one would risk hunting the bad guys if they knew their power could be reflected back at them– times three.”
Kyla gave a low whistle. “Can you tell if someone has used a Spell of Three?”
“Nope,” I popped the P. “It made it exceptionally dangerous for mages who were going after black witches. They’d use their power, with no way of knowing that it would be reflected back at them. Since it was their own power, their shields were useless against it. Most of them died. Badly.”
“How difficult is it to create a Spell of Three?”’ Kyla asked.
I shrugged and glanced at Riona. Her eyes had slid closed again, but she managed to push them back open.
“Difficult. It requires a sacrifice of something living— usually something sentient. It’s that sacrifice that makes the magic multiply.” Her eyes filled with tears. “In this case, they used a gnome. That’s where all the blood came from.”
She took a deep breath and blew it out in a steady stream. “They obviously didn’t know the owners had asked me to housesit. I was… stupid. I realized I’d made too much noise walking in and I turned to go. The witch looked at me. Something hit me from behind and the next thing I knew, I was chained up in that basement.
“My hair had fallen in front of my face, so I cracked open my eyes. The black witch walked in and I swear to God, I thought I was dead right there. She looked at me like I was already no longer breathing, and I heard them talking about the spell while I pretended I was still unconscious. She told the human guy that I could at least be useful as the sacrifice for her next spell.”
“What did he look like?”
“Um. Young. Maybe mid-twenties. White guy, dark hair. He had a scar on his upper lip. It was deep.”
