I nodded and stepped back as Angela straightened and began walking in a circle, dumping a white substance on the ground in a thin, consistent line. I sniffed experimentally. Salt. She was making a salt circle.
Huh. Guess human fiction had gotten something right. Salt always seemed to be used to create wards or keep things out in those books I used to read.
“How is this going to work?” I asked, stepping up beside Miriam as Angela finished laying the circle.
Miriam gave me a sidelong glance.
“The ritual is one that has been in my family for nearly ten generations. Outsiders have rarely witnessed it.”
She moved away after that, leaving me staring after her in bemusement. Well, that was cryptic. I watched as the two of them moved around the clearing with sure, precise movements. It was like watching a dance, one with a music only the two of them could hear.
The trees branches rustled in the light breeze as the grass added their own melody to the night. I closed my eyes, listening. For a moment, it felt like I could hear a very faint strain of the music. That whisper of a melody disappeared when Miriam said, “We’re ready.”
My eyes popped open. They’d been busy while I’d been entertaining myself with a nonexistent song.
At each of the four corners a candle burned and a small bowl, each one filled with different substance. A map had been set in the middle along with the photo copy of Jackson Miller and his wife.
Miriam and Angela were still in their normal clothes. I had envisioned a crazy scenario of them conducting the ritual in elaborate ceremonial robes or maybe sky clad, which I thought was the hippie way of saying naked.
Neither of them seemed inclined to strip. I shivered as a sudden breeze whipped by. Being naked in this weather would have been unbearable, anyway.
“I don’t suppose you have anything besides this photo from the draugr?”
I shook my head. Getting close to a creature rather intent on my death had been the last thing on my mind.
“Is that going to be a problem?”
Her head tilted in thought. “It may make things a little difficult.”
“Her presence in the circle might strengthen the connection,” Angela suddenly spoke up. “The draugr seems to have fixated on her. It could bolster the ritual enough to work.”
Miriam gave Angela an assessing gaze, her thoughts shielded and inscrutable. “That is a possibility.”
I waited, not sure if she wanted my involvement. Her words hadn’t been a rousing endorsement of Angela’s idea.
There was an odd distance between Miriam and Angela, one that hadn’t been there the last time I was at the shop. I wondered if Miriam was still upset about Angela seeing Victor behind her back. I had a better grasp of why Miriam might want Angela to steer clear now that I knew the man was a werewolf. None of the otherworld sects cared for the other. Miriam probably didn’t want a personal association between her apprentice and another group. On the other hand, I’d met Victor and I wouldn’t want someone I cared about dating that jerk.
Miriam gestured me forward. As I stepped over the salt circle, I felt a slight buzzing across my senses. I shivered again as the hair on my body stood straight up. It felt like I was continually getting zapped by mild static electricity. It was unsettling and brought my fight or flight instincts to the fore.
I kept moving forward, my anticipation turning into a need to get this over and done with. I stopped next to the map and the copy of the photo as Miriam indicated.
Their voices rose and lifted in a chant, the background buzzing edging from simply uncomfortable to something approaching pain. It felt like a hand had me in a vise grip and was squeezing my insides then relaxing. Again, and again.
Was this normal? If so, I’d have to rethink participating in any other magic rituals. This was how I always imagined it felt being in one of those g-force simulators, but instead of a constant gravity, the force surged and receded like a strong wind.
Miriam raised her face to the sky, the words pouring from her mouth faster and faster. I couldn’t decipher the individual words, only the cadence of them in the rising melody. That same unseen force gathered around her, tightening like a boa constrictor. Her body was shadowed and hard to see as the force around her strengthened and grew.
I shifted my gaze to Angela, whose voice rose and fell in tandem with Miriam’s. In contrast to the older woman’s almost holy look, Angela’s gaze remained fixed on mine. She seemed determined and victorious as she stared me down. Smug satisfaction oozed from her expression.
My gaze snagged on her necklace. I had seen it before—and recently. A single branch stood out among the fine details. My eyes shot to the photo of Jackson Miller and his wife. I knew where I had seen it.
Everything came together for me. Angela’s locket and Victor’s hostility. I’d been right when I saw her on the vampire’s club tape. I don’t know why she’d lured the victim to his death, but I had no doubt now that it was the sorcerer’s contact I’d been meant to meet.
This was a trap. How could I have been so stupid? Miriam must be in on it too. Her interest in the photo had been pronounced. Now, I knew why. She probably fed me that line about the ritual being an old ancestral one to get the sorcerer out of the way.
I advanced forward despite the invisible wind buffeting me. I needed to stop this before it was too late. Pain bit at me. It felt like pieces of me were breaking off and disintegrating into the ether.
I screamed, the sound wordless and full of rage.
