“Shimon burned your house,” I murmured. Guilt punched me in the chest and opened a dark pit inside me.
Molly walked away and talked for another five minutes, getting particulars. But none of it really mattered. Shimon Bar-Judas had burned my BFF’s home. Molly had lost her orchids. Her big Aga stove. Evan had lost his home studio and all his instruments. The kids had lost all their toys. Molly was crying. Evan looked as if all his blood had pooled in his boots, face too white against the red of hair and beard.
The pit of guilt inside me grew wider and deeper.
As Molly was getting off the call, Evan’s cell rang. It was Molly’s mom. Frowning, he tapped his cell on too, and answered, “Hey, Bedelia, what’s going on—”
“The working got through the wards. The whole place lit up in seconds, a flash fire.” Molly’s mother was crying. “We’re okay. But only because of the old root cellar. We went down and through it and out on the creek side. We’re okay,” she repeated, whispering, “but the house is in bad shape. Lots of fire and smoke and water damage.”
Molly took Evan’s phone and tapped off the speaker. Privately, to her mother, she said, “We’ll be home as soon as the weather lets up. You, Carmen, the kids, and the animals go stay at Evangelina’s, okay? Put up a ward there. Attach it to the ley lines below the house.”
Evangelina’s house was sitting on ley lines close to a liminal line. Powerful. Very powerful. Any ward opened on that old house should withstand anything. The ley lines were how Moll’s sister had captured a demon and set a lot of the mess of my life in motion. Molly’s death magics had first appeared there, and to this day, nothing would grow there.
After a lot of magical strategy chitchat, Molly ended the call and leaned against her husband, her red hair against his broad chest. “I have to call the insurance company. Our rates are going to go through the roof. Which we don’t have anymore, it seems.” She sobbed once, hard. Big Evan pulled her close, tears in his eyes too.
I walked away. They were in danger because of me. They had lost their house because of me. My fault. Guilt, my old frenemy, clawed into my soul. “Jane,” Alex called as I moved through the empty inn area. I waved him away and made it to the front door. Yanked it open, the icy air instantly clearing my head.
Agongshivered through the air, through the floor, through the walls.Gong. GONG.GONG!Thehedge of thornsaround the house wavered and shook in a coruscating wash of light.
I raced outside. Big Evan thundered through the inn after me. Molly was on our heels, moving faster than I ever remembered. I stopped and they passed me. The ward bonged over and over, a steady thrum of dissonant notes, and I pulled on Beast’s night vision, placing all our people.
The witch twins were standing back-to-back in the snow. Focals lay at their feet: moonstones as big as my fist at Cia’s feet for the moon witch; Liz was a stone witch, and she had a huge, clear orb at her feet, quartz, maybe, and beside it was a two-foot-long multicolored crystal spire of tourmaline, as big around as my arm.
Shiloh raced at vamp speed from the side of the house, a popping smudge of movement. She threw her back to the shoulders of the twins, facing out. Cia made a littleerpsound. Liz cursed. They hadn’t known she was here. I had forgotten to tell them, and it seemed Molly had forgotten as well. Shiloh dropped a strap over her head and shoulder and aimed into the dark with an AR-17. There were extra magazines in her belt, each holding thirty rounds. “Hi,” she said to the two witches. “It’s been a while, and I’m a little different nowadays, but you’re my aunts. I’m Shiloh, and what you can call a combo witch. Earth and a little fire. I’m making myself a conduit and giving you my magic to use while I keep you safe from human weapons.”
“But. You’re a vampire now,” Liz said, intrigue and horror on her face.
“I don’t eatfamily,” Shiloh said, amused and exasperated. “And being a bloodsucker doesn’t stop my magic.”
I loved that girl. Shiloh was badass. She looked fully healed from having her throat torn out. Always a plus. The gonging bonging continued, speeding up slightly. The ward over the house and grounds brightened and dimmed with each percussive stroke.
Molly dropped her back to the twins’ other shoulders, so they all four stood facing outward. Big Evan scuffed a ten-foot circle in the snow crust and took the north position. “We have air,” he said, speaking of himself, “earth-death, stone, moon, and earth-fire. Five of us. My power, my will to your wills.”
“My will to your wills,” the others repeated. Quickly they fell into that meditative state that synchronized their magics.
It wasn’t a perfect circle. They needed a water witch to make it perfect. But it was an Everhart-Trueblood grouping, and that made it powerful, linked by bloodlines and love. Which was the first time I understood that Molly’s family knew about her death magics. I was proud of Molly for telling them. It couldn’t have been an easy convo.
Big Evan pulled out a multitubed flute, the kind the god Pan always used in stories, and blew a soft, tremulousnote. The circle flared up and the witches each took a step to their assigned places.
Edmund moved slowly to stand beside me. He wore a bandolier-style holster with two nine-millimeter semiautomatics and four full magazines of ammo. Double swords hung at his hips. He looked pale and scarred and so verynotready for combat. “My queen,” he murmured. My lips tightened in frustration.
On the snow-covered lawn, the witches sat and arranged their focals. Evan said awyrdand the circle he had made in the snow blazed once, a soft white light. At each witch the light sparked once, changed color, and a tendril of energy rose to the center, where it met the others. They twined about and sent up a sparkling, rainbow-colored braid that converged on the ward overhead. The ward that was shivering sound and light across the inn’s grounds.
Eli joined me and placed a comms system around my neck. I stuffed the earpieces into my upright ears and adjusted the mic for my snout. He handed me my Dyneema, Kevlar, and anti-spelled armored vest, which I Velcroed on. Over it went the shoulder/spine rig that held three weapons, dual shoulder nine-mils and the Benelli M4 in a spine sheath. The hip rig with one nine-mil and vamp-killers with fourteen-inch blades on each hip. When I was weaponed up, he placed the Glob in my hand and extendedle breloque. I pocketed the Glob but hesitated at the crown. This was one of the things the Flayer of Mithrans was after. I didn’t know if I should taunt him with wearing it a second time. But I reached out and took the crown. Placed it on my head. It changed shape and tightened, securing itself to my head.
“Thank you,” I said to my partner and my second. Eli was fully kitted out in cold gear and weapons. “You arenotgoing out of the ward to reconnoiter,” I said.
“Yes, Mama. I’ll be good, Mama.”
Even I caught the sarcasm, but I decided to ignore it. “What does Alex see?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Which was very bad. That meant the enemy had foundall the security measures on the property and figured out how to avoid them, or they had mojo—magical or tech—that we didn’t have. I looked along the walls of the house to see Lincoln directing Thema and Kojo up onto the roof, each with long-distance rifles and tripods. He sent his other fangheads around the house into secure locations, spots I was sure he and Eli had chosen in advance. “The prisoners?” I called to the MOC.
“Secured and unconscious, Queenie. You see anything?”
“No. Not yet.”
