“Something’s wrong—” The Crossroads pressed andsquirmedlike someone was stabbing it with hot pokers. I grunted with shared pain. “Something’s hurting the Crossroads.”
“Is it the portals?” Card asked. “Someone coming through?”
“No one can—”
But the magic was screaming, and I couldn’t find a way to calm it. The Crossroads was a maelstrom of chaos, and no matter how hard I tried to hold it together, hold everything down, it was flying apart.
“Someone’s coming, Ricky,” Val said. “Someone’s coming.”
I knew it. I could feel it. Like a storm raging our way. Like I was caught in a hurricane, a tornado that had been sent after me like a pack of hounds.
“Go,” I told him. “Find my dad in Elwood. Tell him to bring the coin to Fate.”
And that was all I had time to say before all the lights in the house were extinguished. The magic went dead, like batteries pulled out of electric toys.
“Oh, shit,” Card breathed.
I didn’t have a chance to ask what he was swearing about. Instead, a voice filled the darkness.
“Now,” the voice said. A woman’s voice. A wizard’s voice. “I will have what I am due.”
ChapterTwelve
Thunder crackedas a flash of light seared through the windows and splashed shadows against every surface.
“Stel,” Card said, his color already gone off, pale. “She’s here. That’s her magic. That’s her spell. This null darkness shutting down the magic in the house. Shit, Ricky. I didn’t know. Didn’t know she would follow me.”
“Nope,” I growled, rolling up my sleeves and pushing past Card. “Don’t apologize. She’s here, and I just happen to be in the mood to kick some ass.”
I dragged my hand along the wall as I walked down the hall, then down the stairs. Wards I’d worked into the house simmered, but could not fully flare. Whatever spell the wizard had thrown at the place had done its damage.
By the time I stepped out onto my back porch, every color of ink was glowing against my skin, the tattoos shifting and merging. The Crossroads might be shut down, but I was still fully operational.
I leaned my shoulder on the porch column and stared across my property.
The evening light had started closing in, making everything golden and rich, like the world was filtered through amber. I breathed slowly, accepting the power in my control.
I was a giant, a mountain, a stone that could not be moved by any force under the stars.
In this place, I was roots and soil.
“You’re here,” I said, not bothering to shout, since Stel was a wizard and would hear me no matter where I was. “You want something. Let’s hear it.”
My back porch looked out upon a field and, beyond that, a stand of trees.
The air in the center of the field crackled turquoise. A wizard stood there in the grass.
She was old, at least two hundred, but her blonde hair was cut in a modern, short pixie. Her wide blue eyes and nearly perfect peachy white skin made her look like she was in her twenties.
When she smiled, her wide mouth caused dimples to pop in both cheeks.
“Erica Vargas. I see you’re still trying to fill your father’s shoes. How noble.”
“Good to know my opinion of you hasn’t changed either,” I said.
Stel was not afraid of me. She didn’t have to work for her connections to the magic she wielded. She didn’t need to rely on ink and the cleverness of a dryad-wizard to connect ink and my blood and flesh to the magic of this place.
She had trained with magic for many more years than me, breathed it, spoke it, lived it. If this came to a one-on-one magic fight, I was outclassed.
