5
My arm stretched over my head as high as I could get it, my hand was open wide with Great-Grandma Cleo’s pendant, and my Rainbow Moonstone in my palm.I’d done the only thing I could, considering I was the one who opened the Hellmouth, and I was the one…
“Who doesn’t know how to close it?”
“Yeah, Lydia, thanks,”I scoffed.“I got that part.”
“Did you?‘Cause it kinda seems like you did what you always do.”
“And what, pray tell, do I always do?”
“Jump in feet first without a clue, and pray I know how to get you out.”
“Pray you know how to help me?”I snorted a sarcastic chuckle.“Not even in your wildest dreams would I ever…”
"BROOOOP!"
“The Hellmouth!”Lydia and I screamed in unison.
A sound, like a pregnant elephant sat on thirty-seven bagpipes shot from the Gateway to the Underworld that a heat-seeking missile aimed at my ears.The high-pitched, discordant, grating shriek seemed to go on forever, followed by a visceral, primeval howl that had every hair on my body standing on end with extreme prejudice.
Something was coming out of the Hellmouth I created, the Hellmouth that should have been a five-by-five square in the sand that I could use like a window to speak to the Spirits in the Underworld and find my mom.It wasn’t supposed to be like this.Nothing I’d studied said it would be like this.The Nexxus of those two Ley Lines was supposed to have been tapped centuries ago.There shouldn’t have been this much of the Earth’s Energy, this much Mysticism, this much…everything.
“Okay, Lydia, time to earn your keep.”
“Time to what?”
“You heard me,”I sassed right back.“Time to get to work.Put your money where your mouth is.”
“Why, I never.”
“Oh, puhlease, shut up, and listen.”Without giving her a chance to interrupt me again, I gave directions like a Drill Sergeant.“You’re gonna hold the pendant and the Moonstone, my Nucleus of the Containment Spell, right here.You are not going to let it move even a centimeter.You are gonna continue to draw from the positive side of the Nexxus of the Ley Lines and keep all of Hell’s critters docile and contained while I figure out who or what in all that is most definitely not holy is coming now.”
“Would you like a latte?”
“No, I would like to do what I asked without being a pain in my ass.”
“Yeah, okay, I can do that.”
For a split second, I thought I might have lost my mind.Lydia, the bane of my existence since I saw my first Recently Deceased Spirit, was actually, in her own way, being nice to me.I knew Hell hadn’t frozen over because, well, there was a gaping hole about ten feet from me that said the flames were still scorching, sizzling, and ready to devour everything in their path.
Taking advantage of what I was sure was a once-in-a-lifetime miracle, I said,“Thank you, Lydia,”and got to work.
Dropping my arm, I breathed a sigh of relief when my Nucleus stayed where it was.My inner Necromancer was doing her job.Give that girl a gold star.
Running to the sizzling, smoking edge of the Hellmouth, the toe of my boot was about a foot from the brimstone when out of the flames rose an absolutely ginormous, golden throne.Wolf heads with large ruby eyes were the only décor–aside from the Demon Prince smugly sitting on the overstuffed, red velvet seat.
Although I’d never met him in person, I knew the handsome, suave Fiend hiding behind the subtly menacing humanoid figure on sight.It didn’t matter that he was dressed in a perfectly tailored Stuart Hughes, charcoal gray wool suit that cost damned near a million dollars.Nor did his perfectly coifed, shoulder-length, wavy, ebony tresses detract from his yellow eyes with their red, elliptical pupils.
He was the personification of Greed, and I knew in a heartbeat that he was the reason all of this had happened.
“Mammom,” I spat.
“But, of course.”The smug grin on his beautiful face set my nerves on edge, then he sniffed, “And of it isn’t, Bernadette Elizabeth Fogarty, Princess and heir to the Heatherton Magic, and… my bride.”
“The hell you say!”
The bellowed roar had me spinning to the right as if I hadn’t ditched ballet class halfway through my first lesson.Blinking my eyes, I was sure I had a concussion and was most likely hallucinating, because in that very moment, there was none other than a ten-foot Warrior Dragon speeding toward me.
