Page 141 of The Blue Moon Café & 24-Hour Occult Emporium

Three more cuffs to go, Talula thought to herself.

“Is she here?” Damien gave Dahlia a vicious shake.

But Dahlia kept her lips tightly closed. Enraged, Damien threw Dahlia down to the ground so hard, Talula could hear Dahlia’s gasp of pain.

If the Volta was pissed before, now it was incandescent with rage—and so was Talula. The Volta’s raw magic hammered against the walls like an angry fist. Two more cuffs decayed to the brink of breaking.

Which left only one more. Damien’s.

“Tell me what you know, or I’m going to stop asking nicely.” Damien reached into his jacket and pulled out a gun.

Rage and magic roared through Talula. She dropped her invisibility, shoving the last of her magical focus at Damien’s cuff. “STOP!”

Damien smiled his sick, smug smirk.

“There she is.” He trained his gun on Talula. He jerked his chin at his hunters. “Bring her here.”

Fingers dug into Talula’s arms as the hunters dragged her to Damien. Dahlia struggled to her feet just a foot away to Talula’s left.

“Nice try, babe,” Damien said, patting Talula on the cheek. “But we’ve got you and your girlfriend, and my guys will blow up your town once we are out of here.”

“No, they won’t.” Heart racing, Talula gave Damien a smirk of her own. She inhaled, summoning her air affinity. She exhaled. A forceful gust of wind emanated from Talula’s breath. It swept through the crowd of hunters, blowing at their clothes and hair.

“That’s it?” Damien laughed sinisterly. “Jesus, what kind of half-rate witch are you?”

A moment later, there was a clink. Then another, as forty-nine jinn-made magical cuffs of protection clattered to the ground, aged beyond recognition and completely useless.

Damien stared at the scraps of metal. His lips thinned to two pink squirming worms of displeasure. But Talula wasn’t done yet.

“Let go of me, or you’ll get burned in three, two…” she said to the hunters who held her. She let lightning-hot witchfire coat her limbs like a second skin. The men scrambled to get away. Talula sent out another burst of air to curl around Dahlia and reel her in like a lasso. Talula created a ring of witchfire around the two of them.

“Are you okay?” Talula sliced through Dahlia’s ties with a razor-thin bit of flame. “How did you get here?”

“The conjuring, I think.” Dahlia exhaled a shaky breath into Talula’s shoulder. “The hunters were holding me, and when you conjured their cuffs, I came, too.”

Dahlia looked at Talula and gasped. “Your eyes! They’re…they look like the Volta.”

Talula turned inward, looking toward her magical core. She bit down a scream. Minutes ago, her core had been a colorful hearth of magical fires. Now the Volta’s cerulean had taken over, turning her magical core a swirl of blue-hued magic. She’d been channeling the Volta’s unfettered power for too long. It was filling into the spaces between her molecules, eating away at her life force. Adrenaline and fear had helped Talula compartmentalize the pain, but she was running out of time.

“I’ll be fine. I have to finish this.” Talula tried to calm her too-fast heart. “We can’t let them keep hunting.”

“I have an idea,” Dahlia said, determined. “Do you think the Volta will listen to me?”

The voice that answered Dahlia through Talula’s lips reverberated with sorcery and time and power. “Yes.”

The Volta had answered for her.

“Let me do my thing and stick to the plan.” Dahlia slipped her hand into Talula’s.

Outside their witchfire circle, the hunters paced like wolves. Damien crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t stay there forever, witch.”

“She won’t have to, dick,” Dahlia responded cheerily. “Here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to tell you a story. Then, you’ll never hunt again. Because this is the Volta, and you’re dealing with the strongest sorceress in an age.”

Even as Talula struggled to keep the Volta’s power from tearing her apart, her heart soared.

“Once upon a time, a bunch of assholes got dropped into the late Cretaceous period because they pissed off my girlfriend.” Dahlia let her voice carry out over the hunters. She turned to Talula. “Can you show them?”

Talula felt a shiver of something from the Volta through their connection. It was…delight.