Witch's Sacrifice

by Emma L. Adams

  Keir, however, had eyes only for me. He cupped my chin with one hand, kissed me on the lips, then his fingers sought the wet heat between my legs.

  I came the instant he thrust into me, rocking against his hips. He slowed the pace, his touch vibrating through my spirit, as I returned the favour, his spirit essence mingling with mine. Skin against skin, heat against heat, so close I could hear his heartbeat thudding in sync with mine.

  He curled around my body and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I love you, Jas,” Keir murmured. “You know that, right?”

  “I love you too.” I let his arms fold around me until sleep lulled me into its embrace.

  We held onto one another, two sparks in the endless fog of the spirit realm.

  I jerked awake to three shadowy figures standing around the bed, their grey-blue eyes shining in the spirit realm.

  “What the hell are you doing in my house?” Keir lifted his head from the pillow. “This room is warded.”

  “We’re not here for you,” one of them said, his eyes on me.

  Bugger. Evelyn must have somehow got out the house while I was sleeping and riled up the locals.

  I sat up, half-asleep and bewildered. “Evelyn?”

  To no surprise whatsoever, Evelyn made no response. I squinted at the three shadowy shapes. So that was how they’d got past the wards—they were in the spirit realm, their real bodies somewhere outside.

  "Give us what you owe us,” said the vampire on the right.

  “Wrong person,” I said. “I think you want to speak to my evil alter-ego. Wait for me to get her and I’m sure she’d be happy to talk.”

  “Keir!” yelled Aiden. “The house is surrounded by zombies.”

  Seriously?

  I reached up from the bed, straight through one of the vampires, and latched onto his spirit. He stilled, eyes widening as I drained his life force. The other vampires got the message, and all three disappeared into the grey.

  “Who needs an alarm clock when you have zombies?” Keir grabbed a pair of jogging trousers and pulled them on. “What the bloody hell did Evelyn do?”

  “Good question.” I grabbed for my clothes. “Evelyn, they’re after you, not me. Get out and deal with them, or so help me—”

  The front door crashed in its frame. Keir sprinted out of the room. Giving up on searching for a shirt, I pulled a hoodie over my underwear and followed suit, waving farewell to dignity.

  I found Aiden standing in the living room, holding a salt shaker in his hands and facing the window. From the vacant expression on his face, he was in the spirit realm.

  “Dammit, Aiden, I told you to wait.” Keir took the salt shaker from his brother, heaved open the window and lobbed the salt at the zombies.

  Rather than dodging the snowstorm of salt, the zombies moved in a swarm, beating against the doors. Definitely under a vampire’s control.

  I tapped into the spirit realm to help Aiden. He hovered outside his body, cornered by three vampires at once. My hands found a target, performing an instant spirit drain. Keir caught another by the throat, taking care of him in a few seconds.

  “Ow.” Aiden groaned when I pulled the third off him. “I’m still in no shape to be drained.”

  “Do you need one of us?” Keir moved to help him, while I finished off the vampire with a quick spirit drain.

  “I’ll be fine.” Aiden blinked back into his body. “And for god’s sake, both of you, put some clothes on.”

  “Ah.” I floated back to my body. I wore nothing but underwear and one of Keir’s hoodies, which was twice my size. Knowing my luck, I’d flashed all the neighbours. At least I couldn’t do that as a ghost.

  Keir smirked at the look on my face. “Don’t worry. I for one enjoyed the show.”

  “Only you can get away with saying that, Keir.” He wasn’t half bad to look at either, even with his hair a tangled mess and several days of stubble on his face.

  “I know.” He brushed a kiss to my forehead.

  Aiden made gagging noises. “Get a room. Preferably without me in it. And who’s going to clean up those zombies outside?”

  “I’ll do it in a minute.” Keir ducked back into his bedroom, and I followed. “Bloody vampires. I should have asked them what Evelyn did to aggravate them.”

  “Me too. I wonder where she’s hiding.” I took the tattoo pen in hand and topped up the binding spells on my wrists, finding more threads of bark-like markings had spread overnight, creeping down my chest to my stomach and thighs.

  Keir’s eyes followed the path of the grey-brown markings, his gaze darkening. Despite his words last night, I couldn’t help wondering if he was in a state of denial that would come crashing down when the curse finally claimed me.

  God. I loved him. This was too hard.

  As though he’d sensed my thoughts, he brushed another kiss to my forehead. “I’ll find the local vampires and see what I can do. You track down your wayward relative.”

  “She tried to hurt your brother, Keir.” My mouth tightened. “I don’t even know how she got to the vampires, considering she couldn’t leave the house. Unless…”

  Unless she’d pissed off the vampires before she’d unbound us. She’d been scheming for weeks before she’d cut me off. I’d thought I’d covered all the bases, but perhaps the vampires had been one of her backup plans.

  I turned to Keir. “I’m going to see Agnes. I’ll have to bind us even closer if I’m to stop her from forming more alliances behind our backs.”

  16

  I made it halfway to Agnes’s house when a message hit my phone from Vance, inviting me to an urgent meeting of the Council of Twelve. Bet it’s about the mirror. The mages had taken it back to their headquarters, which would make it tougher to keep an eye on the other realm and track down Ivy.

  What in hell had Evelyn been doing last night? I hoped the Soul Collector hadn’t caught on to her presence, because if he tried to attack her, I’d end up dragged into the same conflict. That was the real downside to binding our souls: any enemies she made would target me as well. Take those vampires, for example. If she really had cooked up more than one backup scheme before she’d left the city, we weren’t out of trouble yet. Far from it.

  I reached the necromancer guild and made my way to the usual meeting room, finding most of my friends already assembled at the long table. Isabel had saved me a seat, with Ilsa on her other side. River inched his chair closer to her when I walked in, which puzzled me until I saw several other council members move backwards or lean to whisper to one another at my entrance.

  Everyone here knew I’d bound Evelyn, and the two of us were once again sharing a body.

  I ducked my head as I sat down, a flush creeping up my neck. “Ilsa, are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “They kept me overnight in the infirmary just in case, but I’ll tell everyone what I saw in the other realm. I’ve already told the story at least four times.”

  “She has,” said Isabel. She looked tired, as though she hadn’t slept much. “Evelyn tried to pressure Ilsa to show her how to use her talisman, then left her tied up when she wouldn’t cooperate.”

  “I think she was pretty gentle, considering.” Ilsa gave a shaky laugh. “She wanted to know the extent of my knowledge about the Ancients. I told her she was wasting her time. So she left me for the dragons. Lucky for me, I met a dragon who was nice and set me free.”

  I wondered if it was the same dragon who’d helped Isabel and me rescue Agnes and Everett. “Not all the dragons hate humans. But you didn’t see where the furies took Ivy?”

  “No,” she said. “They split us up early on. A different fury flew off with her, but it was so foggy over there that I lost track of where we were flying. I’m sorry, Isabel.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. “Jas, is you-know-who talking?”

  “Nope,” I said. “She was in a screaming temper last night, so I had to soundproof the room. Then she woke me up by setting three vampires and a swarm of
zombies loose in Keir’s house. Maybe the council will be able to help me wrangle some answers from her.”

  Vance stood, calling for silence.

  “To start off with,” he said, “most of you are aware by now that Edinburgh’s mage council took the mirror back to their own headquarters.”

  “Didn’t you tell them we need that mirror to go into the other realm and find Ivy?” I asked.

  “Unfortunately, they’re within their rights to claim the mirror back,” said Vance. “The mirror is known to have been in their possession before Lord Sutherland misused it—”

  “More like at the same time,” interjected Drake. “He started kidnapping people the instant he got his slimy hands on that mirror, and the new mage council ought to know it.”

  “That’s enough, Drake,” Vance said. “Evelyn is secured, and yet Ivy is still missing, and Isabel was unable to track her in the other realm. That suggests Evelyn has trapped her elsewhere.”

  “Tracking spells cover a limited area,” said Isabel. “If the furies carried her miles away, I wouldn’t be able to pick up on her.”

  “Evelyn won’t talk,” I added. “She was furious when I used a spell to stop her from causing harm to others while we’re bound together, and she clammed up.”

  “Is there another spell that will loosen her tongue?” Drake asked.

  “If we knew how to reliably make ghosts talk, there’d be no need for half our guild laws,” Lady Montgomery said. “I do, however, have another way. River?”

  River rose to his feet and left the room. I frowned after him, unsure what the boss was planning.

  An audible whisper carried across the room: “She ought to be locked in a cell.”

  “Didn’t she try to break the spirit lines?” someone muttered. “Both she and that mad spirit should be locked up where they belonged.”

  A muscle ticked in my jaw, and I gave up on pretending I didn’t hear them whispering about me. “If I’m in jail, I’d like to see you try your luck against the Ancients.”

  There was an awkward pause. Then the door opened again, and River returned, accompanied by Mackie.

  “Mackie,” said Lady Montgomery. “Can you read Evelyn’s thoughts from where you’re standing?”

  Oh. Of course. I should have thought of the psychics, but I’d been too stunned by our success at binding Evelyn to consider asking them last night.

  “She might still be in a mood,” I warned Mackie.

  Her brow wrinkled. “Yeah… she is. She was yelling all night. I heard her even through the iron.”

  “But did you pick up any distinctive thoughts?” asked River.

  “Hang on.” Mackie looked at me. “I kept seeing images of the countryside. Really vivid ones. I don’t think they were Jas’s memories. Evelyn has a distinctive way of thinking.”

  I frowned. “Countryside? You mean in the other realm?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I could see the spirit line, in the vision. The Ley Line, maybe. It was brighter than any I’ve seen before.”

  “Where on the Ley Line?” Vance pressed. “Is that her next target?”

  Mackie shook her head. “I kept seeing images of chains, and a massive hole in the ground. Evelyn was there, looking down into it, and so was Ivy. There was this big… I think it was a skeleton.”

  The temperature in the room dropped, and Vance moved forwards. “A skeleton of what, exactly?”

  “A—dragon.”

  All eyes turned to Vance. “A dragon buried in the earth,” he said. “On the Ley Line. I only know of one such place, and it’s where the last shifter god was buried.”

  Mutters broke out among the mages.

  “Shifter god?” I thought back to the events of January, with the Moonbeam and the shifter murders. “You mean the god Ivy killed?”

  “Ivy didn’t kill him,” said Vance. “The Ancient known as Voran died fighting Fionn, a Sidhe who became as powerful as a god. Voran was asleep under the ground for countless years, bound in iron chains, before a disturbance on the Ley Line woke him from slumber. After his death, we reburied him.”

  “Damn.” What did Evelyn want with him? “The shifters didn’t know he was there?”

  “The god was imprisoned by the predecessors of the Mage Lords and the necromancers, hundreds of years ago,” Vance said. “It’s believed that most shifters are descended from him and other Ancients. The ones who fell under the Moonbeam’s spell a few months ago were direct descendants of that bloodline.”

  “And Evelyn plans to recruit them, too?” said one of the mages. “I knew they were too dangerous to allow to roam free.”

  Vance gave the interrupter a sharp look. “More dangerous than mages, or faeries, or witches? I think not. As for Evelyn, Jas confirmed that she hasn’t left her side since her return to this realm. She’s not recruiting any shifters.”

  “Fill me in,” said Ilsa, leaning forward. “The god who fathered the first shifters is still in this realm?”

  “His disintegrating corpse is,” said Drake. “Vance and Ivy buried him two years ago. So Evelyn is after a god who’s already dead? Why?”

  “Voran was believed to be the last of the Ancients, but since then, we’ve learned that isn’t the case,” Vance said. “Regardless, the shifters who didn’t witness Voran’s return do not believe he is their ancestor.”

  “What does that have to do with Ivy?” asked Ilsa.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, the god’s already dead, so Ivy’s talisman can’t do much to him, I imagine.”

  “I told you her thoughts made no sense,” said Mackie. “She was obsessing over this hole in the ground way out in the countryside. I dunno how many dragon-sized skeletons are buried on the Ley Line, but she’s been thinking about it nonstop since she got back into this realm.”

  “Wait,” said one of the mages. “Is Evelyn listening to us right now?”

  I shifted in my seat. “I honestly don’t know. She’s been quiet since last night. But she’s unable to stray far from me, so she’ll be hiding in the spirit realm somewhere. I had to bind her closely, or she’d be able to roam around the city, unchecked.”

  As more fearful mutters sprang up, Isabel spoke. “Evelyn is with us, which means we can use her for leverage,” she said. “Jas can keep her busy if there’s anything she doesn’t want her to know—Evelyn isn’t psychic, and she can’t even read Jas’s thoughts. There’s no reason to throw Jas under the bus along with her. We need her.”

  Gratitude welled within me. “Thanks,” I whispered.

  “Anytime,” Isabel whispered back.

  “For now,” Vance said, “we will send an emissary to the place where Voran lies buried. Did you hear anything else, Mackie?”

  The psychic rubbed her forehead. “I’m just getting images of this hole in the ground. And something buried in there. I think it’s important.”

  I turned on my spirit sight, seeing Evelyn stir beside me. The naked fury in her gaze took the breath from my lungs, and my own magic tingled in the marks on my arm.

  “I hope you all burn,” she hissed in my ear.

  Several people jumped. “What was that voice?” said one of the mages. “Was that her?”

  Oh, great. Evelyn had figured out how to up the creepy factor.

  “If you try that again, I’ll put you on mute,” I hissed back at her.

  Evelyn, wisely, shut up.

  “She’s obviously leading us into a trap,” I told the others, as we gathered in the entrance hall an hour later. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “As long as you keep her on a tight leash,” said Vance. “Now she’s no longer in the other realm, it’s this one we should be concerned with, especially vulnerable places such as the spirit lines.”

  “There’s a link to the Ley Line right here in Edinburgh,” I pointed out. “What makes that particular location so important, if the god is already dead?”

  “He’s buried there, but that’s not what concerns me,” Vance said. �
��It’s lifeblood she needs. She might want his talisman, but there’s no magic left inside that either. Ivy checked.”

  “This god is your ancestor?” asked Keir, who’d joined us at my request when I’d messaged him. “Like the vampires’ ancestor?”

  “My own family came from the forest of Dean,” said Vance. “They were descended from wolf shifters, and far enough back, Voran himself. My uncle has never believed those stories, and I believe the shifter god would have been buried in a liminal space, originally, before the invasion caused the spirit lines to move. That’s why he was never discovered until two years ago.”

  “And a Sidhe killed him,” I added. “So what Evelyn wants with his dead body, I can’t say. She’s still not talking.”

  “I don’t know about this, Vance,” said Drake. “It seems weird that Evelyn would target that place. She must know that Ancient died years ago.”

  “She might not,” Vance said. “Even if our mission turns out to be unnecessary, at least we’ll have forewarned anyone nearby in case of an attack on the Ley Line.”

  “Vance has family living there,” Isabel whispered to me. “Including his young cousin.”

  “Oh.” Now I got it. He’d want to make sure they were safe. And Mackie’s psychic powers didn’t lie. I’d assumed that if Evelyn wanted to target a spirit line, she’d go for the one with the forest. How could the bones of a dead god possibly help her achieve her goals?

  “Vance, you aren’t going alone,” said Drake. “If there’s a trap, you’ll be glad to have me there.”

  “And I’m coming to help Ivy,” added Isabel. “Jas—”

  “If Jas comes, Evelyn does, too.” Vance’s tone wasn’t harsh, just factual. And damn, he was right. But if Evelyn planned to spring her trap, she must have accounted for me binding us again. Staying behind would leave my friends vulnerable to whatever traps she’d left. And what if the Ley Line led us to wherever she’d taken Ivy?

  “I don’t trust Evelyn wherever she is,” I said. “But I have her on as tight a leash as I can, and I also know how she operates. If she left a trap, I’m prepared.”