She nodded toward the witch, who was now floating a couple of inches off the path, just as I had. Burgundy had clearly successfully cast and triggered this particular anchor point.
“Plus,” Kandy said, “Scarlett was really clear that we couldn’t use the bakery, like Pearl originally wanted. Because of …” She looked at me, an understanding dawning. “Because of your blood wards.”
“It’s not just the wards that reside there,” I murmured.
“The portal,” Warner said, far too matter-of-factly.
“Can you see it?”
“I feel it.” He glanced over at Kandy. “Have the witches keep their individual circles and the grid active.” Then the sentinel slipped off into the night, moving faster than even I or Kandy could have as he traced the magic back to the bakery. Or worse, to the portal, if that was where it had inadvertently anchored. Because even with my limited knowledge of such things, pulling power from a magical transportation hub created by a guardian dragon seemed like a seriously bad idea.
The kind of bad that might trigger all sorts of other things … like random flare-ups of other Adepts’ magic.
Kandy started texting. “The witches want to test using the grid as a defensive shield.”
“Magically sealing the entire city? How the hell would that work?”
Kandy shrugged. “Don’t know. But it gives them something to do while the sentinel is scouting.”
“Is something wrong?” Burgundy asked.
I glanced back to the witch, who was standing on the ground once again. I shook my head, ready to assure her that everything was okay.
Then a rush of power exploded from within a house almost directly across the park from us.
Kandy and I whirled toward the four-storey Craftsman in the center of the block. Its recently painted red siding appeared almost burgundy in the night — except for where a brilliant white light pulsed out from the partially below-ground basement windows.
“What the hell is that?” I could see where the third stream of magic from the anchor point — the stream Warner was currently tracing — touched the very edge of the house.
“That’s the Talbots’ …” Burgundy whispered from behind us.
“That’s the Talbots’?” I echoed, just on the unbecoming edge of screeching.
Kandy nodded in rueful confirmation.
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.”
“I was just there,” Burgundy cried, becoming distraught. “I mean, we were all there. All the others. They’re holding my place in the game.”
“Can you see the bright light from the basement windows?” I asked Kandy, ignoring the babbling witch. I was fairly certain I was seeing magical energy.
She shook her head. “I can smell the magic, though. Can you taste it?”
“Not yet.” I took off across the grass. Kandy followed.
“Wait!” Burgundy cried out behind us. “What should I do?”
I glanced back at the terrified witch. “Stay in the circle! Keep it active until Warner comes back.”
She nodded, crouching down to retrieve her focal stone and cradling it in her hands. Fear shot through my chest at the sight of her alone, perched on what appeared to be an island of land and light within the surrounding darkness. All I could think about was that I should have added some protections to the stone. I should have offered my magic freely. I should have been the one in the circle.
No.
I shouldn’t have been the one standing in the circle in the first damn place.
I should have been able to understand my limitations, rather than powering through them. I should have been able to get past the fear of disappointing my grandmother. So what if I wasn’t the witch she wanted me to be? I never had been.
I never would be.
But trying to hide from that meant that I just might have anchored a massively complex witch spell — an ongoing spell, actively working — to a guardian portal.
I yanked my attention back to the present as I hit pavement, charging across the narrow road. Kandy matched me step for step.
I felt wards on the Craftsman, but they were dormant. Sorcerer magic, waiting to be triggered but not currently live. The white energy still streamed out from the basement.
“Is there a basement door?” Kandy would have fully scouted the Talbots’ property when she visited earlier that day.
“Around the back,” the werewolf said.
Forgoing the front steps, I tore along the path at the side of the house, planning on going through the basement door, then through the upper floors of the building if necessary. The bright energy lit the stone pathway and the tall cedar hedges along the edge of the property. Kandy was a silent shadow, so close that I could hear her slow and steady breathing. We ran through magic that tasted of everything and nothing at all. Too many flavors mixed together.
I rounded the corner — and almost fell into an old concrete stairwell that didn’t have a safety rail. Even at the back of the house, the basement was still partly below ground.
“Jade,” Kandy hissed. She grabbed my arm, pulling my attention to the foliage that dominated the backyard.
Things were crawling out of the ground.
Dead things. Rodents … snakes …
I caught a hint of toasted-marshmallow magic.
“Mory,” Kandy murmured.
I looked away, not wanting to see the full scope of what might have been buried in the yard of a house that was easily a hundred years old.
I jumped down, landing at the base of the stairs and kicking through the door in the same motion.
An open area of unfinished basement before me was dark. But the white magic was flooding past the edges of a closed door on an inside wall halfway through the house.
I pulled my knife as I slipped across the door I’d kicked to the ground. Slowly stalking toward the glowing door, I passed laundry facilities on my left. Someone was drying lacy underwear and bras on a clothesline over a free-standing laundry sink.
Kandy picked up the door behind me, placing it back to cover the opening to the yard even though I’d ruined the hinges and the lock. Still, we’d hear it if anyone came in behind us.
The hot water heater and a pair of bicycles were tucked up against the open-stud walls to my right. I continued stalking toward the closed door, giving my senses time to adjust to the magic emanating past it.
Above and to the right, I heard a door open. Another light source flooded down into the basement, revealing a stairwell descending from the main floor.
“What the hell is going on down there?” a woman’s voice called. “I heard a crash.”
Recognizing the accent, I glanced back at Kandy, whispering, “Angelica Talbot.”
She nodded. As I reached the door outlined in white magic, the werewolf veered off to the right, sticking to the shadows but setting herself into position to cover the stairwell at my back.
“Tony?” Angelica called again.
I touched the closed door, again picking up a hint of Mory’s magic. Probably because I knew it so well. But her necromancy was layered within too many other tastes and tenors. The door itself wasn’t spelled, though. It also opened out, rather than swinging in.
Angelica sighed like only a long-suffering mother could. Then she started down the stairs.
I opened the door, stepping to the side as I did.
A six-foot-tall snarling monster barreled through the doorway.
Bitsy.
I slipped my foot forward, intending to trip her as benignly as possible. Unfortunately, she didn’t fall for that move a second time. At least not completely.
Tangling her leg around mine, she tumbled forward, hooking her claws into my ribs and dragging me with her. We fell together — head first into the water heater. Denting it so badly that the metal folded inward.
Angelica Talbot cried out, stumbling down the rest of the stairs and right into Kandy’s arms. My werewolf BFF snatched the sorcerer out of the darkness, clam
ping one hand over her mouth while pinning her arms with the other.
Scalding-hot water erupted from the tank, soaking me as I thrust my forearm up to block the partially transformed werewolf from tearing out my throat. Snarling madly, Bitsy clamped my arm between her jagged teeth and twisted, doing her best to rip the limb from my body.
“Gentle, Jade,” Kandy cautioned from somewhere below my feet. It was difficult to see through the steaming water spraying everywhere.
“I’m letting her chew on me, aren’t I?”
I got my knees up underneath Bitsy’s torso, easily tossing her off me and to the side. Then, before she could recover and come at me a second time, I gained my feet and cold-cocked her.
She fell heavily to the floor, like a bag of cement. Unconscious.
Kandy made a quiet mewing noise. I threw a glare at her through my wet hair as I stepped over to check on the downed werewolf.
Bitsy’s chest rose and fell steadily. She wouldn’t be getting up any time soon, but I hadn’t broken her neck.
More eager to get out of the ill-timed hot shower than to face whatever awaited me in the room beyond — and trying to ignore the guilt that came with being bigger and badder than everyone else, even when I was pulling my punches — I stepped through the white energy streaming out through the door. Kandy followed, shoving Angelica before her, but pausing within the doorway behind me.
Gabby Talbot was standing in the center of what appeared to be a recreation room. Her light-blond head was thrown back and magic was streaming out of her, spiraling around the room, then feeding back into the amplifier.
And she had somehow caught all the other Adepts in the room directly within that looped river of energy.
Peggy was curled in a ball on the floor in the far corner to my right, clutching her head and muttering. Mory was directly across from me, tucked into the opposite corner of the room from Peggy. The necromancer’s eyes were closed as she clenched her necklace in one hand — and held what appeared to be a reanimated red-eared slider in the other. All of the magic in the room was combined into a whirlwind of untapped power, including Bitsy’s cacao nibs and toasted walnuts, even though the werewolf was still unconscious and outside the stream.
Mory was desperately trying to control her necromancy — and failing miserably, judging by how she was in the process of being swarmed by a pack of dead mice and more than a few rats. I was also pretty sure that two zombie cats — and possibly a small dog — were banging against the window above her head.
“Mory!” I snapped. “That’s just creepy as all hell.”
The petite necromancer’s eyes snapped open. “Jade!” she cried, visibly relieved to see me. Then, reverting to her regular disgruntled tone, she added, “Why are you all wet?”
“How about we focus on what’s immediately relevant?”
“Fine,” she mumbled. “But your makeup is running.”
I threw my hands up in the air, glancing back at Kandy and seeking commiseration.
Then a fourth person in the room popped up from behind an overturned sectional, hitting me with some sort of electrical pulse. Straight to the neck and chest.
I stumbled, hearing Angelica gasp, “Tony!” from behind me. Pain radiated through my upper rib cage, down and across my torso, and out through my limbs.
I lost hold of my knife. And for just a moment, I thought I might go down.
Instead, I gritted my teeth, reached for the lightning-like sorcerer magic attempting to attach itself to me, and ripped it from my chest. The electrical energy twined around my hand, still feeling as though it were cutting into my skin, but my eyesight cleared. And I found myself facing off against a shaggy-haired, eighteen-year-old sorcerer wearing a T-shirt inspired by the old Legend of Zelda video games. I recognized the red sword.
The sorcerer was a younger, slighter, male version of his mother, and was clutching what appeared to be a series of electronic items. I could see a laptop, a game console, and an iPad among his collection.
“You must be Tony,” I snarled in pain, though I’d been going for snark.
His eyes widened, glancing down at the magic I held in my hand — his sorcerer magic, which was obviously connected to technology somehow. “You … you … you’re hurting my sisters.”
“It isn’t me, you ass. I’m here to fix it. Let’s start with giving this back to you.”
I stepped forward swiftly, slamming the palm of my hand and the spell I held against the wall of electronics he was clutching to his chest like a shield.
Tony flew back, crashing against a large-screen TV on the far side of the room, then falling to the ground insensible. Thankfully, the shattered TV stayed attached to the wall. Accidentally murdering fledgling sorcerers possibly not in control of their magic wasn’t on my to-do list. Not at the moment, at least. But it seemed too likely, painful lesson or no painful lesson, that Tony Talbot was stupid enough to try to draw my attention more than once.
Yeah, I really was prejudiced against sorcerers. But seriously, given what I’d been through, who would have blamed me?
I glanced back at Kandy in the doorway. The green-haired werewolf was pinning the terrified Angelica by both wrists, grinning viciously. Or was that victoriously? The magic the sorcerer carried in her multiple bangles rose up, but was countered by the power of Kandy’s cuffs before she could actually wield it.
“What the hell is it with you Talbots?” I snarled. Again, still in pain. “Throwing magic around before you even say hello?”
“I … I …” Angelica stuttered.
Kandy laughed.
“You are far too delighted for someone who just watched her best friend take an energy spell to the chest, werewolf.”
Kandy sneered. “You love a challenge, dowser. You’ve been complaining about it all day.”
“Not out loud.”
“I can read you like a book.”
I shook my head, laughing quietly. The pain in my chest eased. Then I returned my attention to the remaining issue, willfully stepping into the magic that was still pouring into the room from Gabby.
My mouth flooded with the taste of tart raspberry jam, so intensely that I momentarily worried about —
“… getting seeds stuck in my teeth,” Peggy said, completing my thought. She was still curled up in a ball on the floor, clutching her head.
Jesus, I thought. The telepath —
“… is in my head.” Peggy pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead harshly, continuing to speak my thoughts out loud.
Though why she was —
“… cueing into me instead of Gabby or Mory, I didn’t know.”
Yeah. That wasn’t —
“… especially creepy at all,” Peggy said.
Mory started laughing, on the edge of hysterical.
I deliberately looked away from her and Peggy, focusing on the amplifier currently causing all the mayhem. My walking into the magic streaming from Gabby must have inadvertently forged a connection to her sister, Peggy. Hence, the telepath reading my mind.
“Plus,” Peggy said conversationally. “I really didn’t want to see what else the necromancer had awoken.”
Jesus. I talked to myself a lot.
Trying to clear my mind so the telepath would stop narrating my thoughts, I stepped closer to Gabby.
The amplifier was completely in thrall to her own magic, which was still trying to attach itself to me, but was being rebuffed by the barrier made by my necklace and knife.
“Except that was about to change,” Peggy whispered.
Right.
“Gabby?” I asked.
The amplifier didn’t acknowledge my presence.
“I was going to have to touch her,” Peggy narrated.
Kandy laughed. “Let’s keep the telepath around, Jade. She’s fun.”
Ignoring the werewolf, I pressed my hands to either side of Gabby’s face. The amplifier was the same height as me, her in sock feet and me in one-inch heels.
Gabb
y immediately grabbed both of my wrists, her magic snapping to me, attempting to pull my power into the maelstrom looping around the room.
So, not knowing how else to stop it, I allowed her amplifier power to stream through me. I let it mix with my own magic, filling the bottomless reserves of my knife and necklace.
For the briefest of moments, I could taste dark, deep cacao with hints of possible fruit notes … maybe even sweet, juicy strawberries … but underneath it all was that spice that reminded me of —
“Chinese food,” Peggy whispered.
Oh, god. I was tasting … I had never tasted —
“… my own magic,” Peggy whispered reverently.
Then the energy flowing between Gabby and I shorted out. I carried too much power for the amplifier to handle, even without me taking any for myself. She fell forward into my arms, convulsing wildly.
I carefully lowered her to the ground, realizing that the rug underneath her had gotten tangled in her feet.
Angelica, after being freed by Kandy, dashed over to us, kneeling and reaching out for her daughter. Gabby stopped convulsing. I laid the amplifier gently across her mother’s lap.
Peggy, weeping, slowly crawled toward us. She began to caress her twin’s arm the moment she was within reach.
“Put the crawlies back,” Kandy growled above my head.
“Already am,” Mory said snottily.
“What happened?” Angelica asked. “What happened? What is going on?”
No one answered her.
Tony moaned from where he’d fallen to the floor.
I rose, ready to put the tech sorcerer, or whatever he was, down again.
Then I tasted it.
Strong black tea, topped with a dollop of cream and … something else.
I spun around in a circle, trying to track the magic I hadn’t noticed underneath everything else whirling around the room.
Cloyingly familiar magic that I couldn’t quite place.
“What is it, dowser?” Kandy asked.
I reached down and flipped the corner of the rug back, exposing a crack in the concrete floor. “Magic that shouldn’t be here.”
“Get back,” Kandy snapped at the Talbots.
Champagne, Misfits, and Other Shady Magic (Dowser 7) Page 22