War Witch

by Layla Nash

  “Yes.” Anne Marie’s mouth thinned in irritation. “Before I went to the Skein, someone showed up at my store. Turns out she was the same witch who mucked with our work.”

  Saints protect me.

  One of the younger witches I didn’t know—maybe Betty—gaped at the Morrigan. “Another witch?”

  She was young, immature; I would not have had the patience to keep her in my cover even if she were powerful enough, but Anne Marie had a great deal of tolerance for lemmings. She would ruin Kyle, but this vapid little wretch would probably inherit an impressive career.

  Anne Marie nodded. “One of our... colleagues from the war interfered. Lilith. Lily, as she is known now.”

  I held my breath as Leif’s scrutiny hit me like a ton of bricks. We hadn’t talked about that part of the week. I refused to look at him; those questions could wait.

  Tracy leaned over the back of the love seat, between Andre and Rosa. “Lily went to the Skein?”

  “And she knew we’d cast there. Someone in this room told her, because no one outside the coven knew we were working that night. Not even Soren.”

  The audible gulp from the coven—and Jake—would have been comical were it not for the gravity of the transgression. I shook my head. Nice, Anne Marie. Summoning an Ancient without informing the Peacemaker. And he wanted to arrest me.

  Silence stretched in the room, growing weighty with tension even though we all knew how the night ended. I wanted to yell at Anne Marie to get on with it so I could get started finding Tracy and whoever else survived. But I could only wait and hope she didn’t spill too many of my secrets.

  The young witch tugged on her ponytail. “Why did she go to your store?”

  Anne Marie paused for dramatic effect before taking a deep breath. “To attack me.”

  More disbelief from the witches in the coven, and Jake’s hard gaze joined Leif’s on me. I snorted and shook my head. Ridiculous. I’d gone there to help her. She was just too hateful to hear it.

  Tracy shook her head. “Come on, Anne Marie. Lily doesn’t like you, but she would never just attack you. It’s been years. Why waste the time and energy?”

  “Are you suggesting I provoked her?” the older witch asked.

  She met Anne Marie’s gaze unflinchingly. “We knew you both during the war, and you two together are like matches and kerosene. Bad news.”

  “That’s true,” Joanne said, perched on the arm of the love seat next to Rosa. My chest tightened to hear her voice. “Come on—you really expect us to believe Lilith just walked into your store and attacked you? She’s way sneakier than that. If she wanted you gone, she wouldn’t just start swinging.”

  The Morrigan’s mouth twisted. “She’s desperate and unhinged, saying she’s still…responsible for the covenant with the Peacemaker. That she’s protecting the witches from something else going on.”

  “She’s not desperate,” Tracy said, shaking her head. “And she’s no more unhinged than she was eight years ago, when you two were friends.”

  “How would you know, Tracy?”

  “Because I spoke with her yesterday,” Tracy said, no hint of remorse in her tone. “Before the circle. I asked her to help.”

  “Traitor,” Jacques breathed, lurching to his feet as his fists balled at his sides.

  I held my breath. Anne Marie folded her arms over her chest with an air of grim triumph. “I knew it. I knew you told her about the Skein and our project. What did you ask her for that you couldn’t get from us? Something dark? Or just gray, as she was always so fond of saying?”

  The weight of the shifters’ gazes dragged at me, and I hoped they waited to attack me until after I’d seen enough to find Tracy.

  Rosa stood. “That’s not fair, Anne Marie, and you know it. We all edged into gray magic when we had to. All of us—even you. It was just easier for Lilith.”

  Anne Marie and Tracy ignored her, focused on each other like prize fighters. I doubted they even heard Rosa.

  “I asked her to join the circle.”

  Anne Marie’s ghostly face drained of color, and she drew herself up. “You what?”

  “I invited her back to the coven.” Tracy’s defiance surrounded her like armor. “I’d much rather have a proven war witch standing beside me for the shit you’ve got planned than some random charmer Jacques picked up in the street. Even you have to admit Lilith is more powerful alone than most of us combined. I asked you to think of what was best for the coven, but no—you were too stubborn and jealous to ask her, and for something as dangerous as summoning a rogue Ancient.”

  Deeply-inhaled breath all around stole air, and Leif took a step back. I raised an eyebrow—a rogue Ancient was dangerous business even with a well-trained coven, far more so than the average Ancient, if there was such a thing.

  “She’s not welcome. You know that,” Anne Marie snapped. “She’s unpredictable and cruel and a saints-damned demon junkie.”

  “No, she isn’t, AM,” Rosa said, a frown wrinkling her forehead.

  “Don’t call me that.” Anne Marie ran a hand through her hair, wild-eyed as she looked around—her new witches stunned into silence, and the old witches verging on mutiny.

  It warmed my heart a little, even through the magic, to see her suffer.

  Anne Marie gathered herself, took some cleansing breaths, and held up a hand to cut off whatever Joanne was about to say. “Tracy, we’ll discuss your questionable decisions later. For now—she was at the Skein, she interfered with our spell and cast a serious spell of her own, then showed up at my store and blew apart my wards.”

  Joanne fumed at being shushed, dark eyes flashing, and Rosa patted her knee as she asked, “But what did Lilith cast? While we were there?”

  “Someone cast a redirection without our spell,” Jacques said, nose in the air. “And if she was the only rogue signature, obviously Lilith did it.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Joanne said, studying her inch-long nails. She sounded bored with the entire argument, and over the coven meeting. She probably had a date or three lined up. “The extra cast could have come from inside the circle.”

  Anne Marie nodded reluctantly, even as Tracy leaned to flick Joanne’s ear. “Don’t be ridiculous, Jojo.”

  Joanne tossed her dark hair over her shoulder to frown at the other witch. “Cut it out, you know I just got that pierced. And one of us could have cast within the circle and redirected the spell. We didn’t see the outcome we wanted, maybe it happened at the Skein. It would have taken a hell of a lot of control, so we know Jacques didn’t do it, but it could have been done by one of us.”

  Anne Marie shook her head, waving her hands to dismiss any other argument. “It had to be Lilith. It was Lilith, hiding in the woods while we cast.”

  “But why?” Andre sat forward, weather-beaten face wrinkled further in a frown. He came from a family of fishermen; I’d always imagined the craggy skin and rich voice were inherited, that he’d been born with crow’s feet and a deep tan. “She’s got her own life, what does she care what we do? And what, exactly, did she cast?”

  “It was a redirection, attempting to Call something else instead of the Ancient.” Anne Marie bit off each word as if it had wronged her. “Which is too dangerous to leave there—we need to go back, do a regressive cast to reconstruct what happened, and we’ll see what she summoned instead of the Ancient.”

  I winced; I never would have admitted such a failure to a coven I led. Anne Marie revealed she hadn’t known what happened as it happened, and still didn’t understand the point of the spell cast within hers. She showed the same weakness she would have exploited were she on the other side. Losing her touch, as well as her control.

  Tracy shook her head. “No way. It’s too dangerous. There are Externals all over the city arresting people, and witches are disappearing. And you haven’t told Soren. If the Styrma catch wind of this, we’ll all end up in the Reserve. We should wait at least a day or two.”

  “We go tonight,” Anne Mari
e said.

  Tracy got up and started pacing the perimeter. “We’re going to get arrested or killed by the Externals, and Soren won’t protect us. The dogs are already trying to consolidate power and knock us down further. Don’t give him more justification to dismantle the coven and send us all into exile. You’re going to get us killed.”

  It was my turn to frown at Leif, who just shook his head.

  But Anne Marie’s gaze chilled as she watched Tracy, and a familiar cruelty surfaced as she sensed a challenge to her power. “We go tonight. Deal with it, witch, or get out.”

  Tracy’s eyes narrowed as she glared at the Morrigan, and I held my breath. Maybe this was where it started. Maybe Anne Marie really caused the disaster and got my friends killed. I clenched my fists and leaned forward, hatred making the magic strengthen.

  Chapter 36

  Tracy had never been easily intimidated, and a hint of magic gathered around her. Her mouth twisted in an ugly grimace as she made another full circuit of the room and kept going. “This is my house, AM. I’m not leaving.”

  “I meant out of the coven.”

  The witches stilled. I stepped closer still, holding my breath as Tracy’s eyes narrowed and she gathered herself. Her voice remained deceptively quiet as she folded her arms over her chest and her lip curled in disgust. “Good luck explaining to Soren how you lost yet another war witch. Tell them why you can’t keep anyone in the First Coven, how you’re driving away everyone with experience. How your mismanagement is destroying the aligned witches. You haven’t even bothered to look for Cara and Danielle, or talk to the Warder about how to protect the rest of us from being targeted by the Externals. Go ahead and explain that, witch, when the rest of us break off and form our own coven. Good luck.”

  My attention zeroed in on Anne Marie’s trembling fingers as she patted her hair. She put her hair behind her back and I tensed: an aggressive move, for a witch. She was scared.

  But she pretended haughty indifference, taking refuge in her pride. “Your call, witch. Abandon this coven and your colleagues, just like Lilith did. Take your bullshit threats and walk away. No one else is going with you.”

  Tracy looked at the others, but Rosa and Joanne didn’t meet her gaze. No one else moved, waiting for the storm to pass, and Tracy’s face flushed. Clearly she’d been expecting overwhelming support from the older witches, and when none came, Anne Marie started to look triumphant.

  The Morrigan raised an eyebrow, suddenly cocksure. “Or you can cast with us tonight, finish our business, and make your decision tomorrow.”

  Eternity ticked by, one heartbeat at a time, as Tracy stared down Anne Marie. Her face grew redder and redder with each passing moment. I bit my lip—I remembered that expression. Tracy was one snide comment from going straight berserk.

  Rosa recognized it, too, as Tracy paced the room like a caged tiger, about to strike. “Come on, Tracy. Let’s just do the cast while it’s still viable, and find out who screwed up. If it was one of us, well... You remember how that story ends. Stick around until we know more, then we can go get dessert and talk about the rest of this stuff.”

  Joanne smiled with false cheer, showing all of her teeth as she smacked Tracy’s hip. “Look on the bright side—Jacques probably fucked up again and put all of us on the Externals’ radar. We can burn him at the stake for betraying the coven through stupidity.”

  The male witch hopped to his feet. “You bitch—”

  He silenced as Joanna stood and held her right hand out, magic flaring, and Anne Marie shouted for all of them to stop fucking around and get it together before they ran out of time.

  Tracy’s grim expression and the fury on Joanne’s face didn’t bode well for Anne Marie’s plans. But the Morrigan was nothing if not overconfident in her power and ability to get the unruly coven to follow orders. She didn’t know Tracy well enough. “So what’s your choice, witch? We’re wasting time.”

  Tracy surveyed the room, gaze sliding over the witches as she measured her options. After a long pause, she turned back to Anne Marie, her face curiously blank. “Fine. I’ll stand in your circle for this farce, but we’ll have a long talk tomorrow.”

  The way she said “talk” made it sound like “fight” instead.

  “Count on it,” Anne Marie said, then pointed at the door and right at me. “Let’s go.”

  The coven got to their feet, though Tracy cleared her throat. “We should start here. So there’s less time for the Externals to catch up. Or Soren, for that matter—unless he’s in on that one?”

  Anne Marie ignored the last jab, clearly over the whole argument and just wanting to be done with the cast as soon as possible. “Fine. We set up here.”

  She stroked the top of the warding box, disabling the magic, and lifted a book bound in old, cracked calfskin out of the recess. My nose twitched as I peered at it; I hadn’t seen that one before. Maybe I’d stolen the wrong book.

  Anne Marie flipped pages as the coven formed a circle around Tracy’s furniture. They gathered power, weaving their individual magic into a fiery mass, more powerful than the sum of its parts. It was familiar enough to me, but the shifters stared, slack-jawed, at the inner workings of coven magic. They were not supposed to see how the coven worked, but in the long list of rules I’d broken, this was a minor one. The saints would forgive me.

  Anne Marie walked a circle with her book, muttering—another of her bad habits. As she drew the coven magic in her wake like spidery blue and gold webs, I squinted to study the spell. Regressions were tough casts to initiate and maintain, and... I stepped forward, as if to warn her, as another circle flared to life, set outside her circle and intersecting with mine.

  Something held me back. I concentrated on the construction, the signature in the ward. Tracy. Tracy set a circle? I stared at her image, my stomach knotting. If she didn’t trust Anne Marie, maybe Tracy meant to protect herself and the coven. I might have done the same, regardless of the risks.

  I tensed as Anne Marie hesitated, then fumbled through another manipulation of the spell. She hadn’t done a regression in a while, it seemed. She should have prepared more, should have studied as long as it took to memorize the spell, so she wasn’t lost in a book when things started going wrong.

  Desiree’s magic flashed, brighter than the rest, and upset the delicate balance. Tracy scowled at the younger witch. “Control yourself.”

  “That wasn’t me,” the girl snapped, her strained expression betraying the effort of maintaining her part in the powerful circle.

  “Shut up and focus.” Anne Marie finished her circle and glanced once more at her book before intoning the rest of the spell. Apparently she still needed the pretty Latin poems.

  A low buzzing made me twitch, brushing my ear. It grew louder, more insistent. I glanced over at Leif. “Do you hear that?”

  “Just chanting,” he said. “Do you need to stop? What is it?”

  “No.” If I stopped—when I stopped—I would collapse and not move for days. I shook my head, straining to hear Anne Marie’s clumsy repetitions over the obnoxious sound. “I don’t know what it is.”

  The buzzing intensified and Rosa tossed her head as if a mosquito whined in her ear. My heart sank. Good for me, bad for them. It reminded me, suddenly, of the interference when demon magic interacted with witch magic. I drew breath to warn her, tell her to run. Break the circle and save herself before it got worse.

  “No,” I whispered, but it wasn’t enough. They couldn’t hear me.

  It began quietly, as those things usually did. Like watching a car crash from afar—in slow motion, unable to help, unable to warn them of the impending disaster. But I couldn’t look away, even as my heart broke.

  The magic surged in Anne Marie’s spell and again Desiree’s magic spiked. A halo flared behind her; I focused on it but it was gone too quickly to identify.

  Andre frowned as he said, “What the hell—” as a sunspot flickered to life in the center of the living room.

&nb
sp; Betty wavered, her voice thin. “Anne Marie?”

  The circle convulsed as the name unbalanced the delicate magic ballet, and the sunspot shivered. “No,” I said, repeating it again and again as the ripple spread, and I took a step forward.

  If I could just—

  Something yanked me back. I put my hands over my mouth, wanting to run. Saints shelter them. Saints and stars above, bless and keep them. I rocked back and forth, unable to look away as I hoped—I prayed—they felt no pain.

  The sunspot grew as it rotated, creating coronas of light flaring from the center. Anne Marie should have recognized the danger and ended it. She could have saved everyone. But she just stood there, peering at her stupid book.

  “Stop it,” I said, panic building into fury until I stomped my foot. “Damn it, they can’t—that’s a demon. Break the circle, Anne Marie.”

  My spell shivered at the name, but Anne Marie didn’t do anything. She just focused on her book as the coven fell apart.

  “Who’s doing that?” Rosa demanded, rubbing her ear. Her magic vibrated green and soothing—she was a natural healer, a mender who brought together oceans of magic. She would have healed my collarbone with a wink and a lollipop. “TT, is that you?”

  “No,” Tracy said. “Jojo?”

  “Not me,” Joanne said. The dead witch gritted her teeth with the effort of keeping the spell from shattering. “But that looks like a... Hey AM? We should probably—”

  The buzzing exploded into a shriek and Rosa clapped her hands over her ears. The sunspot coalesced in a blinding white flash and with a pop! turned itself inside out.

  In its place was a form of pure darkness. Malevolence incarnate.

  Demon.

  Jacques cursed and blasted power at the thing. His panic echoed in the shifters around me as the demon swirled into something resembling a half-snake, half-cat. It fed on his desperation, absorbing his magic easily. It had been too long since they practiced fighting demons, and it showed. I wanted to shut my eyes as the demon launched at the wide-eyed Lauren.