Black Magic Sanction. Ким Харрисон

       Five

      You toad!” I shrieked, striding forward only to stop short at the shimmering wall of ever-after rising up from the protection circle. It hummed aggressively, and I pulled back, stymied. Hands on my hips, I glared at Nick, heart pounding and pissed, growing hot in my strawberry-and-ash-covered coat.

      “You summoned me, didn’t you!” I accused him, and Nick hunched, brown eyes avoiding mine. “I was driving, Nick. Ivy and Jenks were with me. We hit something, you little prick. If they’re dead, I swear I will hunt you down. There is nowhere you can hide from me. Nowhere!”

      A clatter of pixy wings turned into Jax, and Jenks’s eldest son, dressed in black and looking so much like his dad it hurt, darted erratically in front of Nick. “I gotta get to a phone!” the pixy exclaimed, and he vanished through the open skylight and into the early dusk.

      The sight of Jax was a shock, and realizing what I must look like—practically foaming at the mouth and raging like … a demon—I forced myself back from the barrier, the warning buzz having escalated into cramping my toes. Most circles didn’t burn, but this one had been drawn to hold demons. To hold me. I am not a demon. I’m not!

      The surrounding witches held to their posts to keep the circle strong,but Nick, who had apparently done the actual summoning, seeing that he knew Al’s name, was picking up his stuff and jamming it in a worn, army-green satchel. “It’s cold in Cincy, Nick,” I said, shaking. “You son of a bitch. Even if he survived the crash, he’s going to have a hard time staying alive.”

      The witch with the laptop shifted to draw my attention from Nick’s grim expression. She was the tallest one there, wearing a black business suit and gray hose. Her legs were too muscular to be called pretty, and her sandy blond hair was in a simple cut with gray highlights. She looked familiar, like from a news article, but it wasn’t until I saw her Möbius-strip pin holding a sprig of heather that I finally got it. Crap, it was the coven.

      Worry colored my anger, and I moved back to the center of the circle, looking over my summoners again to see the balances in play. Vivian was still in Cincinnati, but if she had been here, there’d be three men and three women, an equal number of earth and ley-line users, all carefully selected to supplement one another’s skills. Remembering Vivian’s strength, I knew I was in trouble. Yes, they had been voted into the position, but they’d been trained for it from early childhood like Olympian athletes, skills and traditions embedded into them until magic was like breathing—instinctive, fast, and powerful. This was going to be … tricky.

      The woman with the laptop seemed to be the high witch, since she did a quick look around at the others before asking Nick in a pleasant voice, “Is this Morgan, or the demon?”

      I wrapped my arms around myself, wanting to demand that they let me out, but I knew they wouldn’t. They wanted me in a hole in the ground—quick and quiet. I was in so much trouble.

      Nick obviously knew it was me, but he came close, as if unsure, faded satchel in hand, shoulders at an uneven slant and a tired look in his eyes. He appeared old and weary, and the sheet of ever-after between us hummed as I moved so close that my breath came back to me. His wrist was a mass of scar tissue where his hand had almost been chewed off during his stint as a rat, and his black hair was longer than I remembered. Slowly, my hands formed fists.

      I’d slept with this man, thinking he loved me. Maybe he had. But he’d betrayed me, selling secrets about me to demons and then trying to double-cross me after I’d saved his life. My fist jammed out, hitting the barrier inches from Nick’s stomach. Pain cramped my hand and clawed its way up my arm. There was a collective gasp as I danced back, shaking my fist. Rubbing my knuckles, I met Nick’s sad expression with a heightened feeling of bitterness.

      “I thought you were smarter than this,” he said, a toss of his too-long hair the only clue that I’d startled him. The demon scar on his brow that he’d gotten from Al showed for an instant, then was hidden. “Are they right?” he asked. “Did you go into partnership with Al? Is that why you showed up instead of him? God, Rachel. You were supposed to be the smart one.”

      “I didn’t have much choice, Nicky,” I said sharply.

      His eyes flicked away for an instant—his only sign of guilt. “Neither do I. Remember that when this is done. I’m settling a debt you foisted on me,” he said loudly. “Did you think I wouldn’t have to answer for you running off with the focus?”

      My chin rose. “It showed up on my doorstep with my name on it. Tell me you weren’t going to sell it to the highest bidder. Tell me that, Nick.”

      “I was,” he said belligerently, his attention shifting to the witches around us. “Them.”

      Them again. The same them who now had me circled like an animal. “Looks like I made the right choice in giving it back to the Weres then, huh?” I was so ticked I could scream.

      Nick looked me up and down, his gaze lingering on my strawberry-covered coat before he put a hand to the back of his neck and walked away. “It’s her,” he said to the tall witch with the laptop, and there was a soft exhalation as they all relaxed.

      My tension, though, spiked as the witches left their posts to join the tall woman at her computer. The humming of the barrier eased as they lessened their collective attention holding it, but the circle was still strong enough to stand.

      The oldest man was wearing a large amulet, probably defunct this close to the coast. Earth-magic user, obviously, which made the older woman with the laptop their ley-line master. His cuff links were Möbius strips, and my face warmed when he handed Nick a stack of bills.

      Nick shoved the money in his bag with unusual haste and turned to me. “We’re even now,” he said, his brow furrowed, and I flipped him off. His lips tightened and he looked away. “Don’t call me again,” he said to the man as he started for an elaborately tooled wooden door, but upon reaching it, he hesitated. “You either,” he said to me, and then he … sort of … smiled?

      Don’t call him? I thought. Like I ever would? But I forced my breathing to remain slow as I glimpsed the hallway beyond the door, an idea trickling through me. Carpet and soft colors, pictures on the walls. I was in a private home, not an institution. As the witches watched the door shut behind him, my hand crept back to my jeans pocket to find the lump of my phone. Holy crap, Nick had reminded me of a way to get out of here. An active phone line could break a circle—if one was skilled enough in taking them down.

      The door snicked shut, and I heard a sigh from one of the five witches. “I really dislike that man,” one said.

      “Me, too,” I said loudly, then pulled my fingers back from the cramping sensation of the barrier. It was still too strong—they needed to lower their guard more.

      Apparently they’d been waiting for Nick to leave, because they gathered behind the sandy-haired witch with the laptop to face me like a jury. The woman looked to be an athletic forty, but I was willing to bet that her surfer-toned body was actually closer to a hundred. You don’t find that grace or confidence in a mere forty years, even if you can keep your balance in a tight curl. Her short hair was bleached by sun and salt, not chemicals in a salon, and her narrow, angular nose was peeling from sunburn.

      Balancing her was the older witch with that nonfunctioning amulet. He appeared to be about forty as well, and his clothes were stodgy and expensive looking. They clung to him a little tightly, telling me he usually had a slimming charm. Settling in behind them was the middle male/female pair who both appeared to be a spelled thirty, and behind them, a young, gawky guy who was more than likely Vivian’s counterpart, probably close to my age and still gaining his full,