Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (30 page)

Mory shrugged.

“Is Sienna surrounded by shades in the same way?”

“No,” the necromancer answered, but then she thought about it a bit more.

“Before she learned to block Rusty from using your magic to hurt her?”

“Yeah, I get the question. Maybe. But she kept me drugged, you know, so that kept me from using my powers while she figured out the blocking thing.”

“She sleep-spelled you through the necklace?”

“Nah, human drugs. In my food. I had to eat something.”

Oh, freaking hell. That was information my already damaged soul wasn’t going to absorb neatly.

“She had to back off on the drugs when she wanted to travel, but by then she’d figured out how to block Rusty. She had some of your trinkets. Maybe they helped.”

“It must be something that comes naturally to necromancers. Blocking shades or ghosts. Something you probably do without even learning,” I said, steadily putting things together. “She was slowly draining you and slowly learning the power.”

“She’s no necromancer,” Mory spat. “She can’t see ghosts, or talk to them.”

“But she can do necromancer spells and summonings.”

“Maybe.”

“If she was surrounded by the shades of all the Adept she’s killed, could your mom communicate with them?”

“They’re not like Rusty. They’d just be residual energy. Shadows.”

“Shadows all focused on the object of their death,” I said, and I looked up to meet Desmond’s gaze. “If Rusty can sense Sienna ahead, and they’re connected because she killed him, then everyone she’s killed might still be … around.”

“I’ll let the necromancers know,” Desmond said. He stepped back into the dark of the forest.

“I don’t get it,” Mory said.

“I don’t either. Maybe it’s not important. Maybe your mom already knows. But what if Sienna can use the shades somehow? Like stored energy? Magic is energy. Maybe the necromancers can disrupt that connection if it exists. We need all the defenses we can build.”

“Can we continue then?” Mory asked. Her snark was firmly back in place. It tended to drop when Desmond was around. She wasn’t a big fan of the alpha, and seemed to try to stay under his radar. Once, I’d felt the exact same way … during a much safer and calmer period of my life.

“Lead on,” I said.

Mory huffed out a breath and continued down the trail.
 

∞

Almost thirty minutes and three twists in the trail later, Mory, via Rusty, had led us to what appeared to be a caretaker’s or park ranger’s hut. The hut, along with a public outhouse — currently closed — water tap, and message board, was dead center in a small clearing in the forest. Trails led to and from this clearing in four directions. A water-stained picnic table and benches stood on the opposite side of the hut, directly across from the outhouse.

I wished the moon was fuller, and therefore brighter. I could really only just see the outlines of the structures in the clearing.

“Rusty can’t get inside,” Mory said. Not taking her eyes off the hut, she shuddered as if cold. It looked like just a chill, but I worried her shiver meant more than that.

We were hunkered down in the trees at the edge of the clearing. I pulled Mory’s necklace off — it was a tight squeeze around my head — and noted that it was glowing with a light blue tint of magic, as if being entwined with my necklace had charged it somehow. I dropped it back in place over Mory’s head.

“Hey!” the fledgling necromancer exclaimed, though she immediately curled her fingers around the thick gold and silver chain.

“Next time, you learn to strengthen the connection with Rusty using the magic of the necklace.”

“I’m not a witch,” Mory sneered.

I shrugged. “Fine. Don’t then.”

I stepped around Mory and stumbled through the woods with Kandy in wolf form at my side — off the path — until I’d walked the perimeter. I stopped when I was once again facing the front door of the hut.

“No magic,” I whispered into the surrounding trees. “Not that I can taste or see. I should get closer to confirm.”

“No,” Desmond growled. He was standing at my back suddenly, though thirty seconds ago, he’d been much deeper in the forest.

“I’m not going to argue with you about it,” I said, as Scarlett, led by a wolf I didn’t recognize, stepped up to meet me. I could taste other witches nearby now, and the skinwalker magic just at the edges of my senses. The troops were gathering … again.

“Key weapons don’t waltz into apparently empty clearings after being led there by a ghost,” Desmond said.

“He has a point,” Mory whispered.

“Don’t take sides,” I hissed at the fledgling.

She shrugged and stroked her necklace thoughtfully. It was an unconscious gesture, but backlit by the magical glow, her fingers looked skeletal. I looked away.

“Danica understood your thoughts about the poor souls Sienna has killed,” Scarlett said. “She and the other necromancers are trying to figure out if they can make use of it. Thankfully, their magic seems compatible with cellphones, so they’re calling friends and family for guidance.”

I nodded, but my attention was fixed once again on the hut. “Something’s not right,” I said.

“Rusty wouldn’t mislead us,” Mory insisted.

“That’s not it.”

“Audrey,” Desmond called softly into the darkness. A gorgeous, dark gray wolf stepped up beside Mory. The necromancer flinched. The wolf dropped its jaw open in a toothy smile … or like it was about to take a bite out of the fledgling.

“I suppose you won’t allow me to go?” Desmond asked, hopefully.

The gray wolf lowered its head and a growl rumbled out through its now aggressively bared teeth. Mory squeaked and pretty much threw herself into my lap, knocking me off my haunches and onto my ass in dirt, dried leaves, and ferns.

I hadn’t seen it coming, but I’m fairly certain I should have been able to take a hit like that and stay on my feet. I sighed. “Don’t run. Only prey runs,” I said to Mory, attempting to be stern and comfort her at the same time.

The fledgling necromancer disengaged from the hug I was now forcing on her and climbed in between where Scarlett was standing and me. “I am prey,” she whispered.

“Only if you see yourself that way,” Scarlett admonished.

“Yeah, claws and teeth beat ghosts any day.” Mory’s snark was seeping back.

I looked at Audrey, who’d backed off a step at the mention of ghosts. “Don’t be so sure,” I said to the fledgling.

“You’ll need thumbs,” Desmond said, either oblivious to or bored with the drama taking place at his knees.

Audrey took another step back and her green magic rolled around her so brightly I had to look away. Still on all fours, she transformed into her human form. Her completely naked human form.

Audrey straightened from her crouch, unabashedly displaying the most gorgeous female body I’d ever seen — long muscled legs, high breasts, and a slim waist that curved down into perfectly proportioned hips — as if I hadn’t already hated her clothed.

She stepped by me — I was still sprawled on my ass like a street urchin in the dirt — and out into the clearing.

At the same time, a ring of green-glowing eyes moved a step forward to the edge of the trees, surrounding the hut and the outhouse. All the shapeshifters’ attention was fixed on Audrey.

“What’s on the picnic table?” I murmured, not expecting an answer. I’d noted the dark shadow there when I’d done my perimeter walk and brushed it off as a water stain … except it had been raining all day, so a water stain shouldn’t show up like that on wood.

“Blood,” Desmond answered. His remote tone suggested he was utterly focused on Audrey as she picked her way past the table and reached for the handle of the hut door.

Blood, blood. A pool of blood soaked into wood. Why was that ringing —
 

“Wait!” I cried.

Mory and Scarlett flinched beside me. Audrey froze with her hand an inch from the doorknob.

“Wait, wait,” I muttered, fiercely trying to focus my thoughts. Everything was moving too fast … like London …

“Sayers,” I whispered.

“The sorcerer?” Scarlett asked.

“Yes,” I breathed as it clicked into place for me. “We’re forgetting what Sienna does.”

“I think that’s rather difficult to forget,” Scarlett said.

“No, I mean, she binds power —”

“Steals,” Mory spat.

“Exactly. And the last Adept that I know of who she stole power from was Sayers.”

“You said you couldn’t feel any magic in the clearing,” Desmond said, a pissed-off growl edging his statement. I got that he didn’t like being thwarted. Actually, I got that he wanted to be in the clearing instead of his beta-elect, but protocol or whatever kept him standing in the woods behind me.

I straightened and pulled my jade knife. In the moonlight, the green stone of the blade glowed almost the same hue as the shapeshifters’ eyes that still ringed the clearing across from me.

“I feel no magic in the clearing, and yet there’s natural magic all around us. It’s dim, touched and eroded by humans and Adepts alike. It’s like the magic I find in the jade.”

“Sayers’ specialty,” Scarlett murmured.

“I thought it was just a magical dampener he wore, but then the fog spell that covered the parking lot dampened and diffused magic within it.”

“Sienna siphoned this sorcerer’s power?” Desmond asked.

Audrey remained standing perfectly still in the clearing. Her dark hair cascaded down her bare back. Her skin glowed in the pale moonlight.

“She got some of it. Enough to trigger the demon summoning — a spell Sayers set up — but I bound the rest.” I let this painful admission hover in the darkness between Mory, Scarlett, and Desmond.

“In the knife?” Desmond asked. “Which the black witch now has?”

“Yes.”

“She’s learning too fast,” Scarlett said. “Impossibly fast for someone previously so unskilled.”

“No,” I said. “She’s just trying everything. You understand? She would always try everything once. We just have no idea what she tries that doesn’t work.”

I stepped forward into the clearing. Desmond, Kandy, Mory, and Scarlett followed. The shapeshifters — not all of them wolves, I now saw — stepped forward to tighten the perimeter but stayed in formation. Desmond’s form was a mountain lion, so I knew his pack would contain other species of shifters besides the wolves I’d met. I saw at least one coyote, what appeared to be some type of fox, and a smaller cat that was maybe a lynx out of the corner of my eye as I crossed to the hut.

Audrey turned and sneered at me as I approached. “I don’t smell any magic.”

“Go ahead, touch the door,” I said, smiling at her sweetly.

“Jade,” Scarlett admonished.

Audrey raised her chin and gazed over my head to look at Desmond, her expression now welcoming and receptive. She was like a porcelain statue in the moonlight, except for the dark nipples and trimmed triangle of dark pubic hair. She didn’t seem to have the problem Kandy had with body hair growing back after she transformed. I guessed that was a refined shapeshifter ability, similar to their half-beast forms. I wanted to slap her silly … repeatedly.

Instead, I stopped beside her and looked at the door. I still couldn’t feel any magic. “Still nothing.”

Scarlett bent down, and with a flick of her fingers called up a dimmer version of her light spell. Even though the blue ball glowed with less wattage than usual, the shapeshifters and I flinched from it.

After a few rapid blinks, I could see the line of coarse salt along the underside edge of the door.

“Definitely spelled,” Scarlett said. She straightened and opened her palm to send the blue ball of light over the picnic table. “No magic in the blood?”

“No,” I answered.

“Animal?”

“No,” Desmond answered. His nostrils flared, and then he scrunched his nose. “Human, a few hours old.”

“The sacrifice for whatever spell she’s working?” I asked, speaking more to myself than the others. I turned back to the door. “The dampening spell wouldn’t need a sacrifice … No, she used it to mask whatever is inside.”

I reached for the handle but Audrey knocked my hand away and grabbed the doorknob herself.

Nothing happened.

The werewolf strained. Then with a grunt and a flash of shifter magic, the handle popped off in her hand.

The door swung slightly open on loose hinges.

“Impressive,” I said. Without breaking a sweat, Audrey had countered some sort of ward on the door that I hadn’t even felt.

I touched the tip of my jade knife to the door and pushed it the rest of the way open.

Audrey stiffened and moaned ever so quietly. I couldn’t see what she saw within the darkness.

Scarlett sent her light spell to hover over my shoulder. I reeled away from the carnage that lay in the one-room hut even before my brain had fully processed what my eyes had seen.

My mind refused to acknowledge the image imprinted there as I turned to block Mory’s view, actually lifting the fledgling and carrying her — kicking and protesting — away.

I heard Desmond step forward and absorb the scene in the hut with a pained grunt.

“How many?” Scarlett asked, her voice thin and unsteady.

I suddenly very much wanted my Gran. I wanted the life she’d carefully directed me toward — keeping me away from magic, keeping me ignorant and safe, and not forever haunted by my sister’s deeds. I wanted her to wrap her arms around me as I was now holding Mory, who quieted once she figured out what I was blocking her from.

“Jade,” Scarlett called to me. “I … we need you to look at the magic.”

I nodded and turned back to the hut. Kandy, in wolf form, brushed by me and stood in front of Mory, exchanging places to watch over the fledgling.

Scarlett and Desmond stood at the door and watched me approach. Audrey stood to one side with her arms crossed protectively and her head bowed. She wasn’t so confident and cocky now, but I couldn’t take pleasure in this change because the hut was full of dead bodies.

A pile of dead bodies. Their blood soaked into the pentagram inscribed on the wooden slat floor.

“Magic?” Scarlett prompted. She was trying to steel her tone and failing.