Page 51 of Claiming Chaos
A tourist group stood outside a historical building, taking up most of the sidewalk, and parked cars lined the side of the road, making it nearly impossible to go around them without getting hit by traffic. We slowed to a walk and sidestepped the crowd, but a big, beefy guy decided to take a giant step backward, right into me.
His boot landed on top of my foot, and he lost his balance and careened backward, slamming me onto the hood of a car. I couldn’t stop the yelp from escaping my throat or the oof as I rolled off the car and smacked the ground.
“What the hell?” He spun around, looking for whatever he smacked into and scratching his head when he found nothing there.
“Ash!” Chaos’s deep voice boomed as he rushed toward me, and the entire crowd gasped.
I made a lip-zipping motion and reached for his hand when he offered it. He hauled me up, and I limped as I dragged him away.
“Salem is the most haunted city in America,” the tour guide said to his patrons. “Did we just experience an angry ghost?”
With their attention returned to their tour, I stopped half a block away to loosen my laces before my foot swelled. I’d torn a hole in the knee of my fireproof leggings, but my skin wasn’t marred in the slightest.
“Huh. I guess that protection sigil works after all.” I wiggled my foot and took a tentative step. The pain was gone. “Nice.”
“Almost there,” Ember called. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” We caught up with the others and crossed the intersection at a fast clip.
“Shit.” Miles stopped in his tracks and grabbed Ember’s arm, pulling her back. “I recognize her. She’s from BMS.”
We peered through our shadow at the woman leaning against a stone fence. She crossed her legs at the ankles and looked down to type on her phone before letting out a sigh and looking right and then left. Her cheeks puffed as she blew out another breath, and she kicked at something on the ground, rubbing the sole of her shoe over the concrete.
“She must be a lookout,” Ember said. “How do you know her?”
Miles cringed. “Her name is Wendy. She’s the one I convinced to let me into their library. If I’d known she was working with Chrys, I…”
Shade clapped him on the shoulder. “There’s a lot we’d all have done differently if we’d known what Chrys was up to.”
“I’m sure there are others. We—” I clamped my mouth shut and stepped out of a woman’s path, dragging my sister to the edge of the sidewalk. “It’s time for a silencing spell if we want to make it in undetected.”
She nodded. “Patrice, can you handle that?”
“I—” Shade started, but Ember held up her hand and said, “We’re sharing the vim, remember? You’re cloaking us. Ash performed sigil magic and the undoing spell in the van. It’s someone else’s turn.”
“Absolutely.” Patrice sat in a patch of dead grass next to a fence and mixed a potion. We gathered around her as she recited the incantation, rendering us all soundless to the outside world.
Silent and invisible, we crossed the intersection and headed toward the church. When we reached Wendy, she pressed her phone to her ear. “Hey.”
She rolled her eyes, listening to the caller.
“I know. Some High Priestess she’ll be. It took her forever to find the damn skull. Then she didn’t have the sigil to call on the guy, and once she found that, she had to get another book with summoning instructions. I can’t deal with her right now.”
We stopped to hear the rest of Wendy’s conversation.
“I’m starting to think she’s not as big and bad as she made herself out to be.” She stuck her finger into her nose and flicked out a booger. Gross.
“Don’t you dare report her… Because! We’ve been on the bottom rung of the ladder for years, and she promised us a seat at the table when she takes over.”
“Keep moving.” Ember jerked her head toward the church, and we continued up the walk.
“If Chrys wants to take over the coven, why recruit low-level witches?” Miles asked. “She’d have more power with stronger ones.”
“The weak ones are easier to control,” Chaos said before sucking in a sharp breath.
“What?” I clutched his arm. “What do you feel? Is it Mayhem?”
“Not yet, but she has begun the ceremony. The veil is tearing. We need to hurry.” He took off in a jog, so I scurried behind him, making a mental note to seriously work on lengthening my strides.
The others followed, and as we reached the end of the last block, we smashed into an invisible wall of magic. The sensation of claws ripping across my skin made me scream. I pressed my hands to my face, expecting it to be covered in blood, but I didn’t have a scratch.
The feeling subsided, and as I looked at my team and then at the church a few yards away, I realized what the ward had done. Our protection sigils had blocked most of the nastiness, but Shade’s fog had rolled away, bringing the world into full color. Chrys had stripped us of our cloak, and six dark witches marched toward us.