Page 120 of Demon's Bluff

Scott.

Crap on toast. My bag. If Scott has my phone…“I thought you told your crow to leave us alone,” I said, disgusted as Scott pushed his hair from his eyes and squinted at us. His suit was a mess and he seemed tired. His phone was in his hand, and I could almost hear someone on it. It didn’t see my bag anywhere and I hoped it was still under the truck’s seat.

“Get Johnny in the truck,” she muttered, feet shifting to find a secure stance. “I’ll distract Scott. Don’t wait for me. This is going to be fast.”

I took a breath as I counted the steps to the truck.You think?

“Elyse?” the man said in wonder as he looked at his phone as if in betrayal. “How—”

I twitched, feeling it when she yanked on the nearest ley line. “Light footprint!” I cried out, but she was winding up hard. Her hair wild and her eyes alight, Elyse gestured a spell into existence, her aura flashing into the visible spectrum as Scott stared from her to his phone.

“Teneo!”she exclaimed, the single word of Latin exploding from her as an aura-tainted ball of energy hissed through the air to slam against Scott’s hastily erected protection circle. Snapping and popping, little arcs of power skated over the man’s circle, slowly dissipating.

Head down and skin tingling, I pushed Johnny down the ramp.

His jaw set, Scott stepped through his bubble of protection, oblivious to me. “Who the hell are you?” he exclaimed.

“Crescit eundo!”Elyse shouted, my pace bobbling when the pavement in front of Scott blew up as if a bomb had hit it.

Scott stumbled, safe under his protection circle as rock and asphalt rained down. Shielding Johnny the best I could, I ran for the truck.

Scott found his height, his face red in anger. “By the authority of the coven of—”

“Crescit eundo!”she exclaimed again, and I winced, skin tingling as the boom echoed between the buildings.

“Son of a—” Scott rolled, aura sparking as he came to a halt beside the dumpster. I wasn’t too happy, either, as chunks of rock and pavement fell thumping around us. Elyse was clearly enjoying herself, her expression alight with the joy of rubbing out past slights. Faces were showing at a few windows. We had to get out of here. Now.

“Hurry up, witch!” she said, and Scott’s gaze jerked to me. His brow furrowed as he realized she hadn’t been trying to hit him, but only to distract him.

“Stop!” he shouted at me, then yelped, his half-formed curse falling back in on itself when the ground exploded again at his feet.

I was at the truck. Heart pounding, I locked the wheels. I itched to turn and fight. Elyse was yelling something, but I didn’t dare look as I fumbled the door open. Crows were cawing, more than one diving down to distract Scott as I worked the lap belt free.

In a sparking-haired glory, Elyse stood just outside the building, her hands moving in sweeping gestures as she gathered power. Line energy dripped from her fingers, glowed from her limbs, her obvious passion of working magic making her almost unreal. I stifled a gasp when one of Scott’s charms hit a crow…But it was only an illusion, and the black shadow exploded into a shower of sparks that hissed against the broken pavement.There’s only one crow…

“Get in there,” I muttered as I yanked Johnny’s deadweight into the back of the truck.

“Hurry up!” Elyse shouted as she hustled down the stairs. Scott was picking off her illusions, but for each one he took out, two replaced it.

I scrambled in over Johnny and pulled him the rest of the way. Struggling, I lurched back out, shoved his legs in, and slammed the door. Behind me another spell-based boom rocked between the buildings, the tang of spent energy like tinfoil on my teeth.

This was as backward a run as I had ever been on. Jenks would laugh his lily-white ass off. Ivy would cringe at the lack of planning. Trent would…

I grimaced. Trent would do something drastic, like bring down a wall or wrap Scott in a twining, Goddess-born snake of destruction. And as I stood beside the driver’s door, my fingers tingling with the strength of the line, I thought that fortunately for Scott, I wasn’t Trent.

“Quod periit, periit!”I shouted, slipping my spell behind Scott’s defenses when he dropped them to destroy another of Elyse’s illusions. It was a joke curse, but Elyse was pinned down and we needed to get out of here.

Scott yelped as the spell struck him, the man freezing as he scrambled to figure out what he needed to counter. I yanked open the truck door, jumped in, and started it in an exploding thrum of old Detroit muscle. I shouldn’t have worried about the truck. It was solid.

I put the truck in drive, arm reaching to make sure my bag was where I’d left it. It was. “Let’s go!” I shouted through the open window to Elyse.

She bolted forward, looking back when Scott shrieked in terror as his hair cascaded from him in a dark wash. Eyes round, he stared at me, his arms hanging as if afraid to move.

Elyse vaulted into the truck bed and pounded the side. “Drive!”

Asphalt chips popped and flew as I hit the gas, tires slipping until they found good pavement. Sirens wailed in the distance, and I hunched low in the seat as I wove through the destruction. Chunks of asphalt lay everywhere, in the road, on dented roofs.

But as I glanced into the rearview mirror, I realized Scott was wreathed in a green glow—staring at us. My expression emptied.