Page 135 of Demon's Bluff
“Spellsoffthe gargoyle!” Al shouted, a premade spell tearing through Trent’s bubble.
The curse was headed right for Scott. Jaw clenched, the magic user blasted the curse to nothing, then rose, smug with satisfaction. In his effort to save Bis, Al had taken Trent’s circle down.
“Stop!” Elyse demanded, and Bis did a somersault in the air, my breath catching as his red eyes found mine and widened. Trent spun, magic hazing his hands. Ivy, too, looked up, blinking to focus. Al seemed to catch his step, emotion blanking his expression as he pulled himself to a magnificent stance of confidence…and relief.
“She made it!” Bis shouted as the coven circling them seemed to hesitate. “She’s back!”
“And she’s got a bitching car!” Jenks exclaimed, the clothes-heavy pixy wiggling out of Bis’s grip in a burst of blue dust.
“Stop! Everyone stop!” Elyse called again as she came around the front of the car, pace fast and looking innocuous in her gray institutional sweats. “We’re all right!”
“Hey!” I exclaimed as a dark shadow dove at me, but it was only Slick,the crow cawing and flapping his wings as he landed on Elyse’s shoulder, demanding attention and warning everyone off all at once.
Jenks struggled to hover before me, weighed down by layers of woven spider silk. “Tink loves a duck, where did you get the car?” he said as he landed on my hand. “You okay? You stink like burnt amber. Where’s your bag? What did you do to your hair?”
“I’m okay,” I said, wishing I was four inches tall or that Jenks was six feet in height. “Crap on toast, I missed you.” I jumped when Bis’s feet found my shoulder, his feet clamped as if he would never let go. “Both of you.”
Ivy slowly got to her feet. Heartache swelled as I remembered Kisten, and feeling it, Bis’s wings drooped. The coven members had knotted together, and the need to be with Trent, Al, and Ivy almost hurt. “Where’s Laker?” I asked. My God, Trent looked every part the elven warlord, his straw-blond hair staticky with mystics and his aura flicking in and out of existence as his next spell flitted through his mind at the ready.
Jenks shifted to my shoulder, his wings cold as he plastered them to my neck to warm up. “The lunker left thirty seconds after things got gnarly. You’ve been gone for like fifteen minutes.”
Whoa. I did good.“Fifteen minutes?” I started across the field with Elyse, the woman’s attention utterly on soothing her familiar. Shoulder to shoulder, we must have made an unsettling sight, both of us ragged, tired, and inappropriately dressed for kicking ass.Both of us easy with each other’s company…
Bis’s grip tightened on me. “The longest fifteen minutes of my life,” he said, glancing at Slick in mistrust when Elyse told the bird to leave him and Jenks alone.
“You owe me a jar of honey, old man,” Jenks said proudly. “Where is it, Rache? Where’s the mirror?”
My gut hurt, but I didn’t shift my pace, didn’t change my expression. Even at this distance, Al could read my mood and he slumped, knowing that I had not gotten it. I took a breath to tell Jenks I’d failed…hesitating when Elyse’s expression flicked from annoyance to alarm.
“Down!” she shouted, and energy zinged over my skin as she yanked on the ley line. I dropped to my knees, trusting her as she flung out a hand with a dramatic“Sisto!”
Bis’s feet clamped tighter, and Jenks rode it out on my shoulder as well. I peered up at Elyse as the coven spell fizzed in a shower of red and purple sparks.
“Knock it off! Stand down!” Elyse exclaimed in annoyance. “I’m fine, Scott. The entire thing was a mistake.” She extended a hand to help me up and I took it. “It was my fault I got caught up in Rachel’s spell. If not for her, I wouldn’t have made it back.”
“Back?” Scott shouted, his childlike voice high. “From where? She can jump the lines?”
Oh, if only,I thought. The anger on his face looked wrong on someone so young seeming. But as Orion, Yaz, and Adan clustered behind him, lending him their strength, Scott’s aura flickered into existence. He was pulling on the line. Heavy.
“Mother pus bucket, he’s going to do it again,” Jenks whispered.
Fear tightened my gut—not for me but for those who would stand between me and the coven. Angry, I pulled on the line as well, and Trent’s attention shot to me.
“Stop, all of you!” Elyse shouted.
“Detrudo!”I exclaimed, my hair flying as a huge wave of aura-laced air pushed from me, rocking the trees and shoving the twin ponds sloshing out of their confines and onto the grass. My lips parted, not at the coven members rolling ass-over-teacup across the park but at the new, obvious tracings of smut among the usual gold of my aura. Al alone stood tall, his cane held out to part the force around him as Trent knelt with Ivy. Bis’s grip on me tightened and Jenks held on to my ear, his madly fluttering scarf tickling my neck.
I looked down at my hand, my thumb rubbing against my fingers as I gauged my new level of smut before my aura vanished. It was more than I had expected for the trip back, and I winced as the cold water sloshed back into the pond, dragging sticks and leaves and candy bar wrappers.Sorry,Sharps.Still, it felt good to be home, where I could throw spells around and not worry about changing the past—only the future.
“Damn, girl,” Elyse said as the leaves settled. “Why didn’t you do that with Newt?”
I touched Bis’s feet in apology. “Because she would have hit me harder,” I said, and then louder, “Elyse is right. You all need to knock it off and listen!”
Scott picked himself up with the stoic pain of the sixty-year-old that he really was. “Save it for your trial,” he said, his little-boy voice at odds with the anger in it. Behind him, Orion, Yaz, and Adan stood tall. “You are done, Morgan.” Scott wiped the blood from his nose. “By order of the coven of moral and ethical—”
“Oh, for Medusa’s apples,” Elyse interrupted, her arms wrapped about herself from the cold. “Rachel was not fleeing. She went to get a mirror to break the curse.”
Al harrumphed as he came to stand behind me with a pompous air. Not a hint of magic wreathed his hands, but I knew Trent, at least, had a thought in the lines. I could feel it.