Page 9 of Speak No Evil
“Goddess, what have you done to yourself?” A disembodied feminine voice somehow reaches me inside the portal. I stiffen at the sound. The familiarity. And that fact that I shouldn’t be hearing it at all.
Portals are instantaneous...
No way should I be here long enough to have any of these thoughts, let alone hear a random lady in my head.
The tinkling bells ramp up to an ear-splitting klaxon.
And I brought it all on myself.
Well, I mean, at least I’m consistent, right? Rushing into a situation and getting myself into even more trouble is kind of my M.O.
I just need to think this through.
I know that voice. IknowI know it, but I can’t quite nail it down.
Not helpful.
And being stuck in nullspace reminds me of when Vrahs fucked around and found out...pausing time in the middle of a portal.
Has someone done that here?
Lucifer’s tit, I fucking hope not. Vrahs is the highest order demon lord, and pausing a portal seemed like a seriously high level skill to me. If there was a demon out there with Vrahs’s level of juice...
I shake off the implication and settle on a plan of action—shoving my way through.
Because brute force is also my M.O.
Instead of thinking about how the last time I tried to force my way through a portal felt like my skin being flayed off one molecule at a time, I just suck in a breath and hope I pop out on the other side with everything where it should be.
I smash down the fear that this plan was actually really stupid and definitely won’t work out the way I expected.
It all seemed so straightforward. I followed the tainted magic I saw wrapped around the basilica’s wards back to the creator. Kind of like a return-to-sender spell with extra steps. I figured, if they were responsible for the bullshit I saw in the basilica’s wards, they’d likely also be responsible for pulling Blackwood out of nullspace. And since I’m chock-full of demon magic, thanks to Vrahs, I did it in my sleep.
Seemed simple, but clearly it’s not gonna play out that way.
I reach deep into my magic andshovemyself through.
I brace for pain. Eye popping, soul shredding pain. But somehow, jamming myself through the portal doesn’t make my eyes feel like they’re gonna burst out of my head.
Ave Lucifer for small miracles, I guess.
The second I’m on the other side, the other shoe—a big dog-shit-covered one—drops right in my fucking lap.
“Hello, Jade. It’s so nice to see you,” the familiar voice says as I materialize in the center of a sea of black lace and chiffon.
My heart stops. It takes every bit of steel in me not to fucking whimper as I stare into the glinting black eyes of my former coven leader. I try to cover my mouth, only to find my hands bound behind the rigid back of the wooden chair I’m seated in. A chair placed in the dead center of a circle of witches, in the one place that can hold the entire coven.
The coven temple.
The wide, open space and high, pitched ceilings might as well be a prison cell. Candles flicker on every wall, in the iron chandelier above, and behind the witches that encircle me.
Every bit of the panic from before swells within me, tightening my chest, crawling over my skin far worse than a portal ever could.
My breath goes shallow.
And just like that...
I’m a twenty-year-old witch again, newly come into my powers and being formally reprimanded in front of the entire coven for not taking a mage. Not taking all the mages, since that was the best way to ensure pure-blooded little witch babies.