confronted them about it, but they refused to leave this foolish path they are on. So now our coven is split.”
“Split how?”
“There are six of them waiting for you in the Superstition Mountains. They have no doubt contacted you by now.”
I pretended not to hear her last sentence. “So where are the other seven?”
“We are currently at my home, and that is where we will stay while we consider what to do. We are forming a new coven and we have much to discuss.”
“Which six are in the Superstitions?”
“That ungrateful snot Emily, and Radomila of course, as well as Jadwiga, Ludmila, Miroslawa, and Zdzislawa.”
“And the witches with you are?”
“Bogumila, Berta, Kazimiera, Klaudia, Roksana, and Waclawa.”
None of the names meant anything to me, but I filed them away for future reference. “How do I know any of this is true?”
Malina huffed in exasperation. “I suppose I can prove nothing over the phone. However, when you confront my former sisters tonight, I trust you will note my absence.”
“It occurs to me that you would not be calling me if you expected me to die tonight. You’re trying to prevent me from coming after you tomorrow.”
“No, I fully expect you to die.”
“Oh. How charming.”
“I simply didn’t want you to think I betrayed you. Unlike my former sisters, I have a sense of honor.”
“We shall see,” I said, and hung up. I’d make a point of calling her tomorrow. I shucked off my shoes as the werewolves finished their changes and milled around impatiently, waiting for me to signal them to go. “Have patience, please,” I told them. “I have a couple of bindings to do.”
I gave Granuaile the bindings I had promised, then told the wolves we were ready. I had to stay in human form to carry the sword and communicate with Granuaile. “We’re going to sprint,” I told her. “Go as fast as you can; don’t worry about pacing yourself. You won’t run out of breath. Just make sure you don’t twist an ankle.”
And with that we were off, with nothing more than a couple of excited yips from the Pack. Gunnar had strictly forbidden howling and barks by prearrangement, in hopes of keeping our numbers and our distance hidden from Aenghus Og and the witches. The werewolves could communicate via their pack link, anyway. Our enemies might have heard the painful cries of the Pack turning wolf, but then again they might not have: Tony Cabin was a good six miles away, and the hill between us might have absorbed the sound.
Something I was curious about was whether I could shield my mind from Oberon once we got in range. I had never had any occasion to wish for such a thing before, but if he sensed me nearby, his tail would start to wag as sure as a princess waves in a parade, and that would alert our enemies to our proximity. I really didn’t want to give them any warning if I could help it.
After about a half mile of running uphill at a full sprint-across rocky, treacherous terrain on a moonless night-I heard Granuaile giggle delightedly. “This is unbelievable!” she crowed. “What a trip, running with a pack of werewolves!”
“Remember this,” I said, “when you get bogged down in your studies and wonder if it’s all worth it. This is only a taste of what you will be able to do.”
“Will I be able to turn into an owl too?”
“Perhaps. You can take four different animal forms, but those are determined by a ritual and not by whim. Everyone has slightly different forms.”
“What are yours?”
“I can be an owl, wolfhound, otter, or stag. They are not forms I chose but rather forms that chose me in the ritual.”
“Wow,” she said, suitably awed. “That’s pretty fucking cool.”
I laughed and agreed with her. We crested the hill and, by prearrangement with Gunnar, we paused there at the entrance to Haunted Canyon. I had spoken with him extensively about our plans, because I could not communicate with him effectively when he was in wolf form. Communicating with Oberon was my magic, but communication amongst the Pack was their magic; I was not part of the Pack, no matter how friendly we were. And werewolves are, for the most part, immune to any magic that isn’t theirs, even the benign sort that would allow me to talk to them mind-to-mind in wolf form.
“This, unfortunately,” I said to Granuaile, “is where we need to part ways for some time. Laksha is going to need to rejoin us from here on out.”
“Oh, okay, um, master, or sensei, or whatever. What should I call you?”
I laughed. “Archdruid would be the correct term, I suppose,” I said. “But that doesn’t fall trippingly off the tongue, does it? And it would turn heads in public, and we don’t want that. So let’s stick with sensei.”
“Kick some ass, sensei.” She clasped her hands together mantis style and bowed to me, and when she rose back up Laksha was in charge.
“Why was she bowing to you?” she asked in her Tamil accent.
“I’m her sensei now.”
“I am not knowing this word.”
“It’s an honorific we’ve settled on. Listen, we’re four miles, give or take, from Tony Cabin. How close do you need to get to Radomila?”
“To take the necklace back, I’ll need to be right next to her.”
“I mean how close do you need to be to, you know, make karma happen? Do you need line of sight?”
She shook her head. “I need only this drop of blood I have heard about.”
I pulled Radomila’s note from my pocket and handed it to her. She examined it the way a normal human being would for a couple of moments, but then she pulled some creepy witch stuff and made Granuaile’s eyes roll back in their sockets so all I saw was the whites of her eyes. I knew it was something akin to my faerie specs-the Vedic third eye that allowed them to see visible traces of magic-but it was still creepy. When she had seen what she needed to see, her eyes rolled back down like slot machine tumblers to give me double pupils. They focused on me and she said, “I can kill her from as far away as a mile with this. But I cannot kill the other witches without my necklace-unless you have their blood too?”
“No, I don’t.”
“I was not thinking so. You will have to get me the necklace, then, if you want me to be helping with them.”
“I’ll probably be busy at that point,” I said dryly, thinking of Aenghus Og. Suddenly I felt a tug at my feet, a subtle indication that someone nearby was drawing power from the earth. The only beings capable of doing that, besides me, were a few Old World dryads, Pan, and the Tuatha De Danann. Paranoia made me think of Aenghus Og immediately, since I doubted Pan would be chasing any dryads in the Superstition Mountains. “Someone’s coming,” I said, drawing Fragarach from its sheath. The werewolves’ hackles rose and they spread themselves before me, facing the direction I was facing and straining with snout and ear to sense what I had sensed. Nice doggies.
I wondered if the magic of the Tuatha De Danann would work on the werewolves; my own didn’t seem to work very well, and it was the same as the Tuatha De’s, albeit somewhat weaker. Laksha, I saw peripherally, had coiled Granuaile’s body into a defensive stance that was probably some form of varma kalai, an Indian martial art based on attacking pressure points. She wasn’t dependent entirely on magic, then, like most witches, for her offense and defense-good to know. In case, you know, we weren’t on the same side someday.
The tug at my heels felt nearer-whoever it was, they were definitely coming this way. I looked down the slope into Haunted Canyon but could not spy anything moving. The choked overgrowth of scrub oak and manzanita along the trail had quite a bit to do with that; someone determined to remain concealed could do so until they were practically on top of us. As it was almost certainly one of the Tuatha De Danaan, they would have camouflage cast on them in any case.
I saw a couple of werewolves snarl and leap slightly off to my left, and I shifted my stance to meet whatever threat might materialize there. The werewolves oddly tried to change course in midair, but apparently they could not avoid whatever alarmed them. Instead, they collided broadside with something that sent them whirling to the ground with dismayed whimpers.
