“Don’t. Move,” he said, and I froze. That wand was a lot more dangerous. Seeing Holly unattended, his eyes took on a satisfied glint.
“Tom,” I said, shaking my head in warning. “Don’t be stupid. You give Holly to Walker, and Mia will freaking kill you.”
“I think she’ll be more angry at you than me,” he said, twirling the wand dexterously. “Or at least she will be when I get done with her. Back up. Get away from the kid.”
I had nothing. Well, I could talk him to death, maybe. “This is a bad idea,” I said as I edged away while he moved closer, pushing me from Holly with his presence. “Think about this. You’re not going to walk away from it, and if you do, you won’t be alive for long.”
“Like you know a bad idea from a good one,” he said, motioning with his wand for me to keep moving back. “If a human can touch the kid, then I can, too,” he added as he scooped her up.
“Tom, don’t!” I exclaimed, and Holly keened, an eerie coo of pleasure and delight that chilled me to my core. The man stiffened. His eyes bulged, and his mouth opened in a silent scream. He fell to his knees, and I tensed to knock the child from him, only to fall back and cower as a wave of bright force burst from him. I couldn’t see it-my eyes were blind to it-but it was there. I could feel it, and my skin tingled, as if a thousand summers were pressing on me in the smothering dark of the sunken room.
Tom’s cry of pain echoed against the curved ceiling and came again a thousand times. Back arched, he hung poised as Holly pressed her hand to his cheek, rapture infusing her.
“Holly, no!” Remembering my gun, I aimed at Holly and pulled the trigger. The ball went wild when someone hit my arm.
Shocked, I dropped back when I saw Al. Pierce was behind him, looking afraid, and that chilled me to my core. “What are you doing?” I asked, shocked.
But the demon, in his green velvet and with his reddish complexion, only smiled. “Celero inanio,” he whispered, and I yelped, dropping my suddenly hot gun.
“Damn it, Al,” I said, frustrated as I shook my hand. “What are you doing?”
“Keeping you alive, itchy witch.” He held a warning hand out behind him at Pierce, and the man rocked back. “Stay put, or the deal is off and you’re really dead.”
Deal?
Tom moaned in pain. I didn’t care if he was a black witch. No one should die like that. Giving up on any help from Al or Pierce, I ran to help him, only to fall when Al tripped me. Gasping, I fell, and pain whitened the world as my cheek scraped the cement when I didn’t turn my head fast enough. I looked up, shocked into stillness.
It’s Tom’s life, I thought in despair as I shook the hair from my eyes. Holly was taking him, like she had tried to take me. The room pulsed with the force of Tom’s soul, a hidden heartbeat of intent that measured his life. I could feel it as his aura was sucked away and nothing was left to hold his soul to his will. And it was fading.
A soft scuff behind me was my only warning, and I yelped again when Al roughly pulled me up. He grinned, his flat blocky teeth glinting in the light from Mia’s lantern. “Too late,” he said, smiling as he watched in macabre rapture, almost salivating at the death of the black witch and making me wonder if Al was here to collect on a debt. “Too late and perfect timing.”
Ford was out cold, the emotions of the room having brought him to his knees. The air pounded with white-light thoughts, a lifetime of whispered conversations at the edge of my awareness. But they were fading. Holly made a delighted squeal of surprise when Tom completely collapsed. The black pulse echoing in my head was sucked into oblivion, and I staggered, unwittingly pushing back into Al. The small child awkwardly got to her feet and wobbled to her kneeling mother, now smiling and holding out her arms to her. God help us. Tom was dead. Mia was awake. And Holly was walking.
“Let me go, Al. I have to…get her,” I finished lamely. But with what? The heat had probably popped the sleepy-time charms in my gun.
The demon’s grip on my arm tightened when I tried to pull away. “Not yet,” he said, and pain shot up my arm as I twisted in his grip. “I need something.”
I stared at him, my heart pounding. “Need what?”
“This.”
He unexpectedly swung at me, and my head rocked back. My ears rang, and I staggered. Pierce protested, but it was the smooth, clean touch of velvet against my neck that caught and cradled me as I fell. “So sorry, itchy witch,” Al said as he gently eased me to the floor. The scent of burnt amber and mold made me ill, and I tried to focus. Dizzy, I was dizzy.
The cold seeped up through my back, my coat doing little to keep me warm. I felt a moment of panic when I saw the shiny gold knife in Al’s hand as he knelt by me, but I was helpless. Al gave me a little pat on the cheek that stung, and I pushed ineffectively at him.
“You are a font of opportunity,” he said, in a wonderful mood as he caught my wrist. “Never would I have been able to plan this, itchy witch, but good things just seem to follow you like a puppy.”
Good? I wondered. Was he crazy? “What are you doing…,” I panted, trying to pull my arm from his grip.
Temporarily putting the knife between his teeth, Al pulled from his coat pocket the black potion bottle he’d taken from me. “I need a wee bit of your blood, love,” he said when he took the knife from his mouth. “Something to invoke the excellent charm you cooked up for me.”
Pierce’s charm? Panic slid through me when he set the potion aside and took the knife. Behind him, Pierce stood with his hands fisted, clearly upset but not going to do a thing. “S-stop,” I said, then jerked at the icy pain of the blade. “Al, stop!” I cried, trying to pull my wrist from him.
Al stood. I tried to follow, but he put a booted foot across my throat, and my upward surge ended in a gurgle and a thrashing of legs.
“Master’s prerogative,” he said as he swirled the potion with the three drops of blood in it. “I can claim any spell you make. We’ve been over this before.” Tilting his head, he looked at me from over his smoked glasses. As if in a toast, he held up the potion. “Mine.”
His foot lifted, and I gasped, putting a hand to my throat and sitting up. My finger throbbed, and I looked, seeing that he had cut right across the closed loop of my fingerprint. He wasn’t doing the charm right. It should be spilled into a hollowed-out stone and allowed to disperse. He was using my potion, but for what?
“What are you doing?” I said, truly horrified when he yanked Tom’s body up and dumped the potion into the corpse’s mouth. Was he trying to resurrect him?
Al dropped the body and turned in a jaunty motion. “I can’t have a corpse for a familiar. How gauche would that be? People would talk. And with you idling your time away, I need a real familiar. Thanks, love. This will do fine. Enjoy the rest of your night. This one is mine. Preexisting agreement, you see. It’s not a snatch, itchy witch.” And he laughed.
I scrambled upright with a hand to my stomach. Al was using my potion, but for what?
“Ta, love,” he said, and with a wicked smile, he yanked Tom to him and vanished.
He took Tom. Holy crap, he took Tom! And I think he used my potion to keep him from dying. “Al!” I cried, panicked that it had been my charm to do it. This was not my fault! You play with black magic, you pay the cost.
The light shifted, and I turned to find that I was alone down here with an unconscious FIB agent and one extremely pissed banshee. Pierce was gone. A pile of clothes and the stolen coat marked where he had been, and I cursed Al, thinking he had snagged both witches and left, Tom, apparently, being more important than keeping his word.
Mia had Holly on her hip, and the child watched me with eyes as black as her mother’s, as innocent and unforgiving as death itself. Backing up, I looked at my now-useless splat gun. I couldn’t make a circle, and running after a banshee without backup-or better yet, angry-was going to bite me on the ass. But I’d gone out tonight intent on talking Al into agreeing to stop snatching people, not to rescue the world from a banshee having a bad day.
“You will die for your part in this,” the woman snarled.
“I tried to help,” I said, grabbing the back of Ford’s shirt and dragging him out of her reach. He was conscious, but not going to be of any help, unable to sit under his own power yet.
“You are alone,” the woman said, letting Holly slip from her.
“So?” I said stupidly, then gasped and backpedaled when the woman lunged forward, hands grasping.
“Rachel!” Ford called with a slurred shout, and I stumbled, tripping over his legs.
