Black Magic Sanction

o-o-o, you had to try it on your own. I told you to wait.

'Hey! I'm not the one trying to put Krakatoa into my soul!' I said loudly, face warm.

Not Krakatoa, Krathion. And I wont take the blame for you prematurely invoking a curse when I told you to wait for me! he said, and I was silent, fuming. I'm trying to downplay the situation, Al thought, his emotions slowing. In the meantime, if he teaches you one thing, one thing, Rachel, you'll be wearing his guts as hair bands. Got it?

I glanced at Pierce, and he blinked at my sudden interest. Pierce could teach me something? 'Sure... ,' I said, starting to see the possibilities. If I could learn how to jump the lines, no one would have to watch me at all.

Rachel? Al growled, not detecting any sincerity in my thoughts.

'Got it,' I reaffirmed, then took a deep breath. 'Hey, along those lines, I need my original summoning name back. Like now.'

From my peripheral sight, Nick blinked, almost mirroring the shocked emotion I felt from Al. Now? Al thought, and I felt him start to sever the connection. You want to play in the collective when everyone is watching? Damn my dame, you do need a babysitter, Rachel. No.

'Al, wait!' I shouted, pressing my hand harder into the glass until it felt like I'd made a soft indent in the mirror. 'I just spent a day in Alcatraz after being summoned into a closed trial called by the coven of moral and ethical standards.' I didn't look up, but I heard Pierce sigh because I hadn't listened to his advice. 'They weren't after you, they were after me,' I added.

Al laughed, and I looked past my stringy hair to Nick. He was staring at me, long face aghast. Across the kitchen, Pierce held himself still, eyes dark from behind his mop of loose curls and his hat back on his head. Jenks faced me from the counter, spilling a red dust that puddled on the floor, and Ivy stood almost in the hallway, her black eyes fully dilated.

Nice try. But no one in that pantywaist coven knows my name, Al was thinking. And if they did, they wouldn't summon me, holier-than-thou chicken squirts. Stay out of trouble, Rachel, and this will all blow over. Two decades at the most.

Two decades! I thought, then said, 'That's what I'm saying. They didn't summon you, they summoned me! They used your name, knowing J would be the one to show up! They paid someone to summon me into a six-pointed star. I barely got out because they thought I was bound to demon law, but that's not going to work a second time. They know I can invoke demon magic, and they're going to give me a lobotomy and take my ovaries as soon as they find the next chump who knows your name!'

Who summoned you? Al said suddenly, icy calm pouring from him, and I looked at Nick, my mouth shutting. Tell me who summoned you with my name. Tell me, itchy witch, and Til not only see that you learn how to jump the lines, but how to survive that runt of yours.

I closed my mind to Al and pulled my hand from the glass. The sudden disconnection jolted through me, and I started. Feeling haunted, I first looked at Ivy, then Pierce, then Jenks, who was white faced and spilling a sickly green dust. Last, I looked at Nick, standing behind that chair both angry and frightened. Jax was on his shoulder with his wings folded submissively. If Al knew Nick had summoned me, the demon would actively work to take him out—close the hole of information rather than trade our names back as we had agreed.

Ivy uncrossed her arms, glancing at Nick and then back to me. 'What did he want?'

I held Nick's attention, shivering as the adrenaline washed out and the last twenty hours fell heavy on me. 'Just Nick.'

Nine

 Water cascaded off me as I stood up in Ivy's tub, my knees throbbing from the moist heat. It was steamy in here, with the mirror fogged, and Matalina sifting yellow dust to keep her wings dry as she sat on the towel rack and knitted. Ivy's fluffy black towel was soft against my red, scraped skin, and I awkwardly tried to get the stopper undone with my toes, finally giving up and reaching for it and feeling everything protest. I'd soaked long enough to wash between my toes once and my hair twice. I'd be in there still, but I was starving.

Nick's voice was faint through the walls. Matalina's lips pressed together as she listened to the conversation, but it was too indistinct for me. I wasn't ready to deal with him or Pierce, and I was hoping to make the dash to my room unnoticed.

Nick was our unwilling guest since he could summon me at will after dark, an intolerable situation to Ivy. Jenks wanted me to give Nick to Al on the principle that he was a douche bag. I doubted Ivy would say anything if I went along with it, but I wasn't going to give Nick to Al. I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Besides, my safety would last only until the coven found someone else who knew Al's summoning name. What I needed was my own name back.

I sighed as the towel found every scrape and abrasion, my eyes falling on the ugly canvas slip-on shoes beside the toilet. I couldn't help but wonder who had my kick-butt boots, my jeans, my underwear... my red leather coat sticky with strawberries. Gone.

From atop the towel rack, Matalina smiled. 'Oh, Rachel, you look fine,' she said, and I met her gaze, thinking that I must look ghastly if that's what she thought I was sighing about. The woman appeared to be eighteen, but she and Jenks had forty-some kids, and she was nearing the end of her life span. Or so Jenks said. She looked awfully chipper for someone supposedly on her deathbed. Jax being here might have something to do with it. And I was worrying about who had my underwear?

'I'm out of the tub,' I said, listening to my pulse and feeling tired as she knitted from a ball of what was probably dyed spider silk. 'Why don't you go visit with Jax?'

'Because I'm angry with him for running off half trained, with a thief,' she said primly.

Her expression was fierce, and I wondered if it was the thief or the half-trained part that bothered her. Guilt hit me, and I gingerly rubbed the welts on my wrists. Matalina would never forgive herself if her eldest son left again before she could find it in her heart to talk to him.

I glanced at Matalina watching but not watching me as I sat on the edge of the tub and tried to dry my feet, reminded of my first few nights in the church. It was Matalina who had kept an eye on me the night Al had almost torn my throat out. A lot had happened since then, stuff that turned enemies to allies, and allies to enemies. But Matalina was unchanged, she and her family a point of normalcy in my chaotic life. I was glad she was looking so well.

'Go talk to Jax,' I said softly, and the woman sighed so loudly I could hear it.

'I will,' she said. 'Life is too short to carry a grudge. Especially when it's with family you thought you'd never see again.' She continued to knit, smiling. 'He likes you, you know.'

'Jax?' I said, surprised.

'Gordian Pierce!' she exclaimed, looking up. 'You can see it in his eyes.'

Funny. The only thing I ever see in his eyes is trouble. Taking the towel from my hair, I went to the mirror and wiped it, wincing. I'd never get through the tangles. Never. 'Pierce is a teenage crush from when I was young and stupid, and thought impulsive, dangerous men were the catch of the day, not the death traps they are.'

Matalina huffed. Pixies were terribly straightforward when it came to relationships. Jih, her eldest daughter, had courted and married in less than a summer—and seemed all the happier for it. 'With Jenks, I just knew,' she said, a fond smile erasing her fatigue lines. 'You re making this harder than it should be.' I gave her a wry look as I sprayed detangler in my hair, and she added, 'Does Pierce make your heart beat faster? Did Marshal? Did Nick? Did Kisten, bless his undead soul? I mean, really?'

I didn't have to think about it, and I felt like a tramp. 'Yes. They all do. Did, I mean.'

The pixy woman frowned. 'Then you are in trouble, Rachel.'

Don't I know it.

Shifting my towel higher, I minced to the door, listening for a moment before cracking it. The cooler, dry air slipped in, and I gazed first longingly at the kitchen across from the back living room, then closer, to the open door