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“At least you no longer laugh,” she said.

But I did just that at her comment. “If I ever laughed at ya, Mulan, it was with joy. Ya’re the first woman of power I’ve gotten to know this well.”

“But you are witch. Did you not have group?”

I shook my head. “No, I never joined a coven and Jack ran off all my potential friends. It’s nice not to be the only female around so many males.”

Mulan snorted but didn’t comment. I don’t think she believed my words, but I wasn’t being trite. I honestly did admire her.

I put my hand out when I felt a tug of magick. Glancing around, I saw a cleared area with a sacred circle. Even though it was broken, the magick in it remained. As a spell caster, Zara should have known that leaving her power in place was a bad idea.

I walked to it quickly and held up a hand to keep Mulan back. “Keep yer distance. I’m going to do something witchy here.”

Mulan rested her staff on the ground and her head against it as she watched me. Normally, she kept the staff smaller than her size. Tonight it extended a foot above her head. One day I was going to ask her about such things. Why did it keep changing? Was that her choice or something it did on its own? She talked about the staff like it possessed sentience.

I knelt beside the sacred circle and put all my attention on the remains as I held my hand over it. Muttering a command to absorb its power, I let the lingering magick leave the salt and the dirt and rise into my fingertips. It was potent to absorb—stronger than any witch’s I’d ever sampled. Power rose from the circle for at least three minutes before it finally stopped.

After I’d drained the circle, the salt Zara had used turned a dirty gray. The ground inside the circle now looked like someone had burned it. I used my boot to scatter the salt well away from the circle.

“Zara will not be able to do her rituals here until she repairs her sacred space. The magick I got from the circle will help me recognize her work.” I looked around. “I guess we check the building next.” I turned to Mulan. “I see no wards. Will ya check it as well? Normally, I make Conn do the second sweep, but he’s not here.”

Mulan stepped forward, extended the arm holding her staff, and chanted. A ring of energy exited the staff and circled the building. She closed her eyes and traveled that energy in her mind. Eventually, the energy returned to her.

“Ya’re good at recycling your magick. I need to learn to do that.”

“It takes long time and much patience to learn. It is easier to drop energy to ground but doing that leaves me weaker.”

I nodded in understanding. “Conn’s mantle keeps me from tiring quickly. TheTuatha De Dananngave him ten times the power of the strongest of his kind. Since Conn alwayswasthe strongest of his kind, he got ten times stronger and more powerful. He tells me the mantle only takes the strength of one demon to power.”

“Your connection to Connlander makes you two like family.”

“Since the day I took my vows to work with him, I’ve felt that way,” I said, pointing at the building. “Any wards?”

“Nothing on outside. We check again after we go in.”

Nodding, I looked around. Off to one side, a bunch of wolves lay resting in the grass. They were free to leave, but I suppose their curiosity had proved greater than their fear. Or maybe they were waiting on the others that Rasmus had followed.

Whatever their reasons for lingering, I didn’t mind them hanging around.

As I stepped close to the building, I saw a giant padlock hanging from the metal door. I touched it with my sword and commanded it open, but it resisted the demon magick in my weapon and wouldn’t budge.

Next, I held my hand over the lock and chanted. The lock lifted in the air and shook at my commands, but still didn’t open.

I looked over at Mulan. “I don’t know what kind of magick is holding this lock shut. It looks like I’m going to have to cut through it or wait for Conn to get here and yank it off.

“Let me try to open lock. My magick is natural and from Earth. I will speak to metal elements it is made of.”

Mulan chanted something until her staff glowed as if covered in liquid gold. She touched it to the lock and a tiny golden tendril entered the opening meant for a key. Within a minute, the lock undid itself and fell open. She pulled the golden energy back and walked over to remove the lock from the latch.

The hinges were old but had been oiled recently. We could smell the oil as it silently opened for us.

Mulan hung the undamaged lock into the empty latch ring on the door and left it there.

I conjured a blue flame in my hand to use for light as we entered. It seemed to be one giant room half-full of broken furniture. Giant cobwebs and dust covered everything in the space. They were creepy enough to give a spider-phobe nightmares for months.

On one side of the room, there was a wooden door in the floor that someone had flipped open and left that way. We approached it cautiously and peered down a set of rickety steps to a dark bottom. I dreaded going down there until I heard a slight movement followed by a soft moan.

Demon wolves couldn’t jump down that far and falling that distance would have hurt them. They had to be kept somewhere else. That left the other missing human captives as the obvious choice to stash in a basement that was only accessible by climbing down a rickety old ladder.