Page 6 of Demon's Bane

I turn the word over and over in my mind, stopping just short of saying it aloud to test the weight and the shape of it on my tongue.

Joan glances over at Esme, then back to me, those furrows of concern on her forehead deepening before she reluctantly nods and steps aside so I can come in.

It strikes me then—I can’t sense her magick, not the way I can scent it coming in waves from Esme. The High Priestess has magick as steady and potent as iron, overwhelming in its strength and filling the small front room of the shop.

But I can’t sense any magick at all from Joan, not until I get enough of a handle on myself to concentrate and breathe around the strands of Esme’s power.

There, just there.

A whisper, rather than a shout. More delicate than the power I’ve sensed from Esme or from any of the witches who’ve come poking and prodding around my village in search of the crystals they find so valuable. Joan’s power is tremulous and gentle. Less metallic and more botanic, like lavender and chamomile and sunshine.

Unlike the soft caress of her power, the witch in front of me is still all hard edges and defensiveness as I step into her shop.

It’s unexpected, given what the High Priestess led me to believe about the nature of this meeting. Here, in this smallsettlement called Beech Bay, we were to meet with a witch who could help, a witch who might hold the key to solving all of this.

Esme had given me her assurance that all would go smoothly, that the witch in question would be more than happy to assist.

Joan, however, appears not to share that sentiment. As soon as I’m inside, she crouches to re-latch the door, letting out an unmistakably irritated sigh as she does.

Esme sits at a table in the middle of the room, expression relaxed and pleasant as if this were a social visit rather than a late night clandestine meeting. I take my own seat across from her and watch as she summons a third cup to join the two already on the table, but when I look up to see if Joan will choose the seat next to me or next to Esme, she’s watching us both with hard, inscrutable eyes.

She chooses neither.

Instead, she grabs the chair next to Esme, drags it to the unoccupied shorter edge of the table, and plunks herself down. Arms folded across her chest, expression entirely closed off, she turns her gaze to Esme.

“You were saying?”

A pulse of irritation on the High Priestess’s face. Brief, but unmistakable.

“I was saying that Rhett is here from the demon realm. There has been… some discord between a village in the demon realm and a few Crescent witches.”

“What witches?” Joan asks.

“Discord?” I say at the same time, snorting in derision. “More like fraud and theft.”

Esme glances back and forth between us as she tries to decide which question to answer first. “Just a handful of our best and brightest. As you know, Allison’s new bargain has changedthe landscape of the Veil and allowed us to travel it freely for the first time.”

Ignoring me in favor of Joan, then. Unsurprising, but I study them both, trying to determine if this is all some kind of farce, if Joan’s unwelcoming attitude and hostility toward Esme is just a ploy, and the two of them are working together to deter my purpose here, to throw me off-balance.

The idea of it puts a heavy, leaden weight into the bottom of my stomach.

Finding my mate in a Crescent witch is one thing, but to find her in a witch who’s party to the wrongs which have been committed against my realm, the ones I’ve been sent here to make right? Unthinkable.

“Your best and brightest witches seem to be a bit tarnished,” I cut in, directing my ire toward Esme. “Since they’ve already proven themselves to be entirely untrustworthy.”

“That is a very serious accusation.”

The High Priestess’s pleasant mask slips again, her face hardening as she turns her attention on me. All the iron strands of her witchmagick pulse deeper, darker, fanning out into the air around us.

Joan flinches slightly, shifting herself a couple of inches away from Esme. Instinct has my teeth on edge, grinding together on just this side of a growled warning.

“Enough,” I say. “We’re here to find the truth of it.”

An ebb in the magick releases a bit of tension in the air, but every single one of my senses, every bit of muscle and sinew and bone, pulls taut. Aching, straining, commanding me to pull my mate into my arms, to tuck her behind me and stand between her and anything that would harm her.

But apparently Joan is more than capable of standing up to the High Priestess herself.

“About that,” she says, “how the hell do I factor into any of this?”