Page 11

“Yeah.”It came out as a whisper.

I was trying to get myself under control, but it had been a hell of a few days and a hell of a month before that.And, frankly, most of the year hadn’t been so great, either, so I was having trouble.But my problem was mostly because the face in front of me kept tearing my thoughts apart whenever I tried to form any.

The eyes were the same, if sunken in acres of wrinkles she shouldn’t have had.They were still dark, mysterious, and lovely, and were how I’d recognized her along with the voice, as nothing else was familiar.Instead of looking fifty years older, which for a witch would equate to maybe twenty for a human, she looked three times that, enough to make the almost two-hundred-year-old witches who had helped to guard my court seem young by comparison.

“It’s the mileage,” I whispered before I could stop myself, and she laughed.

That was the same, too, full-throated and genuine.“Yes, while you haven’t aged a day,” she informed me.“I couldn’t believe it when I saw you above.So sweet, so innocent, soearnest.The golden-haired goddess...who left us all to die.Including those girls I sent you.”

The words were bad, but the expression, the change in voice, and the sudden stillness as everyone stopped talking at once were worse.I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out.Because the significance of what she’d said hit and hit hard.

Pritkin was talking again, loud, angry words that cut through the silence like a knife, but I didn’t hear them.All I could focus on was my girls.The ones bound to me, the ones who had made up my little coven, the ones who had trusted me.

A terrible, echoing emptiness opened up under my breastbone where their presence should have been.I’d felt weak since I came here, but had put it down to sheer exhaustion.Now I knew better, but the lack of the power boost they gave me wasn’t anything compared to the slew of images that slammed into me like a freight train.

Little hands reaching up, wanting to show me their latest artwork; little eyes, shining with pride when I noticed them or gave them praise; little hands, so chubby and clumsy, yet trying to weave a spell out of the Pythian power that hovered around them like an unseen nanny, golden and benevolent; little bodies running around my court in long, old fashioned nightwear, because my acolytes were from a different era and didn’t approve of Hello Kitty and Disney character stuff.

An exception had been made for Mira, the dark-skinned diva, who clung to her ratty pink bunny suit with all the ferocity of the formidable witch she would someday be.Even Hilde, my chief acolyte and self-proclaimed battleax, had decided that that wasn’t a fight worth having and let her keep it.She’d finally started outgrowing it right before I left.

Before I failed her, as I’d failed all of them.Trying to save Faerie when I should have been looking after my responsibilities, my court, my coven.Mygirls—

“Left them behind, didn’t you?”Jasmine’s voice said, echoing my thoughts.“You promised me you’d take care of them, defend them with your life, but youleft.And barely a month later—”

“How?”Pritkin demanded harshly.“How did this happen?”

But Jasmine acted as if he hadn’t even spoken, and those eyes, those beautiful, beautiful eyes, never left mine.“No, you left us all to deal with an army ofgods.You were our only chance, and youweren’t here.The Circle went first, the only satisfaction we had, watching them throw themselves at the oncoming tide as uselessly as—”

“All of them?”I whispered, unable to take it in.The Circle...couldn’t be gone.They just couldn’t.

The Silver Circle had been the bastion of order in the magical community for as long as anyone could remember.Their methods hadn’t always been pretty, but they’d brought peace, stabilized a chaotic system, and maintained order.And now they were gone?

“Oh, not at first.”She sat back on her heels, allowing the others to crowd close, with hateful, vengeful faces everywhere I looked.“They attempted a few frontal assaults, got annihilated, and then the rest regrouped to try more subtle approaches.But they didn’t have time.

“The gods were like a ravenous tide rolling over the landscape, full of hate and hunger.They can sense magic like we smell food, and they were starving.They hunted down the Circle’s men—oh, not the greater; they had bigger prizes.But the lesser gods, the little bastards, skeletal, half-dead zombie-looking things, who hadn’t been allowed to eat at all back in whatever misbegotten world they call home...

“That kind weren’t so picky.They took anyone they could find with a scrap of magical blood.They tookourpeople, so many and so fast, that we barely knew what had hit us before they were gone.Including Evelyn,” she added, calling up memories of a cap of steel gray hair, a wardrobe of no-nonsense business suits, and someone who in no way had resembled the typical image of a witch.

Until you looked into her eyes and saw the power there.

“Evelyn,” I repeated, disbelieving, because she’d had the permanence of a mountain, the indestructibility of a force of nature.Yet she was gone?

“And Beatrice,” she added, bringing up the image of a tiny, four-foot-seven, caftan-covered dynamo with a ‘fro almost as big as she was and enough gold jewelry to buy a house—or two.“They went to your court to try to get the girls.They failed.”It was stark.

“I’m sorry—”

“Save it for someone who gives a damn!If you’d been there—but when were you ever?Popping in and out—”

“She was fighting a war!”Pritkin said and was again ignored, except for rumblings from the surrounding witches, several of whom dragged him back when he tried to move forward.

I shook my head at him.I was a coven leader—technically—and thus able to speak.He was an ex-war mage, and I wasn’t sure that they knew about the ex.He saw the gesture but only scowled at me, so I didn’t know if he would be quiet.

But if not, it wasn’t likely to go well.

Of course, neither was this.

Jasmine, whose real name I had finally remembered—Zara—had gotten up and started striding around, witches scattering out of her way.“I would have been with them that day if I hadn’t been busy putting out another fire,” she said, her robes snapping and her mane of gray hair crackling like a lightning bolt had hit down nearby.

Her power had always been strong, but not that strong, I thought, staring about at the witches who were lending her part of their strength, as my coven had once done for me.And lending her part of their rage, because she’d always been the calmest and most reasonable of the mothers I’d known, the most willing to listen.But she wasn’t listening now.