Page 19

Chapter

Eighteen

I t was my first lesson in earth magic.

“This is where we’re our strongest, Betty,” Mom said.

“In the middle of a smelly field?” At four years old, I naturally distrusted anything stinky.

Abuela Lulu chuckled. “Fragrant, not stinky.”

“Alfalfa is an earth witch’s ally,” Mom continued, tugging on one of the green, aromatic plants that surrounded us. It came up to her knees and my waist. “We share an element with this herb.”

“Used in spells, it can bring prosperity and good luck,” Abuela said. “It is especially generous with our kind, and the soil cradling it welcomes us.”

I halted and dug my heels in. “I’m scared.”

“That is as it should be,” Mom said. “To form a deep connection with anything, soil or person, you must show that you’re willing to be vulnerable to them.”

“What’s that mean, Mama?”

“It means that it’s okay to be scared.” Abuela Lulu took my hand, and we walked barefoot to a damp, spongy spot between two tall rows. “But you must show the soil that you’re willing to trust it—that your trust is stronger than your fear.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Gracias, Madre Tierra.”

Mom did the same. “Thank you, Mother Earth.”

“Gracias, Mother Earth,” I said, copying them.

Mom took my other hand, and together we three sank into the soft, welcoming earth. Panic crept in when it was up to my chin, but the soil sensed my fear and soothed me in a way only I would understand.

My mother’s music burst from somewhere outside me. One of my favorite songs. A happy tune, one we’d belted out in the car and danced to in front of the fire at Abuela’s house.

“Come and get your love,” I sang with Redbone as my head went under, and I melted into the earth with the two people I loved most in this world.

There were few words capable of describing the feeling of sliding into the soil, but the first that came to me this time was: painless.

Though I was grateful for the power, the process of the soil vaporizing and absorbing into my bloodstream through my skin had grown progressively more painful.

But this was different.

This time the power that enveloped me was invigorating, comforting, and joyful, the way it’d been that first time with Mom and Abuela. I even hummed the first few bars of “Come and Get Your Love” until the last of my breath gusted out of my lungs and into the soil.

My breathing ceased, but I felt no fear. It would return when I needed it, and in the meantime, the soil would provide everything I needed.

“Where is she?” Desmond’s muffled voice came from somewhere above me. “No. Stay back. Stay away from me.”

Beneath the earth, I didn’t move the same way I did above it. There was no walking or even swimming through the dense soil. It was more that I existed everywhere at the same time. The cells in my body connected to the minerals surrounding me. I felt people on the surface rather than saw them, though the pictures created in my brain made everything as clear.

Desmond was above me now, the foul magic in which he’d drenched himself bleeding into the soil. I started to reach for him when I realized he wasn’t alone.

Four sets of tiny paws were behind him—the rats, I guessed—and several sets of large paws surrounded him. The feel of these creatures was unmistakable.

Wolves.

Beyond that, and approaching quickly, was the most dangerous being out there—a two-legged creature with animal speed and the scent of blood on his skin.

The human form of Floyd Pallás.

I couldn’t sense Fennel, Cecil, Bronwyn, or Margaux. They weren’t touching the soil.

“ Sent your wolves to do your dirty work, Alpha? ” Desmond’s voice deepened with dark power again. There was no wavering this time. He sounded fully in control.

“Why would I dirty my hands for someone like you, Mace?”

Floyd’s voice filled me with anger. The soil tried to calm me, but I didn’t need to be calm.

I needed to take action.

The alpha leader sounded bored. “I’ll need that book back.”

“Your favorite witch has it. She stole it, along with my wife.”

Floyd let out a string of Spanish curses. I couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up at the idea that I “stole” Maya. She not only went willingly, she thanked me for saving her.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a dirt witch like she is? Take it back.”

“What do you think I’m doing? If you’d stop distracting me?—”

“Should’ve known you were a loser. Anyone who’d sell out their people for a stupid book has to be.”

“ Stupid book? That book is what made everything you wanted possible.” Desmond’s rage flowed into the soil. “And take the moral superiority down a notch, Alpha. You asked the coven to kill your own son.”

“He’s a danger to the pack. Nothing comes before my pack.” He shifted his weight. I felt it in the way the soil moved. It didn’t seem to have the same revulsion for Floyd that I did, but it carefully tracked his movements, nonetheless.

Probably because it sensed I wanted to know exactly where he was.

Desmond didn’t respond, but his feet sank into the soil a foot or so away from my head. I’d propelled myself a good distance, though I hadn’t felt myself move.

“Try anything, and I’ll have my wolves separate your head from your body the way you did to those witches,” Floyd said.

Witch es . I spared a thought for Carolina and Aldrich and discovered I didn’t have the empathetic capacity to feel bad about their fate. I’d given them a fighting chance, which was more than they deserved.

Unfortunately, Desmond hadn’t been so fair-minded.

One of the other wolves spoke. “Who did he kill?”

It was growly and rough, so the wolf speaking was in hybrid form, but his identity was apparent. Mason godsdamned Hartman.

The guy was like the Siete Saguaros’s water bill. He kept showing up in my life at the most inconvenient times.

“Who the hell cares, Hartman? They’re witches,” Floyd said.

“We have an agreement with the coven,” Mason said. “We protect them. Even from themselves.” He ended the statement on a growl, a sure sign that he was furious. Mason didn’t show emotion like that in my experience.

Unless it was frustration. He did like to show that emotion—specifically to me.

“There’s no deal anymore. That agreement was with Margaux Ramirez, and I’m told she’s no longer a coven member. As far as I’m concerned, the coven can all fuck off and die. Mace here took out three of them himself. Only a matter of time before we find the last two.”

“Which three?” Mason’s tone crystallized into cold, hard rage.

If Floyd had picked up on his second’s anger, I couldn’t tell it by his attitude. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“Not the one you like to play with, second alpha,” Desmond said. “Not yet .”

Floyd growled his impatience. “Bring me that book, Mace. This is your last chance. If you bring my son, too, I’ll think about allowing you to live.”

Ronan . It all seemed to come back to Ronan.

“But if you screw this up, you’re dead. Simple as that.”

“ Simple as that. Do you think? ” Desmond laughed, the sound shaking the earth. He sank deeper into the soil above me.

“Sir, he’s up to something,” Mason said.

“Figures. Can’t trust a witch,” Floyd said, almost lazily. “Wolves.”

Desmond rocketed deep beneath the soil, so far down I lost the feel of him.

Panic furled in me like a tightly coiled spring. I opened my mouth to chant a protection spell. Soil poured into my throat and mouth, and I choked.

Goddesses save me.

I couldn’t find the enemy I was sure was lurking below. Couldn’t chant or reach my magic. Couldn’t breathe .

Darkness teased the edges of my consciousness.

Abuela’s voice filled my oxygen-starved, aching head. “… you must show the soil that you’re willing to trust it—that your trust is stronger than your fear.”

Fingers—Desmond’s—tunneled through the soil beneath me, wrapped around my ankles. Yanked. The hands dragged me into the earth, through layers of rock and water and organic matter. We’d passed some sort of barrier—either hydrogeological or magical—and entered a world closed to anyone not of our element. The soil went from wet and cold to dry and hot .

I’d never been so far underground. The weight of the world above me was impossibly heavy. There were no words capable of expressing the feeling of compression. My head filled with pressure, my body compacted, my bones ached. Fear covered me like skin.

My fingers curved, and I reached up to dig in, to slow my progress. It hit me then.

It wouldn’t help. Nothing I could physically do would.

Where I was, the rules of the human world didn’t apply. Learned magic wouldn’t help me, either. I wasn’t in control here. That kind of thinking was what had kept me from fully connecting to my magic. I needed to rely on what made me strong—what made me me .

My bond with the soil.

Mother Earth , I put my heart, my magic, and my life in your care.

I immediately stopped moving.

I trust you to take care of me the way you took care of my mother, her mother, and the Lennox witches before them.

He yanked and jerked on my legs, but my body was stubborn and held still. Finally, he released me and moved up until we were face to face. His body was too close and more than anything, I wanted to shrink away, but I stayed right where I was.

I will trust you. I relaxed into the promise. I do trust you.

Desmond’s cursed, powerful voice rang like a gong in my head.

“You think you’ve won? Look at me. I’m not the feeble dirt witch your mother once chased off her soil. Not the weak witch you openly disdained. I am bursting with power.”

“With what power?” I asked, sending my voice into his head. “Dark magic? Demonic?”

“That’s your weakness, earth witch.” His sneering tone raked over my nerves. “You believe the only path to power is through your element. It was what limited you to a powerless, empty, trailer-trash existence.”

It could’ve been the implied threat of the past tense, as if my demise was a done deal, or it might’ve been him calling my life empty and powerless. It was definitely the trailer-trash crack, because elitism pisses me off, but it wasn’t only that .

It was, I realized, that I was very tired of being viewed as weak. By my mother, by this fool … by me.

The soil cradling me began to steam.

“What is that? Stop. You don’t control this place. I do.”

The steam formed a scalding vapor that hit my skin with a kettle-whistle hiss. It was alive, filled with power, and the cells of my body drank it in.

“Stop.” Desmond wrenched away from me.

I pursued him upward, catching him by the ankles. Again, the cells in my body connected to the minerals surrounding me. Power roared through my body, and though I hadn’t moved a single muscle, I knew I was near the surface.

If the trip down had taken under a minute, the trip up took a tenth of that time. I dragged Desmond with me, his body dangling like a rag doll in my grip.

He chanted words I didn’t know in a language I didn’t recognize and sent a series of symbols straight into my brain. It was a spell so ancient it was best represented by a collection of wedge-shaped marks, like the symbols on mage runes.

At any other time, a spell that old would’ve terrified me. I knew Desmond had absorbed magic from a cursed book with the blood of goddess knew how many witches soaked into its binding. He wasn’t a good earth witch. He’d just discovered a shortcut to power through dark magic.

But I had power, too. And here, beneath the soil, mine was stronger.

He swam up, kicking his feet in an attempt to free himself.

Again, I relaxed into my trust in the soil. The symbols in my head scattered like sand in a desert windstorm. The spell had no effect on me.

I tightened my grip on Desmond’s ankles.

He slashed at the soil, kicking, boosting himself until his head finally broke through the surface. Two sets of tiny feet stampeded in his direction and he screamed .

Blood soaked into the soil.

He tried to jerk himself free, but I wasn’t letting go. My earth magic was stronger than his cursed magic, and I was going to prove it.

The tiny feet retreated, and footfalls like thunder shook the ground. One howl, two, and then a cacophony of sound rent the night.

Desmond’s body jolted violently. It bent at an odd angle and seemed lighter than before. The soil erupted around his legs as if it were trying to purge them. I held on, but the soil was determined. It wanted him out .

He was wrenched from the ground—either expelled by the soil or torn away by the wolves. My guess was some of each. His screams cut short in a whiplash instant, and I no longer felt him on the surface.

“I’m going to destroy you, witch. I don’t care what you think you’ve got on me. None of that’s going to matter.” Floyd’s voice raked across my nerves the way his claws had raked across my throat last night. “First, I’m going to take away all your friends. Then I’m going to kill your lover—my traitorous son—and then I’m going to kill you. Slowly, bite by bite. I’ll make sure the entire pack has a taste.”

“Where is he?” The sound of my voice erupted from the ground like scalding water from a geyser. It came from everywhere and nowhere.

Floyd laughed humorlessly. “He’s as dead as if he were in your granddaddy’s cemetery.”

Great. He knew about my connection to Sexton.

“There ain’t a damn thing you can do about it, either, witch.”

“You’re going to die in ways even the gods don’t yet know about, Floyd Pallás.” My voice burst out of the soil, sending dirt and dust flying. Footfalls and the sound of coughing grew fainter as some of the wolves—including Floyd—pulled back.

“Is that what you think?”

“What I think is that your death will be celebrated like a holiday. Once a year, we’ll all barbecue steaks and set off fireworks to commemorate the day you were crushed. We’ll call it The-Bastard-is-Dead-Day because we won’t even remember your stupid name, only that you were a fly that needed to be swatted.”

He snarled. “I’m going to enjoy watching you die.”

“You think you’re the only one with power here, wolf?”

I’d transcended consciousness. I existed inside the earth and above it equally. The minerals in the soil were my eyes, the water beneath it my blood, the heat rising from the planet’s core my breath.

“Sir, we should go,” Mason said.

“Get your paws off me, Hartman. Pallás wolves don’t run.” Floyd stomped the ground above me. At least, that was how it felt. I was everything and everywhere now. For all I knew, he could be a mile away.

“You should’ve listened to your second,” I said. “Because I’m finished talking.”

I burst out of the soil. Floyd was inches away. I grabbed his head and shoved him into the dirt. He went in as smoothly as if I’d turned him upside down and whacked his feet with a giant mallet.

The whole thing took seconds.

Before any of the wolves could attack, I dove in after him.

“Betty, no. Ronan’s not dead, I swear. Don’t do this. You’ll start a war you can’t win,” Mason spoke directly into the soil. “He’s got allies, and you’ve got friends. He dies, and they strike against your people. Let him out.”

Floyd wriggled and cried and screamed into the earth, but no one heard him.

Except the earth.

And me.

“Why would I believe a Pallás wolf?”

“You know why.” The growly undertone disappeared from his voice, replaced by a layer of sincerity—though he was pretty good at faking that, in my opinion—and urgency. “You hate me, but you also listened to me today, so there’s a part of you that trusts that what I say is the truth.”

“I trust you to look out for yourself.”

“Then trust that I don’t want anything to happen to her .”

“Who? You can speak freely. He can’t hear you. He can’t breathe, either, so you should probably move it along.”

“You know who. You saw us that day.”

“Why do you care so much about Bronwyn?” I was tired of dicking around with the guy. He was working the situation, and though he might not be on my side, he and Margaux had some weird deal going. I wanted to know what it was.

Plus, at this point, I was enjoying Floyd’s underground panic. I hadn’t really expected Mason to tell me anything I didn’t know.

He surprised me.

“I’m in love with her.” His tone was tight and uncomfortable. “I’ll help you find Ronan, I swear. Just get Bronwyn and Margaux out of here and let me have the alpha. This isn’t the way.”

“You say that, but I can’t help thinking this is exactly the way. If I keep him under here for another few seconds, neither of us will have to make that choice anymore. So, you can assure your wolves that?—”

“Ronan has to challenge him, or this is all for nothing.” Mason rage-whispered the words. “Release the alpha, and I’ll owe you a favor. You collect those, right?”

First, Floyd with the demon thing, now Mason with the favor thing? Damn it, how did these wolves know so much about me?

“You seem sure Ronan is alive. Where is he?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure he’s alive. He escaped the witches.” Paws feverishly dug into the soil above me. Obviously, Mason had shifted back to mostly wolf—though not fully, or he wouldn’t have been able to speak. “Why can’t I pull him out?”

“Because I don’t want you to,” I said.

“It’s been too long.”

“He’s okay for now. He just shifted. That gives him at least another few seconds. ”

Mason snarled. “Think, Betty. You know I’m right about this.”

“Fine. Two favors, and one of them is you warn me if Floyd gets near Ronan before I do.”

Was it smart to push him? Maybe. Maybe not. But I needed to find Ronan, and if Mason could help me with that, I’d make any deal—even if it meant giving up my vendetta against Floyd for the night.

“Deal.”

“Fine, I’ll let him go.”

Release him . I thought the words into the soil, and it immediately belched up the enormous wolf. I followed him up, perching on the ledge of a hole filled with loose soil. The dirt on my body heated, vaporized, and absorbed into my skin. It stung, but less than before.

I wished I understood the significance.

“He’s not breathing.” Mason, once again in mostly human hybrid form, glared at me.

“Try the Heimlich,” I said, as I examined my nails. I’d just painted them black two days ago, and they already looked as if they’d been sandblasted. If I intended to spend more time underground, I was going to need a stronger topcoat.

Mason lifted the alpha, the muscles in his biceps and forearms straining, cupped a hand over his fist, and drove it into Floyd’s chest, just below his rib cage.

At least, that was what it looked like. I wasn’t great with wolf anatomy.

“It’s not working,” he said, as he performed the maneuver over and over.

I sighed. “You’re sure we have to do this for Ronan?”

“Godsdamn it, Betty, I’ll give you three favors. Three . Plus, I’ll forgive anything you owe me.”

“Where is he, Mason?”

“I told you. He escaped the witches somehow and is in hiding.”

“Is he hurt?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can’t you feel him through the pack bonds? ”

“No.” He stared directly into my eyes, all expression wiped from his face. “The alpha forswore him before coming here tonight.”

“ What ?”

Being forsworn, or expelled, from a shifter group was a serious thing. It was traumatic for the shifter and significantly weakened a pack. The higher in the pack the shifter, the worse it was all the way around.

While I absorbed all this, I asked, “And Desmond?”

“You’ll never find a single piece of the bastard. The wolves were thorough.”

Yikes.

“Now, quit stalling and help him.”

“When you say it like that it makes me feel dirty,” I said.

“Betty, godsdamn?—”

“ Return .” Once again, I didn’t rely on a chant or a power word or any other taught-witch method. I did it the earth witch way.

Floyd’s mouth opened as wide as it would go, and a river of dirt flew out of his mouth and into the hole where I was lounging. The whole thing took less than a minute, but it couldn’t have been a pleasant sixty seconds.

And it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving wolf.

“He’s unconscious, but alive,” I said, rising to my feet. “What’s your deal? What side of the fence are you standing on? Or are you getting redwood splinters in your balls?”

He hoisted Floyd’s body onto his shoulder. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“Even if I agree to ditch one of my favors?” I held up three fingers.

“Do you?”

“Yes. Tell me where you stand, and I’ll give you back one of the three you owe me.”

He stared at me for a long moment, the alpha leader’s body limp, head swaying with every movement Mason made. “Agreed. I’m not on his side,” he cocked his head toward the wolf, “and I’m not on your side. ”

“So fence straddling it is?” I asked.

“This isn’t a binary situation. There’s another side. One you’re incapable of seeing right now.”

“What other side?”

He looked at me, an angry wolf in his eyes. “Giving up another favor so soon?”

“No. Also, I hate you.”

“That’s because I don’t put up with your bullshit the way everyone else seems to. I make you uncomfortable.”

“No. Ronan makes me uncomfortable. You piss me off.” I shook dust from my clothing into the rapidly closing hole at my feet. “I dislike people who have the strength and brains to do good and choose evil instead. It’s a quirk of personality, I know, but one I can’t seem to fight.”

His lip twitched. A wide smile in Mason’s world. “I know.”

There was a commotion behind me, and fire flew past my head and hit the tree next to Mason.

“Your gnome is creating a diversion so the two rats who shifted back to human can get the witches to your car. Good job. The cowards in the pack pulled back when you burst out of the ground like a godsdamned zombie, and I didn’t position any of them behind there, anyway. You have a clear path.”

“All that for Bronwyn?”

“Yes,” he said softly.

“I’m totally going to tell her you’re in love with her.”

Mason ducked around the burning tree and said, “She already knows.”

I ran into the house to see what the heck Cecil was doing now.

Animated chittering and a couple of cat screeches sounded from the room where the witches had been. I knew that sound. My partners were pissed at each other.

“What’s going on in here? Why aren’t you guys with the witches and rats?”

Fennel had the strap of my bag in his mouth and was glaring mutinously at Cecil, who had a hex bag in one hand and a lit fireplace match in the other.

I knew nothing about the scene, yet I was pretty sure I knew everything I needed to know.

“I told him he could burn this place to the ground, Fennel. Let’s get clear, and let him do it.”

Fennel growled at me.

“What?” I looked at Cecil, who appeared as puzzled as a guy whose eyes were entirely hidden beneath his hat could look.

The cat bounded to the door. I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed him. He led us through the house, around the one side I hadn’t managed to make it to in my original inspection, and stood at the crawlspace opening.

“ Meow .”

A chorus of tiny meows echoed out from the crawlspace and—one, two, three— six —kittens strolled out of the opening and surrounded him, rubbing their faces on his paws, back, and face.

“Are they yours?” I asked.

His ears flattened.

“Fine, you’re not the dad. It’s a legitimate question. I don’t know where you disappear to some nights.” I looked around. “Where’s the mama?”

Fennel shook his head sadly.

“They’re orphan kittens?”

Cecil blew out the match.