Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (19 page)

To Drake, I added: “If the spell comes down before I neutralize Sienna, or Sayers, whoever is casting — you cut the rope.”

Drake nodded. He pulled his broadsword out in a flash of gold that I could see clearly despite the fog.

“No,” I said, “with this.” For the first time since I’d crafted it, I willfully handed over my jade knife to another person.

Drake took the blade with reverence. He nodded solemnly.

“No, Jade,” Mory said. “If you cut the rope, the spell will backlash and everyone might die.”

“Not Drake, Mory. Magic can’t kill him. He is magic.” I sounded way more sure of myself than I actually was. “Drake, you cut the rope, you grab Mory, and you head for the nearest portal.”

Drake frowned and started to protest.

“Not for you,” I said. “For Mory.”

He nodded.

I turned away, not sure whether my knife could even get through the spell on the rope while it was in Drake’s hands. The fog prevented me from fully assessing the magic of the pentagram. The knife had cut through Blackwell’s wards, though, so all I could do was hope.

Because I couldn’t send anyone else after Sienna. I was the only one who could resist her magic … unless she had new tricks and new magic. Then she was going to kick my ass. Though I also had a shiny new sword, so maybe we’d be even.

“You take the sorcerer,” I said to the fog, knowing that Kett was somewhere near. “Unless he’s casting. Then I will take him.” I felt naked without my knife, but at least I still had my katana. This was my sword’s destiny after all.

“As you desire, warrior’s daughter,” the vampire replied from out of the fog. He sounded far too pleased. But then, I was still in denial about that part of me. The part that wanted to kick Sienna’s ass way more than I wanted cupcakes, chocolate, or pretty new trinkets.

My sister brought out the darkness in me.
 

CHAPTER TEN

I stepped out onto the roof of the parking lot. It was completely open to the night air, and the fog was thicker around my knees than my head. Which was good, because I was going to need my eyes.

Sienna was waiting for me. She and Sayers were standing in a roped pentagram rigged at the top of the parking lot’s central open well.

It hurt to look at Sienna with her bulging black veins and inky eyes. She wore a fabric bag slung across a tattered cloak. She was going for bag-lady chic now. I was also unhappy to note that she was wearing what looked like three of my trinkets. I hoped she’d had a stash, because I really didn’t like thinking that she’d gone back to Vancouver for them. Sayers was still in the suit, which made it more obvious he’d come directly here from the hotel. I guess the sorcerer had wanted a look at me before he tried to kill me. I couldn’t figure out if that was polite or insanely rude.

Sayers, as best as I could see, was putting the final touches on the pentagram spell, because unlike the three below us, it wasn’t sealed. Within the thinned fog, I could taste the sorcerer’s sugared Earl Grey essence and Sienna’s old blood-drenched earth magic.

I tamped down on this nausea-inducing combination, and — just for a moment — wished I hadn’t given my knife to Drake. I had a clear shot at Sienna, but I couldn’t throw the katana slung across my back the way I could throw my jade knife.

“Hello, sister,” Sienna said. She was holding the sacrificial knife she’d used to kill Jeremy. The anger that had been on a low simmer in my belly now ramped up, until I felt like my heart might be on fire.

I didn’t have any witty words. I didn’t want to trade quips with my evil best friend. I just wanted this to be over, over, over.

Kett stepped into my peripheral vision. Sienna’s black-lipped smile widened at the sight of the vampire. This stretched the black veins snaking across her face in such a way that my belly rolled with a different kind of queasiness, but I didn’t look away.

“Back for more, vampire?” Sienna purred. Then she snapped her teeth at him. Yeah, that was my sister now, cheesy and evil. In a strange reversal of roles, she had drunk Kett’s blood in the basement of my bakery six months ago …

Wait.

Blood.

Sienna’s blood spreading across the altar in the vision Chi Wen shared with me …
 

“Don’t drink her blood,” I hissed to Kett.

He furrowed his brow.

I could clearly remember Kett slumped off to the side of the cave in Chi Wen’s vision, as if it was my own memory. But what could possibly kill — or at least incapacitate — the vampire in that version of the future?

“I saw … I was shown something,” I said, sorting quickly through my thoughts. Sienna had cocked her head to one side as if trying to hear our conversation.

“In the nexus?” Kett asked with an involuntary shiver. Yeah, vampire and dragon magic really didn’t mix.

“Yes, by the far seer.”

Kett nodded as he slipped off into the fog to my left. It hardly even swirled in his wake. I reached for my sword, pushing Chi Wen’s vision — and the way Sienna’s black blood had spilled from her body and mixed into the blood of my loved ones — out of my mind. I focused on the tip of the sword as I brought it forward to point at Sienna.

Three leaps — now that I could vaguely see where I was going — was all it took to cross the space between my sister and me. I pulled the sword back over my head, ready to strike. And for a moment, right before I tried to lop her head off, I held Sienna’s surprised gaze.

Yeah, I could come up with new tricks in three and a half months as well. Like speed and strength and a shiny new sword.

Sienna threw up her hands. Black magic sparked between them, but she was too late.
 

Still midair, I swung the sword, twisting it slightly right over my shoulder and across.

I hit a magical barrier.

Sayers had sealed off the pentagram.

My katana crashed against the ward in a multicolored flare of magic, which threw me — still twisted in strike pose — back the way I’d come.

I slammed into a parked car fifteen feet away, blowing out its windshield and caving in its roof with my landing.

Ouch.

Sienna was laughing, though I couldn’t see her as I was once again swallowed in fog.

“Pretty sword, Jadey!” she cried as she clapped her hands.

I peeled myself off the crushed car, glass tinkling to the concrete all around me. I felt badly for the owner. Hopefully his insurance covered acts of God, because I wasn’t sure how else he’d explain it.

I crouched low beside the passenger-side front tire — noting it had exploded — and placed the flat edge of my blade across my left wrist. I held the sword close to my eyes in an attempt to examine it in the fog. It seemed unscathed.

“You okay, sis?” Sienna called, which confirmed she couldn’t see me in the fog either.

I sheathed the sword over my shoulder and ran through a quick series of downward dogs and planks to make sure I hadn’t broken any bones. Any aches sustained from the magical backlash and my trashing the car eased.

“We need her to trigger the spell,” Sayers hissed. I could hear him clearly through the fog.

I eased forward, staying in my crouch, and made my way back to the pentagram.

“I know, sorcerer,” Sienna spat. “It’s my idea, isn’t it?”

“But I had to seal the pentagram prematurely. We have to drop and then reinitialize the spell.”

I started laughing. Then I laughed some more. I’d seen fewer cars on the roof than below, but my laughter hit and bounced off all of them to reverberate through the fog.

“I warned you, Sayers,” I said. Then I laughed again.

Somewhere on the other side of the pentagram, hidden within the fog, Kett started laughing. Dear God, I hoped I didn’t sound quite as creepy as he did. I was seriously glad he was on my side tonight, because that laugh was going to haunt my dreams.

“Shut up!” Sienna screamed. She always did have a low breaking point. Once sealed in the pentagram, I assumed that she and Sayers wouldn’t be able to cast outward, so screaming was all she could do to Kett and me.

“She played, you Sayers,” I called out as I stepped around another car. I could feel Kett doing the same on the other side of the pentagram, through the life debt bond and through his magic. The fog wasn’t diffusing that magic as much up here on the roof. “She had no intention of triggering the spell with my blood.”

“What is she —” Sayers began.

“Shut your stupid hole, Jade,” Sienna said. “You’re just embarrassing yourself, again. Don’t listen to her.”

For some reason, Kett found this doubly amusing. His laughter ramped up accordingly.

I rose out of the fog facing Sayers, who’d moved to the final point of the pentagram when he’d sealed the spell. If there hadn’t been a ward between us, I could have reached out and smacked him.

He flinched at my appearance. I raised a finger to my lips and smiled at him. This confused him, as it should have.

Sienna was standing with her back to us. Her lips were moving as she bowed her head over the original copy of Blackwell’s book.

She was already starting the ritual.

I tried a bit of sign language with Sayers. I tapped my ear and then my chest — ‘Listen to me.’

I brought my hands up in the universal shrug meaning ‘Why?’ Then I showed him four fingers. Why four? Why four pentagrams, I meant, for three demons?

Sayers’ confusion deepened.

Stupid freaking sorcerers.

Sienna marked her place in the book with the sacrificial knife, then put the book in her fabric bag. Up close, the bag was actually just a burlap sack tied at the two upper corners with rope. This … this was baffling from a girl who’d once put a Louis Vuitton bag on layaway for over a year, and then slept on my couch so she didn’t have to pay rent at the same time.

A little more frantically now, I gestured toward Sayers — ‘You’ — then slashed my hand in the air and pointing at my chest again — ‘Not me.’

You not me.

“What?” Sayers asked.

“Jesus Christ,” I snapped as I watched Sienna spin around. “You stupid freaking sorcerer. Four pentagrams for three demons?”

“The fourth triggers the spell —”

“No, idiot. A sorcerer triggers a spell … or a black witch with the powers of a sorcerer. This pentagram is for her spell. You know, for when she drains your magic. Duck, asshole.”

Sayers ducked as Sienna lunged toward him with a small switchblade she’d had hidden in her cloak.

The sorcerer spun away but got his foot caught on the ropes of the pentagram. The spell sealed it from underneath, but the thick rope was still difficult to walk on.

“Been taking your smarty-pants pills, hey Jadey?” Sienna sneered.

It doesn’t take much intelligence to outsmart you
, was on the tip of my tongue, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to address her. I didn’t want to treat her like a person.

As Sayers fell, he raised his hands, muttered something under his breath, and cast a spell. I still couldn’t taste the magic, but I could see it. The unknown spell hit Sienna, slamming her back against the ward that kept her just out of my reach.

Sayers scrambled to his feet as Sienna fell to her knees.

Kett rose out of the fog beside me. “It was smart to play them off each other,” he said.

“Excuse me?” I answered in mock surprise. “Did you just compliment me?”

Kett leveled a cool I’m-not-amused look at me. I grinned back.

The black witch and the sorcerer continued to do battle within the pentagram.

“She’ll kill him eventually,” Kett said.

“Yeah. We need to counter the connection to the other pentagrams before that. I gather we can’t do it the same way we did in the cave?” Kett and I had collapsed the pentagram in the Sea Lion Caves by using the magic in his blood as a catalyst, which I then triggered with my knife.
 

“No, not with four pentagrams tied together.”

“If collapsing this one would triggers the others, then we take them out of order. Get Mory out first?”

“You would kill Edmonds and Clark to rescue the necromancer?” Kett asked the question without judgement, but with a lot of curiosity.

“Okay, fine,” I said.

Sayers had been holding his own, but Sienna’s spells were hitting him harder and harder as the fight progressed.

“Sorcerer,” I called. “Take down the ward. We’ll spare your life.”

Sienna slammed Sayers with her fireblood spell. He was able to scream, so I gathered it didn’t hit him at full strength.

“We have to counter the ward,” I hissed at Kett.

“Without witches at each pentagram —”

“Stop nay saying and come up with something.”

“When the sorcerer dies, any spell solely constructed by him will fall as well.”

I turned from glaring at Kett to watch Sienna looming over Sayers. He was dragging himself away from her, toward Kett and me. He was more than half dead already.

“Sienna,” I said. “Stop this. I don’t understand any of this. Why are you doing it? To what end?”

“Oh, so now you want to talk to me? Now you want to know why?” Sienna answered. “There is no ‘Why.’ No ‘Because.’ There is only today and then tomorrow. And tomorrow, I shall be more than I was today.”

Sayers rolled over on his stomach, locked eyes with me, and reached for the point of the pentagram that I was closest to. Sienna yanked the sorcerer backward by his hair as his fingers brushed the point where the ropes intersected.
 

The ward fell.

Kett and I lunged forward just as Sienna slit Sayers throat.

Blood spurted across my face and chest. My sword was in my hands. I drew back to swing. Sienna’s magic was everywhere. I could taste it as it swirled around Sayers, as if it might be lapping at the lifeblood pumping out of him.

My blade was inches from Sienna’s neck as my foot landed on the top edge of the concrete wall.

Everything went black.

Sienna had trapped the wall.

∞

Kett would have called this touch-triggered spell inspired. I just called it crazy painful, and was super pissed at myself for missing it within all the magic-diffusing fog and Sayers’ magic literally gushing out of him.