Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (26 page)

“Yes,” Scarlett said. “It’s too bad the sorcerer is not to be trusted and that Kett is … dead.” She ran her fingers through my curls, then went back to reread the chronicle again.

I turned to look at Gran, utterly aghast. “But —”

“This affects all of us, Jade,” Gran said. “What will Sienna do with a horde of demons?”

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

“The blood magic has her now,” Gran said. “I’m so sorry I didn’t see it. I never thought her capable.”

“You never thought me capable,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I needed to return to that sore point now, when Gran was already deep into self-flagellation.

Pearl Godfrey, who’d been the most powerful person I’d known for twenty-three years — and was still the most powerful witch I knew — nodded sadly.

Then she rose to help her daughter, a witch whose powers were focused on charm and charisma, plan a war.

∞

By the time I made it back to the bakery, Mory was in the kitchen eating the
Pucks in a Cup
. Apparently, the necromancer had no tastebuds … and an iron stomach.

“Stop that,” I said, dumping everything in the garbage and offering the fledgling necromancer a banana instead.

She looked at this offer skeptically. I’d just fallen a few notches of cool in her estimation. I hadn’t been aware I could actually go farther down.

“You said you’d fix my necklace,” Mory said.

I nodded. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

Mory shrugged, but it looked more like a ‘yes’ than a ‘no’, so I let it go.

I reached for the necklace and Mory backed up a step while clutching the chain to her chest. “I don’t want to take it off.”

I tried to smile but the expression just twisted on my face.

Mory dropped her gaze from mine.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I said. “I’ll fix it there. No one can get through the wards without my permission.” I, unlike Gran, had changed my apartment wards six months ago. Maybe it was a good thing to underestimate yourself sometimes. Gran’s confidence had practically handed Sienna the spear … though before I got too high and mighty, the knife I’d pretty much gifted Sienna with was probably far more deadly than the spear.

“Are there cookies upstairs?” Mory asked as I led her to the back stairs.

I folded the wards around her as we climbed.

“There will be,” I said, figuring I’d be more successful baking for Mory than for myself. Yeah, I wasn’t totally thick about my magic all the time. I knew I’d ruined those cupcakes because I felt I didn’t deserve them.

“My mom’s been on the phone all morning,” Mory said. “A bunch of people are trying to fly in.”

“Yeah,” I answered as we entered the apartment living room and I prepared to invade my mother’s privacy. Though to be fair, she was the one who’d taken over my craft room in the first place. I needed supplies to fix Mory’s necklace. “The Adepts of the West Coast are building an army.”

Mory nodded sagely and allowed me to lift the necklace off over her head. She’d showered and was once again outfitted in her not-goth-not-army-brat-but-almost clothing.

My desk — tidied but relatively undisturbed — was still situated underneath the north-facing windows. Normally, this offered a breathtaking view of the North Shore mountains, but today all I saw was fog. The world looked liked it ended a block north of my apartment building. I shuddered, laid the necklace on the desk, and resolutely started digging through the far-too-tidy drawers for tools.

“Nice bed,” Mory muttered, not a hint of sarcasm in her tone.

My mother favored silks and vibrant colors. I wasn’t sure how she kept her duvet quite that poofy, or how she had so many pillows perfectly piled on the queen-sized bed she’d crammed into the room. I suspected magic.

“The shapeshifters and witches are coming?” Mory asked. I nodded as I inspected the oddly tarnished gold chain.

“And the vampires?”

“No.”

Mory nodded, not as relieved as I thought she would be. None of the Adept got along with vampires, but least of all, necromancers. There was some history there that Kett had only hinted at — something about how vampires had been created in the first place, and how powerful necromancers could control the undead. All the undead.

“But there will be cookies, right?” Mory asked as she threw herself down on Scarlett’s neatly made bed. “Before we all go to fight Sienna and probably die?”

I laughed. Trust a necromancer to be blasé about impending death. It was also the first time I’d heard Mory refer to my sister by name. I took that as a good sign. A sign of healing.

I began to polish the necklace. The tarnish came off easily underneath the cloth, with a little help from my magic. I let my eyes unfocus and my fingers move beneath my conscious awareness, while I thought about everything I’d put off thinking about.

I thought about Blackwell’s fog spell, the one I’d trapped in my sword. The spell had held Kett until he’d transformed himself … or allowed himself to go bestial to counter the sorcerer’s magic. I thought about the dampening collar in Blackwell’s possession, and how I was going to have to survive to do something about that. Then I thought about Sienna slowly siphoning necromancer powers from Mory, despite the protection of the necklace.

“How long did it take Sienna to learn to block Rusty?” I asked.

“What?” Mory answered sleepily.

I glanced at the perfectly polished necklace in my hands, then at Scarlett’s alarm clock by the bed.

It was 11:34 a.m. More time had passed than I’d thought.

“After Sienna learned to block Rusty, she could start siphoning your magic?”

“Bit by bit, in both cases,” Mory answered as she flopped over onto her stomach and propped her chin in her hand to look at me. “Why?”

“I’m not sure yet … but it won’t happen again.”

I stood up and gently lowered the necklace over Mory’s head. The necromancer patted the chain and then smiled at me.

“I don’t hate you,” she said.

“Well, that’s good,” I answered. “Because I’m going to need your help with the cookies. If the shapeshifters are coming, we’re going to need dozens.”

“Dozens?” Mory echoed. Then she asked, “You want me to bake with you?” as if I’d just asked her to marry me.

“Yeah,” I said, returning the smile. The fledgling necromancer was going to be all right … until we met Sienna again. There was no chance we’d manage to keep Mory at home without spelling her.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

So I waited … and baked. I flinched as each text came in on my phone — until Mory muted it, after which I jumped each time it vibrated on the counter.

One text announced Kandy’s arrival in Squamish. I gathered that her demanding to see the old lady with all the beastly kids didn’t go over well with the band. We’d inadvertently trespassed on the skinwalkers’ territory three months ago. Unfortunately, at the time they were kidnapping us, we didn’t get actual names to go with the animals the skinwalkers would cloak themselves in. At least Kandy and I didn’t. Kett might have, but obviously that knowledge was lost now …along with all the knowledge and truth he’d collected over centuries of life. Yeah, I was hanging on the precipice of maudlin … still.

A second text announced the first of three witches arriving — as summoned — to Gran’s house. Scarlett was sending out cc’d messages now. I wasn’t even aware my phone could do that.

The third and fourth texts were about necromancers — it seemed Mory was ‘missing again.’ This forced me to pick up my phone and communicate her location — my apartment — and activity — baking peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies.

Unsurprisingly, after this second round of text messages, the first knock at the door wasn’t the one I’d been dreading. Though had I known it was coming, I probably should have been worried. I opened the door to reveal Mory’s mom, Danica. The necromancer looked more put together than she had at the airport, but she didn’t actually smile until she laid eyes on Mory over my shoulder.

“Jade,” she said, and though I thought she was going to launch into some speech, she rather awkwardly didn’t continue.

“Would you like to come in?” I asked, stepping back and reaching out for the magic of the wards.

“No.” She beckoned for Mory. “We don’t have much time before the seven o’clock ferry. I understand we’re all trying to meet there.”

Um, yeah. I hadn’t gotten that text yet.

Mory stepped by me and handed her mother three fresh baked cookies wrapped in paper towel.

Danica’s gaze fell on Mory’s necklace. “You fixed it, then?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Thank you … I know what it does, what it protects her from. Thank you.”

She meant Rusty, her own son whose ghost had almost managed to kill Mory the first time he’d tried to go after Sienna. I still wasn’t sure about Rusty myself, but it must pain Danica incredibly to know such terrible things about her son.

I nodded, pushing away the tears that seemed to be constantly on the edge of falling these days.

“We — the necromancers and I — will need to know more about the demons in London. Mory says they were somehow reanimated?”

“Yeah. Previously vanquished and supposedly impossible to summon. Mory, Kandy, and I were all there. We might have all seen different things.”

“But you felt their magic and the magic that was used to … reanimate or resummon them?”

“Yes, but I hope to God Sienna doesn’t try to use the same spell. She somehow substituted the sorcerers’ corpses for the demons’ bodies, I think. They were like … vessels, maybe.”

Danica’s jaw tensed at my mention of my sister. Yeah, if she’d killed my son and kidnapped my daughter, I’d become very proficient at death curses if there was such a thing.

“There aren’t enough sorcerers to sacrifice in the world,” Mory said as she broke a piece from one of the cookies her mother held. “There are going to be dozens of demons this time.”

Mory’s blasé attitude threw me again. I was still haunted by seeing the demons in London tear their way out of the corpses of the sorcerers, then eating their hosts.

“We’ll just have to stop the summoning beforehand this time,” I said. Yeah, that sounded weak and pathetic to my own ears as well.

“I’ll need as many specifics as you can give me, of the spell, the rising, and of the demons,” Danica said. “If we’re to have any hope of controlling what your sister raises.”

“Of course,” I said, though I had to swallow passed the lump in my throat to speak. “It was a sorcerer spell, so I might be guessing at some parts.”

“I’ll speak to the werewolf, Kandy, as well,” Danica continued. “We’ll see you on the ferry.”

The necromancer turned away. Mory followed, turning back to wave before she hit the front stairs.

I closed the door and quickly crossed back to the kitchen to start packing up the cookies as I waited for the final batches to bake. I concentrated solely on this task, and despite Danica’s request, attempted to not remember the demons of London any more than I already did.

I needed to pack as well, but other than my sword, I didn’t have much to bring that I wasn’t already wearing. I never took off my necklace, and my jade knife was almost always strapped across my right hip. I looked down at my jeans and flip-flops. My dragon trainer, Branson, would be appalled about me going into battle like this … I might have an old pair of leather pants somewhere …

∞

The second knock on the front door — the one I’d been dreading and yet anticipating — came after a text confirmed the plan to be on the seven o’clock ferry. Another text informed us that Kandy was on the way to the ferry terminal now with a contingent of skinwalkers.

I opened the door to find Desmond leaning against the frame, looking back over his shoulder. I had a heartbeat to absorb his impossibly broad shoulders, tawny short-cropped hair, and chiseled jaw before he turned his green-flecked golden-brown eyes on me.

“Desmond Charles Llewelyn,” I breathed.

“That’s alpha to you, alchemist,” Desmond drawled. He wasn’t a drawler though — he was attempting to be playful. A little of the metaphorical weight that was crushing me eased.

“Hi, Jade,” Lara called, drawing my attention over Desmond’s shoulder toward Kandy’s apartment across the way. Last time I’d seen Lara, who was one of Desmond’s enforcers, she’d been a breath away from dying because my sister had wanted my undivided attention.

“Hi, Lara.”

As I watched, the lovely werewolf grabbed Kandy’s spare key out from underneath a seventy-pound planter. I was seriously glad to see her on her feet. Even if her purple-glossed bee-stung lips made me insanely jealous.

“You take too much on yourself, Jade,” Desmond said, pitching his voice low. He’d been watching me watch Lara, who entered Kandy’s apartment and disappeared from my sight.

“Well, that’s the kettle talking, isn’t it? Alpha?”

“No. I take responsibility only for my own. You seem to think that nothing bad happens without your stirring of the pot first.”

I squared my shoulders and jutted out my chin. “I had nothing to do with that tsunami that happened last month.”

“Are you sure? I heard you batted your eyelashes at some sorcerer in Hawaii.”

“I would never,” I exclaimed with mock indignation. Yes, Desmond Llewelyn, Lord and Alpha of the West Coast North American Pack was flirting with me.

We really were all going to die.

“Let me in, little witch,” he murmured. “I like the pants.”

I was wearing a pair of red leather pants. I couldn’t find anything else remotely as sturdy. I’d found a high-buttoned black leather vest in the back of my closet that I was guessing was actually Sienna’s because it was rather tight across the chest. I’d planned to throw on a T-shirt and my 7th Heaven Zachary boots — black lace-up Fluevogs — but was glad I hadn’t yet when Desmond’s gaze snagged on my breasts. Finally, someone found me more interesting than my necklace.

“What about the rest of the outfit?” I said, not budging from the doorway.

“Looks like it’s restricting your breathing,” Desmond said, his face full of concern. “I can help you with that.”

I laughed. “We have to leave in fifteen minutes. It’s a forty-five minute drive to the ferry.”