The witch started to cry. Above me, Big Evan bent over the hole to the lair. He started to curse softly beneath his breath.
• • •
We were standing in front of the refrigerator in the old bar, waiting to step into the witch circle. Just Big Evan, Bruiser, and me. And two unconscious vamps. Evan hadn’t been gentle with them, not since treating the Acheé witches. His eyes had filled with tears over the girl, not yet an adult, abused and nearly catatonic with fear. Kathyayini was in a coma, still dream-walking when the ambulances came.
And he had been taking his anger out on the vamps ever since. Yet I knew that Evan would have a problem taking a life, even a vamp’s undead life, even with justice so long overdue. He had already refused to kill, saying that no witch would use blood magic to break black magic. And I wasn’t sure if he could break the spell of the full witch circle without taking their blood and their heads.
“Time?” I asked.
“Eleven twenty-four,” Bruiser said.
“Close enough,” Evan said, urging us on.
I didn’t have to have my cell phone handy to know that the others were looking for us, worried sick. I could actually feel Rick’s panic, like a burr stuck in my paw. He had nearly changed already once, and the pain had been unendurable. Now the moon was at her fullest, almost midnight of the full moon, the witching hour. We had been waiting for hours, Big Evan setting the timetable and outlining the plan.
And now, at last, it was time to save Misha.
“I’ll go through first,” I said, “and open the trapdoor. Then you send the vamps through. They’ll fall through the opening into the circle below. Then I’ll close the door and you two come through, one at a time.”
I had wanted to do it all by myself and not risk Big Evan again, but breaking a working this strong took a witch and the blood of the vamp who set it into motion. Since he was dead, I was hoping that the blood of his killer and the blood of his heirs would do. I stepped into the fridge and fell.
Even though I was expecting it, I nearly lost my supper. I caught myself only by the most delicate line of luck. I landed hard, stumbled, and ended up on one knee and both hands. Moving fast, I turned on the flashlight and opened the trapdoor. The reek that flowed up through it was so close to the stench of the charnel lair that my stomach roiled again. I dropped through and stood to the side, the trapdoor open. I didn’t look around with light. I couldn’t make myself. I was such a coward sometimes.
Moments later, the two vamps fell through to bounce at my feet. They were bound with silver and steel and a spell. And a full roll of duct tape, Big Evan’s last-ditch protections against vamp strength. I closed the door, and when it opened, Bruiser walked down, followed moments later by Big Evan, whose bulk barely fit through the opening.
The big man swore at the sight of the twelve witches, taking the flashlight from my hand without asking and studying them. He spent the longest on the witch who was nearly buried. Now only her mouth and nose were above the ground, but even he was afraid to brush away the sand, for fear the spell would activate and kill her instantly. “While there is breath, there is hope,” he whispered.
His face was grim as death when he came back to me, harsh lines and angles in the sharp light of the flash, his body bent to protect his head from the floor system above. He nodded at me, and I opened another new sheet, this one already partially marked with a circle, part of the preparations we had made in the hours while we waited for midnight.
I spread the sheet over the uneven floor, in a place between the bones that littered the surface. Normally Evan would have used a spade to dig a circle in the earth, but the bones and the absolute concentration of power made that unpractical.
He picked up Lotus and tossed her into the circle. Bruiser tossed Silandre. Both vamps were rounded, sensual, and warm to the touch, full of witch blood. Neither showed signs of the transformative process of the witch working and the binding of the red iron. And neither had spoken since they were captured, maybe silent in the presence of lesser creatures. Maybe waiting out the clock for the few minutes left until midnight.
Evan stepped into the circle and sat, rolling the vamps close and digging in the bag I had carried for his supplies. This would be Big Evan’s show, not mine. I was just the helper. Bruiser was the muscle, standing guard at the bottom of the steps below the closed trapdoor. He was silent, watching us, his face impassive, his body loose and ready for anything that might land in the circle above us and come through the door.
Walking sunwise—or, in this case, literally clockwise—I walked the witch circle, setting out twelve candles, one beside each buried witch. I lit them according to my instructions, beginning with the witch wearing the pocket watch set at the number one. When I was done, Evan asked, “Anything else you need to tell me?” When I shook my head, he said, “Say it again.”
I restrained a sigh and a retort. I wasn’t a witch, I wasn’t used to memorizing spells, and I had never crafted one. He wanted to make sure I hadn’t left anything out that would help him with the spell and had made me repeat Kathyayini’s words over and over. “Long years past was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free.” I opened my hands as if holding a tea tray flat on my palms, as if saying, See? Just like last time, and telling him with my eyes, as I had told him with words, that all this part had been figured out.
He nodded for me to continue.
“Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.” I pointed to the witch nearest. “The one you seek,” I said, pointing to Misha, “she is bound to the Earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.”
“We still don’t know what is being used as a focus for the spell?” Evan asked. I shook my head. “Time?”
“Eleven fifty-two,” Bruiser said.
“Good.” Evan drew a knife, an athame. The whole thing, handle and blade, was purest sterling silver. He pointed the tip at the circle, and I closed it with the black marker. I drew a blade. Mine was steel with silver plating, but, really, even plastic would have done. I went to kneel near the witch who was almost buried. It was my job to scrape away the sand the moment the working was broken.
Big Evan Trueblood was an air witch, meaning he worked with air currents, sometimes with weather, with wind, with storms. But most often Evan worked with sound. He pulled a box from the bag he had brought and opened it with quick metallic-sounding snaps of the latches. Within was a flute. The witch placed it to his mouth and blew a long, slow note. This wasn’t a wooden flute, with a hollow sound and a limited range, but a large, silver flute, larger than any flute I remember seeing used in the high school band. The tone was haunting and low as single notes became a melody.
Beneath my feet and knees, I felt the sand shiver with the deep vibration of the music. It was sweet one moment, discordant the next, melancholy and joyful by turns. Moment by moment, the sand beneath me grew more and more disturbed, until I could hear its disquiet over the music, a scratching, dry abrasion, the surface sand worrying across the deeper-packed earth.
It moved as if alive, shook as if frightened, slid as if sentient. And as I watched, a bead of sand crept closer to the mouth of the buried witch. I looked to Evan, sitting in the center of the circle, playing his flute, his form placid, his melody serene.
Another bead of sand slid within her mouth. She didn’t move. Didn’t react. But my heart rate spiked. The music sped, its tempo rising, the notes climbing high, only to fall into the deeps. I glanced at Misha and started to rise. She was sinking, sinking fast, into the sandy earth. As if she were in quicksand, her body sank, note by note.