I’d warded Heather against attack spells. It never occurred to me to ward her against a knife blade.
Patty’s aim was uncanny. She slashed with the knife along the side of Heather’s neck, sending a spray of blood across the flagstone patio and a torrent of it down over the young woman’s shoulder and chest.
Heather staggered, dropped to the ground. More blood pooled around her and ran in rivulets along the grouted seams between the stones.
Witcombe stumbled back a step, gaping in horror at what Patty had done “Oh, dear God! Heather! My God, my God!”
I dropped to my knees beside the girl, blood soaking my jeans, and put my hands over the wound. “The cut, my magic, her healed flesh! The cut, my magic, her healed flesh!”
I hadn’t cast many healing spells, and I was too freaked out to try to recite the spell silently. As it was, the magic I summoned felt weak, inadequate to the task.
“Don’t bother,” Patty said, her voice so calm it made me want to snap her neck. “She was dead before she hit the ground.”
“Her blood’s still flowing. She’s not dead.”
“But you’re not weremyste enough to save her, are you?”
I repeated the spell. But Patty was right: Heather was dying, and I wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it.
Witcombe continued to babble and blubber, saying “My God, my God” again and again.
“Would you shut up already?” Patty snapped.
Witcombe whirled on her, the rebuke seeming to kick her out of her panic. “Are you fucking crazy? Killing her like that, here in my home? What in God’s name were you thinking?”
“We need the blood,” Patty said. “And I didn’t kill her; Fearsson did. That’s what we’ll tell the police.”
Something clattered on the stone beside me. The bloodied knife.
Three elements. My hand, Patty’s foot, and a good hard tug. I’d used the spell before, and it worked every time. Her foot shot out from under her, and she landed hard on her back.
I scrambled up. And was hammered back to my knees by what felt like the kick of a mule to my temple. Magic stirred over my skin a second time and I was hit again. This time I sprawled onto my back, too dazed to do more than lie there.
“Quickly now,” Patty said to Witcombe. “You know the spell.” She got to her feet and kicked me in the jaw with her open-toe shoe. It hurt more than I would have imagined.
I tried to get up, but another spell stopped me. This one seemed to thicken the air. Magic surrounded me, clung like heavy mist to my skin, my hair, my clothes. And then it fell upon my mind with the fury and finality of an avalanche. It buried my will, my ability to act. I tried another attack spelclass="underline" fire this time. Nothing happened. I tried to sit up, to roll onto my knees
I raised my eyes to Patty; I couldn’t so much as lift my head. She leered down at me, and for good measure she kicked me again, digging her foot into my side this time. I felt the impact, gasped for breath. But I couldn’t raise my hands to clutch the spot she’d hit. I wasn’t even sure I grunted.
“Dark magic, Jay. You should try it sometime. It really is exhilarating.”
If I could have turned her into a torch, or peeled back the skin from her face, I would have done it. But I could no more cast than I could speak or get up and walk away.
I tore my eyes from her face-they seemed to be the one part of my body still under my control-and looked around. Heather lay beside me, her eyes open and fixed on the sky, a bit of blood oozing from the wound. Most of the blood, though, had vanished with the spell Patty and Witcombe cast. I would have bet that even the blood on my jeans was gone, though the spell kept me from confirming the hunch.
The conjuring had put me in mind of a landslide. I imagined a giant shovel digging me out, removing this terrible weight, freeing me. The weight of the spell, the imagined shovel, and me. Nothing.
“You can’t save yourself with a spell. You’re ours now.”
“What are we going to do with him?” Witcombe asked.
Patty loomed over me, regarding me the way she might a newly listed property. “Just what we planned to do all along. We’re going to use him to kill his runemyste.”
CHAPTER 17
I thought they would have to carry me-or have the guards do it. What they did instead was infinitely worse.
“Get up,” Patty said, her voice echoing in my head.
I stared at her, wanting to tell her she was nuts, that obviously I was incapable of sitting up, much less getting to my feet.
But even as these thoughts flashed through my mind, I rolled onto my hands and knees and pushed myself up. My vision swam, and I felt like I was going to pass out, but I didn’t sway.
“Get it now?” Patty said. “Pick up the knife.” Again, the command reverberated in my head, the power lashing at me.
God knew I didn’t want to do it. Her control spell had wiped the blade free of blood, but her fingerprints were still on the hilt, and that was the only way I’d be able to prove that she, and not I, had killed Heather.
“By the hilt,” she said.
I bent and picked it up.
“Grip it the way you would if you were about to stab someone.”
I fought her with every ounce of strength I possessed. The effort should have been enough to make my muscles tremble, my pulse race. But I had the feeling that no one watching me would have noticed at all. I wrapped my fingers around the handle, which was made of some dark, polished wood.
Etienne de Cahors had used similar magic against me when I fought him, but somehow this was worse. Patty and Witcombe were weremystes, like me. They shouldn’t have been strong enough to control me with such ease.
“Now,” Patty said, voice echoing, “hold that blade to my throat.”
I did as she said, laying the honed edge along her neck just below her jaw line. She showed no fear at all. Her smile, the look in her eyes: She was as sure of her power over me as she was of her own name.
“You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you?” she said, her voice low, so that only I could hear. “It wouldn’t take much; a flick of your wrist, and I’d probably be dead before anyone could stop the bleeding. But you can’t do it, because you belong to me, completely, utterly, without hope of reprieve. You can fight me all you like. You can try to cast spells, you can resist until your heart bursts within your chest. It won’t matter. Our spell will hold you until you’re dead.”
Or until you are. I wanted to scream the words at her. Nothing.
“Put the knife in your pocket.”
I slipped it into the inside pocket of my bomber, despising myself.
“What about her?” Witcombe asked, gawping down at Heather’s body, her cheeks ashen.
Patty eyed me in a way that made my stomach clench. “Jay will carry her out to his car and put her in the back. We’ll decide what to do with her later.” She faced Witcombe. “But first you need to clear out your guards. Too much to explain if they see us with the girl’s body.
Witcombe eyed me. “But won’t-?”
“Jay’s not going anywhere without my permission. We don’t need the guards right now. We need privacy.”
Witcombe nodded and hurried into the house.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Patty said, gazing after her. She waved a hand toward the view. “To the rest of world, she’s a corporate giant, one of the most powerful women in the country. But as you can see, she’s a bit pathetic. She’s handy to have around-all that money, you know. But otherwise she isn’t good for much. And before long, I’ll have access to enough income that we won’t even need her for that. For now, though, in our circles-yours and mine-she answers to me. Just like you do. Stay here. Don’t move.”
She went back into the house, and emerged a short while later with a drink. It smelled like Scotch. She sat in the chair I’d used a short while before and sipped her drink, ignoring me.