Dating : Nightstalker & Pope: 2

Pope

“Was that you?” I snap, still reeling from the magical poke and prod.

She folds her arms across her chest as she comes to a stop five feet away. She’s too good to allow any of the outrage that flashes in her eyes seep into her features. “No, John, that was not me. Of course. It’s a ward.”

Oh, Angelica.

The usual rush of emotions flood me upon seeing her. Anger, guilt, a good measure of love and a healthy mixture of resentment. Respect. And, with no thanks to the lust curse right now — desire.

Her thick black hair is longer than when I’d last seen her. Falling in tumbles down the length of her long, sun-darkened neck behind her shoulders. Her eyes exist on a spectrum of dark amber to milk chocolate depending on what she’s wearing (her dress makes them appear like the latter). She wears jangling bracelets, charms (actual or aesthetic, I can’t tell) tinkle with every move she makes.

Her lips, usually full, are now drawn into a thin line. “Didn’t you sense it?”

I blink at her, then look to the door. Belatedly reach out with my senses. See that she’s absolutely, one hundred percent right. Going near that door physically would hurt. My senses tell me the warding has the unmistakable, barbed signature of whomever cast the lust curse below.

Calmly looking back to her, I say, “Didn’t you?”

She gives me a flat look “No. You didn’t hear me calling for help?”

Now I do let surprise register on my face. “Not at all. I didn’t even know you where in here when I walked in.”

A frown marks her smooth features. “Then why the hell did you come in here?”

“I’m looking for Dom.” It’s my turn to frown. “And, the lust curse might have been distracting me as I came through the door.”

“Oh, Pope -”

I don’t try to hide the irritation in my voice. “Well what’s your excuse, Ms. Nightstalker?”

Her fingers snap a couple times, to a tune only she hears. Quick in succession, snapsnap. She takes a few steps across the rug toward the desk, her heels leaving deep impression in the Oriental carpet.

“I was following a server,” she says. “He came in here, I followed. When I sensed the ward set into place, it was too late. He was already through the other door before I could get him -“ She cuts herself off as she takes another look at me. “Why are you dressed like a matador?” Her tongue rolls over the Rs in her words.

I glance down at my outfit. “Is that what this looks like?”

Her lips twitch. “Si. The shoulders -“ Now she grins and shakes her head.

She, of course, looks stunning. Glad one of us could focus on our looks when our son — No don’t start that now. I glance back toward the door. The sensation I’d felt had been the ward locking me into the place, the pain had been me standing too close to it as it did so. Glancing back at her, I splay my hands.

“We can blow the ward wide open. The two of us? No problem.”

“I’ve already tried.”

I frown at that. Angelica couldn’t blow it open? And she was trying?

“It’s not a normal ward, Pope,” she goes on. Her voice lowers. “It’s not meant to keep anyone from getting out. Just us.”

A cold feeling settles into my stomach. “A blood ward? How do you know that?”

“The servant I followed in here.” She gestured to the door he had left out of. “He was able to walk right out of the room.”

“He just must have set the warding as soon as he left, Angelica.”

She’s already shaking her head, again anticipating what I’d say. “No — he didn’t even know I was behind him. I had myself cloaked. He wouldn’t have known I was behind him when I came in.”

“So you think.” I grin. “Your cloaks haven’t always been the best in the business.”

Her expression flattens. “He didn’t know I was there. And who would have set the ward behind you as you came in, burro?” The r’s in the last word roll with the force of her irritation.

I shrug. “Maybe someone with a better cloak than mine.”

“No one has a better cloak than you.” She says this uncomplimentary, as a statement of fact. I accept this with a nod.

“Okay, let’s say you’re right. I went into a few rooms on my way down here. Why would they put the warding on one room they weren’t even sure we’d go into?”

She shrugs, a pretty rotation of both shoulders (blame it on the lust curse) and snaps her fingers a few more times, taking a couple of steps on the hardwood of the floor, adding to the staccato tune. “I can’t be sure, but I bet they warded the rooms at either end of this hall, the ones that lead to the other parts of the house.”

“They were assuming we’d snoop around.” A troubling thought occurs to me as I follow the logical course of reason attached to that thought. “They knew why we would be snooping.”

“A blood ward,” she says, her voice shaking slightly, “can only be cast with our blood. Or . . .” Her voice trails off and our eyes meet — my hard gray against her angry black. The rest of her sentence passes unspoken between us: Or with someone who shares our blood.

“They have him,” I say quietly. “He wasn’t attending this party, Dom was bait.”

Our list of enemies could, really, take a day or two to compile. Things have been quiet, relatively speaking. Nothing out of order. The next Apocalypse isn’t scheduled for another few years, if the coked-out prophets at base got it right this time. There hasn’t been more than the usual missing number of young people in this area recently.

This has to be a personal thing against Angelica and I. We’d taught Dom how to take care of himself growing up — and he always, always knows to get in touch with one of us if he gets in over his head. But this must have been a concerted effort to get Dom, to get to us.

Angelica has been pacing, as she does when she thinks or is agitated. Absently, her fingers snap at her side, but suddenly she cut off the gesture. Cocking her head, she moves to the left side of the room, to the window, and glances out of it.

“That warded too?” I ask.

She casts a withering look over her shoulder at me and doesn’t answer the question. Of course it is.

“Whoever put the ward on the problem has probably been alerted that we’re in here,” I say as she looks down at the street below. “How long were you in here before I walked in?”

She doesn’t respond.

“Angelica.”

“What?”

“How long?”

She glances back at me, pondering for a moment. I take a moment to appreciate her high cheekbones in the moonlight. Her skin seems to glow with it, as if it’s caught the light. “Maybe five minutes.”

“I didn’t see you go up the stairs.”

Her white smile flashes again. “My cloak may not be as good as yours, but it’s good enough.”

“Really?” I say, impressed. I stride to the desk and perch myself at its edge. “In front of all those people?”

“The rest of us aren’t able to just tell light where not to go,” she replies absently as she looks again at the street. “I have to do a bit more . . . Blending, blurring.”

“I can blend and blur,” I protest.

She doesn’t reply.

“What are you looking at?”

My question hangs in the hair a moment before she swears softly under her breath. “They took out Alejandro.”

I move from the desk to sidle up beside her. Her perfume fills my nostrils, a spicy, heady sort of scent. I look to where she is pointing. Sure enough, the limo she had arrived in is parked across the street, just visible through the treetops outside the window. For her, it had taken as long as it had for her to make out the scene below. For me, though, it takes a small effort of will and the world brightens, intensifying in the usually soft glow of the moonlight. I bend the light inside the window (anything beyond it is retarded by the ward) and narrow in on the bullet hole through the windshield of the vehicle.

And the slumped form over the steering wheel.

Blinking away the small spell and the hyperdilation of my pupils, I look back at her concerned expression. “Poor Ale,” I said. “He’s been with you for years.” The connection she keeps between her dummies would be unaffected by the warding, unlike my own magic. Some things run deeper than what even a blood ward can block.

Without commenting on it, she asks, “Can you touch the light outside the window?”

I grunt as I shake my head. “They knew exactly how to deal with us. Took out your man in the one way he can be taken out, it seems, and they’ve limited my access to the spectrum to just in here.”

“They have Domingo,” she says, “and they are coming for us. They know we’re looking for him. Want us out of the way?”

“If we’re not the goal.” Grimly, I turn toward the doors and wave a hand across the room. Words of power spring to my lips and I give them voice. “Venatori sartorum.”

There is a shimmering of light, like that which glitters on water during a sunny day. It rises in a wave from top to bottom of all three doors, accompanied by a faint, distant locking sound. The room dims considerably.

I look back at Angelica. “Nothing says we can’t cast our own ward to keep them out until we figure out what to do.”

She arches an eyebrow, leaning against the window frame. “And what are we going to do?”

I shrug, pulling out my phone. “There are a few Table contacts out here, surely . . .” My voice trails off as I see there’s no reception.

“Already tried,” she said.

“Calling me?”

“Calling for help.”

“You didn’t think I could help?”

She rolls her eyes and shoves away from the window to stalk across the room. “I figured if I fell for this trap that seems specifically to have been designed with us in mind, then you probably would, too, John.” She draws an imaginary circle in the air around my figure. “Ah, and here you are.”

I let my long-dead southern drawl resurrect for a moment as I sit languidly in one of the ornate chairs in front of the desk. “You’ve been nothin’ but mean to me since I walked in here, Ms. Nightstalker.”

She stiffens. Her eyes narrow at my face. I’d almost say she looked close to shuddering. “Don’t do that. With that and your face . . . In the shadows, you’re like him.” This last comes out a little shaky.

Without hesitation, I banish the concealing spell I’d cast over my features. Features enough like mine that Dom would have recognized me, different enough that someone who knew me may have needed to look twice. The beard vanishes in a glitter of light and the chiseled edges of my jaw soften a bit. My eyes return to their normal shape and my nose loses its flatness. I know why Angelica had the reaction she’d had, when coupling my altered appearance with the accent.

I am not the only one who does not appreciate a reminder of my father.

“I’m sorry,” she goes on, blowing out a breath. “About what you said. I’m on edge. I’m worried about Domingo.” She glares at the walls. “And us, too, ahora.”

“I’m worried about Dom, too,” I say, putting my hands behind my head and leaning back in the chair. It’s comfy. Real leather. Pricey.

She cocks her head and walks toward me again, rounding the chairs, heel clicks muted by the carpet. “But not us.”

“Oh, sure.”

She rests both palms on the edge of the dark oak desk and watches me for a moment. There’s a resigned amusement in her features. “But you’re not interested in getting out of here?”

“If we leave,” I say slowly, “We’ll miss our best lead in finding Dom.”

“The puto that cast the ward,” she elaborates unnecessarily.

“We’ve spent the whole night looking for him — really, the past two weeks, since Dom’s been missing. Just didn’t know it. We have no idea who took him, but here we are, together, presented with our best shot.”

She stares at me pensively. “This was well thought out. They knew how to take out my support, knew to construct the ward to keep you from touching light outside the window. They’re going to come in here heavy. They know who we are.”

I lean forward in the chair and a sharky grin spreads across my features. “So do we. Did you probe the ward? Did you sense the . . .” I seek the right word. “The spikiness of it?”

“It is thorny,” she confirms. “Designed to draw blood, make whoever’s touching it jerk away.”

“There. The thorns are a ward for the ward, covering the holes in it, holes we could probably exploit if we had enough time.”

“Whoever cast it is strong, but not experienced enough to deal with the intricacies of such a thing, you’re saying.” She grimaces. “Well how about this — it was subtle enough to not even register to us until we’d passed over the threshold. They’re strong enough to slam us in here — us, John — like a couple of prisoners. It held up to the best I had to throw at it. Whoever placed the ward is strong but not dumb. Don’t mistake a bad Crafting with lack of experience. Probably didn’t do any of it alone, either.” She indicates the window, the moonlight beyond. “Look at all the boxes they had to check. The ward has to be strong enough to hold us for mere minutes. It didn’t need to be a web.”

I shrug. “All right.”

“All right?”

“Would you accept ‘okay’?”

She snorts. “Oh, please. Say what you want to say.”

“It’s all irrelevant, anyway. We don’t have enough time to escape, we don’t have enough time to come up with any better plan. Like you said, it’s to hold us for a few minutes. So we wait. They’ll be here soon.”

As if on cue, the door opposite the one I had entered booms, as if a giant on the other side had delivered a sharp kick.

Angelica straightens and paces over to the door, her arms crossed. “How is your shield?” she asks.

“Holding,” I say, concentrating on the spell as I reinforce it. “Let them tire themselves trying to get in here.” The bastards were smart, not putting a whole lot of light in the room for me to work with. If it weren’t for the brightness of the full moon, they really would have had me cowed.

The next blow is sharper, almost angry, as if whoever’s on the other side realizes the barrier to entry. “Damn,” I say, sweat breaking out on my forehead. The last dregs of the lust curse, only now beginning to die with starvation after I’d quarantined it, is still stealing bits of my concentration. Even if that wasn’t the case, though, whoever was on the other side of that door would give me a run for my money on my best day.

“Want me to help?” Angelica asks, glancing at me, a crease in her brow.

“No,” I puff. All the resistance is coming from the same door, the others remain untouched. I dispell those and use the released energy to shore up the fracturing shield.

I look to her and she looks to me. Before we were lovers, before we were parents, before we were married and divorced — we were partners. Some things run deeper than whatever emotional hang-ups we may have with each other now.

“Duck and cover,” she says.

“Duck and cover,” I agree.

~~~

When my ward shatters into glimmering bits of light that peter out before touching the wooden floor, the door flies open and three men storm into the room.

The two bracketing the one in the middle are holding Uzis. The one in the middle is breathing raggedly and holds no physical weapon. We have our curseworker. All three are young, in their mid-twenties, roughly Dom’s age. Their olive skin and rapid Italian hails their country of origin as they file in, taking up positions in the middle of the room. The goons with the guns train their sights on me and Angelica where we are seated, she on the desk, me in the chair.

A binding curse leaves the leader’s lips and lashes out at us, a greenish mist in the air moving at the speed of sound. It breaks off into two distinct halves, one heading for me, the other, Angelica. It spins around us for a moment before angrily dissipating in the air, hardly stirring the hair on our heads.

The leader falters for a moment, staring at us and our complete lack of concern for their entry. He walks forward and says, “Come with us and we won’t kill you.”

Angelica’s index finger spears the air and she snaps, “Just a minute.” She has not taken her eyes off of me the whole time. “You think you’ve got this handled? They have machine guns.”

“Remarkable, seeing as you haven’t even greeted our guests, or looked at them long enough to see what they’re holding in their hands,” I reply calmly.

“I don’t care about them. They are nothing.”

The kid in the middle falters. This had not been what he’d been expecting, clearly. “Hey,” he barks sharply.

Now Angelica looks at him, swiveling her head on her neck, her dark hair fanning with the motion. “I said,” she says in a mothering tone, “Just. A minute.” Without waiting to see if he heeds her warning, she turns back to me. “You couldn’t even hold the wards in place against a child.”

I shrug. “He’s like a toddler. Lot of energy, doesn’t know where to put it. Not my fault.”

The leader’s nostrils flare. He’s good-looking, with gelled, slicked-back hair. Elisha’s boyfriend, I’d guess. He wears the remains of the costume he’d had on presumably earlier in the evening. The dark suit is beaded with gems at the elbows and lapels. A Venetian mask hangs at his side, a dark red velvet thing with connecting gems patterned in a whirpool toward the eyeholes.

I look up at him and scrunch my nose. “Pretty.”

The kid snarls and raises a hand. A small ball of pure energy erupts into existence, casting shadows over us . . .

. . . From the far corner of the room, cast in darkness, I whisper, “Damn.”

Having to maintain the illusion and account for the sudden brightness almost makes me lose my concentration and shatter it. I’d been counting on the deep shadows cast by the moonlight to hide the finer details of our appearances, but the sudden light forces me to do some quick work, using it to reinforce the image, in fact. Thankfully I think the sudden brightness must have also momentarily blinded our assailants and the half-second of detail work — pulled from my most recent memory of the two of us — goes unnoticed. I blow out a breath.

Close beside me, a laugh rumbles deep in the real Angelica’s chest. “They’re keeping you on your toes, old man.”

Across the room by the desk, the leader snarls at motes of manipulated light and sound. “You’re coming with me, now.”

“Sloppy,” Angelica remarks behind me. It’s not directed toward me; the newcomers had not even cast a look about the room before marching directly to the desk.

My illusory self regards the leader. “Who are you?”

“I’ll kill you,” he snaps in reply. He’s not released the ball of energy he’d summoned, just holds it aloft threateningly.

“If you wanted us dead, you wouldn’t have set all this up,” I make my illusion reply calmly. “Who are you?”

“Your son wants you out of the way,” the man said.

“I’m sure.” Fake Me stands, businesslike. It walks to the side of the desk. The men to either side of the leader train their guns on me.

I, the real me, would not have been so cool and collected with automatic weapons trained on me while facing down a high-octane sorcerer. Things would have gotten bloody by now, in fact. “Do you know who we are?”

“Domingo’s parents,” he says with a sneer.

The Illusion Angelica peels her gloves off.

“Did he tell you what we do for a living, darling?” she asks sweetly.

“You think I’m scared of you people?”

“You’ve committed a class five illegal cursework on unconsenting mortals below,” Fake Me says. I make the moonlight around the two illusions brighten somewhat in intimidation, now that I have ample light to work with. “Class five felonies are capital offenses. Do you have any defense for yourself?”

“I don’t think the Circle Court would like a blood warding, either, Pope,” Illusory Angelica chimes in.

The illusions nodded satisfactorily to one another, watching the newcomers defiantly.

Leader Boy turns to one of his thugs and says something in rapid Italian out of the corner of his mouth. Probably telling him to call for back-up. We can’t let more people show up until we’ve dispelled the blood warding.

I feel Angelica tense up beside me, no doubt coming to the same conclusion. I glance at her to begin formulating a plan, but I see her sudden alertness has nothing to do with what may be coming. She’s looking at the nearest thug, who has been less than impressed with our show. He’s been looking about the room warily. The guy must have some experience under his belt. Knows a bluff or stall for time when he sees one. His eyes alight on the thick rug that had been laid carefully over the cold wood flooring.

Unmarked, save for the still-present imprints of Angelica’s heels leading right to our hiding spot.

The man’s face tracks these imprints and looks directly into our shadow — a shadow far darker, far deeper than any else in the room.

His gun follows the example of his eyes and his mouth opens in a warning.

Events move quickly now.

I make the illusions of us rush the leader, who lets the tightly woven fire spell fly. It blurs through my casting and incinerates the desk, some of the fire raking the wall around the window, too. The other thug has not come to the realization his fellow had, and instead begins shooting into our illusion’s rushing forms, bullets also passing through them.

The guard that’s noticed our hiding spot jerks in surprise at the sudden noise behind him and casts a careless look over his shoulder.

It’s what kills him.

My pistol is out of its holster and in my hand and I’m lining the sights before anyone can even shout. The pistol barks and bucks once as I let a bullet fly, right through the man’s skull and out the other side. Pieces of the bullet and gore fly free of his head, all of it catching the leader in his back. He falls to a knee with a cry of surprise.

Light floods our corner as I release the illusions and the displaced light comes rushing back around us. My gun is turning to catch the other guard, but the commotion has made him duck and roll behind one of the leather chairs.

“I’ve got him,” I grunt as Angelica strides for the pyromancer.

“Sequestre,” I mutter, and a shield forms in front of me as I stride toward the chair the last gunmen has taken refuge behind. Just in time, too, for he lets loose a spray of bullets through the expensive material, shredding it and crumbling the the little shelter. Seeing me unharmed, his jaw goes slack. His features are still in shock as I put the bullet through his chest and leave him to bleed out on the floor.

Turning back toward my ex-wife and her quarry, I see that the reckless flame cast by the leader has spread from the draperies and climbed toward the ceiling. This presents a new problem.

That blood warding keeping Angelica and I in here will stay in place until the foundation of this building is destroyed. It’s a bit more powerful than the run of the mill working. Fire could potentially disrupt the powerful ward, but by the time it does that, we’ll be burned to a crisp and dead. Our only shot at escape now is to get the kid to reverse the spell.

Angelica is standing over him. His breath is shallow and he is trying, unsuccessfully, to crabwalk back away from us. With the light from the fire behind him playing against us, we must look very nightmarish indeed. The air is hot and dry.

She crouches and says, simply, “Where is our son?”

“Burn, bitch!” He screams back. I tense, prepared to try and deflect an attack, but nothing comes from his outstretched hands. I glance to Angelica and see the magic dancing in her eyes. A light almost as deeply purple as her dress encircles the kid’s wrists, cutting off any evocation he may call to his hands.

“You first,” she says. Her eyes flick to the fire now pooling across the ceiling. She let loose with some quick Italian, and I catch enough of it to think I hear her call him a clown. “We’ll let you go, but you have to drop the ward first. And then you will take us to our son.”

“Like hell,” he snaps back. Angelica takes a step forward and kicks him in the chin. His head jerks back and rebounds off the floor.

Going with the motion, the kid hauls his legs up and over his head, rolling up into a crouch that caries him close to the desk. He glares at the magical bindings at his wrist and begins chanting in a low voice. Fire from the ceiling arcs down and separates him from us.

“John,” Angelica invites curtly.

My genre of magic tends to shoulder up closely to fire magic; I can influence it to an extent if not outrightly control it in the right circumstances. I tentatively reach out and try to leech the light from the fires to make them dissipate. Flame rears back and roars in the attempt. I can feel it singe the fine hairs on my arms and bring up a fine shield between us and the hottest of the flames, reflecting the light and heat back at it.

“He has it,” I say grimly. We back up, not seeing the kid behind the now-brightly burning wall separating us from him.

“Release the binding,” I tell Angelica. “He’s going to burn the whole place down trying to break it himself.”

She makes a sharp gesture of disspellation with a muttered word, followed by a sharp, “Damn.”

A moment later, the curtain of flame separating us from our quarry parts. His teeth are bared, eyes intent on murder. I raise my gun and fire off three shots without hesitation. Two bullets take the kid in the thighs, the other through his hand. He screams and goes down. Powerhouses like him tend to rely entirely on his magical ability to do the heavy lifting. The power goes to their heads, makes them think they’re invincible. They don’t bother learning the finesse required for shield or protective spells. Young powerhouses fall prey especially to this mentality.

He goes down, hard, on his ass. The columns of fire he’d called to his aid suddenly lose their rigidity, bowing slightly away from him, beginning to spread like normal flames across the floor, as if they have abandoned him.

Angelica steps uncaring over a patch of flame to regard the young man.

“Now,” she said. “I want to know where my son is.”

Our adversary bares his teeth in a grimace of pain. His eyes flick between the two of us for a moment before he regards the flames.

Not again, I think with an inward sigh, gathering a shield around Angelica and myself with another muttered word.

But when he calls to the flame, he directs it not toward us, but to himself.

For an absurd moment, I think he means to take his own life rather than tell us where Dom is. But then I see that his intent has not been to burn himself alive, but to burn the floor around him.

The fire burns hot and unfailing, like a lightning bolt. It blinds me for a moment before I can react. A horrible crash fills the air and Angelica takes a sharp step backward into me. It’s all I can do not to fall into the growing flames behind me.

Blinking away the impression his workings left on my retinas, I see what his intent had been.

The stretch of wood he’d been sprawled on has broken through the floor and down onto partiers below. It’s not the main ballroom, of course, but some other part of the party. No doubt some people were caught beneath the crashing floor as screams reach our ears. The source of their sudden attack must immediately become apparent next as their eyes track up toward the ceiling to see me and Angelica staring dumbfounded through the hole in the floor.

“Well,” she says as the kid — very much unharmed aside from the wounds we dealt him — rolls off the wood. “At least the ward is broken.” The worker of the curse has willingly broken the barriers of the space the blood ward had been erected around.

The interrupted dancers nearest to him recover from their shock and move to help the kid and other wounded. Someone helps Leader Boy to his feet. His thigh wounds don’t let him get far. He cries out and lowers himself gingerly back to the floor. Screaming for some help, he points up to us. Men with guns move through the crowd (now swiftly funneling for the exits) toward stairs out of sight. A few men and women without guns follow the security guards at a more leisurely, confident pace. I see a few of them draw thin wooden wands or don various items of jewelry.

I glance up at Angelica, then to the fire swiftly spreading through the room.

“How are you?” she asks.

In reality, I’m spent. I’ve wielded too much magic and directed too much light without a focus, something to help in that process. I draw the two short staffs no longer than my forearm from their sheaths beneath my suit jacket. There’d been no time to draw them before, things had been moving too swiftly.

Once I may have tried to assure Angelica I could handle what was coming, and once I might not have let my own exhaustion slow me down. I answer her honestly: “I can hold my own, for a while longer.”

She hears my voice and hears the tension in it. The fires are spreading quickly, approaching the bodies of the men I’d downed earlier. The antique desk is aflame, crumbling nearly into ash.

Angelica steps around me and pulls back a portion of her dress, exposing a leg to the air. She’d chosen fishnet to round out her outfit tonight. That is not where the focus of the eye is drawn, though.

Up the leg, near her hip, hangs a limp, dead chicken.

Its eyes glow purple in the light of the fire.

Angelica smacks it a couple times on the head and it utters a muted squawk. I see her shoulders straighten, go rigid with tension. She takes a step forward a lick of fire. Her heel lands with a resonance it shouldn’t have. A snap of her fingers follows the step, in quick succession. Boom.

One, I think quietly, blinking once.

Another step, another resounding footfall. This time she claps her hands together, once, in tandem with the footfall.

Something within my body responds to the sound. Boom, boom.

Another step, heel falling delicately onto the ashen wood of the smoldering floor. Another clap. Footfall, clap, snap go her fingers.

Two.

It is a deathly, quiet beat, one that my heart times itself too. I have trouble keeping my eyes open, my body tries to collapse under my weight but I grit my teeth. She’s had no time to draw a circle of power to contain her magic, it’s not her fault some of the power of her spell is spilling over into the room.

Boom, boom. Her steps are casual, her foot placements careful. Every jangle of every piece of jewelry she wears times itself to the beat. Boomboom. Every inhale becomes part of the song, every exhale a crescendo. Boomboom, boomboom.

Three.

She claps her hand one more time, releasing the spell.

When she does, the dead begin to rise.