But Margaud wasn’t a witch. She was human. So where had she . . . ?
Things began to pop up and slide together in my mind, like some weird puzzle forming all by it itself. Margaud and her brothers were Moutons. The brothers had shown up at Lucky’s with Solene, the coven leader, who was Lucky’s sister. The Moutons were vamp haters from way back. Lucky was a vamp hater from way back. Solene hadn’t seemed any too happy to be sharing the town with suckheads. Solene and Lucky were related to the Bordelon sisters, one of whom had been their grandmother, and the sisters had fought the vamps to a stalemate in the town’s vamp war.
Had the Bordelon sisters used a gris-gris? Had they called up a demon?
Through the window something flew, slowly, ungainly, tumbling through the air. Gee DiMercy. But he didn’t fall, tuck, and roll. Blue and pink and lavender magics boiled out from his slight form and in an instant he sprouted feathers, spread his wings, and caught an air current. He glided across the yard, barely maintaining altitude above the ground. He flapped once as he crossed into the street, trying to make it over the witch circles. He wasn’t successful. His wingtips brushed the top of the electric dog collar and the hedge of thorns where they met at the top. Black and silver sparks flew, slightly faster than the rain. The acrid stink of burned feathers filled the air.
And the wards exploded.
The Gray Between caught me up, and time simply . . . stopped. The falling magics looked like slowly burning paper, blackening and scorching in arcs of heat, with flaming lights at the edges. Raindrops hung in the air. I didn’t look at the droplets. I knew better. They held the possibilities of future timelines, spreading out from this moment, from the decisions I made in this moment, possibilities that affected everything and everyone. If I looked at them I could be paralyzed, unable to act, afraid that anything I might do would mess up everything for everyone else. So I didn’t look. I didn’t even want to.
I dropped the gris-gris’ contents to the porch floor and crushed it all between my paw pad and the old, painted wood. It made a strange grinding sound, the tiles breaking. The cross hadn’t stopped him, so that meant that even this might not stop the swamp thing, but it should do something to the demon. Weakening it would help, at the very least. As I ruined the spell, my guts twisted horribly. The pain felt like someone was dragging my intestines out of my abdomen and braiding them into a long, plaited coil.
Nausea rose, tasting of blood and bile. I gagged. I didn’t have long.
When the tiles were dust, I walked back inside, where the fight was still taking place, found a small escritoire with paper and pens inside. I wrote a note to Eli explaining what I had figured out, about Solene Mouton probably helping Margaud, trying to drive a wedge between vamps and witches. I folded the page and tucked it into Eli’s hand, where he’d feel it in real time. Then I stuck the mud monster with a silver-plated blade about fifty times. Surely that should do it.
Satisfied I had done all I could do in here, I shoved off from the porch, leaping through the air, faster than time, splashing through raindrops hanging still in the night. Racing toward the center of the street. Seeing the wards as they fell, breaks appearing in long striations of fractured energies. Seeing, knowing the weakened places in the magics. I bladed my body through a tear in the outer ward, my pelt sizzling and stinking. I raced between witches and spun through the inner ward. It bent and gave and fell beneath me.
I took two steps through the center of the circle, stooped, and picked up the wreath. La corona. Le breloque. I pushed off the asphalt and landed on the far side of the witch circle. Moments later I was half a block away, bent over, retching. Blood pooled on the wet pavement beneath me. Time had returned to normal. Or I had returned to normal time. It was confusing. I gripped my middle and kneaded the twisted steel of my muscles. And once again the heavens opened up and rain assaulted the earth.
I looked up and saw, in the distance, Lucky Landry, Edmund Hartley, and Clermont Doucette walk from the ruined house and into the street. The vamps were no longer sporting swords, so crushing the tiles must have killed the demon, or sent him back where he came from. Whatever. I’d take it. The witches in the circle were screaming. I could hear them in the distance. The rain that had started above me raced across the street and hit them too. Lightning jagged down, the sound booming. It was close. I had no desire to be hit by lightning again. Once in my lifetime was enough. I looked around for the Anzu, wondering if he had called down the current storm.
I pushed up from the water-runnelled pavement. My other hand was . . . gripping the wreath.
I have the wreath.
I have stopped the demon.
And I might live.