Beast chuffed at me in disgust.
Not now, I thought back at her. Mountain lions and the Cherokee had very different feelings and instincts about how to raise their young, and I wasn’t going to argue with my other soul. I studied the hedge, its energies a dull red of smooth shimmering light. In most wards, the energies were a coruscating light pattern, a roiling of thick and thin, fluidlike, waterlike power, or banded like an agate, or ringed like Saturn. Sometimes even a licking flame. But always there were weak spots in it. Not this time. The hedge was a ruby red, smooth as polished glass, except for the manacles that had trapped Angie’s hands at the wrists. That was actually a second working wrapped inside the first, blue energies sweeping up out of the hedge and coating Angie’s skin. I could see the tiny sparks of electric energy arc out and snap at Angie’s flesh.
This was new. Entirely new. Which was important, but it was more important to release Angie from the discomfort it was causing.
Molly’s family had created the original hedge spell and taken the unprecedented step of sharing it with other witches. They had given it, free of barter, to the New Orleans coven. I had thought it was to cement relations with the different covens, but now I realized that the gift had been an easy one to share because the Everhart sisters had already devised an update. Hedge of thorns 2.0. A better, faster, sneakier working. One I couldn’t figure out how to break, once it had been initiated, even seeing it out of time.
I saw Angie’s pinky finger move. The tiniest little tremor, a quiver of a fingertip. A black light arced out from that fingertip to zap the manacles.
Black light. Black . . . black magic full of darkness and prism sparkles. Something I had never seen before, or at least not like this. Black light with a hint of purple, a trace of blue, a faint reddish tinge around the edges. A second arc of black light zapped out. And a third. And the blue manacles began to fail, to disintegrate. Angie was using a type of magic I had never seen before, except once when a crazy vamp clan was about to sacrifice witches to accomplish a blood-magic working. Sacrifice Angie and her baby brother.
This was bad. This was very bad.
Angie was way too young to have access to her magic, which wasn’t supposed to manifest until puberty. She had been bound by her parents, her magic tightened around her like a second skin, still there, but not available to her. It was a binding that had been explained to me, how they’d done it, how it worked, like knitting magical swaddling clothes around her. I had seen them renew it as she grew, and it had to be renewed often, but it was a binding she had begun to notice, and probably fight against. And clearly that binding had stopped working. Again.
My gut tightened and twisted again and I pressed a fist against the pain. I hadn’t done anything but walk while time was bubbled, but that was enough. Bubbling or twisting or bending time made me sick. If I didn’t stop soon enough, it made me vomit blood, and it wasn’t a sickness that my Beast was able to heal. My Cherokee Elder teacher, Aggie One Feather, lisi, had told me that if I didn’t listen to my magic, and kept pushing its boundaries, it would one day kill me. I had a bad feeling that she was right, but I wasn’t always in control over it. Sometimes it was instinctive, like if I was in danger of dying, or someone I loved was in danger, then, sometimes, the magic itself took me over. At such times, my own life, our own lives, no longer mattered, and Beast would take over our magics and send me into the Gray Between. And bubble time so she could move outside of it.
I started to knead my belly, but the bruise stopped me fast. Pain doubled me over and the acid rose again. I swallowed it down. I didn’t have long. I dropped to the floor beside Angie, crossed my legs guru-style, and studied what she was doing. Yeah. Angie was definitely analyzing and breaking the hedge. The manacles weren’t hurting her, not like they should have been. She wasn’t writhing in pain, she was mad.
Pressing my belly gingerly, I let time snap back.
The echo of Angie’s furious scream assaulted my ears. The luggage hit the foyer floor. The cat screamed and yowled and the cage tumbled with the cat’s acrobatics. Eli landed inside the room. His eyes went wide at the sight of me there. Molly blew in and caught herself with both hands on the doorjamb, her body bowing into the room and back out. Her face was full of fear and shock to find me there. Molly’s lips moved tentatively, but no sound came when she said my name. Jane?
Eli put away his gun and the vamp-killer he had drawn without even noticing.