Page 18 of Witch

“I doubt our warlock has access to the same sort of facility, but they had to cast a similar level of spell to open a door into the demon plane to pull the imp across. A spell like that will leave something we can track, and if the warlock uses the same location for all their summonings…”

“We might find the warlock’s lair,” Johanna finished, her voice breathy with anticipation.

“Exactly. If we can figure out to how track this spell to summon a familiar, we can definitely alter it to track the spell to summon a demon.” Kana put the last flourishes on his circle and then placed the chalkboard down so everyone could see it.

“Brilliant,” Johana said. She turned to the rest of the room. “Niale, Nicole, your teams keep working on those charms. They’re our best defense right now, and I want them to start going out to everyone by tonight. Arnold, pull a couple people to help Kana dig into this new idea. I don’t want to put all my eggs in one basket, though, so the rest of you keep working on the other projects. You never know what might work!”

Kana went to get another chalkboard, hoping his idea would at least help, but glad they weren’t abandoning everything else. That incantation showed promise too. Still, despite how much Kana wanted to learn how incantation writing worked, he needed to focus on his own project. He settled in with the team Johanna had assigned and got to work.

Chapter Nine

KANA WAS NOSE-DEEP in a rune textbook when a strange buzzing interrupted his concentration. Another second passed before Kana realized the buzzing was accompanied by the familiar tune of his ringtone. He looked up, blinking in confusion at the phone, which was lit up and vibrating on the desk in front of him.

The caller ID read Ember, Kana noticed, so he quickly dropped a bookmark into the textbook, set it aside, and reached out to hit the Accept button on the phone.

“Ember?” Kana asked.

“Hey, Kana. Sorry to bug you at work, but Marc’s principal got back to me. He wants to meet at six today. Did you want to join us?”

Kana glanced over at the clock, which read three thirty. That would give him another two hours of work before he had to meet Ember, and he could come back after dinner to work some more. They needed to find the warlock, and Kana had missed helping out long enough while he was healing, but getting Marc’s issues fixed was also important.

“Sure. I’ll be working late anyway, so it’ll be good to get away and focus on something else for an hour,” he replied.

“Perfect. See you then.”

“Bye,” Kana said before hanging up. He returned to his research, but Kana didn’t get as engrossed this time. He kept glancing up at the clock, worried he would get buried in work and miss when he needed to leave. He wasn’t as productive over the next hours as he hoped, but had made some headway into figuring out if there was a rune for demons like there was for familiars, or whether he would have to somehow create a rune himself by combining a few already existing ones, when the clock finally ticked over to five thirty.

“I have to run to the elementary school for a parent teacher conference,” Kana told Johanna as he tidied his notes. “I’ll be back by seven.”

“I was just about to start sending everyone off in staggered shifts to go find dinner,” Johanna replied with an easy smile. “You’ll be part of the first shift.”

“Thanks,” Kana said before walking to the door. The trip down the hallways and back to the foyer was thankfully uninterrupted. Kana was worried another hunter would be lying in wait by the front door to confront him, but only the woman manning the bowl of holy water was in the room as Kana went through and out the front door. By the time he walked all the way down the drive, a car was idling in the street, waiting for him. Ember was driving, a wolf in a suit whom Kana didn’t recognize was in the front passenger seat, and someone in very dark clothing was sitting in the back passenger side. Kana pulled the rear driver’s side door open and slid in. He was still buckling his seat belt when Ember took off.

“This is Meryl, the pack’s lawyer,” Ember explained. “I’ll let Shannon explain how the heck he’s here.”

Kana looked over at the dark-swathed person he was sitting next to and gaped. Shannon—if it was Shannon because Kana couldn’t actually see who it was—was wearing a black, wide-brimmed hat. Opaque black fabric hung from the brim of the hat down past Shannon’s shoulders, completely concealing his face. The rest of him was covered in thick black clothing so no hint of skin was visible.

This time of the early autumn, the sun was already setting by six, but definitely still visible in the sky. Vampires wouldn’t be safe until the sun was fully down, and Kana had thought most of them slept during daylight hours anyway.

“I am able to move around during daylight hours, and I can withstand a brief touch of sun to my body, but it will be a few centuries more before I will be capable of prolonged contact. This costume is made of specially treated fabrics that prevent wind from blowing them and protects the clothes from tearing and exposing my skin. I am able to exist in the sunlight for the amount of time it will take to attend this conference only thanks to this outfit.”

That was awesome and Kana really wanted to know what magic was involved with creating the fabric, but he knew better than to ask. Something like that had to be a closely guarded secret within the vampire community, and there was no way Shannon was going to share it with Kana.

“Let’s talk strategy,” Meryl said. “The principal and the teacher will probably be scared of you, Alpha, and of Shannon. I doubt they’ll figure out what Kana is, but the goal is for us to be suing them, not them to be trying to charge us for threats of bodily harm. That means we need to tone down any aggression. Let me do your talking as your lawyer, get them afraid of legal jargon rather than the supernatural creatures in the room. We’re more likely to get what we want that way.”

“Agreed,” Ember said. “If they were afraid of Marc, Shannon and I are going to terrify them. Scared people won’t do what we want.”

Meryl nodded. “And will claim later in a court that you threatened them to get it, which would be counterproductive. Kana, they won’t know what you are, so as long as you appear to be fully human you should be fine. Still, let me do the talking unless they ask you a question directly.”

“Makes sense,” Kana replied with a nod. “I just want this to be over for Marc.”

“Our goal is to get them to agree to remove the suspension from Marc’s record,” Meryl continued. “That way we can enroll him in the local private school, which I’ve already vetted as being a much better place for supernatural creatures.”

Ember pulled into the parking lot of the school, which was just emptying of cars as the work day came to an end. He found a spot close to the door and shut the car off.

“Ready?” he asked as he unhooked his seat belt.

“Let’s do this,” Meryl agreed.

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