Page 91 of Horn of Winter

“Yes, unless I was grounded. And I was. Kinda.”

“As statements go, that one is not at all comforting.”

I smiled but returned my attention to the building. There were at least a dozen witches kneeling on the ground, each with one hand thrust into the earth and the other raised. The air around the latter rippled fiercely, a haze that washed over the building in waves.

They were drawing the heat from the earth, not the air as I’d half expected.

“You might want to push your people back, Marjorlaine,” I said. “If events follow the same path as previously, they’re in danger of being hit by slabs of ice.”

“You cannot possibly draw enough power to shatter that much ice.”

“I’m not. The knives are.”

Her gaze dropped to the knives I was holding. “Silver knives cannot dissipate the power at play here.”

“Silver knives can’t, but these are goddess-blessed and part of a triune of power.”

“Indeed? I look forward to seeing them in action, then.”

She didn’t bother controlling her skepticism, and I found myself suddenly understanding why Win disliked her.

I flexed my fingers against the hilts of my weapons, then strode forward with a confidence I didn’t really feel. The closerI got to the building, the warmer the air became. Sweat dribbled down the back of my neck and the side of my face, but I ignored both, concentrating on the building, looking for the launching point. At the Lùtair Enterprises building it seemed to have begun at the main entrance, but here, the ice appeared to be fractionally thicker at the employees’ entrance. I walked around to it and stopped several feet away. The chill coming off the ice crawled across my skin, despite the heat that otherwise pressed around me. Through it, I once again felt the witch.

Felt her fury.

This time, though, she didn’t attack me. She simply withdrew.Totallywithdrew.

The ice coating the door and the lower portions of the building instantly started to melt, the thick slabs quickly forming rivers of blue that raced down the wall and flooded the concrete.

Unease stirred through me. Her fury, and her sudden retreat, just didn’t gel.

Something else was going on.

I rubbed my arms uneasily and turned, walking back to Sgott and the others.

“Well,” Mathi said. “That was anticlimactic, especially after this morning.”

“She fled the second she felt my presence.”

Sgott frowned. “That makes no sense, even after what you did at the Lùtair building and at Kaitlyn’s.”

“Perhaps this was merely a diversion.” My gaze shot to Lugh’s. “Darby’s not at your place at the moment, is she?”

“I don’t think so, but I’ll check.”

“Might be wise for you both to stay somewhere else tonight, just in case.”

He nodded and moved away to make the call. I returned my gaze to Sgott. “She might well come back once she thinks I’m gone. It looked as though she’d hacked into street cameras whenshe attacked the Lùtair building, so it’s possible she’s doing the same here.”

“Even if she has,” Marjorlaine commented. “It’s unlikely she’ll have the strength for a second attack so soon. Not given the energy output she must have employed encasing this building and battling my people.”

And I was betting that Marjorlaine, who hadn’t really witnessed what this witch was capable of with the horn in her hand, was seriously underestimating her.

“Are you able to leave a team of witches here, just in case she recovers quicker than normal?” Sgott asked.

The older woman nodded. “I had a secondary team ready to step in should the battle go on much longer, so they can stay.”

“Good—thank you.” His gaze came back to me. “You and Mathi should go rest. We’ll call you if anything untoward happens here.”

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