Page 114 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
Talk about something useful, you babbling bitches,Lucy silently ordered them, the smell of Tierra’s green concoction stinging tears to the pig’s eyes as a stab of pain bunched in his rudimentary belly. Lucy shuddered inwardly.How crudely these animals were made.
“Then I’ll make more,” Tierra answered with a defiant tilt to her chin. “What I would like to know is, why are we bickering over lighters and talking about gaseous pigs instead of figuring out how to get Moira back?”
Because I own your sisters, Lucy thought.Or I will, soon enough. Every day, Moira shrinks from their minds, little by little. As do you, earth witch.
Both Aerin and Claire stared at the tabletop, chastened.
“We went on a reconnaissance mission earlier to the Horsemen’s compound,” Aerin admitted. “After we forced you to lie down for a nap.”
“What in the Goddess’s name were you thinking?” Blood flooded Tierra’s cheeks. “Do you think I want to end up with all three of my sisters kidnapped, or shot, or burned at the stake?” The memory turned the earth witch’s eyes the green of an uncut emerald. “The two of you out there alone with the Four Horsemen and Lu…,” Tierra stopped herself, searching for a suitable substitution. “That bitch from Hell on the loose—”
“Three,” Claire amended, a half smirk tugging at one corner of her mouth. “Technically there are only Three Horsemen on the loose since you gave Death a first-class ticket to Hell.”
“That was an accident. Mostly.” Tierra blew out an exasperated breath and set Cheeto on the floor at her sandaled feet. Lucy struggled to hold his body still against the cacophony of aromas beckoning him. The trashcan he could tip over. A potted plant just within reach. A scattering of crumbs under the chairs. How the animal could seek after more food with this hideous burbling in his guts baffled and disgusted Lucy in equal measure.
“Moira’s there,” Aerin reported. “And she’s alive. I could feel her emotional signature from a mile away. One part smart-ass and three parts pissed off.”
Tierra’s sigh of relief was audible.
“But,” Aerin continued, “since she’s being held in a house withThreeHorsemen and the Devil and she’s still alive, my guess is they’re interested in more than just killing her, or they would have done it already.”
Claire nodded her agreement.
“Do you know where she’s being held? Did you get close enough to see her?” Tierra’s questions had an edge of desperation honed by residual guilt, perhaps, as it was during her own trial-by-fire that Moira was kidnapped.
Aerin and Claire snagged gazes.
“That’s the thing,” Claire began. “We couldn’t even get close.
They’ve done something to the area around the compound.”
“What do you mean,done something?”
Cheeto’s keen ears picked up the sound of Claire pulling her riding leathers up to her knee. She gently peeled away a bandage to reveal a nasty scrape running the length of her shin.
“I have matching accessories on both elbows,” Claire reported.
Tierra’s intake of breath was sudden and shocked. “What happened?”
“I took my bike for a little off-roading, and when I got about a quarter mile from the house, something knocked me back about twenty yards.”
“Ditto,” Aerin chimed in. “I have a bruise on my ass the size of Cambodia. Even via the sky, I got about as close as Claire and was blown off my broom. Luckily, I caught a couple branches on my way down. I’m pretty sure my ribs aren’t broken.” She poked a polished nail at the waist of her suit coat and winced through an unconvincing smile. “See? Totally fine.”
“This has to be that heinous hell-bitch’s doing.” Cheeto started as Tierra abruptly shoved her chair back from the table. She started digging through her cabinets and cupboards like a woman possessed…a condition Lucy knew the symptoms of intimately.
“Tierra?” Aerin asked with uncharacteristic gentleness. “What’re you doing?”
The earth witch said nothing. Only continued her frenzied piling of bottles and ripping handfuls of herbs from their respective spots on her shelves.
Claire rose from her seat at the table and put a hand on her sister’s shoulder. Tierra merely slipped it off and commenced dragging out stockpots and delicate swan-necked distilling apparatuses.
“Tierra,stop,” Aerin ordered.
“I can’t.” Tierra’s voice was thick as mud, heavy with unshed tears. “I have to fix Claire’s shins, and your ribs, and Moira’s—” Lucy watched from her position under the table as the earth witch’s shoulders collapsed and she broke into back-breaking sobs.
Claire wrapped an arm around her sister’s shaking shoulders and cast a narrow-eyed glance at Aerin behind Tierra’s back. Aerin took her time rising from the table, apparently as nonplussed as Lucy was by Tierra’s hysterics, but eventually shored her sister up from the opposite side, wrapping an arm around her waist.
“This isnotyour fault, Tierra,” Claire insisted.
