Page 79 of The Wolfing Hour
“Then my partners aren’t getting anywhere near that circle, and neither are you. The conduit is me. End of discussion. Let’s do this.”
“That,” she said, with a knowing smile that irritated the hell out of me, “is reason number one.”
“What are you talking about?” This whole conversation was giving me whiplash, and I was pretty sure it was my fault.
“What makes me believe you could run a coven? Responses like that. Your first instinct is always to protect others. I can’t conceive of a finer quality for a leader.” She looked so damn pleased with herself it was ridiculous.
“Stop complimenting me. It pisses me off,” I grumbled.
“Okay, next Coven Mother.” She ignored my muttered curse words and inspected the circle, turning her head this way and that. Added a series of flowing lines to a smaller circle in the center. Erased one with the heel of her hand and redrew it.
Fennel meowed softly from his fluffy bed beneath the planter of his namesake. Cecil was crashed out beside him in his bed—a mosaic planter with tiny seashell feet filled with a flourishing string-of-pearls plant I’d given him. My partners were staying out of the way for now, but remaining close in case things went sideways.
At least, one partner was. Cecil was three sheets, two comforters, and ten down pillows to the wind. I wasn’t sure how much help he was going to be until he sobered up.
“We’re ready. All we need now is some magic to power this thing up. Hopefully, then we’ll find Aurora and be able to devise a way to bring her home safely. Mason, too.”
The reason for the spell, the reality of the situation hit me.
Not that the need to find Aurora Pallás hadn’t been on my mind since that fateful phone call, but I’d been so distracted byeverything else going on in the hours since, I hadn’t allowed the urgency of the matter to fully sink in.
It was sinking in now.
If we didn’t find Rory, Ronan was going to bend the knee to his bastard of a father. He was going to lose the pack, and anyone who’d ever aided him would be punished, including Gladys, because that was what the gym attack had been about. Revenge for allying with Ronan.
And when every last “traitor” wolf had been dealt with, they’d kill him. Maybe not right away, but it would happen. Ronan was powerful—more than anyone, including me, even knew—but he wasn’t a god. He was as mortal as the rest of us.
Brass tacks: if Floyd won, we were all going to die.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“Sit in the center of the circle. Don’t smudge the chalk, bump the hairs or the clip, or disturb the soil. All are important to the spell.” Her voice quavered on the wordspell. That tremble, the caving of her shoulders, and the slump of her head told me she wasn’t sure this was going to work.
“When do I use my magic?” I asked.
“You’ll know. For now, sit very still and close your eyes while I power up the circle. Open your mind and receive any images that flow in, no matter how ridiculous, impractical, or surreal they seem.”
Great. An LSD trip spell. A hellish end to a hellish day.
She drew in a breath and exhaled over her shoulder, away from the chalk lines and soil. Then she began to chant in a forceful, deliberate tone as if in direct challenge to her own doubt.
I closed my eyes.
Magic hit the circle with a thunderclap of power, surprising me into accidentally opening my eyes. The hair clip made clicking sounds against the floor. The pile of soil shivered thencrawled away from the chalk whorl in rolling contractions, like the movement of a slug, dragging itself toward me.
Margaux picked up speed, words spitting out of her like Eminem in a rap battle. I was afraid to break her concentration, but she’d said the soil was important as a grounding agent and, from what I could tell, it wasn’t providing a safe path for the magic to flow. It appeared to have its own agenda.
“Uh, Margaux? The soil is?—”
The pile gave one last shudder then, like metal shavings to a magnet, flew into my open mouth and rocketed down my throat.
Fire.
I’ve never eaten ghost peppers, but I have bitten into a habanero or two in my lifetime. This was beyond chili-pepper hot. It was miles from boiling-water hot. It was an oozing, slithering heat that incinerated my esophagus and steamed all the air from my lungs.
Margaux, I tried to scream, but I had nothing to use. No throat, no lungs—even my brain was on fire. Black flames licked at the edges of my vision. Sparks of power burst like fireworks above my head. I tried to reach out to her, but my body felt glued to the floor, my arms stitched to my sides.
Margaux kept chanting.
