Page 86 of Cleansed By Water (The Nature Hunters Academy 3)

The woman blinked several times and then seemed to compose herself, at least a little. “She’s gone.”

“Gone as in dead? Because I’m pretty sure I would have met her when her soul came to play with me.”

The witch grabbed at his hand, and he realized she was turning blue. Osiris loosened his hold.

“The demon, Dolion, was here and took her with him,” she said.

Osiris cursed. That meant the battle had begun.

“Why isn’t this spell working?” he asked as he held up the piece of paper.

Her eyes roamed over it as she read. Then she looked at him. “Did you get the blood you needed for the spell?”

“I had the witch’s blood and the demon’s who conjured the spell I’m trying to break. Why the hell isn’t it working?” He repeated his earlier sentiment though she couldn’t have known that it was the twentieth time he’d asked it. His patience was seriously running thin.

“That is a written copy of the spell, yes?” the witch asked.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” Osiris snapped. “My demon brought it. Crescious,” he yelled. The little demon scuttled around to face him.

“Did she write this spell?”

“Yes, my lord. She got it out of a book, in that cabinet,” he pointed to the cabinet behind the witch.

“May I?” the woman asked as she reached for the piece of paper.

Osiris narrowed his eyes on her. “If you try any of your witchy shit I will rip your soul from your body.”

She nodded her head, and he released her and handed her the paper.

She hurried to the cabinet, unlocked it, and pulled out the book. It only took a few seconds of page-flipping before she found the one she wanted. The witch ran her fingers across the page as she looked back and forth from the book to the piece of paper Osiris had given her.

Finally, after what felt like an hour later, she picked up a pen, marked some things out, and then wrote different words in their place. The witch held the paper out to him.

“She’d written two words wrong.”

Osiris growled. “She deliberately made the mistake.”

“I can’t be certain of that,” the woman said, her voice quavering under his anger. “The words are very close in spelling so it could have been an honest mistake.”

Osiris didn’t have time to call bullshit on the woman. He had to get the royals free.

He snapped his fingers, and Crescious hurried to his side. He took the demon by the nape of the neck, and in the blink of an eye, they were back in front of Dolion’s chamber.

Osiris looked at the paper and read it out loud. He’d already placed the blood on the wall. Now, the spell had better work. As he finished up the words, he felt a shudder run through the ground and then he heard a popping sound.

“Open,” he growled, and just like that, the door that had been hidden behind the ward slid open to reveal Dolion’s chamber.

Osiris’s eyes skimmed over the room until they landed on a leather-bound book lying on the floor.

Crescious hurried over and grabbed it. He handed it to Osiris with a bowed head. Smart demon. Osiris was ready to make heads roll, and Crescious’s would do just fine for a start.

The lord of the underworld led them both to the chamber where the royals were imprisoned. He placed his hand on the wall and could feel their power behind it. The spell containing them and concealing them from him was powerful. The witch who had given it to Dolion would die, and her spell would die with her.

Osiris opened the book and held it out to Crescious. “Where is the spell?”

Crescious turned the pages and then pointed to one written in the demon tongue.

Osiris glared at it as if it had somehow insulted him. He really shouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore, but then ever since a blonde human girl had ended up in his domain and then gotten away scot-free, life seemed to have become interesting.

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