The Witch with No Name

“With Ellasbeth,” he said shortly as he lifted me to my feet.

The blood rushed from my head and I stood for a moment, wavering. I could hear noise in the street. The lines were gone. Magic was dead. We’d be lucky to get out of Cincinnati before midnight. “You think giving her to Ellasbeth was a good idea?”

Trent tucked a shoulder under mine. “I think you were right about her and I was wrong. Can you walk?”

Jaw clenched, I took a hobbling step to the door. “I might have broke something.”

“I think so, too. We should get out of here.”

Nauseated and holding Jenks close, I limped to the door. The demons were safe, but I’d killed the source of magic to do it. That probably wasn’t going to go over very well.

Chapter 27

I leaned hard against Trent as the elevator lurched and settled. My leg throbbed, and I cupped a depressed pixy tight to me. I knew Jenks was thinking about his kids, scattered over the city, and Jumoke and Izzy at Trent’s estate. If he couldn’t fly, then they couldn’t either. There were no predators in Trent’s gardens, but that wasn’t what Jenks would be worried about. It was the natural magic from free-ranging mystics that gave pixies flight, and there wasn’t enough of them around anymore. The Goddess was pissed, having gathered her untold thousands of eyes to her and gone brooding somewhere, plotting to kill me.

Or at least most of them, I thought as a tingle passed between Trent and me as the ornate doors slid apart. Noise spilled in, and what little zest I had left for the day vanished as I saw the FIB hats and I.S. vests in the lobby. “What happened?” I asked as Jenks perked up, a faint dust hazing him.

“Looks like someone made a call.” Trent scooped me up and carried me out when I balked. There were too many people, and I was sure more than one of them wanted to talk to me in ugly, accusing voices. My bleeding leg was obvious, and Trent started for the front desk. Both an I.S. and an FIB cop were interviewing a tearful hotel employee, and the restaurant to the left was full of sullen Weres. One of them caught sight of me, jiggling his buddy’s elbow before grinning and giving me a bunny-eared kiss-kiss.

Heads began to turn, and I felt sick. “There’s Edden,” I said as I looked over Trent’s shoulder to the bar. Immediately Trent did a one-eighty, making me dizzy. “Do you see Nina or Ivy?”

Trent shifted his grip on me before taking the shallow stairs up, his jolting pace making my leg throb even more. “No. I think they got out before all this.”

“I can’t see fairy farts,” Jenks complained. “Rache, it’s my wings that don’t work, not my brain. Put me on your shoulder, will you?”

Someone pointed us out to Edden and he grimaced before turning away again. It wasn’t a promising start. “You sure you can hold on?”

“Hell yes,” the pixy grumbled, and I carefully shifted him. “I’m not going to yell at Edden from your hand.”

“I know how you feel,” I said, glancing at Trent. “Ah, I appreciate this, but—”

“You will sit where I put you and not move,” he said as he pushed his way through the milling uniforms and into the informal bar area. “’Scuse me. Pardon!” he said loudly, finally setting me on one of the bar stools. It was about the right height, but I almost lost my breakfast at the pain when Trent moved someone’s satchel off the adjacent stool and lifted my leg onto it.

“Edden,” I called, and the man’s ears went red. “Edden!” I called louder, and his shoulders hunched. I debated sliding down and hobbling over, but Trent gestured for me to stay, needing to turn sideways to slip through the crowd to reach him.

“This sucks,” Jenks complained from my shoulder, and I waved at Edden when he looked at me after Trent shook his hand. The officers he was talking to broke up, and the short, graying, and overworked FIB captain reluctantly came over, hands in his pockets.

“Edden, did you see Ivy and Nina?” I asked even before he got close.

Edden glanced at the big glass doors, clearly worried. “I saw them into the ambulance myself,” he said, then sent his gaze over my bleeding leg, Jenks sitting on my shoulder, and then Trent. “Al said you were going to try and stop Landon.” He pulled himself straighter, looking over the crowd. “Paramedic! I’ve got a non-life-threatening GSW!”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, trying to smile. Al, eh? Interesting . . .

“The slug is still in her leg.” Trent hovered close to keep people from knocking into me. “Can you get her to emergency or should I take her home?”

Edden scratched his shoulder, his expression creased in worry. “It will take an hour to get an ambulance out here. How fast is your copter?”

“An hour!” I exclaimed, and Jenks’s wings clattered when Edden took my chin and peered at me.

“You aren’t dying,” he said distantly, evaluating my pain by the look in my eyes. “The roads are clogged.” He let go of my chin and straightened. “This is worse than last time.”