The Witch with No Name

My stomach hurt as Al finished wiping down the old oak floor, his goat-slitted eyes worried as he threw my silk dress into a corner, having removed “excess stray ions” with it. “Ivy goes in the middle,” Al said, sounding unsure. “The spiral is etched outward from her.”

“Ivy?” I called, and I heard her coaxing Nina out of their room. She was still bound, but she numbly sat where Ivy put her. Suspicious, I turned to Al. His motions were too fast, too quick. He wanted this even as his regret and worry grew with every moment. “Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Jenks, dust a spiral, please,” the demon said, avoiding me, and my eyes narrowed. “Start at the center and move widdershins. Three arms is traditional. And keep enough space so that if Rachel should fall she won’t hit one of the other arms.”

Fall?

“You want it flammable?” Jenks asked, and Al hesitated.

“Ah, no, but the longer you can make it glow the better.”

Hands on my hips, I frowned up at him. “Why are you doing this?” I asked again, and his eyes flicked to mine.

“You’re in the way.” Hands on my shoulders, he pushed me closer to the pool table. Peeved, I watched Jenks happily dust a sparkling silver path, skating a bare inch off the floor as he laid down a glow that I could tell would last a good five minutes. Plenty of time to save or damn a species—and my friends.

“Al,” I prompted, and he turned fast enough to make his coattails spin—if he’d been wearing his usual green crushed velvet instead of his forties suit.

“I never agreed to this,” he said, his distant gaze making it clear he was talking about the original vampire curse. “I maintained that it was unsporting to curse those who had no original intent, but Celfnnah was sustained by bitterness.”

Celfnnah. My eyes widened as I remembered. Al had a ring with her name on it. He had loved her. He had loved her so much that he couldn’t deny her revenge—her dark bile poisoning a thousand lives, a thousand lifetimes.

“If we’re to survive a return to this world we’ve been exiled from, we need to end this. We need to let the pain go and heal, no matter where the source comes from,” he whispered, but his heartache was not for me, but for her.

“Al, I’m sorry . . .”

“And the cost to perform this curse of binding will be exorbitant,” he added, gaze going everywhere but to me. “It will keep even Newt in new socks. I swear, that woman can put holes in her socks in one afternoon.”

“Al . . .”

“It’s a simple curse,” he said, ignoring that I’d seen his guilt and aching need to move on, to be accepted. “Most of it was prepped when you made the curse to bind the soul in the bottle. You’re simply moving it to a new container. Walk the spiral with Nina’s soul. It will draw it from the bottle as you go, and when you get to the end, you peel it off you and bind it to Ivy.”

Peel it off me? I didn’t like the sound of that. “If it’s that easy, why don’t you do it?”

“Because Ivy is not my friend,” Al said, his hands heavy on me as he moved me to stand right before the beginning of the spiral.

“I’ll do it,” Trent said suddenly.

“Because you, Rachel, are covered in elf shit,” Al amended, dramatically wiping his hand on his suit, “and you’re the only one they are listening to. Walk the spiral. I’ll catch you when you fall.”

He wasn’t talking about me falling because of my leg, and “covered in elf shit” meant the mystics. I believed him. My fingers had been tingling for the last five minutes, but even more telling was Jenks darting about as if nothing was wrong. Even Bis’s color had darkened to his normal pebbly gray, though he showed no signs of waking up. But if the mystics had found me, then the Goddess could, too. Make this fast, Rachel.

My heart pounded. Ivy stood at the center. Her hopeful expression almost hurt. She trusted me to do this right. Nina’s soul was in my hand, like a promise to be fulfilled.

“Plan C, eh? Bind the soul and run like hell,” I said, and Trent tried to smile, failing. Jenks was on his shoulder, and the pixy gave me a thumbs-up. This was for Ivy, for everything she’d suffered, everything she’d told herself she wasn’t deserving of. For her, I would risk it all.

And then I stepped forward, placing my foot on the glowing line.

My breath came with a slow intake, seeming to pull with it the memory of drums echoing against a sky faulted by uncountable stars. A slow lassitude spilled into me as I exhaled, pulling a ponderous beat from the spiral to replace the breath within me. I recognized it, accepted it as mine, drew it in to become one with it so I could bend it to my will. Wild magic.

The bottle grew ice cold in my hand, numbing as Nina’s soul coalesced from creation energy. Far, far older than the Goddess, it emerged, pushed by the waves of sound from the drums into a form that had no shape, a thought that came from no idea man had ever witnessed.