The Witch with No Name

Frauds or not, they’d managed to get the surface demons into reality. I was starting to think again, and my shoulders scrunched up almost to my ears. Something had happened in the ever-after, something bad. Uneasy, I looked over my shoulder to my mom’s unseen spelling room. I’d been through most of the cupboards, and there’d been no scrying mirror. I could probably summon Al without it, but he was pissed at me.

Unless he’s trapped somewhere. He won’t kill me if I rescue him, will he?

“The ghostly, frightening images with half substance are showing up in most major East Coast cities,” the newscaster was saying, “the vampiric souls appearing in a steady progression west with the setting sun.”

Trent crossed one ankle over his knee. I’d never seen him look so confused. “I don’t get it,” he said, gesturing. “There isn’t a way to move them to reality.”

I glanced at the clock on the cable box. It was very close to sunset in Cincinnati. Stretching, I took the remote and clicked over to CNN. Sure enough, an excited, somewhat nervous man was standing at Fountain Square, the sky still holding the pink from the sun. I had figured they’d be either there or in Detroit. It was too early for Chicago. Behind the reporter were clusters of living vampires. The atmosphere was one of breathless anxiety.

“Sunset . . . ,” Trent whispered, and the newscaster spun, voice rising as he described the sudden appearance of nearly twenty surface demons. My expression twisted as the cameras zoomed in on them, their ragged auras and gaunt limbs standing out against the sunset-red sky, making it look like the ever-after. People squealed, and most of the surface demons ran for the street, looking for somewhere to hide.

Two, though, hesitated, hunched and furtive as they hissed at the vampires coaxing them closer. Trent said nothing, and I clicked back to New York. The undead there had probably figured it out and were likely in the streets looking for their souls.

“Mmmm,” Trent grunted, easing closer to the TV as a news reporter tried to stay in the limited streetlight as she nervously explained what was going on behind her. The sun had been down for a while. It was dark enough for the undead.

My lips parted as the camera swung and steadied to show a surface demon melting into a rapturous vampire. He wasn’t a master vampire. He was hardly a vampire at all, actually, one of New York’s homeless vamps living under the streets and existing on addicts until someone bigger took him out. But he’d found his soul—and it was trying to bind to him.

“My God, Landon did it . . . ,” Trent breathed, but I wasn’t so sure this was going to have a happy ending. You couldn’t see an aura through a TV, but it still didn’t look like a repeat of what had happened up in Luke and Marsha’s apartment, even if the vampire was sobbing, holding on to the corner of the building as the guilt and shame of his soulless existence crashed down upon him.

Spontaneous joining? I wasn’t buying it. “What’s to keep it from spontaneously leaving?” I asked. We’d had to burn the gateway through which Felix’s soul had entered him to keep it from simply going back out.

Someone had stopped to help the vampire, now weeping inconsolably. The newscaster looked uncomfortable as she told people to stay off the streets and out of the way as the vampires found their souls.

“I guess they think we’re dead,” I said, not feeling at all good. I wanted to call Ivy and see how Felix was doing. “The surface demons will be showing up here in about three hours,” I said as I looked at the bright golden light.

His eyes on the TV, Trent got to his feet. “They seem to be staying in the main population centers.”

So far, I thought glumly. “You really think they’re free? For good?” If they were, then that soul bottle I’d made was going to be more than useless.

Trent hesitated, watching the TV as if it might have the answers. “I’ve no idea. Maybe their release was what you felt on the stairs.”

Or the attack in my mom’s spell room, I mused, an ugly thought trickling through me. If it had almost taken me, then maybe it had hit the demons, too.

I jumped as he spun, almost running to the stairs. “Where are you going?”

“To get Bis!” he shouted.

Fidgety, I looked out the big windows at the bright sun. “Trent? He won’t be awake,” I called, then gestured as if to say “I told you so” when Trent came back with Bis perched on his arm like a huge sleeping owl. My bag was over his other arm, looking funny against him.

“We have to get to the ever-after. Find out what happened.” Trent stumbled into the living room. He thrust my bag at me as he sat down on the edge of the couch. Motions tense, he tickled Bis’s ear. “Bis, wake up.”