Black Magic Sanction

My lungs were filling with air that was just a shade more substantial than I was, and I stumbled, not quite solid yet. I was standing, though, which was a lot better than showing up facedown. Not yet visible to my summoner, I sniffed deeply. There was no scent of burnt amber—I was in reality, and that was a relief. I'd be dealing with people. A demon might be a problem, but I could convince people to let me out, and then I could do some damage. I knew how to play this game. When summoned, demons couldn't lie except by omission, but I wasn't a demon.

There was a faint hum of chanting. I was in a high-ceilinged, round room, dimly lit with a white floor etched in black to make circles intersecting circles. Granite, I thought, thinking it was almost the inverse of Al's kitchen floor. I was trapped in the center of a huge six-pointed star that took up most of the room. The protection circle holding me was actually a shallow ditch made to contain salt, blood... whatever. It glowed faintly, the thick haze fading to a soft shimmer a mere three inches above the floor. The sound of gulls turned my attention upward to the open round skylight high above. No clouds, but the clear transparency of dusk told me it was sunset.

Holy crap! Was I on the West Coast? How in hell was I supposed to get home?

With a soft shiver, my aura finished rising through me, carrying the thought of my body with it and coalescing around my mind to leave a nasty taste of ash on my tongue. I had arrived.

Squinting, I brought a hand up to shade my eyes to better see the five people standing at equal intervals around the six-pointed star. I didn't look like Al, but he could appear as anything he wanted. Any demon summoner worth his salt would know that.

Abruptly I realized where the soot taste was coming from, and horror filled me. I was covered in ash. The faint white haze on my clothes was some dead person's ashes!

"Oh my God!" I shouted, smacking at myself to get it off. The chanting abruptly stopped as I danced about the interior of the circle, beating the chunky dust off me. It only made things worse, and I began coughing on someone's dead grandmother. My eyes watered, and I finally gave up, glaring at them from around my hair, now all over the place. Damn it, I was covered in strawberries and human remains. This was really gross, but the more I brushed at it, the more it stuck to my leather coat, like pixy dust on wet leaves.

Disgusted, I slowly turned in a circle to look at them. Jaw clenched, I tapped the nearest ley line, feeling that same disjointed cracked sensation again, and I wondered if this was why the U.S.-wide coven meetings were held here. If you weren't born to it, trying to use the ley lines on the West Coast would be like Russian roulette. Earth magic wouldn't work at all within a hundred miles of the ocean, a fact that led ley-line witches to think that they were superior to earth witches, but earth magic functioned on fresh water, and put a ley-line witch on a boat—any boat—and they were in trouble without a familiar. I was on the West Coast? Al would laugh his ass off.

Between us, the opalescent sheet of the ever-after showed a hint of all their collective auras, not a shade of black among them. My pulse quickened. This might be harder than I thought. These people looked professional, not like the laughable excuse for black-arts witches dressed in hokey black robes who had once summoned me into a basement. The summoning pattern was odd, too. Not that I'd been in the middle of many, but usually it was a five-pointed star, not six-. This was an old configuration. If it had been a friendly spell, I'd be at the position of power where I could draw from the other six. Here, I was their prisoner.

Two women, three men, varying ages. They were dressed professionally in pastels and dark colors—all solid, with no patterns that could disguise a written charm or symbol of power. The tallest had a laptop open on the high stool next to her. Their ma

Five

"You toad!" I shrieked, striding forward only to stop short at the shimmering wall of ever-after rising up from the protection circle. It hummed aggressively, and I pulled back, stymied. Hands on my hips, I glared at Nick, heart pounding and pissed, growing hot in my strawberry-and-ash-covered coat.

"You summoned me, didn't you!" I accused him, and Nick hunched, brown eyes avoiding mine. "I was driving, Nick. Ivy and Jenks were with me. We hit something, you little prick. If they're dead, I swear I will hunt you down. There is nowhere you can hide from me. Nowhere!"

A clatter of pixy wings turned into Jax, and Jenks's eldest son, dressed in black and looking so much like his dad it hurt, darted erratically in front of Nick. "I gotta get to a phone!" the pixy exclaimed, and he vanished through the open skylight and into the early dusk.

The sight of Jax was a shock, and realizing what I must look like—practically foaming at the mouth and raging like... a demon—I forced myself back from the barrier, the warning buzz having escalated into cramping my toes. Most circles didn't burn, but this one had been drawn to hold demons. To hold me. I am not a demon. I'm not!

The surrounding witches held to their posts to keep the circle strong, but Nick, who had apparently done the actual summoning, seeing that he knew Al's name, was picking up his stuff and jamming it in a worn, army-green satchel. "It's cold in Cincy, Nick," I said, shaking. "You son of a bitch. Even if he survived the crash, he's going to have a hard time staying alive."

The witch with the laptop shifted to draw my attention from Nick's grim expression. She was the tallest one there, wearing a black business suit and gray hose. Her legs were too muscular to be called pretty, and her sandy blond hair was in a simple cut with gray highlights. She looked familiar, like from a news article, but it wasn't until I saw her Mobius-strip pin holding a sprig of heather that I finally got it. Crap, it was the coven.

Worry colored my anger, and I moved back to the center of the circle, looking over my summoners again to see the balances in play. Vivian was still in Cinci

The woman with the laptop seemed to be the high witch, since she did a quick look around at the others before asking Nick in a pleasant voice, "Is this Morgan, or the demon?"

I wrapped my arms around myself, wanting to demand that they let me out, but I knew they wouldn't. They wanted me in a hole in the ground—quick and quiet. I was in so much trouble.

Nick obviously knew it was me, but he came close, as if unsure, faded satchel in hand, shoulders at an uneven slant and a tired look in his eyes. He appeared old and weary, and the sheet of ever-after between us hummed as I moved so close that my breath came back to me. His wrist was a mass of scar tissue where his hand had almost been chewed off during his stint as a rat, and his black hair was longer than I remembered. Slowly, my hands formed fists.

I'd slept with this man, thinking he loved me. Maybe he had. But he'd betrayed me, selling secrets about me to demons and then trying to double-cross me after I'd saved his life. My fist jammed out, hitting the barrier inches from Nick's stomach. Pain cramped my hand and clawed its way up my arm. There was a collective gasp as I danced back, shaking my fist. Rubbing my knuckles, I met Nick's sad expression with a heightened feeling of bitterness.