Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic (22 page)

That taste was uniquely Sienna.

∞

I might have lost a little time, because I realized that I’d managed to stand upright, though I was still shaking with pain. The spell was still in my bloodstream. At least that’s what it felt like.

Extremely disjointedly, I thought about trying to channel the spell into something magical. Except I had only my knife on me, and I didn’t know what adding such a spell would do to it. Serves me right for wearing a pretty dress without pockets. Serves me right for thinking I was worthy of such a dress in the first place. That my life was one where such dresses were wearable and —
 

“Standing already,” Sienna said. “Impressive. One of my test subjects was out for two days. And the other — a human — died.”

Jesus, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My ears had to be lying, right along with my dowser senses. Was this just a crazy, creepy extrapolation of Sienna’s tendency to exaggerate? Or was my sister actually as blood-frenzied as she sounded?

“How did you get to Portland?” I asked. I was attempting to control my convulsing limbs. I wasn’t sure I was capable of doing anything more than standing.

“It seems a strange choice, doesn’t it?” Sienna took a few steps closer to me. I still couldn’t see inside the hood, though. “Cute dress.”

“I wore it just for you.”

Sienna laughed and clapped her hands together. She’d let her nails — painted black, obviously — grow too long. They were beginning to curl. Totally icky. Her laugh hit me like chewing glass, running all along my spine. Not that I’d ever chewed glass before. Ironically, it cleared more pain away from my overloaded nerves.

“Sienna —”

“No,” she snapped. “Not Sienna. Not some dull witch name. I’m Valencia now.”

I laughed. It came out through my pain a lot like gurgling. “Like the orange? Disney called. They’re alleging copyright infringement —”

“It means power in Spanish, moron.”

Sienna hit me with the spell a second time.

I brought the knife I still clutched in my right hand up in time to cut through it, but half of it still hit my left side, shoulder to hip. My left knee buckled and I fell sideways to the ground. I tasted blood in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue. That typical sort of pain was easily and utterly overwritten by the fireblood spell.

Except … it wasn’t quite as bad as the first time. This time I was capable of screaming.

Sienna crouched down beside me and brushed her fingers through the riot of curls covering my face. I couldn’t even lift my head, let alone my knife.

“Amazing now, aren’t I?” she said. “I figured it out. Well, one in three times, anyway. How to bind the magic to me.”

“More stolen magic,” I croaked. I was starting to worry about whether the pain was more than just a spell perceived by my brain as painful. I was starting to worry it was doing permanent damage to my veins and arteries.

“What do you think you do with your little trinkets? That magic doesn’t belong to you, either.”

The spell was wearing off quicker than it had before, but I didn’t move as Sienna ran her fingers over my forearm, then down to my hand clutching my knife.

“I don’t kill for power,” I said, desperate to keep Sienna focused on me and not Mory, who had obviously backtracked contrary to my explicit instructions. Damn willful teenagers. I could feel the fledgling necromancer’s magic just around the corner. That magic was expanding even though she wasn’t moving closer, as if she was triggering something. Stupid, stupid, brave, brave girl.

“You will, Jade,” Sienna said, crooning at me as if I was a pretty kitten. “You will kill for me, but now it’s time to go.”

I abruptly straightened from my fetal position. Sienna stumbled back, her hood falling over her shoulder.

I’d rolled, still crouched, to my feet with my knife ready, but I didn’t press my attack further because … because … Sienna’s face.

Sienna snarled and yanked the hood back up over her head. Magic danced around her fingertips. She was readying another spell but it was a slow build, as if she couldn’t cast such heavy magic multiple times in a row.

“Your face …” I said. I wanted to cry, to lie down and weep. Yes, I’m aware I can be a softhearted idiot. But my sister —
 

“Stop gaping at me like a moron, Jade. You think I care what I look like when I have this power?”

Sienna threw the fireblood spell at me. I knocked it away with a slash of my knife without really trying. It was barely half the strength of before, disintegrating underneath my blade just as Sienna had in the portal.

“The portal,” I said. Clicking things together in my mind. “You survived the portal.”

“Obviously,” Sienna answered. “Fuck, Jade. I should kill you just to save you from your ignorant, dull existence.”

“But you have something you want me to do.”

“As I mentioned previously. Think much?”

I took a step toward her. Just one deliberate step forward. I hoped it looked threatening, because I was really sure it was all I could currently manage.

Sienna took a step back and began readying her spell again.

“You need more in your arsenal, Sienna. That spell isn’t going to take me down again.”

“I told you not to call me that.”

The tone of Sienna’s voice reminded me so much of fighting with her in our youth. My heart pinched right in the place that constantly — no matter how much chocolate I consumed or how many shapeshifters I kissed — ached for my sister.

“I never knew …” I stumbled on my words. “I never knew I loved you best.”

Sienna stilled. Her hands were in front of her, the spell on her fingertips. “I know,” she whispered. “I know, sister. Just come with me, then.”

“No, Sienna. I meant I never knew I loved you more than you loved me.”

Mory stepped around the corner of the building at the mouth of the alley. Her eyes were wide and way too big for her pixie face. A too-pale child in dress-up clothing.

“I invoke my blood right to retribution for the death of my brother, witch,” Mory said. Her hands were spread wide at her sides. I could feel the power rolling off her … almost as if she was feeding something with it.

Sienna twisted to look behind her, but she couldn’t keep both Mory and me in her field of vision with her hood up. So she knocked it back. Mory winced at the sight of her face.

“Sienna, you’ve met Mory, right?” I asked.

“Rusty’s sister,” Mory added. “You remember Rusty, don’t you? Because he sure remembers you.”

The dumpster to Sienna’s left shifted. I stared at it in shock. Though I couldn’t feel any magic moving it, it spun sideways as if pushed, clipping Sienna as she tried to jump out of its way. Sienna hit the far wall and stumbled, but managed to stay mostly on her feet.

Mory sagged and swayed as if exhausted. Jesus. Was she somehow transferring her energy to the shades she’d seen in the alley before Hoyt showed up?

Sienna raised her hands, but not at me. At Mory. Fuck. That spell would kill the fledgling.

I lunged for Sienna, knowing it was too far, knowing I wasn’t going to be able to protect Mory. But at the last second, with a black-lipped smile stretched across her face, Sienna pivoted and hit me with the spell right over my heart.

I fell.

The night got even darker around the edges. The spell burned through my heart and into every vein and artery that came and went from it. I was vaguely aware I was arched back on the filthy, garbage-strewn concrete, with only my head and heels touching the ground.

Sienna’s face came into my field of vision. All the veins and capillaries that connected to her eyes were black. They stood out on her pale skin as if drawn in permanent marker. Same for her lips. That wasn’t lipstick.

I collapsed on the ground, the pain easing much quicker than the first two times.

I licked my lips and tried to speak. Sienna’s smile widened. Jesus, her gums were black flesh as well. She leaned over me.

I stabbed her in the gut.

“That’s one,” I croaked. “For payback.”

Sienna shrieked and tried to pull away from the blade.

“Get her, Rusty,” Mory said. She was only a few feet behind me.

Sienna twisted away. She clutched one hand to her belly while the other batted at something that appeared to be attacking her. I couldn’t feel any magic but Sienna hissed and scrambled backward. Small scratches appeared on her face.

Mory touched my hand and then felt her way up my arm. I wasn’t sure until I caught her in my peripheral vision, but she was crawling along to sit beside me. Her eyes locked to Sienna fighting with her invisible demon. I couldn’t move yet.

“You bound him,” I croaked.

“He came when I called,” she answered. “She was going to kill you.” She swayed, struggling to keep her eyes open.

“That’s not why you did it, Mory.”

Mory smiled at me. Death was gnawing on her bones. “You’re not the only one who gets to take care …”

“You have to let him go, Mory. He’s draining you.” Rusty. She’d called Rusty and he’d come to fight Sienna for her. Except ghosts have no form, so he was using Mory’s magic — and maybe even her life force — to attack his murderer.

“I can’t let him go now. I gave it all to him.” Mory collapsed forward over my chest and belly. Her eyes, when they managed to stay open, were still locked to Sienna, who was shrieking and clawing at her own face.

I looked away from my sister’s struggle and focused what little strength and energy I had on Mory. I wrapped my fingers through my necklace where it was still around the fledgling’s neck. I gathered all the magic I found there, then I pushed it out and around Mory like a shield, like a ward of sorts.

The edges of the alley blurred. Pain lanced through my brain and down my spine. I thought I might be passing out but I only pushed harder, adding my magic through the necklace and then up and over Mory.

Sienna stopped shrieking and clawing at the air. She straightened, shaken and bleeding but intact.

“No,” Mory moaned. Then she slumped into a full faint.

“You’re such a bitch, Jade.” Sienna was holding her stomach again, looming over me.

“Come closer, Sienna,” I whispered. “I owe you another.” I raised my knife but it was just a show of bravado. Sienna hesitated. I wondered if she had another of those spells in her.

As if she had come to some decision, Sienna reached for Mory as if to pull her from me. But before I could slash her with my knife, she screamed and snatched her hands away from Mory as if burned.

I laughed again, like a gurgling monkey. “You never learn, sister. Don’t take my stuff.”

Sienna snarled and raised her hands to cast another spell. But then I felt more magic speeding in from behind her.

“You better run, sister. The good guys are coming.”

Sienna looked around distrustfully, but then I felt a ping of magic from a medallion she wore around her neck. Perhaps she’d set up perimeter warning spells.

The good-guy magic was closer. Sienna stood. Stumbling, I was pleased to note. And she walked away. Just like that.

I guess we’d already said our goodbyes for this lifetime.

I released the magic of the shield I’d woven around Mory. As I felt that power settle back into the necklace, it glowed with a gold-blue hue. Well, that was a new trick.

I sat up and gathered the tiny teenager into me as best I could. I wasn’t capable of standing and carrying her.

Sienna’s magic and the oily patch she somehow traveled with to cloak her presence moved away. Behind me, Scarlett, Kett, Kandy, and Desmond approached from two different directions.

It was from this half-propped-up vantage point that I watched McGrowly burst into the alley. He tossed the dumpster that Mory — or rather, Rusty — had moved, hard enough to dent the concrete building. Then he leaped to land on two massively clawed feet one step in front of me.

He reached down with clawed hands, tearing the back of my silk gown to shreds as he scooped Mory and me up in his arms.

A gray wolf with blazing green eyes shot by us, fixed on Sienna’s trail as McGrowly turned back the way he’d come. He began to close the gap between us and Scarlett, who — even with a vampire at her side — still traveled at human speed.

“I was hoping for the transformation,” I said, whispering into McGrowly’s furry shoulder. “You have the best ass ever.”

He growled something that might have been a chuckle.

“I’m going to sleep for a bit now,” I said. Then I blacked out.
 

I became aware of a set of cold hands touching my arms. Kett.

“Leave her,” Desmond said. His voice sounded human again. By the feel of the magic burning into my skin everywhere I was touching him, I was still in his arms. I couldn’t open my eyes.

“At least let him take the fledgling, alpha,” Scarlett’s voice was melodic and filled with magic.

Desmond grunted as the weight on my chest shifted. Mory.

Is she all right? I tried to speak but then I was pulled under by sleep again.

∞

The second time I woke, I was indoors — the lighting was low and the sounds muted — but still, to my pleasure, in Desmond’s arms. He was seated with me draped over his lap. His very naked lap.

I snuggled my ass further into his groin, pleased at the immediate quickening response I got. I curled my fingers through the pelt of hair on his chest.

“We’re not alone.” His low voice rumbled in his chest.

I opened my eyes to confirm that I was nestled in Desmond’s lap in an armchair. The green flecks in his eyes were doing their crazy kaleidoscope thing. He smirked, oddly painfully, at me. He nodded over my head, which I turned only to be rewarded with shooting pain up my neck. “Oh, God,” I said as I blinked past the tears that had rushed to my eyes.

“You and me both,” Desmond said, resting his head on the high-backed, plush chair. The light bronze fabric looked familiar. We were in one of the guest rooms at Desmond’s place.

I tried turning my head again and was rewarded with a smile from Scarlett, who was perched on the edge of the bed and dressed head to toe in black.

“You hate black,” I said.