Black Magic Sanction. Ким Харрисон

the bubble, and the damage had been done.

      “Ivy, listen,” I said, pressing my hand against the bubble to feel my skin warm but not burn. It was a very good sign. “Are you okay? Is Jenks?”

      “Yes.” Her voice came back, tiny and small. “He’s pissed. Where are you?”

      “I’m on the West Coast. Keep the line open, all right?”

      As Ivy exclaimed her disbelief, I shoved the open phone in my back pocket. My two palms went to the bubble, and I pushed. I’d once taken a circle. I’d thought it had been an act of serendipitous timing, but now I wondered if it had been because I could hold the stuff of demons.

      This circle is mine, I thought, filling my mind with the scintillating, broken energy, filling my chi and spindling the excess in my thoughts to dilute the entirety so the weak spots would show. Before me, I fixed on Brooke’s eyes, smiling when the energy spilling into me scraped along my thoughts, the shattered West Coast line filling me as it burned through existing channels to my mind. The weak spot in the bubble glowed, and with a surge of hope, I concentrated, pulling more until I could see the lines of energy I was drawing off the bubble.

      I squinted at my success, and Brooke’s expression became worried. I widened the imperfection. The more I took, the bigger the instability got. It was working!

      My thoughts burned, and I began to sweat. The five witches tried to shore up the barrier, but with a ping, the circle became mine. I gasped as the entire line suddenly spilled into me. A lesser witch would have fried her chi, but the jangling discordance flowed to my mind where I spindled it like mad until I managed to break from the ley line. God, how could they stand manipulating this day after day?

      I fell forward, landing half out of the circle on my hands and knees. “Ow,” I gasped, not from the bump, but from the force in my head. The circle had fallen, and I stared at Brooke, nothing between us but air.

      “She’s out!” the old man shouted, and I moved.

      My boots slipped, and I scrambled on all fours to plow into the weakest member, the youngest, gawky male witch. He shouted in fear and fell back, his training forgotten. His head hit the tile and his eyes rolled back. I waited an instant to be sure he was breathing.

      One down, I thought, then rolled and kept rolling. A yellow ball of force hit the wall, sending goo splattering. It was the oldest man, his head high and his jaw clenched. I yelped and dove for the cover of the middle-aged woman coming for me. Her eyes widened, and together we fell.“Sweet mother of God!” someone screamed, and I thought I saw pixy dust.

      Shaking the stars from my vision, I pushed the woman away and punched to knock her out. She blocked it—badly—and I grabbed her, swinging her around to take the next yellow ball from hell that the head guy had thrown. The goo hit her full on, and I gasped when the ugly yellow splotches grew on my coat. Panicking, I let go, scrambling out of my coat and dropping it as the woman who had taken most of the spell fell to her knees and began vomiting, yellow foam coming out of her mouth and ears. It might be a white spell, but it was still nasty.

      “Oliver, stop throwing that shit!” Brooke shouted, and I looked up. The thought to call Al for help pinged through me and vanished. If I did, not only would I owe Al, but they’d be right in calling me a black witch. I was on my own. And not doing too badly.

      Breathless, I ran at the middle-aged man holding a ley-line charm, grabbing his wrist and spinning around to stand facing his back and jam his own charm into his side. With a groan, he went down, taken by his own spell. I eased him to the floor, narrowly escaping being hit by that foaming-ball-of-vomit spell again.

      “Oliver,” Brooke shouted. “Knock it off! I want her conscious, not puking on my floor!”

      Ignoring Brooke, Oliver pulled his arm back. My eyes widened, and I dove for the nearest circle. “Rhombus!” I shouted in relief as I skidded into it, and a gold-and-black sheet of ever-after flowed up. I didn’t expect it to last long, seeing that I was using that awful, fractured ley line, but at least I had breathing space. I was safe in my bubble.

      “You’re like a cockroach, you know?” came a soft voice behind me.

      Or not. Still sitting on the floor, I turned to see a pair of sensible black shoes in here with me. Swallowing, I followed the gray nylons up to find Brooke with her hand on a hip and a speculative look on her face. “I’m not a black witch …,” I whispered.

      She reached for me, but I couldn’t get my foot up in time, and instead of the expected grasping hand, she shifted at the last moment and fell right on me, her elbow hitting my middle. My head hit the floor, and I might have blacked out for an instant as I struggled to breathe. I tried to shove her away, but she’d filled my mouth with something that tasted like propellant.

      “Turn over,” she said, and arms made strong from battling waves manhandled me onto my stomach. There must have been something in that handkerchief, because I couldn’t resist. My arms jerked up behind me, and I froze, tears starting from the pain. Please don’t dislocate them, please, I thought, going passive in her grip.

      With a satisfied harrumph, she slipped a ring of charmed silver around my wrist and zipped it tight. I groaned when the ever-after washed out of me. It hurt like an old ache, even if the line was nasty, and I tried to breathe through my nose. My circle fell, but I didn’t think Oliver was going to hit me with his flaming ball of puking death. Not with Brooke sitting on me.

      “My God,” Oliver whispered over the sound of the witch retching in the corner. “Did you feel what came out of her? She could have leveled the house!”

      I wheezed when Brooke got up off me, and Oliver’s sensible shoes scuffed into view. “Her aura is blacker than any I’ve ever seen,” he added scornfully, and I grunted when Brooke’s foot wedged under my ribs, and she rolled me over. Three faces peered down at me, Brooke, Oliver, and the youngest, gawky guy, again conscious and holding his head. A faint sparkling sifted from the high windows, and I closed my eyes. Jax. Nick knew what had happened here and done nothing to help. Same old Nick.

      “Oliver, get Amanda unspelled, will you?” Brooke said as she held her wrist. “And check on Wyatt while you’re at it. I don’t know why you use your ley-line skills. You’re not good with them.”

      “Because you insisted on doing this too close to the ocean for my charms to work,” he snarled.

      “What does it matter? We’ve got her.”

      Interesting, I thought as I finally got that wad out of my mouth.

      “Barely,” Oliver said, and Brooke arched her eyebrows and nudged me in the ribs. “I didn’t like this, and I still don’t,” he added. “We could have gotten a demon instead.”

      “Don’t be silly, she’s not a demon. She’s just a witch,” Brooke said. “A stupid one at that, who thinks she is in control and clearly isn’t. Besides, it’s not illegal to summon demons.”

      “It should be.” Oliver was still breathing hard from the exertion, and starting to sweat.

      “I think the media made her out to be more than she is.” Brooke peered at me like I was a bug. “She didn’t do one spell. She had the opportunity and the motive.”

      “It was a demon name that wizard used to summon her,” Oliver protested, examining the eyes of the witch I’d knocked out before then clapping him on the back in support.

      “We only have his say-so that it was a demon name,” Brooke said. “He could have lied, trying to pay us off with a wooden coin painted gold.”

      From out of my sight, Amanda rasped between her gagging, “Oliver. Some help, please?”

      Expression thoughtful, Oliver and the gawky witch went to take care of Amanda and Wyatt, leaving only Brooke. I glared at her, grunting when she nudged me with her toe.

      “A witch couldn’t have broken a coven circle, phone or not,”