Blood of the Sorceress. Maggie Shayne

the energy that hits them.” Lilia nodded toward the pond. “Can you put the rock back?”

      Indy shrugged. “Never tried.” She pointed toward the ripples still radiating from the surface of the blue-green water, swung her arm again, and the rock burst out and sailed in the general direction it had come from, hitting the ground and rolling several more feet before bumping to a stop against a tree trunk.

      Lilia nodded. “You can slow it down, move things deliberately, precisely. It just takes practice.”

      “I can?” Indy looked at her forefinger. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

      “What about you, Magdalena? Did any of your powers remain after your mission was accomplished?”

      “Scrying.” She walked to the pond and looked at the water. “I’ve always been very good at that, ever since I was little, seeing visions of our past in ancient Babylon in my mother’s scrying mirror. But the ability seemed to get turbocharged when I had the chalice. And that didn’t fade away after the chalice vanished. Give me a cup of water or a candle flame or anything, really, to focus on, and I can see all sorts of information in it.”

      “And sometimes she gets visions without even looking for them. They just pop into her head,” Indy put in.

      “‘Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone and truth you’ll know,’” Lilia quoted softly. “Can you ask for and receive specific information?”

      “I try. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t, and some unrelated random thing pops up instead.”

      Lilia nodded. “You’ll get better with practice, too. Though I don’t imagine we’ll get to keep our abilities very long. We set all this into motion long ago, to restore an innocent man’s soul and free him from a prison beyond imagining. The Gods allowed it, apparently even granted us the skills and powers we’d need to make it happen. But once Demetrius accepts the final soul-piece, our mission ends. We’ll probably go back to being normal.” She looked from one sister to the other. “Or as normal as any witch can be.” Her sisters laughed, and she felt herself tearing up. She knew that if Demetrius refused her, she would die and be separated from her sisters again for a long time. But she pushed that thought away. “It’s so good to be together again.”

      “Group hug,” Lena said, pulling her sisters into her arms. They leaned their heads against each other, and Lilia closed her eyes and saw them as they had been so long ago. Three harem slaves, with wild raven hair and deep brown eyes that hid the mysteries of the forbidden craft taught to them in secret by their mother.

      They’d died together. While casting one final spell together. And together they were going to bring it to completion at long last.

      Finally they separated again, and it was Lena who looked at the cave. “Let’s get this done,” she said. “I want to get back to the baby.”

      Together they strode to the falls, pulling their shawls over their heads and dashing through the icy spray into the darkness beyond. Indy drew a flashlight from her backpack and clicked it on, aiming the beam down nature’s dark corridor. “This way,” she said.

      As they began walking every step echoed, and even Lilia felt a shiver of fear rasp up her spine after they’d gone a couple of hundred feet. “We’re close,” she said. “I feel it.”

      “It’s right here.” Indy pointed at a smooth stone wall without a single unusual characteristic. “Or at least, it was.”

      “Maybe it closed on its own,” Magdalena said, reaching toward the wall.

      Lilia caught her wrist, stopping her from touching. “It’s still here. You just can’t see it until someone activates it, or there’s an energy surge or something. Watch.”

      She bent low, picked up a pebble and tossed it at the wall. It did not ping against the stone and bounce back. It vanished instead, swallowed by a soft blue glow. And then the wall changed before their eyes as that glow widened, morphing into a swirling oval of blues and greens that looked like sparkling water but defied gravity.

      “Yep,” Indy said. “That’s just how I remember it.”

      “Get the gear out, Indy,” Lena said.

      “I’m on it, I’m on it.” Indy was already pulling her backpack around, kneeling, removing items one by one. A shell, a sandwich bag filled with herbs, a vial of holy water, a lighter, a geode, a box of sea salt, a red candle. She set the items down on the cave floor, quickly filling the geode with sea salt and the shell with the herbs.

      “Ready,” Indy said then. “Let’s kick the tires and light the fires, ladies.”

      They moved to form a circle around the items on the cave floor, then stood still, eyes closed, heads lowered, as they prepared themselves for magic. When Lilia lifted her head, the others did, as well, and when she looked into their open eyes, they had turned dark brown, just as they’d been in the past, almost black, channeling the witches they had been, melding them with the witches they were now.

      Lena picked up the geode filled with salt and spoke in a voice that was deeper, more powerful than her usual tones. “What was open, Earth now seals.” She moved the dish of salt in a widdershins circle, spiraling it inward, making smaller and smaller passes each time.

      The swirling oval grew smaller as she worked, and then she stepped back and placed the salt back on the floor. Then Lilia picked up the shell, which was filled with angelica, sage and rosemary. Touching the lighter to the herbs, she got them smoking thickly, then stepped forward. “What was open, Air now seals.” She moved the smoking herbs in the same counterclockwise spiral pattern, and the Portal continued to shrink.

      She stepped back and placed the smoking herbs on the floor but let them continue to smolder.

      Indira stepped forward with the red candle, its flame dancing. “What was open, Fire now seals.” She moved the candle in the same diminishing spiral. The candle flame hissed and spat and shot higher, until the Portal was only about eighteen inches in diameter.

      Lilia picked up the vial of holy water and removed its ornate stopper. This time, they stepped forward together, Lilia in the middle, shaking the bottle at the Portal, sprinkling it with droplets of water, her hand following the same shrinking spiral pattern. “What was open, Water now seals,” she said.

      Then they all spoke as one. “What was open, the Goddess now seals.” They moved their hands in unison, shrinking the swirls of light on the wall.

      The Portal became a tiny dot of unnatural light that could have come from someone shining a laser pointer at the stone face. Lilia stood very close to it. “Thank you for what you returned to me, Portal. Your task is complete. Your energy can now return to Source.” She gazed at the dot and snapped her fingers.

      It blinked out.

      “It is done,” she said.

      Both her sisters sighed in relief. Indy starting picking up the items they’d used, blowing out the candle, smothering the herbs until they stopped smoking. She dumped the remaining herbs in a line in front of where the Portal had been, right along the edge of the wall, and poured the salt alongside them.

      Lena dug several little herb sachets from the backpack. “Same herbs we just used, and some onyx to boot. Just to make sure it stays closed.” She lined the tiny drawstring pouches up in a row beside the herbs and salt on the floor.

      “Can’t be too careful,” Lilia said, dampening her fingertip in holy water and drawing an equal-armed cross on the now-solid stone wall. Then she poured the remaining holy water along the barrier they had created on the floor.

      When everything was packed up, they headed out of the cave and started hiking back down the hill, toward Lena’s place, Havenwood, where her mother was preparing a massive welcome home dinner to celebrate Lilia’s arrival “properly.”

      “I’m surprised that went so well,” Indy said. “Tomas and I tried to close it once before,