The handle of the dagger in my back pocket caught on the splintered frame, and I jerked back, thinking it was someone grabbing me.
A little on edge?
I slid the weapon from my pocket and flipped it over in my hand. A Mara blade, or “dagger of confusion.” The weapon was supposedly powered by the death of a fifteenth-century monk, though Beau thought otherwise. Because they were so common in the paranormalworld, he believed the daggers to be spelled by mages, not a long-dead monk. Either way, the blade confused blood cells, brain waves, and the spirit itself. With the right spell, it also disrupted magic.
Plus, it was sharp as hell and capable of doing as much damage as any other knife.
The rat alpha’s words popped into my head.“The three witches tried to put him in the trunk, but none had the strength to lift him. They were only able to drag him into the back seat. One of them wielded a blade.”
Was this the blade the witches had used on Ronan?
I wrapped my hand around the hilt and pictured driving it straight into Desmond’s chest. Carolina’s. Aldrich’s.
Gordon’s.
An emotion I didn’t understand gripped me. It was like rage and sorrow crammed into a little schadenfreude wrapper. Gordon was dead. He’d chosen a path that had brought him to this, sure, but it didn’t feel that simple.
What it felt was senseless.
The wind kicked up, blowing dust through the open doorway. It hit me with a sizzle, instantly reigniting my magic. It hadn’t dissipated, hadn’t died—it had been … banked, like a slow-burning campfire.
I held up the blade, stared at the gleaming edge. Magic buzzed through the thing, sending sparks of heat into my palm.
Wild. I’d powered it with my magic. Now I could sink this dagger into Desmond and watch his magic crumble. It would be easy to kill him. One flick of my wrist, and it would be over. I wouldn’t even have to leave the safety of the front step.
Safety of the front step? When had a slab of concrete become safer to me than my element?
“Betty, where are you?” He sounded close, but Margaux’s voice in my head sounded even closer.
“…you ran to the house from the soil—your element. You ran from the thing that makes you strong.”
With a shake of my head for the possibly stupid decision I was making, I drove the Mara blade into the wall and twisted hard, breaking it off at the hilt. Magic dispersed in a puff of gray smoke, and the thing became nothing more than a plain old, busted knife.
Beau was right. Definitely mage magic.
Another gust blew into the house, this one carrying even more dust. I bit my lip against the urge to scream as the red-hot grains dug into my flesh before vaporizing and being absorbed. Overheated blood flowed through me, the magic so hot I traced its progress through my veins and knew the instant it hit my heart.
I belonged to my element, and it belonged to me. There was no need to keep my feet on the step, no need to brandish a spelled weapon. The soil wanted me to use it. It was angry about the foul magic and bloodshed Desmond had brought to it—raging.
“There will be more carnage,” I warned it. “He can’t be allowed to walk away from this.”
The wind whipped soil—and power—into me, and I spared a second to wonder if Gordon’s spirit were close, helping it. He’d been an air witch, after all. A weak one, but perhaps that mattered less in the next realm.
“There you are. Decided to stop hiding?”
Desmond’s clothes were soaked with blood. I hoped it was only Gordon’s, but there was simply no way that could be true.
No wonder the soil was angry.
“Yes,” I replied. “I’ve decided to stop hiding.”
“Good.” His wide, weird smile pinched into a narrow line.
I stepped off the front step and into the dirt, my bare foot landing beside Gordon’s head. Revulsion moved through me in a wave, and I had to choke back the urge to throw up.
“Desmond?” I cleared my throat. “Why’d you kill your coven? You went to so much effort to take it from Margaux only to kill your loyalists. I don’t understand.”
“Witches are a dime a dozen. I’ll find more. Besides, why would I want the loyalty of people willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder? Theyserved their purpose, but I could never trust them, just like the coven mother couldn’t. Not that it matters,” he said, his voice back to normal. “Once I lost the wolf, it was over for me in La Paloma. If Margaux doesn’t take me out, the wolf alpha will.”
