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 manner was subdued and confident, not excited, as I'd imagined, seeing as they were summoning a demon. All were looking expectantly at me. And outside the formal circle, standing submissively, like a dog, behind the woman with a laptop, was Nick.
Chapter 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.