Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,5

and a merciless sun beating down like it had forgotten summer was over.

“It’s here,” a pink-haired witch said, and piled out of the front seat of the cab.

Her name was Saffy, short for Saphronia, which she hated, maybe because I’d never seen a name less suited to its owner. There was nothing old-fashioned about her. She had blond roots under short pink hair, a septum ring, and a half sleeve of tats, at least two of which were magical, because I occasionally saw them moving. She’d been inside the shop helping with the kids, instead of outside with the vamps keeping an eye on the local junkies, but that was by choice.

Saffy was a badass.

She’d proven that recently by helping to save the court during the Battle on the Drag. She and a handful of other witches had shown up and taken on a whole army of dark mages, at least long enough for me, Rhea, and some reporters who’d been caught in the cross fire to get out. The local coven leaders had afterward lent her little posse to my court, because, as they put it, I obviously needed some competent help.

That hadn’t gone over well with the Silver Circle, the world’s leading magical organization, which traditionally guarded the Pythian Court. Or with Mircea’s vamps, who had protested both the mage and witch additions to the household. But they hadn’t protested as loudly as I’d expected.

I think the attack had rattled even them.

Despite her badass demeanor, Saffy had proven really good with the kids. She made their crayon drawings move, delighting the younger girls, and helped some of the older ones put rinses of various colors on their hair. She’d also let Belle wear her punked-out leather vest back to the hotel while we came out here, leaving her in a tank top, jeans, a wrist full of charms, and some biker boots.

And black nail polish on the finger she was currently poking at the air with.

“I can wait,” the taxi driver offered, watching her worriedly. And then glancing around at the sparse scrub and some vultures on a hill, looking at us hopefully from atop their latest carcass.

“No, no, that’s fine,” Hilde assured him. “We’re going hiking.”

The man took in Hilde’s smart crepe de chine flowered dress, sensible low-heeled shoes, and old-lady support hose. She had a purse that matched the shoes, in bright, candy apple pink, and a little pearl brooch that kept the ruffled bosom on the dress properly in place. She did not have a hat, but looked like the kind of woman who should have a hat, or at least an Ascot-worthy fascinator.

“What?” the man said.

Hilde sighed and waved a hand at him, and his concerned eyes went blank. “Go back to work and forget about us,” she told him shortly, and the man obligingly drove off, the cab bumping a little on the rocky soil because we’d left the blacktop behind a few minutes ago.

“Is that what everyone does?” I asked, worried about the man’s suddenly slack-jawed, bespelled face. If every witch who needed a ride zapped him, I had to wonder what the long-term effects might be. But Saffy didn’t seem concerned.

“Most of us don’t take taxis,” she assured me, still poking at the air.

“What do you take?”

“A portal from town.”

“Then why didn’t we do that?”

That got me a look I didn’t understand from black-rimmed eyes. “Because none of them would recognize you. They’re spelled to keep out unknowns. It’s a security thing, like changing the location on a regular basis.”

“Changing?” I frowned.

Portals had to be licensed out the wazoo, and the license had to include the location, from fixed point A to fixed point B, because allowing people to just appear anywhere they wanted would make law enforcement impossible. And that was even more true since the war. Unless . . .

“Saffy, we are talking about legal portals, right?”

“‘Legal’ by whose definition?”

“Saffy—”

That won me another look. “If you’re going to rep the whole magical community, you have to understand that the world doesn’t revolve around the Silver Circle,” she told me. “No matter what they think!”

“I know that; that’s why we’re here.”

“You think you know, but you were born into a world the Circle controls—”

“I was born into a world the vampires control,” I corrected her, because I hadn’t been one of the clairvoyants identified early and popped into the Pythian Court for training. Instead, a greedy mob boss of a vampire had co-opted me into his shabby little court and