pen stroked them out. The magickal ink was red. A heartbeat later, the year appeared beside each name.
“Five,” Sebastian whispered with quiet heat. “She accelerates the game.”
Almost half the coven was gone.
“The other pages,” Sylvia whispered.
“Yes, she’s distributing the inventories,” Sebastian said bitterly. “To taunt us all with her pending doom. This is the problem with her having her magick back again. I didn’t like that dragon prince, but at least he gave her some competition. At least someone else could summon the magick.” He paced the width of the room, simmering. “Now, we’re screwed.”
Sylvia ran a hand over the book cover, then tucked the loose page back inside. “Not quite,” she said with quiet conviction. She met Sebastian’s incredulous gaze. “Eithne said she was giving her magick to me. I should learn to use it.”
“It’s probably too late,” Sebastian countered.
“We’re still here. It’s not too late.” Sylvia picked up the book, aware that it seemed to weigh far more than it should. It was cold, too, as if she held a block of ice. “You could try to be a little more encouraging.”
“Pessimism is my learned response to several millenia on this spinning rock,” he countered, folding his arms across his chest to glare at her.
Sylvia hadn’t realized he was so old. His expression persuaded her to refrain from comment on that.
“You must like it well enough,” she said instead. “You chose immortality.”
“Did I?” Sebastian smiled, looking more like his usual wicked self. “Or did it choose me?”
Sylvia had no reply for that.
Sebastian looked at the book. “Okay, wannabe witch. What are you going to do first?”
Sylvia knew a challenge when she heard one. “You could help,” she challenged back.
“I know better than to mess with magick, but you suit yourself.” He threw himself into a chair, lounging there even as his eyes glittered. He looked ready to pounce despite his posture and Sylvia was wary of him.
He was volatile because he was afraid, as afraid as she was, and she knew it. She turned the book in her hands, choosing her words. “The magick won’t betray her. She has too much of it to command. It won’t tell me how she can be defeated. But Eithne said that Regalian magick is sentient and, if the Dark Queen holds all the magick, that part of it might be less securely in her grasp.” She looked up and met Sebastian’s gaze, seeing unexpected admiration there. “I’m going to invite it to play and see what happens.”
He gave a low whistle. “Not too daring.”
“The time has come to take a risk.”
“Stand back,” Sebastian said grimly.
Sylvia ignored him as she concentrated and composed her first spell. She was vaguely aware that it started to snow outside the windows and that the wind was chilly, but she had more important things on her mind than the weather.
She saw red light illuminate at her fingertips and dared to hope for success.
Murray was locking up his restaurant and bar, Bones, stifling a yawn when a flash of light woke him up in a hurry. A portal to Fae opened on the dance floor, which had to make the short list of his worst nightmares. He didn’t even have time to react. Someone or something was shoved through the portal, then it was closed, leaving the bar in darkness once again. How could that be? He’d had the wall faced in steel where the portal to Fae had been, and even buttressed it with a wizard’s charm.
But the portal had opened in the middle of the dance floor. That meant it had been sliced open by a Fae weapon.
It also meant that there wasn’t a safe place in all the world.
Murray made his way cautiously across the bar, then realized it was his bartender, Mel, unconscious on the floor. She’d been lost in Fae for over a month and relief flooded through him at the sight of her.
Unless, of course, she was dead.
Unless, her return was a trick.
“Mel?” Murray fell to his knees beside her and checked her pulse. She was alive, but she still had a red string on her wrist. Cursed but breathing. Murray would take it over the alternatives. He felt the air move around him, as if a maelstrom surrounded her, but focused on helping her. “Mel! Are you okay?”
“No,” she murmured, her voice more husky than usual, then tried to sit up.
“Are you cursed?”
“No more than I was before,” she said grimly, meeting his gaze.