a hand under her elbow and wondered what the baby thought when she looked up at me. Would the nebulous memory of my Beast-face stick in her deep unconscious brain somewhere, to come back as nightmares in her future?
“What’s that?” Molly asked, pointing to the west. I followed her finger and spotted the colors and light show of a magic working. I remembered the earthquake and bright lights Beast had thought were white-man lights.
Something tugged at the back of my mind, like a fish on a line, vital, as if I knew it was important. The lights looked like a bright witch circle. Then I remembered the exoskeleton on the SOD. Ah. Yeah. “Moll, could there be a time circle there?”
“Not out in the open. Time circles need to be underground, in a cave or a windowless basement, someplace where the sun and moon can’t interfere.”
Beast thought at me, There was earthquake and brighter lights there, after.
Yeah. Lights were there before the earthquake, but dimmer. “Molly, is there a ley line near Evangelina’s old house in Hot Springs?” Evangelina was Moll’s sister, the opposite of Glinda the Good Witch. More like the Wicked Witch of Oz fame.
“Yes. Not a big one. But a line leading to a stronger one we can draw through. And not too far away is a liminal line, but we don’t usually draw power from that. It’s in the Nantahala National Forest, on land claimed by the Cherokee tribe, up near Robbinsville. Everharts are polite about borrowing earth power.”
“Do liminal lines lead to thresholds?” Liminal thresholds were locations where the borders between worlds were thin, where things could crawl or cross through. I wasn’t in the mood to fight some big bad ugly from another realm.
Molly yawned, her jaw cracking. “Sometimes. But there isn’t one near here.”
“Okay. So nothing magical over there.” I pointed.
Molly cast a seeing working with mumbled wyrd. “Probably a showy circle to impress human customers. A small clan of weak-as-well-water witches moved in over that way. The Shookers. They take human customers, put on a show with lots of lights. We checked them out. There are no indications of dark magic or blood rites on them or on their property.”
Molly knew her business, but I made a mental note to get someone to check on the Shookers come morning.
Walking into the heat of the inn/house was like being smothered by a heated blanket. Brute, who had not made the flight back with us, raced in between our legs, nearly toppling the two bipeds. I caught Moll and offered to pull her boots off. Baby at her shoulder, she sat on the small bench near the door and lifted a foot. I pulled off her boots and placed them to drip-dry on the rack.
“Thanks, Big-Cat,” Molly said, levering herself up before I could help. “I’m going to change a diaper, put all my babies into the bed with me, and get some shut-eye.”
“You sure you’re okay?” I meant with death magics, and she nodded. “Thank you,” I said. “I doubt we’d have made it without you. I like having a Glinda on my team.”
“Of course you do.” The rest of her words filtered back as she padded for the elevator. “Glinda had horrible fashion sense and awful hair, but she had good timing, and that ‘click your heels three times’ thing is legendary.”
With a claw, I dug the snow and sleet out of my toenail pads and out from my foot fur, dried my pads, and pawed my way to the office. I needed to get out of the red armor, but I could stand it for a few more minutes. “What’s so almighty freaking bad in NOLA?”
“This,” Alex said. He hit a key. “Footage of Sabina.”
Sabina was the only outclan priestess in North America. She had been with Uni Lisi in my toddler memory of a war dance.
“I am badly damaged,” she croaked. On the recording, her throat made a horrible noise that might have been a cough as she tried to breathe. “Near true-death. The larger fragments of the Blood Cross are destroyed.” She coughed as if she was breathing blood. “My mausoleum is on fire. I dig through the earth . . . with the last sliver of the cross in the Americas.”
The audio cut off.
CHAPTER 11
Is That a Royal Decree?
“I lost the call,” Alex said. “Haven’t been able to get it back. I’m thinking Sabina’s underground. Or true-dead. And we have this.” He punched a key on the keyboard