by Kim Harrison
I squinted at my success, and Brooke's expression became worried. I widened the imperfection. The more I took, the bigger the instability got. It was working!
My thoughts burned, and I began to sweat. The five witches tried to shore up the barrier, but with a ping, the circle became mine. I gasped as the entire line suddenly spilled into me. A lesser witch would have fried her chi, but the jangling discordance flowed to my mind where I spindled it like mad until I managed to break from the ley line. God, how could they stand manipulating this day after day?
I fell forward, landing half out of the circle on my hands and knees. "Ow," I gasped, not from the bump, but from the force in my head. The circle had fallen, and I stared at Brooke, nothing between us but air.
"She's out!" the old man shouted, and I moved.
My boots slipped, and I scrambled on all fours to plow into the weakest member, the youngest, gawky male witch. He shouted in fear and fell back, his training forgotten. His head hit the tile and his eyes rolled back. I waited an instant to be sure he was breathing.
One down, I thought, then rolled and kept rolling. A yellow ball of force hit the wall, sending goo splattering. It was the oldest man, his head high and his jaw clenched. I yelped and dove for the cover of the middle-aged woman coming for me. Her eyes widened, and together we fell.
"Sweet mother of God!" someone screamed, and I thought I saw pixy dust.
Shaking the stars from my vision, I pushed the woman away and punched to knock her out. She blocked it—badly—and I grabbed her, swinging her around to take the next yellow ball from hell that the head guy had thrown. The goo hit her full on, and I gasped when the ugly yellow splotches grew on my coat. Panicking, I let go, scrambling out of my coat and dropping it as the woman who had taken most of the spell fell to her knees and began vomiting, yellow foam coming out of her mouth and ears. It might be a white spell, but it was still nasty.
"Oliver, stop throwing that shit!" Brooke shouted, and I looked up. The thought to call Al for help pinged through me and vanished. If I did, not only would I owe Al, but they'd be right in calling me a black witch. I was on my own. And not doing too badly.
Breathless, I ran at the middle-aged man holding a ley-line charm, grabbing his wrist and spinning around to stand facing his back and jam his own charm into his side. With a groan, he went down, taken by his own spell. I eased him to the floor, narrowly escaping being hit by that foaming-ball-of-vomit spell again.
"Oliver," Brooke shouted. "Knock it off! I want her conscious, not puking on my floor!"
Ignoring Brooke, Oliver pulled his arm back. My eyes widened, and I dove for the nearest circle. "Rhombus!" I shouted in relief as I skidded into it, and a gold-and-black sheet of ever-after flowed up. I didn't expect it to last long, seeing that I was using that awful, fractured ley line, but at least I had breathing space. I was safe in my bubble.
"You're like a cockroach, you know?" came a soft voice behind me.
Or not. Still sitting on the floor, I turned to see a pair of sensible black shoes in here with me. Swallowing, I followed the gray nylons up to find Brooke with her hand on a hip and a speculative look on her face. "I'm not a black witch...," I whispered.
She reached for me, but I couldn't get my foot up in time, and instead of the expected grasping hand, she shifted at the last moment and fell right on me, her elbow hitting my middle. My head hit the floor, and I might have blacked out for an instant as I struggled to breathe. I tried to shove her away, but she'd filled my mouth with something that tasted like propellant.
"Turn over," she said, and arms made strong from battling waves manhandled me onto my stomach. There must have been something in that handkerchief, because I couldn't resist. My arms jerked up behind me, and I froze, tears starting from the pain. Please don't dislocate them, please, I thought, going passive in her grip.
With a satisfied harrumph, she slipped a ring of charmed silver around my wrist and zipped it tight. I groaned when the ever-after washed out of me. It hurt like an old ache, even if the line was nasty, and I tried to breathe through my nose. My circle fell, but I didn't think Oliver was going to hit me with his flaming ball of puking death. Not with Brooke sitting on me.
"My God," Oliver whispered over the sound of the witch retching in the corner. "Did you feel what came out of her? She could have leveled the house!"
I wheezed when Brooke got up off me, and Oliver's sensible shoes scuffed into view. "Her aura is blacker than any I've ever seen," he added scornfully, and I grunted when Brooke's foot wedged under my ribs, and she rolled me over. Three faces peered down at me, Brooke, Oliver, and he youngest, gawky guy, again conscious and holding his head. A faint sparkling sifted from the high windows, and I closed my eyes. Jax. Nick mew what had happened here and done nothing to help. Same old Nick.
"Oliver, get Amanda unspelled, will you?" Brooke said as she held her wrist. "And check on Wyatt while you're at it. I don't know why you use four ley-line skills. You're not good with them."
"Because you insisted on doing this too close to the ocean for my charms to work," he snarled.
"What does it matter? We've got her."
Interesting, I thought as I finally got that wad out of my mouth.
"Barely," Oliver said, and Brooke arched her eyebrows and nudged me in the ribs. "I didn't like this, and I still don't," he added. "We could have gotten a demon instead."
"Don't be silly, she's not a demon. She's just a witch," Brooke said. "A stupid one at that, who thinks she is in control and clearly isn't. Besides, it's not illegal to summon demons."
"It should be." Oliver was still breathing hard from the exertion, and starting to sweat.
"I think the media made her out to be more than she is." Brooke peered at me like I was a bug. "She didn't do one spell. She had the opportunity and the motive."
"It was a demon name that wizard used to summon her," Oliver protested, examining the eyes of the witch I'd knocked out before then clapping him on the back in support.
"We only have his say-so that it was a demon name," Brooke said. "He could have lied, trying to pay us off with a wooden coin painted gold."
From out of my sight, Amanda rasped between her gagging, "Oliver. Some help, please?"
Expression thoughtful, Oliver and the gawky witch went to take care of Amanda and Wyatt, leaving only Brooke. I glared at her, grunting when she nudged me with her toe.
"A witch couldn't have broken a coven circle, phone or not," she whispered, looking almost hungry. "No, you're something special, Rachel."
"I'm going to take my something special and shove it up your ass," I muttered, helpless.
Lips pressed, Brooke flipped me over. I immediately turned back, but she had taken my phone from my back pocket, and I stiffened when I heard Ivy, telling me she was going to kill me if I didn't answer her. Brooke smirked at my glare and closed the top, breaking the connection before tucking it in her pocket. The sound of chanting drifted to me, and finally Amanda stopped retching.
Brooke leaned close under the pretense of pulling me to a seated position. "Why didn't you call your demon? You know how. I can see the smut on you."
I lifted my chin. "I'm not a black witch," I said, but a sharp tug on my arm cut my argument short. "Ow! Watch it, will you?" I was sitting upright as the others came back and ringed me in a justice that went all the way back to our beginnings. No one would know. And in time, no one would care.
"Rachel Morgan," Brooke intoned, and I knew this was it. "You hereby have the choice of becoming magically neutered and rendered incapable of bearing children—or permanent imprisonment in Alcatraz."
I stared at them, appalled. "You are bullies. All of you," I said, then yelped when Wyatt shoved me over. My breath whooshed out, and I flipped the hair from my eyes, glaring at them.
"Alcatraz it is," Brooke said, pleased.
Six
The heat was on against the damp chill in the low-ceilinged room where we ate, but I still felt cold. It was noon accor
ding to the clock past the gates that separated us from the kitchen, but it was three by my internal clock, and I was hungry. The scrambled eggs in front of me were not going to pass my tongue, however. They looked good enough, but the sulfur in them would give me a migraine. It smelled funny in here, sort of a mix of dead fish and decayed redwood.
Depressed, I picked at a piece of toast, thinking the butter tasted off. Not enough salt? I wondered, dropping it. I almost wiped my hands on my spiffy-keen, orange jumpsuit, but stopped at the last moment. Not knowing when I'd get a new one, I licked my fingers instead. Across from me was my upstairs neighbor, a sallow-looking witch who had ignored me so far as he dipped his toast into his coffee before eating it. To my left was Mary. I'd met her earlier by way of conversation around the wall between us, and my first sight of her had been a shock; the woman was so thin she looked ill. To my right was a middle-aged guy who never spoke. Most everyone was talking. Alcatraz wasn't a big place, and it was kind of... homey. Maybe it was because we were on an island with no ley lines, surrounded by salt water. There simply was no escape.
Unhappy, I pushed my tray away and sat with my plastic coffee mug. I'd been here since the midnight boat brought me over with a load of canned goods, handcuffed to a pole in the middle of the boat. Since then, I'd showered in salt water in a big empty room—as if being on an island surrounded by salt water wouldn't take care of earth charms on its own—reshowered in freshwater, been poked, prodded, gossiped over, and given a new band of charmed silver with my name on it. It had been a relief to finally get to my cell, where I fell into an exhausted sleep hours before everyone else. I felt like a dog at the pound. And like a dog, I worried that my owner wouldn't come pick me up. I hoped it was Ceri who summoned me out of here, not Al. I couldn't call Al for help while I wore charmed silver, but he could summon me. I had to believe that I'd be summoned by someone, eventually.
At least I'd gotten the cremation ashes off me, I thought as Mary jostled my elbow, and I blinked when her smile showed she was missing a tooth.
"You heard about the food then?" she said, glancing at my tray, pushed to the middle.
"What do you mean?" I took a sip of coffee.
"They drug it," she said, and the guy across from us shrugged, continuing to tuck in.
I didn't swallow, my mouth full of coffee as my gaze went between them, wondering if it was truth or prison razzing. The big guy across from me seemed to be enjoying his breakfast, but Mary looked like she hadn't eaten in years.
"It is!" she said, eyes wide in her thin face. "They put in an amino acid that binds to the receptors in your brain to chemically strip you of your ability to do magic if you eat enough."
I spit the coffee out, and the guy across the table guffawed as he chewed. Feeling ill, I set the coffee aside, and Mary nodded, adding enthusiastically, "Your sentence is based on how much of your ability they want to take away. I've got thirty years left."
The witch across from me finished his eggs and eyed mine. "You'd get early parole and be out of here by spring if you'd eat," he said.
Mary cackled at that, and I glanced at the guards, busy not caring. "So how long are you in for, Rachel?" she asked, eyes on the demon scar on my wrist. She obviously knew what it was. "Life," I whispered, and Mary cringed.
"Sorry. I guess you should eat, then. I got sixty years for killing my neighbor," she said proudly. "His damned dog kept peeing on my monkshood."
"Monkshood Mary...," I said, recollection raising my eyebrows. "You're Monkshood Mary? Hey! I read about you in school!"
She beamed, extending her hand. "Hey, Charles, see? I'm still famous. Glad to make your acquaintance," she said as if having rehearsed it a thousand times, and I took her bird-light hand, feeling like it might break in my grip.
"I'm Charles," the man across from me said, and his hand engulfed mine. "That there is Ralph," he added, nodding to the silent man on my right. "He doesn't talk much. Been kinda down since the cell next to him went empty last year."
"Oh. Sorry." I glanced at him. "Someone got out, huh?"
Mary picked at her crust, skirting where the butter was. "Tried. If they catch you alive, they neuter your magic the old-fashioned way. Ralph, show Sunshine your scar."
Sunshine? I thought, not happy about the nickname, but Ralph put down his fork and pulled the hair up from his forehead. "Oh my God," I whispered, and he let his hair fall, turning back to his meal and carefully manipulating the fork... concentrating on it. Slowly, very slowly. They had lobotomized him.
"Tha-that's inhuman," I stammered.
Charles stoically met my horrified gaze. "We're not human."
Silence fell, and I felt cold. I had to get out of here. Like now! Why hadn't anyone summoned me home yet? Ivy said she was okay, but what if Jenks really was hurt and she'd been lying so I wouldn't worry?
I was so lost in my thoughts that I jumped when I realized someone was standing behind me. I turned, coming eye to middle with one of the biggest women I'd ever seen. She wasn't fat, she was big. Big boned, big chested, big ankles, and big hands. Her pudgy face made her eyes look small, but they glinted with intelligence.
"Hey, Mary," she said with a southern accent. It wasn't the elegant sound of a southern belle, but the ugly twang of trailer trash on the edge of the woods with a trampoline out front and stacks of TV Guides by the door. Her fat-lost eyes stared at me as she casually took Mary's tray, holding it over the smaller woman's head while she shoveled her breakfast into her mouth.
"Lenore, this is Rachel," Mary said, her tone shifting to a respectful fearfulness. It pegged my bully meter, and my face warmed. "Rachel has Mark's old cell," Mary finished.
Lenore's eyes narrowed. "You don't need dis, honey," she said, setting Mary's tray down and taking up mine. "Yer figure's jest fine. Let Auntie Lenore take care of yo-o-o-ou."
Just how many syllables are in "you"? I thought dryly. I wasn't going to eat it, but I wasn't going to let Auntie Lenore think she could walk over me either. Trouble was, it was kind of tight at the table, and she held the tray right over me.
I took an angry breath. Mary shook her head, scared. The posted guards weren't watching. They were careful not to, by my estimation. Fine. "Charles, make a hole," I said, and the man casually made a little hop with his hip. Three people protested as he shoved them down, but his bulk made the move fast and easy.
I ducked under the table and slid all the way to the other side, popping up beside him and stepping up onto the bench seat. Standing taller than Lenore, I jerked my tray away. Or at least I tried. The woman had a grip on it as if it was a ticket out of here.
The surrounding conversation died, and all eyes turned to us. Lenore was staring at me as we both held my tray. "You think you can take me, skinny ass?" she said, eager for a fight, and I sighed. Why hadn't Ivy summoned me out before I had to fight someone?
"What I think is, you'd better let go of my tray before I jam it down your shirt," I said. "Anyone ever tell you that you look like an orange in that jumpsuit? Auntie Lenore? More like Auntie Clementine." Hey, if I was going to fight this woman, I was going to do it right.
"You skinny bitch!" she shouted, and people moved. Except for the guards watching us.
"Rachel, no!" Mary said as she scrambled up. "Stop or they'll gas us!"
Not as long as the guards were in here laughing. Lenore made a fist with her free hand. The fork was in it, placed to gouge. She yanked me across the table. I let go before she could pull me into her and dropped, sitting on the table. Bracing myself, I kicked out with both feet, hoping to hit her solar plexus hard enough to wind her. It could be over in ten seconds.
My feet slammed into her. Lenore didn't move, and the shock reverberated all the way back to my spine. My jaw unclenched, and I slowly sent my eyes up to see her smiling at me. My God, the woman was built like a tank. Lenore smirked, then slammed the tray onto my head.
It hit hard, and my vision spun. "You got yerself a sparkly," she said, grabbing my wrist. Suddenly I f
ound myself careening down the table as she walked, me sliding into everyone's trays until I fell off the end in a crash of tin and plastic.
"Ow!" I yelped as I hit, sprawled on the floor.
"Pretty sparkly," she said sarcastically, and I slipped in coffee and eggs as I tried to get up, helpless in the woman's grip. "Dey only make demon summoners wear dees," she said, wedging a thick finger between me and the charmed silver. "You summon demons?"
"No," I panted. "But I'm a liar, too."
"Then you don't need it none," she said, trying to pull it off me.
"Hey! Stop!" I yelled, but the guards only laughed. I was covered in egg and coffee, and half the table was angry with me for dragging their breakfast onto the floor. "Ow!" I shrieked as real pain stabbed through my wrist. "Let go!"
"Gimme yer bracelet," Lenore said, squeezing my hand. "Give it."
She didn't want my bracelet. She wanted to freaking break my hand.
I pulled back and gave her a side kick, but it was like kicking a tree, the woman was so big. She took it, then swung a thick fist at me. I ducked and people cheered.
"I said let go!" I shouted, throwing coffee in her face.
Lenore bellowed as her grip loosened, and I pulled away. Arms outstretched, she came at me. I ducked, scampering out from under her and slipping on eggs. I couldn't let this woman get a bear hug on me—she'd snap my spine.
Still howling, she turned to follow, moving remarkably fast. I hadn't wanted to hurt her, but I didn't have much choice anymore. Jumping onto the table, I fell into a fighting stance.
Lenore hesitated, her eyes flicking behind me. Taking a step back, she passively raised her hands, but it wasn't because of me. Too late, I turned.
