Nava Katz Box Set 2

by Deborah Wilde

  Using the copious demon intel I had access to, a fake profile, and a few well-placed, thinly veiled rumors about various dangerous spawn on the demon dark web that any demon with half a brain would attribute to Hybris, I slammed back a disgusting shot of balsamic vinegar, logged in with Harry’s password, and started rumor-mongering to set my trap.

  Let the other demons track her. Rohan and I would follow that trail after she’d been smoked out of hiding.

  Let her feel what it was like to be the one being judged. The one being hounded.

  Hunted.

  By the time we crashed, both of us were tapped out, physically, emotionally, existentially, you name it.

  I peeled myself out of Rohan’s embrace and into something vaguely resembling a functioning human being late Tuesday morning. Fumbling for my phone, I fired off an impatient text to Raquel. I didn’t mention the Bullseye; it would just distract her from the more pressing task.

  She texted back that they had a solid lead on the Tomb and were working on a safe way to access Lilith’s magic, but it didn’t look promising so did I have a Plan B?

  I was a lot farther down the alphabet by this point, but yes, I did have someone else I could reach out to. I crept outside to Rohan’s car, grabbed Esther’s purse from the trunk, and crawled into the backseat. After rummaging around in her bag for a bit, I found Sienna’s bracelet, then I placed one of the spiky leaves under my tongue and tried to replicate the steps Esther had taken yesterday to magically call Sienna.

  I infused my essence into the bracelet, but I couldn’t get it to latch. Without that subtle snap into place, I couldn’t push the magic out, letting it ripple back to her. If I pulled it off, she’d experience it as a sudden shiver, that “someone walking over your grave” feeling. It was the origin of the expression. Witches had made up the term as code and it had taken root in the non-magic consciousness.

  Thanks to the amplification properties of the leaf, it was more someone stomping over her grave. Stomping sounded pretty good right now, my frustration rising with each failed attempt.

  I spit out the leaf and set the bracelet to one side, taking ten minutes to run through a series of meditation and centering exercises that I had used back in my performing days. Stage fright had nothing on the looming end of my life.

  I rubbed my eyes. I had to make the time I had left count.

  With a fresh leaf and a fresh attitude, I tried again. This time, I felt the snap. I think. It was either incredibly subtle or a figment of my imagination. I’d try again after I’d dosed myself up with java.

  I tucked the Ziplock bag and bracelet into my pocket and headed bleary-eyed into Demon Club’s kitchen, ready to rip the balls off anyone standing between me and caffeine.

  Fingers crossed I’d find Mandelbaum.

  But no, it was Rabbi Abrams standing in front of the small TV on the counter, speechless, his tea going cold in his hand.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  He raised the volume on the remote.

  “We don’t know why the plane suddenly lost thrust.” The sleek-haired reporter stood on the beach, choppy waves crashing behind him.

  “A plane went down?” I said. “That’s too bad.”

  It didn’t explain the rabbi’s stricken expression.

  Rabbi Abrams sank into a chair next to his half-drunk mug of tea, hunched in on himself. Everything about him drooped: his shoulders, his beard, even his masses of facial wrinkles seemed to puddle around his jawline. “Navela. It was the Executive.”

  “What?”

  “…about eight hours into the flight from Jerusalem to Los Angeles, going down in the North Atlantic,” the reporter said.

  Back in the studio, the Asian American anchor with the carefully modulated facial expression cut in. “Ken, we’re getting reports that the crash was caused by seagulls flying into the engine. This is an incredibly rare occurrence. Can you confirm this?”

  “Yes, Samantha. The black box has yet to be recovered from the private craft, but that is the speculation at this moment.” He touched his earpiece. “We’re receiving word that search and rescue teams are being called back in and recovery and retrieval teams are being dispatched instead. Our thoughts are with the families of the six men who perished.”

  “Thank you, Ken. As our listeners may know, in emergencies, black box recorders…”

  I snapped the TV off, white-knuckling the counter. I’d never met any of the Executive and had only briefly spoken to Rabbis Simon and Ben Moses, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact they were gone.

  Rabbi Abrams rocked back and forth murmuring Hebrew prayers for men who had fallen from a great height and would not return home again.

  Planes had extra fuel tanks, signals, all manner of technology that could save them. We were supposed to have engineered our way out of emergencies. But when it came to emergencies consisting of birds in the engine of the plane that happened to be bringing the Executive to Los Angeles?

  There was no way to engineer our way out of magic.

  I should tell someone, but who? Esther was gone and I couldn’t leave Rabbi Abrams here alone, praying. I poured myself a coffee, in order to feel like I was doing something.

  The rabbi finished his prayer and motioned for me to join him at the table.

  We sat in silence for a while, Rabbi A holding my hand in his gnarled old man ones. Water dripped from the tap into someone’s discarded oatmeal bowl.

  “Rivka called me.” He spoke the words so quietly, I barely caught them.

  Sienna had been there when Esther was killed. Rabbi Abrams and Esther had been friends for decades–he deserved to know the truth.

  “Sienna was retaliating for Esther.”

  “I’ve told Boris about Sienna,” Rabbi Abrams said. “It seemed likely she’d attack again.”

  I struggled to find the right words that wouldn’t snap his head off. “Mandelbaum killed Esther and you’ve alerted him to the presence of a witch with dark magic?”

  He stroked his beard. “I overheard one of his men speaking with him this morning. My Slovakian is rusty but apparently, maybe a month ago, Boris distributed photos of women who are leaders in the witch community. Esther was recognized when Boris sent one of his Rasha to pick me up and the Rasha saw her. Apparently that Rasha is now missing.”

  I choked down a strangled sob. If I hadn’t asked her to come to L.A. she would never have been recognized. Wouldn’t have been murdered because of a stupid chance encounter.

  “You took precautions? With whatever may have been left at the crime scene?”

  I dumped more sugar in my cup, even though the coffee was already cloyingly sweet. “Wasn’t there.”

  He’d made his choice and as much as it killed me, I couldn’t trust him anymore.

  Rabbi Abrams pounded his fist on the table. Once. Hard enough to rattle the honey spoon in its ceramic pot. “Those men on the Executive were my friends. Esther was my friend. This madness must stop before we destroy each other.”

  I crossed my arms on the table and lay my head on them. “This is a disaster.”

  “Sienna has to pay for what she did and Rasha are best equipped to apprehend her.”

  “No, the witches should do that.”

  “You can’t protect her,” he said.

  Wearily, I lifted my head. “I’m not trying to protect Sienna. I’m trying to protect the Rasha who are the good guys. Sienna isn’t using demons against us. She’s using animals and, well, us. If she knows we’re coming for her, she’ll throw everything, everyone, at us. How do we protect ourselves when any living creature could be a threat? I can’t–”

  I shivered, my entire body breaking out in goosebumps. I rubbed my arms briskly against the shuddering that I couldn’t stop. Sienna was calling me, but I had no way of magically picking up the phone.

  The shivering grew worse, more insistent. My teeth chattered.

  Rabbi Abrams maneuvered himself to his feet, holding tight to the table’s edge for
balance. “Navela?”

  “Quit it! I heard you!”

  He stepped back in alarm. Great. Now he thought I was crazy.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  Nodding, he shuffled out of the room. “There are calls I need to make. The families…” He stopped in the doorway and turned back. “Maybe you should go home.”

  “Is that a threat or concern?” I flinched at the hurt flashing across his face.

  He glanced out into the hall and pitched his voice low. “I’m worried Rabbi Mandelbaum suspects you’re a witch.”

  I froze. “Why? What did he say?”

  “Nothing. But a month ago you and Rohan were looking into Ferdinand and Tessa and that’s when the rabbi put witches on some kind of hit list. Including Esther, a witch you were connected to.”

  I sighed in relief that Rabbi Abrams hadn’t heard something on this visit. “Mandelbaum would never have let me remain free if he knew I was a witch. And he certainly wouldn’t have kept me working with Ro when this would have been the perfect excuse to rid himself of me once and for all. I appreciate your concern, but he doesn’t know.”

  Not yet.

  Rohan came in, clapped the departing rabbi on the shoulder, and offered his condolences for the Executive. “You want to go get breakfast?” He glanced at the clock. “Lunch? Anything to get us away from here right now?”

  “Sienna wants to meet.” I stuffed my spasming hands into my armpits. “It’s not optional.”

  “You want me to come with? I don’t like the timing of this.”

  “No. If she wanted to hurt me, she would have.”

  He kissed me hard, his hand clasped on the back of my head. “Be safe. I’ll wait for you at the bungalows. Our out-of-town guests have shown up and everyone is getting busy finding the perfect spot for our reunion.”

  Ah. The trusted Rasha contingent had arrived and were working on finding the compound.

  Sienna portalled me out before I could say goodbye.

  I landed on Sienna’s front porch and peered in through the windows at all the photos still visible on the walls. That meant Sienna hadn’t reset the wards, so I probably wouldn’t be fried for stepping on the doormat.

  The door swung open before I had a chance to knock. I needed a full minute to psych myself up enough to enter, and in the end, basically flung myself inside, although I couldn’t stay in the living room. Even though Kane, Ari, and Rohan had removed all visible traces of what had happened, the room was permeated with a dark, twisted energy that pressed in on me.

  I hurried into the kitchen.

  The Tupperware was sitting on the counter. I chuckled softly, remembering Esther’s prickliness at my eye of newt comment. We’d taken turns poking at each other during our friendship, her with a wit so dry it was practically gallows humor.

  I opened the container and breathed in the aroma of buttery, flaky rugelach. She hadn’t stinted on the raspberry jam filling; it gooshed out of the crescent-shaped cookie in a dark red seal.

  This tiny woman with her sharp mind and her giant heart was gone and it was so fucking unfair. Bringing the Tupperware with me to the glass-topped kitchen table, I saluted Esther’s memory with a rugelach and bit into it.

  My teeth snapped closed on empty air.

  “Those are mine.”

  “Jesus!” I scrambled back, my hand on my heart.

  It took me a second to recognize Sienna, dressed as she was in jeans and a blouse instead of scrubs. Also, she’d lost weight since our last meeting. Her black skin hung gauntly on her narrow frame and her brown eyes had lost some of their fire. She’d cut off her dreads, her hair now barely a couple of millimeters long. Sienna reminded me of when Esther had been in her chemo treatments. Dark magic had killed Tessa. How much longer did Sienna have?

  She munched on the cookie with a moan of delight. “Damn, that woman could bake. Oh, stop making those puppy dog eyes at me.” She pushed the container at me. “One.”

  I swallowed half of the rugelach in a single bite because, wow. They may have been the best ones I’d ever eaten. I blinked away the thought that Esther would never make them again.

  “How’d you tag me?” I said. “You don’t have anything of mine.”

  “My magic is way beyond that.”

  We ate our way through the cookies.

  I braced myself in case I had to emergency portal out, but I had to ask. “How could you take down that plane?”

  “Wise up. All of the Executive was in on Mandelbaum’s plans. None of them were innocent.”

  “Esther didn’t want Rasha gone,” I said. “She wanted hunters and witches to work together.”

  “You talk a big game, don’t you, but when it comes down to it, where’s your loyalty? Is it to the Brotherhood who killed her?” She turned her palms outward and the air shimmered.

  An image of Rohan, Ari, Kane, and Baruch in the bungalows with some unfamiliar Rasha popped up, like I was looking into a scrying mirror. There was no sound, but it was live.

  She said something softly under her breath and everyone in the room froze. One of the men was partially squatting, not having quite sat down. Ari was about to catch a pen thrown to him by Kane, while Baruch tacked a photo up, his hand extended to Rohan who ripped off a piece of tape.

  The image narrowed in on my friends and twin.

  The hair on the nape of my neck stood on end. “Don’t touch them. Mandelbaum’s group is one corrupt element. These men are innocent.”

  “There is no innocent when it comes to the Brotherhood,” she sneered. “The last innocent person was Esther and she’s dead. You think we have demon problems now? If we don’t rid the world of Rasha, the witch community will grow so small and so weak that the wards we’re propping up between our world and the demon realm will fail entirely. Then you can kiss humanity goodbye. But if we get that magic back, in fifty years not only will there be no more demons, we’ll have the power to cure disease, end hunger.”

  “Esther didn’t think we’d grow stronger. She said that maybe in the beginning we could have reclaimed our magic by stopping the creation of Rasha, but too many years have passed. Rasha magic lives in the bloodlines and there’s no going back. Killing off hunters won’t transfer all the individual grains of magic into one big pile for us, it’ll simply mean that our small pile will be bunched with a large heap of magic gone bad. Magic that’s become unstable and unpredictable without its host.”

  “Don’t act like you knew her better than I did.” Sienna choked me, lifting me off the ground without laying a finger on me.

  I scrabbled at my throat, but there was nothing tangible to pry off me. My magic pulsed off my skin, rippling outward at Sienna.

  It bounced harmlessly off an invisible shield, dissipating in the air a foot away from her.

  “That entire organization is our enemy,” she said. “History has taught us time and time again that the men will not allow us to sit at the table. The Brotherhood doesn’t want harmony. They want war. Their entire existence is predicated on it. Maybe they’ll throw us a conciliatory bone and let us be healers. Keep the wards up. But let us have a say in our world? In our magic?”

  My lungs were on fire and my vision kept swimming in and out of focus. “Then help me, in Esther’s memory, so I can do the right thing,” I croaked.

  She closed her fist and I crumpled to the ground, dragging in shaky breaths.

  I rubbed my throat, barely managing to stay upright. “When I… killed Oskar, his magic did something to me.” My eyes pooled with tears. “He blocked me somehow. You have to release it because it’s killing me.”

  I placed my hand over my breastbone. Over the box.

  Sienna stared at me suspiciously, then placed her hand over mine. Her brow furrowed. “There’s something there.”

  I was enveloped in a warm light. It started as a tingle: in my toes, in the crook of my elbows, and the jut of my hips. I bound my own magic to Sienna’s as fast as I could. She gasped and tried to break free, but I
was also drawing on Lilith’s magic.

  Sienna screamed, her head thrown back and the tendons in her neck straining.

  I fired all the magic inside me at whatever invisible barriers kept me from accessing the magic inside Lilith’s prison.

  And that’s when I felt Lilith’s eyes snap open. Awake at last. Still trapped, but very much present in whatever plane she existed in.

  The tingle became a trickle, a river, a rush of pure power.

  I’d experienced a lesser version of this, when Lilith had amped me up to heal Rohan, but now? I canted my head back, bathing in the magic like it was rainfall.

  My heartbeat mingled with the delicate patter of a bird’s heart on the windowsill outside. I scouted the savanna through the night vision of a tiger and blinked slowly at fuzzy light through a newborn’s eyes on the other side of the world.

  I was a mote in an infinite spiral, fully alive and aware and rooted and universal for the first time in my life. I gasped, spinning around. Dorothy in Oz, seeing life in Technicolor when it had only ever been flat Kansas brown.

  Sienna wrenched free, physically and magically. “What have you done? How is Lilith inside you?”

  “Long story.” I laughed in wonder. “This is why you practice dark magic, isn’t it? Not to be evil. To return to this kind of power. The power our foremothers had before the Rasha took it.”

  “Stole it,” Sienna said. “The way you stole my magic.” She blasted me.

  I raised a hand, drawing on Lilith’s magic and yet still straining to keep Sienna’s power at bay. “Seems we have a stalemate.”

  I’ll kill you, Lilith whispered. You dare claim my magic? You nothing. You human. I’ll be strong enough to be free in days and you’ll suffer. You’ll beg for death.

  My arm wobbled, allowing a burst of Sienna’s magic to slash across my side. I grit my teeth, visualizing swiping inside the box for more of Lilith’s power.

  “You really want to use that up on me, knock yourself out.” Sienna didn’t even look winded.

  My magic flared brighter with the Lilith boost. “Scared you can’t hold me off?”

  “As if. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. So long as Lilith is trapped inside you, her magic is static, which means you can drain her like a battery. No sweat off my back if you drain her dry.”