“The moon will be up in ten minutes or so,” I said. I took his elbow and pulled Bobby off the sidewalk onto a patch of grass at the curb.
Bobby breathed out and let go of my hand. He closed his eyes and dropped back his head, as if he were falling asleep on his feet. But his hands rose, fingers splayed, as if searching in the darkness, waiting for a gift to be placed in them. “Magic is everywhere here,” he said, his tone a thing of wonder and delight. “So much magic.”
He threw out his arm in a slow, broad sweep, to include all of Under the Hill. “There’s small circles everywhere tonight. I never felt so many witches before.” He pointed upstream. “There’s a small coven there, all from the same family. Misha would say it was nicely balanced.”
I tilted my head, studying him. That was an odd thing to say. For a human.
But . . . not for a witch.
Misha? I sucked in a breath, grabbing a puzzle piece that might not fit anywhere. It might not belong in the image I had been constructing at all. Or it might be the one missing piece. Misha was a witch? The evidence said no. I remembered the smell of the three in the closed hotel room the day I got to town. Human—all of them smelled human—and I had a sense of smell Beast-acute. Even Bobby smelled human. Bobby, who had magic and shouldn’t smell human.
This was crazy. Misha had never smelled witchy, not ever. But witches don’t come into their power until they hit puberty. I had no idea how old Misha had been when she became a woman grown, as the old saying went.
But . . . Charly’s illness—witch children were prone to childhood illnesses and cancers.
Charly was wearing an adult-styled pearl ring that was too big for her finger. Misha had worn a pearl necklace that first meeting. Had the scent of magic been spelled away? Was their jewelry spelled to shield them from discovery?
Softly, I asked, “What kind of witch is Misha?”
Bobby laughed, the sort of laugh he might have had had he been born differently. “Mish thought you would figure it out. Charly wanted to tell you right away, but Misha said to wait. She never let us tell anyone, to protect Charly. She said her being a witch didn’t matter because she had the spell to hide what she was.”
“The spells are in the pearls?”
“Anti-witch-detection spells,” he said with a quiet laugh.
So much for my sense of smell. “But then she came here to write the book,” I said.
“But it still didn’t matter,” he said, “because she wasn’t going to see witches. She was going to see vampires.” He dropped his hands and lifted his head, surprise on his face when he looked up at me. “Are you mad, Jane?”
I had never been good at hiding things from Bobby Bates, and he could read my reaction on my face. As honestly as I could, I said, “No. I’m not mad.” But Misha had been wrong about her being a witch not mattering, because any vampire would have known Misha was witchy the instant the vamp bit her, and no Naturaleza would have turned down a free meal. Misha had gone for a story and research and to find a vamp willing to donate some blood to her daughter. And now she was most likely part of the witch circle I was looking for, being used for God knew what.
But Bobby had no way of knowing that, and I wasn’t going to tell him. The poor decision and the possible catastrophic results weren’t his fault. It was Misha’s for making the decision, and maybe a little bit my fault for not figuring it out already. I was too dependent on my nose, and maybe always had been.
“Moon’s up,” Bobby said, holding out his hand. An instant later, I felt it too, and the magic in Under the Hill increased dramatically as witches everywhere settled into circles, bathed in moon power.
I pulled the pocket watch from my pocket, and Bobby stepped back fast. “That is ugly and it stinks, Jane.”
I turned it over. It was just a cheap pocket watch, base metal with a flying duck in bas-relief on its cover. As far as I knew, no human had noticed the spell smell. “Ugly how?”
“Bloody magics, like rotten meat. Like dead things dug out of the ground.”
Which was an apt description for a vamp, in many ways. “Do you still want to do this?”
Bobby scowled and jerked his left hand at me, demanding.
The plan was to test the waters by letting Bobby hold one pocket-watch amulet and see if he could pinpoint the witch circle that powered it. Then, if nothing happened, we’d try it with two pocket watches, then with three. Of course, there was no safe way to test my method, but I had been holding the watches and they hadn’t hurt me.
I settled the watch into Bobby’s palm and he drew in a hissing breath, as if the thing burned him, but he wrapped his fingers around it tightly and closed his eyes. Instantly his hand lifted and he pointed, one finger rising from the watch. “There. I think—”
Bobby fell, midword, midgesture. Only my Beast reflexes let me catch him before his head hit the ground. I grunted as I let him down gently. Eli rushed up, a vamp-killer in one hand, his small sub gun in the other, his eyes covering the street and houses and even up in the air. As if maybe vamps could now fly. Which gave me pause.
I checked for a pulse and an airway. Bobby was breathing and his heart was steady and strong. I peeled back his fingers to reveal the pocket witch—and the blistered flesh beneath. I swore softly, and Bobby coughed out a laugh. “You gonna get in trouble, Jane.”
Relief swept through me. “Yeah. Mouth washed out with slimy soap. Then put on toilet detail for a month.”
“Crapper detail,” he said, laughing. “Owww. My hand.” He looked at it and his eyes went wide. “I’m hurt, Jane.”
Eli knelt, opened a small med kit, and squeezed a packet of gel on the blisters. He popped a second packet and placed it over the gel, and closed Bobby’s hand gently around it. “Those are second-degree burns. We need to get him to a hospital, but this is a coolant. It’ll take out the sting for now.”
I couldn’t see the writing on the packet, but I figured it was some high-tech military dealio. I had more immediate worries. As I helped him to sit up, I asked, “Bobby, has this ever happened before? Passing out? Getting burned?”
He strained up and balanced on his unhurt arm. “No. But it doesn’t matter. Give me another watch.”
“No way, Bobby boy. I’m not letting you get hurt again.”
“Misha needs me. Charly needs me. I’ll get well later.”
“When you two finish arguing,” Eli said, “I texted Soul. She said to put Bobby in a circle with the amulets and see what happens. It won’t hurt him that way.”
“How do we make a circle?”
“Do I look like a witch? Security expert here. You’re the magic-using part of the triumvirate.”
“Bobby?” I asked. “Have you ever been put in a circle? Do you know how?”
“Misha just draws a ring in the dirt.”
“How about drawing one with a piece of chalk on the sidewalk?” Eli asked.
“Nope,” Bobby said. “Those TV shows and books are wrong. It has to be a complete circle. Breaks in the circle let the power out or in, and the rough sand on the surface make it not complete. Chalk can be used on a clean floor, though, if there are no cracks in it.”
Which was way more than I knew. As I watched, Eli started kicking a circle into the soil with his combat boot. I stayed kneeling and scooped the loosened soil out of the narrow trench. We quickly had a circle around Bobby, with a small area still open. He looked so alone sitting on the ground, his face pale in the moonlight, his freckles like dappled shadows.
“I’ll take the amulets now,” Bobby said. “And will you open them so I can see the faces? Please,” he added, politely, the years of children’s home manners showing.