I walked around the circle again as I waited for time to go by, my light settling on each witch as I passed. The pocket watches were all open, each set at an even hour. I realized that each witch was buried at a point on a clock, and the position of the witch was the time on the clock. So far so good. The dead bodies in the center, near the stairs, were also laid out in a pattern, like spokes on a wheel. I had a feeling that the patterns made by living and dead witches were intended to increase the magical working, adding a layer of complication, another part of the outcome, whatever that outcome might be intended to accomplish.
I found the woman who had the magical number 12 on her amulet. She was elderly, with sagging skin and gaunt features. She had been here long enough to be sitting up to her waist in the soil. I wondered if the parts of her that were hidden belowground were dead already.
Misha hadn’t been here for long. I held the light over her legs, watching for a hint of human movement—a skin twitch, anything—but I could detect nothing. I wanted to feel for a pulse on the top of her foot, but touching her seemed dangerous for us both.
Dissatisfied, I returned to the steps and sat. When my five minutes were up, I hit speed dial for Evan Trueblood, husband to Molly Everhart Trueblood, once my best friend. Of course, that was before I killed her sister.
“This better be good,” Evan growled into my ear.
I almost smiled. “I’m in Natchez, Mississippi, standing below a witch circle painted in black on the floor of a single-story home. On my level are twelve witches, all buried to some extent in the earth, involved in a working that is sucking them down into the ground and killing them. Is that good enough?”
“If you stayed away from bloodsuckers, everybody would be safer.”
Which was mostly what I had been thinking not that long ago, but I was feeling obstinate. “Yeah, because you witches take such good care of your own problems. Like a dead body rolled in a carpet, and a witch using the death magics of dozens of dead witch children to get revenge and make herself beautiful and young again,” I accused, speaking of secrets the Everharts and Truebloods once kept. “So, yeah, go ahead. Blame me. It’s so much easier than taking responsibility for your own problems.”
I could almost feel the fury vibrating through Evan, but I wasn’t going to say anything nice to make it better. This had been a long time brewing. “Now,” I said, making it clear I was changing the subject back to relevant topics. “Do you want to bitch about it, or do you want to save some witches? Because if you don’t help, I’m going to try to free them, and we might all blow up.” The silence after my tirade was almost palpable.
“Tell me everything you know about the spell,” he snarled.
And so I did, starting with de Allyon, adding in Kathyayini’s riddle, the bloody iron discs, the crosses and spikes, and ending with witches on the points of the clock. Evan asked succinct questions and listened without further comment. When I was done, he went silent. After a long moment, I heard him take a breath. “Why do you always end up with death magics to undo?”
“Just lucky?” But that wasn’t what Kathyayini had said. She had told me that I was the root cause of everything. Just like Evan had said. Which could be casual cruelty, or a way to teach me something about myself or make me face some hidden flaw. Or it could be the simple, unvarnished truth. Either way sucked.
“At least now I know why Leo hired me,” he said.
“Hired—?”
“I got a gig at the Darkness Is Forever Bar in Mobile, Alabama,” Evan interrupted, “paying me a small fortune to do an update on the lighting and sound systems. I had no idea Leo owned the joint until yesterday. He knew I wouldn’t hang around to help you, so he kept me close in case you needed my help. And because the MOC is paying me so much money, I did what he said.” Evan snorted softly. “I’m a bigger whore than you are, taking money from the chief fanghead of the U.S. Arguably,” he added. “I guess it’s possible that the MOC of New York has more scions, but not as much territory.” He fell silent, seeming to have run out of things to say on that odd note and leaving me to understand that the arguably did not refer to whether I was a whore. But I held in the snarky comeback.
“I have to study on this,” Evan said, “and make some calls. Don’t discuss us with PsyLED officials.” He disconnected.
I closed the phone when I heard something bump overhead. “There’s a handle in the floor. Pull it up,” I shouted. And only then remembered that someone other than Soul might arrive. Adrenaline rushed through me, and I shivered with reaction. I can be so stupid sometimes. I pulled a vamp-killer and a handgun, then put away the gun. I might hit one of the witches.
But when the trapdoor opened, it was Soul’s hand I saw and Soul’s feet. She had tiny feet in tiny little black boots. I put away the blade, shone the flash onto the stairs, and waited as Soul slowly descended the steps.
“Oh,” she breathed softly as she turned in a slow circle, taking it all in. “Are they wearing iron?”
“The clocks on their chests each contain an iron disc coated with blood. I’m guessing it’s de Allyon’s blood,” I said, not adding the part about skinwalker blood being in the mix. I wasn’t going to share unless I had to. “The blood-donor vamp is very, very dead. Does that make a difference in breaking the spell?”
“Even if he were here, I have no idea how to break such a powerful spell. But without his blood, I fear we are hamstrung.”
“Maybe this will help. ‘Long years past,’” I quoted Kathyayini, “‘was cold iron, blood, three cursed trees, and lightning. Red iron will set you free. Shadow and blood are a dark light, buried beneath the ground.’”
Soul’s eyes went round. “Where did you hear this?”
“An old tribal woman said it to me. She also said, ‘The one you seek is bound to the Earth. She didn’t mean to be bound, but she cannot get away now.’ Neither riddle made sense at the time. But now we have the blood-iron discs, possibly made from the iron spikes of Golgotha, and the buried witches.” I stopped, remembering the scene in Big H’s house, all that white and fancy furniture and silk and satins and one butt-ugly necklace around the neck of the blood-master. He had dangled it outside his clothes, as if proud of it, though it didn’t mesh with anything around him. He wore it as if he wanted it to be seen. By me. As if drawing attention to it.
“And the Master of the City of Natchez wears a copper chain on his neck with something made of corroded metal, wrapped in copper wire, hanging from it. I thought it was just ugly jewelry, but why would he display jewelry so different from anything else in his taste? What if it’s the same iron?” I tried to find sense in it all, but it was like trying to untangle a snarl of copper wire or a skein of yarn after a cat had played with it. And so much for Evan’s order to say nothing to PsyLED.
“I don’t know if he’s bound like the witches or took it as a trophy or using it now himself. But—I know you said it had to be something big, like a boulder or a tree—but what if the necklace is the focus we’re looking for? The amulet.”
“It should be something large,” she started. “But this is something I’ve never heard of before. I shouldn’t base my conclusions on old experience,” Soul said.
“I think the thing Big H is wearing is something from de Allyon, the maker of this circle, and Kathyayini’s riddles were meant to light a path into a possible future. I think he’s wearing blood iron.”