While There is Breath, There is Hope: When she goes into the space, Jane finds three women and a child, the missing Achee family of witches—including Kathyanini. After the family gets taken to the hospital, Jane, Bruiser, and Evan take the two comatose vampires over to the house where Misha and the others are buried in dirt. Jane goes down first; the two vamps are sent through the portal next, and are followed by the two men. After Jane places candles by each of the witches, Evan plays flute music. The sand begins moving, the vampires wake up and begin singing, the spell speeding up, and Jane realizes that the spell is immortality. Jane breaks the circle, beheading Lotus and then Silandre, and the earth spits out the buried witches. The house begins to shake, and Evan uses his music to blow a hole in the side so they can all get out. Two days later, Jane confronts Evan before he is about to leave in his truck. He has avoided her since that night, and she wants to talk to him. She begins by apologizing for interfering with his spell, and he says it wasn’t working, and if she hadn’t done what she did, the vamps would have succeeded. He apologizes for treating her so badly, and credits her for getting to the bottom of what was going on with the vampires and the blood diamond before. He tells Jane that Molly has forgiven her for killing Evangelina, and that she will eventually call. Jane asks Evan to check on Rick’s calming music, because she thinks it needs adjusting, tells him that Francis was turned over to Hieronymus, and that she thinks he may want to consider the addition of vampire blood to the healing spell he and Molly are putting together for Charly. The problem: Hieronymus wants the iron spike that can do transformational magic.
Epilogue: Eli, in his military uniform, presents Bobby with a purple heart medal (one of his) for his service. Jane, Misha, and a healthier Charly are all in attendance.
Story:
“The Devil’s Left Boot” (in the anthology Kicking It): Liz and Cia Everhart are working at the Seven Sassy Sisters Café and Herb Shop that they own and operate with their four remaining sisters—Evangelina having been killed recently because of her involvement with a demon. Liz feels grief over the loss of her sister and coven leader, and actual physical pain from the same sister having tried to kill her with a boulder, but healing from both is taking a while.
Liz sees a bright red car pull up in front of the restaurant, and when she sees who gets out of it, she calls to Cia. The women are surprised and dismayed to see their biggest tormenter and foe from high school, Layla, on her way in, holding a pygmy goat in her arms. Using the formal forms of both sisters’ names, Layla says that she requires help, saying that she brought the goat as a sacrifice. Cia tells Layla that they don’t do blood-magic, and to get out, but the woman starts to cry, saying her mother has disappeared and the police aren’t taking the situation seriously. Softening a bit at Layla’s plight, Liz and Cia decide to hear her out.
Layla’s mother, Evelyn, missed an important work meeting, prompting her boss to check with Layla, who found her mother’s clothes, purse, and cell in a strange pile on the floor at her house. Layla says she can pay them, and after seeing the stack of bills she has, Cia states the fee of one thousand dollars for trying to locate her, and two thousand more for success, regardless of the state she may be in when they find her (which she points out is Jane Yellowrock’s fee). Agreeing to the terms, Layla says she will meet the two sisters at her mother’s house. When Cia brings up her cleverness at citing Jane’s fees, Liz almost tells Cia what she has kept from her—Jane is in town for the hearing over Evangelina’s death.
When they arrive at Evelyn’s house, the outside does not look disturbed at all. The inside of the house is spotless, meticulously kept. When they go into the missing woman’s bedroom, they find the pile of clothes, which appear to have been removed while she was turning in a spiral. Oddly, they find only one boot, the other not being with the clothes or in the closet. Under the boot, Liz finds dried blood, and Cia finds some small figurines and blood, likely from old magical workings. The sisters determine that the boot is actually in the middle of a pentagram, and they think that someone literally whisked Evelyn away using magic. They say that they can try to do a finding spell, but leave it up to Layla whether she wants them to do so, or call the police and PsyLED to get involved. Layla chooses Liz and Cia, as well as the police already involved.
Since they don’t want to disturb any residual magic left at Evelyn’s, the sisters go to Layla’s apartment to do some research, trying to find out where may be a good location for their spell. They hit on a good possibility—a property owned for over a hundred years by the family of the developer Evelyn works for, and the last place she stopped before going home the day she disappeared. Liz tells Layla to call both the police and PsyLED, letting each agency know that the other had been called, hopefully resulting in faster results.
Liz and Cia set up their circle on the property, feeling the power of the place (which even seems to heal Liz’s ribs). Both women sense that their magic seems more powerful. They call out Evelyn’s name, along with a ritual word, and two people appear within the circle—one of them Evelyn, and the other a female vampire. Cia calls down a hedge of thorns spell to keep the vampire from getting loose. The vampire seems unhinged, and says she wants her shoe, pointing at the boot, and then bites Evelyn, which she obviously has been doing quite often, given the woman’s condition.