Bad Blood

The smoke shifted and the demon roused enough to form a face within the smoke, nothing else. Daylight wasn’t its best time. “What do you want, human?”

“Find the ring yet?”

He sneered. “No.”

“Where’s my mother?”

A flicker of a smile. “Gone.”

“I know that. Where?”

“Not my problem.” He closed his eyes.

She picked up the spray bottle of holy water and gave him a spritz. Flames shot up from the aquarium as if she’d just doused hot charcoal with butane. She squinted at the heat.

The demon burst up through the fire. “Human, you try me.”

“Where is my mother?”

“I told you I do not know.”

“Use your power. You’re connected to her. To both of us. I know you are—our blood is mixed with the vampire’s we used to draw you. Find her.”

Nostrils flaring, he lowered his head. His eyes went almost completely black for a few seconds before returning to their usual red. “She’s not on this plane.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She planted her hands on her hips. “Speak English.”

Wisps of smoke curled from his forehead. “I cannot sense her.”

Evie threw her hands up. “Just like you can’t sense the ring. I’m not sure what good you are, demon.” She leaned toward him, her right shoulder suddenly hitching up. She hugged her arm to her body, trying to hold it still. “I can’t wait to destroy you.”

He smiled, reminding Evie of the body they’d found floating in one of the marshes. Time in the sun had tightened the skin into a very similar look. “I eagerly await your attempt.”

“You think I can’t do it? You have no idea, demon.” The years she’d spent in her stone prison had not been wasted. She’d cast and recast spells in her head until she dreamed them better than she’d done them in real life. What else was there?

It was how she had a feeling where her mother might be. Or at least how she’d gotten there. She gave the demon an exaggerated grin as she walked away. “You just sit tight. I’ve got some work to do.”

Her mother had a secret room, one Evie had never known about until her stone statue had been positioned in front of the glass windows overlooking the glades. Amazing how those windows worked as mirrors at night. How the angle of the mirror on the living room wall reflected her mother’s room and the door into her closet. Made no sense why her mother would spend hours in that closet. Not at first anyway.

Evie opened the closet door. The scent of smoke lingered, the last reassurance of what she already knew. It wasn’t uncommon for a witch to have a private altar. Evie’d had one in her old bedroom, just a simple wooden box she kept tucked under the bed. Nothing like the one she had now in the new house the demon had built for her.

She felt behind the clothes, along the wall, her movements releasing the fragrance of patchouli clinging to her mother’s things. Evie’s hand sank into a strange dimple on the wall. She pressed it and the click of a latch being released caused her to nod. A shiver ran down her spine.

She pushed the clothes back, gripped the protruding edge, and opened the door. The smell of burned eggs and earth greeted her. She felt for a switch, found it, and flipped it.

Atop a small altar were the trimmings of the spell her mother had worked to fix the ghost girl’s troubles. The one she’d inlaid with a trap for the varcolai she’d known would pass through the smoke as well. More than that, Evie could tell by the arrangement of things and the freshly burned wick on the oil lamp that her mother had opened the trap and used it. Her disappearance meant the trap had worked. She was out hunting down whatever she’d discovered through the varcolai’s eyes. If she was gone this long, she’d found something good.

Evie kneeled on the pillow before the altar and set about opening the trap again. She threaded a new wick through the oil lamp and lit it, then picked up the mortar and pestle, giving it a good sniff. It seemed her mother had been so sure about her secret room that she’d left all the ingredients sitting out. There was no need to sift through her mother’s supplies for the hawthorn, sulfur powder, and ground bones of a money cat Evie smelled in the mortar, because they all still sat on the altar. Another nearby container held silver filings, but those wouldn’t be necessary to open the portal, since it was tied into the original spell. Although… she picked up the vial of silver filings. Her mother had them laid out but, based on the leftovers in the bowl, hadn’t used them. Silver would strengthen the spell, make it possible to control the subject’s movement and actions, but it would also make the spell heavy-handed. The subject would feel the control.

She weighed the vial in her hand, her fingers twitching. Screw whether or not the varcolai knew what was happening. She needed to find her mother.

A heavy pinch of silver went into the bowl, then she tipped a little of each of the first three in as well. That done, she pricked her finger with the blade beside the pestle and squeezed in a few drops of her own blood. Last went in the pinch of earth necessary to ground the magic. She crushed the contents together with the pestle, then tipped them into a flame-blackened silver bowl and placed it on the burner.

The flame licked the metal, heating the mess until a curl of dirty smoke spiraled out of the dish. She smiled. “Like mother like daughter.” Didn’t hurt that this was the last spell her mother had taught her before the fateful night.