Demon's Dance (Lizzie Grace 4)

I tipped my stones into my hand and then walked in the opposite direction to Belle, stomping down the grass before I placed each stone down. While they were white quartz, between the long, dry grass and the sandy ground, it might be hard to find them again. I passed Belle out the front of the building, and began interweaving my stones around hers, placing one on the outside of her stone, the next on the inside, and so on.

Once that was done, we joined Monty at the front of the old building. “I suspect the next bit will be the most dangerous,” he said. “If she wakes while we’re raising the containment circles, there will be merry hell to pay.”

“Not to mention crispy witches,” Belle said.

“Something I’d rather avoid if we can,” he said. “I think it’s best we perform the spells at the same time. We run the risk of our magic waking her anyway, so we might as well do it in one hit. Just remember to weave an exception into your spell so that I can get past it once my spell is active.”

We nodded and, as he moved through the ring of our stones, we sat down on the ground. I daresay we could have remained standing—as Monty no doubt would—but aside from the basics taught in high school, neither Belle nor I had much in the way of proper spellcraft training. We’d learned to do things our own way and for larger spells, such as this containment one, sitting was better. Especially given the pull such spells tended to have on our strength—the simple fact was, there wasn’t as far to fall if you were sitting.

Once our knees were touching and we’d both taken a deep breath, I said softly, “Right, let’s do this.”

We psychically opened ourselves up to one another. Our energy and our auras pulsed and merged at the point where we touched and I both heard and felt her sharp intake of breath.

The wild magic really has become a part of your being now. That’s rather worrying given how fast it appears to have happened.

It’s also something we can worry about later—

Later may be too late.

If the soucouyant crisps us, then how much wild magic runs through my soul won’t really matter. Let’s take care of this bitch first.

I raised the containment spell, weaving the spell threads across each of the stones, making them as strong as I possibly could and ensuring there were no exit exceptions except for Monty. Belle’s magic rose around me, a familiar touch of energy almost as strong as my own. Both her magic and the ever-present wild magic wove through mine, until a netlike structure had been formed over the hut. It was a tapestry of power that outshone Monty’s, and was possibly even stronger than the spell we’d created to contain the heretic’s magic.

Hopefully it would be enough.

Monty glanced across at us and raised an eyebrow. We nodded and, as one, the three of us tied off our spells and then activated them.

The soucouyant reacted. Violently.

Fire exploded to life in the cabin, and a rush of heat and flame smashed through windows and burst through the door.

Monty swore and bolted for safety—the flames chased him but were brought up short by the shimmer of his containment spell. They rose, following the line of his magic, searching for weakness and an exit point. Our net shimmered as he stepped through.

“Well, that was fucking close.” He hastily patted out a few smoldering sections of shirt. “Now we’ve just got to tighten our magic until we have her in a manageable sphere.”

I glanced at him sharply. “Um, wasn’t the whole point of this exercise to contain and then destroy the bitch?”

“I don’t believe I said destroy—not recently, anyway,” he said.

“Monty, a soucouyant is too damn dangerous to be playing games with.”

“Yes, I know, but I’ve had some new information

that changes things.”

The storm inside the two containment lines grew fiercer and the old hut disappeared in a roar of smoke and ash. I raised a hand to protect my face against a wave of the heat the containment spells couldn’t quite hold. “What sort of information?”

“Apparently, soucouyant can reproduce. It only happens when the spirit becomes old, and it’s more a splintering of its being than actual reproduction.”

I blinked. “Meaning we’re not dealing with separate entities but two parts of a whole?”

“Well, they are separate, but they remain connected. It’s probably why we’ve two in the reservation—after the younger version lost her skin, it rejoined forces with the older part of itself as a means of protection.”

“And yet the older part isn’t exactly doing much to protect the younger,” Belle said. “It’s not like they’re even sharing daytime quarters.”

“I know, and I have no idea why that might be so,” he said. “But the professor and I believe that, given the connection, we could use this soucouyant to track the other.”

I frowned. “That’s still going to be damn dangerous. If there is a connection, the other one will know exactly what you’re doing the minute you try it.”