Demon's Dance (Lizzie Grace 4)

Belle’s amusement deepened. They did say that the reversal spell we have wrapped around the café might be put to good use in a personal charm.

I blinked. I hadn’t thought of that.

So they noted. They suggest you need to up your game.

Hey, I’m not reservation witch. I don’t need to up anything.

Also noted. But they also suggested it never hurts to practice such things in the eventuality the impossible happens.

I don’t like the sound of that. Especially given it gelled with my own nebulous feeling that the future I didn’t want was screaming toward us.

The truck slowed. I peered through the closed but not locked bars of the containment area but couldn’t really see anything out of the reinforced rear window. What’s happening?

Monty thinks we’re close.

Where are we?

On the outskirts of Castle Rock, in some place called Golden Point. It’s a mix of acreage properties and forest.

I grabbed the bars as the truck bounced off the road. Which is a nice, semirural place to go hunting if she’s looking for skin replacement.

The truck came to a halt and then doors slammed. A second later, Aiden opened the rear of the truck. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” I swung the containment door open. “I’d like to know how you get less-than-compliant arrestees in here though—it’s not the easiest place to get in and out of.”

“In the case of the less than compliant, I order in other vehicles.” He caught my hand and steadied me as I jumped to the ground.

Immediately in front of us was a long gravel drive that meandered up the hill to a brick farmhouse. Lights shone through a couple of windows, but I had no sense of the soucouyant.

I did have a sense of death.

I glanced at Monty. “Are you sure she’s here?”

“Yes.” He hesitated. “Though I can’t be 100 percent certain she’s in that house. The tracer spell is becoming spotty.”

No surprise there, given the heat radiating from the jerry can. “I don’t think she’s there. Not now.”

He frowned and motioned toward the still-bound soucouyant. “The tracer spell says otherwise.”

I glanced at the container. The connection between the wild magic and me allowed to see what otherwise wouldn’t be visible. The spell binding and immobilizing the soucouyant had frayed even further, and the dead spots in the wild magic now accounted for at least half of the spell. That it was still holding together and active was rather amazing, but that didn’t mean the faltering state of either spell remained capable of preventing contact between the two soucouyants. And the long tracking thread that had been inserted into this soucouyant’s energy was now little more than half its size. It obviously was still working, but the loss of length would have altered the spell’s reliability.

I rubbed my arms and returned my gaze to the house. “I’m not liking the feel of this, Monty.”

“Neither am I, but we really have no choice if we want to stop this thing.” He hesitated. “But just in case, maybe Belle needs to go back to that lake we passed, and shove the jerry can into it. At the very least, she’ll still be confined by the water if our spells fail.”

Plus it keeps me out of harm’s way and more able to help you if the soucouyant attacks. I like this plan. Belle retrieved one of the water pistols and then handed me the backpack and her phone. At my raised eyebrows, she added, The phone is new. I’m not risking it slipping into the water when I’m trying to drown the soucouyant.

Aiden tossed the keys to her and then said, “I’d rather we approach the house from different angles. That way, if she is there, she’ll have to split her attack.”

Monty handed Belle the jerry can. As she jumped into the truck and took off, he added, “Splitting her energy isn’t going to be a problem if she has fed, but it’s worth a shot.”

“Eli and I will head right,” Ashworth said. “You three go right up the center to the front of the house. If she’s in there, we’ll all feel her before we get too close.”

“And have that fire spell of yours ready, Monty,” Eli said. “It’s your tracer spell that led us here, and she’s likely to have some sense of your presence because of it.”

He nodded and immediately began weaving the spell around his fingers. Ashworth and Eli walked through the old wooden farm gate and then quickly disappeared through a grove of olive trees. The three of us jogged down the gravel drive until it started a sweeping curve around the hill and then cut straight up it.

The closer we got to the old farmhouse, the more convinced I became that the soucouyant wasn’t there. But that didn’t mean she’d fled the area.