Kicking It

FORKED TONGUES A Holly and Andrew Story BY RACHEL CAINE

It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up to a cross burning on my front lawn, but it was definitely not my favorite time, either.

The first I knew about it was the sudden violent movement of the bed as my boyfriend, Andrew, jumped out from under the covers. When Andy moved like that, I instinctively moved, too; I wasn’t battle-tested like he was, and I didn’t have gunslinger reflexes, but I could throw myself facedown on the floor with the best of them.

“Goddammit,” he growled, and twitched the curtains aside a little more. I caught a glimpse of firelight. “I’m about to shoot some sumbitches, Holly.”

I lifted my head from the floor, crawled to the window, and peered out through the bottom. Yep. Cross, burning on our lawn, and a beat-up red pickup zooming down the street, full of heroes wearing black ski masks, armed with cheap beer and attitude. “No shooting,” I told him. “This may be Texas, but we don’t like to have gunfights in the streets.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll just follow ’em home and shoot ’em in their own yards. That’s civilized.”

Andy’s voice was tight, and I couldn’t really tell if he was just being scorchingly sarcastic. After all, he’d been born into a different time—a time when it was perfectly okay to take your grudges all the way across town, and also to shoot up Main Street on a Saturday night, just because it was Saturday night. And if you lost your gunfight, you might be displayed in a stand-up coffin for a day or two with a sign around your neck as a lesson to others.

Andy was Old West at its best, and sometimes at its worst, too.

He’d been brought back from his long-ago death a while back, but he still hadn’t quite adjusted to modern life . . . and I was sometimes afraid he never would.

He was yanking jeans on now over long, lean legs, and his eyes were narrowed and glinting like stone in a hard-set face. Handsome man, Andy Toland—broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, an old-fashioned kind of handsome that had an interesting dash of mischief to it. And history. The scars on his chest, some still red, were a road map to a hundred tales, most of which I knew I’d never learn.

But he could hold a grudge. Oh, yes.

As he pulled his checked shirt off the hanger in the closet, I scrambled up and put a hand on his arm. That stilled him, just for a few seconds. Long enough for me to say, “No, Andy. Stay here. Stay with me.” It was a magic incantation, something I said to him almost every day—sometimes a murmur on the edge of sleep, sometimes caught on a breath during lovemaking. But it meant something to me, and to him.

He shot me a guilty look as he put on the shirt and quirked a quick smile in apology. “All right, I ain’t going,” he said. “Rubs me sandy to let them get away clean, though.”

“Hey, they did the hard work of building the damn thing, hauling it, sticking it in the ground, and setting it on fire,” I said. “It’s the least we can do to let them drive off drunk and run into a tree.”

He hugged me, his shirt still hanging open. “And that is why I love you, Holly Anne Caldwell. Because you’re just so saintly about it all. Hey, what is that you have on?”

“Nothing,” I said, and put my arms around his neck. “Why? You like it?”

“I think it suits you fine,” he said. “Wish I could take you back to that bed and tell you plain, but—”

“But the neighbors might be scandalized.”

“Mostly by the burning cross we left burning.”

I pulled away from him, reluctantly, and dressed quickly—underwear, because going out without it would scandalize the already-butt-hurt neighborhood, and then a pair of jeans I could afford to get dirty and a work shirt I normally chose for gardening. Thick work boots, too.

By the time I was dressed, had grabbed my cell phone, and went outside, Andy was already using our fire extinguisher on the cross. I called 911 with the report and took a cell phone picture before the fire was out completely, then a few more with the flash for good measure.

It wasn’t a huge cross; I guessed our harassers hadn’t been especially ambitious this time. But our neighbors were awake and watching, though no one came out. My house was in a quiet suburban neighborhood, one of those that kept the sidewalks clean and had association meetings about “bad elements.” I was not ignorant of the fact that I was one of those bad elements, especially since not one of those watching came out to see if we were okay.

Not one.

“Holly,” Andy said, in a much different sort of voice—a sober one. “Better come see this.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about at first; when you’re facing a five-foot blackened cross still giving off wisps of smoke, it does tend to command center stage. But then he pointed at the ground in front of it.

Punched into the lawn by a knife was a picture. I turned on the light on my cell phone and crouched, not touching it or the knife, to study it, and I felt my stomach withdraw into a tight little clench as I realized what it was.

It was a photo of a dead woman, staring up at the camera. Her throat had been slashed, and her mouth was open and bloody; it looked as if she’d been beaten before the final cut. Her eyes were open and empty.

And I knew her. So did Andy.

“That’s Portia,” he said. “God damn them. Want to tell me I shouldn’t have shot them on their porches now?”

No. No, I didn’t. But I took in a deep breath, dialed 911 again, and reported the photo.

I asked for Detective Rosen, to save time; he’d show up, where some of the others might not. They’d have all kinds of excuses—out on a call, unable to respond, batteries dead. But the truth was that after the particularly painful murder of one of their own, Detective Prieto, a significant portion of the Austin Police Department didn’t want to protect and serve people like us.

People like witches, I mean.

Andy nodded toward the cross. “We should get that thing down.”

“No,” I said. “Leave it up. Let them see it as it is.”

“Want me to set it back on fire, too?” His voice was too tight, and so were his shoulders. He prowled restlessly, back and forth, and I could feel the fury snapping off him like invisible lightning. Andy was a dangerous man in this mood. “Not taking this flat on my back, Holly. Not taking this any damn way. They want to come at us, they better come ready for hell.”

Moments like this, I wished that witchcraft worked the way it did in the movies . . . that I could just murmur some fake Latin and blow away bad things. But the tradition of it had come down through the ages, and it was not only hard, but each of us was limited in what we could do with it. Andy and I, we were potions witches; give us time and ingredients, and we could do everything from heal the sick to raise the dead and keep them walking. But potions took time, energy, and concentration, and they didn’t keep well.

Potions couldn’t help us with something like this. Might as well take a slug of whiskey to calm the nerves, and then break out the shotgun.

There were a few witches in the world capable of actually cursing someone, fast and with effective spells. I’d never met one, and they damn sure didn’t live in Austin, Texas. The picture of Portia proved she wasn’t one of them, either.

We sat down on the steps of the house, and Andy put his arm around me. We didn’t speak. I watched lights go on and off in the other houses and thought that this would, yet again, be brought up at the association meeting as a disruption. We were those people now. And while we lived in a time a bit too PC for pitchforks and torches, I could feel the tide of sentiment turning against us.

Witches had come out to the public in an odd sort of way, about ten years back. Two specialists had teamed up because they wanted to solve a murder. One was a potions witch, and the other was a witch who specialized in making shells—creating a perfect copy of a human, but without the spark of life. A potions witch—commonly called a resurrection witch, when they did what I do—could brew a potion that put the spark of life back in, and that was exactly what they’d done. Together, they’d brought back a murder victim from beyond, to tell the incredulous detective all about his murder. And who did it.

Other witches teamed up for the same purpose. Before long, unsolved cases were being closed right and left . . . but there was a hitch. Even the strongest resurrection witches—and I was among them—couldn’t keep a dead soul in a resurrected living body for long. We expended our own energy to seal the bond, and the dead . . . Well, death had its own gravity. Eventually, it pulled the soul away. The longer that soul had to stay, the more it, and the witch, suffered. So the logical recourse for the cops was to record the testimony of the resurrected, and play it in court.

Turned out that was ruled unconstitutional at the highest levels, and now testimony of the dead no longer counted. It still solved cases, but it was inadmissible. The business for resurrection witches had fallen off significantly, and although people still wanted their loved ones revived for a brief period, it wasn’t exactly a cash-heavy business.

I often felt that we’d revealed ourselves for nothing, really. As my dad used to say, no good deed goes unpunished.

Which explained the burning cross on my lawn.

A regular patrol car arrived without lights or sirens and parked at the curb under the pecan tree; the two patrolwomen seemed professional enough, and they interviewed Andy and me separately. Detective Rosen arrived about thirty minutes later, just after I’d taken a seat on the step again. Andy was still talking to the officer. He was holding his temper, but I could see it was an effort.

“Can’t keep him out of trouble, can you?” Ed Rosen asked, and sat down next to me. Even at this predawn hour, he was well dressed, in a gray suit and a tie. I never could get a read on Rosen’s mood; he always seemed completely closed off. I respected it, but it could also be off-putting at moments like this, when I badly needed someone to be on my side.

“Considering we were sleeping in our own beds, we’re doing our best, sir,” I said. “It looked like the usual nonsense, a truck full of drunk assholes with a cross and a Google map. The thing looks too nice for them to have nailed it together, by the way. I think they stole it from a church.”

“It takes a special sort of self-righteousness to steal a cross from a church to burn on somebody’s lawn,” he agreed. “Also, usually some alcohol.”

“Check that off your list. I saw the bottles in their hands.”

“Recognize anyone?”

“Ski masks,” I said.

“License plate?”

“Did you miss the part where I said we were in bed?”

“Then why am I here, Caldwell?” His voice had taken on a weary edge, and I realized he thought I was just taking advantage of the fact that we’d worked together a couple of times before. I missed Detective Prieto. He’d been surly and difficult, but I’d always known where he stood.

A lot of people thought it was my fault he was dead. They weren’t completely wrong about that. His murder had stirred up all kinds of trouble in Austin, and now, six months later, it was becoming popular to hate our witches. Churches were more vocal. None of us much dared to have a Facebook or Twitter account, which might be used to track us down; the digital threats made it almost useless, anyway. Considering that Austin had always been a model of tolerance and support, it felt like a last-stand situation to me.

“Come look at this,” I said to Rosen, and walked him over to the picture. He examined it as closely as I had, shook his head, and took some photos of his own. “The woman in the photo is named Portia. I don’t know her last name. She’s a foreseer witch, runs some kind of tarot-reading business.”

“Here in Austin?”

“I think so,” I said. “I’ve never been to her place. I met her at a conference.”

Rosen glanced up at me, and his gaze lingered. He had a long, rectangular face and a fringe of thick silver hair, with thick eyebrows to match. Kind of a silver fox, actually. “Witches have conferences? What do you do, exchange spells? Sell each other cauldrons?”

“Something like that,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood for mockery. “A woman is dead, Detective. So maybe you could stop judging and investigate?”

“We fully investigate everything that’s reported,” Rosen said. “Even when it’s a waste of time.”

“You think a dead witch is a waste of time?” That calm, quiet voice came from behind me. Andy had walked over to join us, probably drawn by the dark energy of our face-off. He did love a good fight. “Where I come from, the law had to pretend to do a little more work before they gave up, at least.”

“Where you’re from, the law was whatever the man with the fastest gun said it was. At least, that’s what the stories say.” Rosen studied Andy for a moment. “Can’t see it, personally. All this gunfighter bullshit.”

Thank God Andy wasn’t wearing a holster and a six-gun. I still saw the impulse travel through his body, the twitching of fingers on his right hand. And I saw the dark, uneven slice of the smile on his face. “Probably is bullshit,” he agreed. “I’d stick with that, Detective. But, hand to God, you’d best get to digging on Portia’s death, or I will.”

Rosen kept eyeballing him. “Is that a threat, Mr. Toland?”

“Not toward you, sir.”

So very polite, all this male aggression. “Do you need anything else?” I asked Rosen. I was regretting that I’d asked for him on this, but I honestly couldn’t name a single detective at APD who would have been any more receptive just now. “Because it’s been a hell of a night so far.”

“I’d expect it’s been worse for the woman in that picture,” he said. “I know my job, and I’ll do it. You two stay the hell out of everybody’s way. We don’t need amateurs cock-blocking us and blowing up the investigation.”

“You mean you’re going to do one?”

“If she’s really dead,” Rosen said. “Right now, I see a picture that might be a fake. Once I have an honest-to-God corpse, I’ll get to work. Other than that, maybe you ought to put a fence around your yard and get a big dog, unless you enjoy this kind of thing.”

“So you’re just going to file it and forget it,” I said. “Right?”

“Miss Caldwell, every hate crime gets reported to the FBI, and I’m going to flag it that way. So just quit punching me. It’s not a fight.”

He sounded tired, and in that moment I saw the strain in the tight wrinkles around his eyes. He’d probably been up for hours, and maybe had been just kicking off for the night when he’d gotten the call to come to us. Made sense he wasn’t thrilled to be here.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Bad night?”

Some of the tension left his body. “Yeah, bad enough. We had a teen girl missing over in Clarksville. Found her in a cardboard box behind a bar. Not a pretty sight. I’ve got a daughter her age.”

“I’m sorry.” I didn’t know Rosen all that well on a personal level; he wore a wedding ring, but I knew nothing about his home life, if he had much of one at all. Some cops didn’t. On impulse, I held up a finger. “Wait here, okay? Be right back.” I dashed into the house and opened up a cardboard box sitting on the sofa in the living room. In it were small bottles with the printed label HOLLY’S BALM. It was magic, but benign and shelf-stable. Not my creation. Andy’s. And it was selling like hotcakes.

I grabbed a bottle from the carton and went back outside to Rosen. “Stress relief,” I said, holding it out to him. “No charge, and I promise, it won’t damn your immortal soul or anything. But it works.”

He looked at it with a frown, but opened the cap and sniffed. I watched the change come over him: pure, simple peace, flowing like air over his body. He let out a breath, capped the bottle, and said, “Well, holy shit. That’s good stuff.”

“It’s effective for up to six months once opened,” I said. “I figured someone in your position probably needs it more than most.”

He thanked me with another nod, more pleasant this time, and said his good-byes. They weren’t effusive, but I didn’t expect them to be. The patrol officers left soon after, and Andy and I wrestled the heavy, soot-encrusted cross out of the ground and dragged it around back. Our neighbor’s German shepherd took exception, but I wasn’t impressed. He hadn’t bothered to bark when the cross went up. “Rosen could be right about the fence and the dog,” Andy said. “Might be a reasonable step. Otherwise, I’m sleeping on the front porch with a shotgun. A little buckshot in their asses might move ’em on.”

“We’ll get a fence,” I said, and stripped off my blackened work gloves, which I dropped on top of the cross. “But you know what I want most?”

“What?” He opened the back door and pulled me inside the house and into his arms.

“I want you in my bed,” I said. “Not out on the porch.”

“You going to change into what you were wearing before?”

“After I wash off the smoke smell.”

“Join you in two shakes,” he said.

I looked back when I reached the top of the stairs, and saw that he had locked the door and was standing at the window staring out at the yard.

Detective Rosen had taken the dagger and the photo with him, as evidence. I didn’t know what Andy was looking at now. Maybe nothing.

“Andy?” I asked.

He dropped the curtain, turned, and said, “On my way.”

Whatever was bothering him, he seemed to have let it go. By the time he was in the shower with me, damp and soapy, neither one of us was wondering about the future very much.

It was a mistake. Obviously.

I went to work the next morning just as I normally did, albeit still smelling a little like smoke (you can never get that stuff off) and feeling gritty and raw on only about three hours of solid sleep during the entire night. Also feeling pleasantly buzzed by the very intense attention Andy had paid to my every need. So on balance, it evened out, at least until I finished my drive to work.

I turned the last corner, going on autopilot (as you do) and thinking about what I had waiting on my desk. I was an accountant—nothing too exciting or even too challenging, but it paid the bills and kept me in medical insurance, which even potions witches need. You can’t brew it all. I’ve tried.

I hit the brakes, because on the sidewalk in front of my building was a crowd. Okay, it wasn’t a mob, but it was at least thirty people, chanting and carrying homemade signs.

Signs that read GOD HATES WITCHES and FIRE THE WITCH.

I knew, with a sinking feeling, exactly who they were talking about.

My coworkers were having to run the gauntlet to get into the building, and were being handed neon-bright flyers (some were crumpled up on the ground, which made me happy). I was certain every flyer had my name, my picture, and some white-hot speculation on just how horrible and evil I was.

I realized that if I just sat in the car, they’d see me anyway, so I made the turn into the parking lot and pulled into a space at the back. Deep breaths.

I was preparing to face the lions, but then the phone rang. Saved by the bell, I thought. I was hoping it was Andy, but it wasn’t, and I wasn’t saved, either.

It was my boss, Heather. Heather said, “Hey, um, Holly? I think—maybe you should take some time off. Don’t come into the office, okay?”

“Really?” I felt shaky and cold, but I tried to sound clueless. “Why?”

“We have a little—situation here. HR and Public Relations are handling it, but everyone agrees that having you come in right now would really escalate things.” She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “I’m so sorry—you know I hate this, but there are . . . people out here. Saying bad things. And everybody’s very upset.”

“They don’t think it’s my fault, do they? Because I didn’t do anything!”

“I know that, and honestly, Holly, you’re great, but . . . let us try to sort this out. Just take a few days off. I’ll cover it. You’ll be paid for your time. Just . . . go home and relax, okay? I’ll call.”

She hung up without waiting for my answer. I didn’t suppose her directive was really optional anyway.

I put on my sunglasses, since I’d be driving into the sun, and circled the lot to get out. I considered running over a couple of protesters, but that would only prove their witches are evil point, so I didn’t. I gunned my engine, though. A little.

I got a whole mile before the enormity of it hit me. The feeling of having your skin peeled back and your insides prodded. The violation and betrayal of trust. It wasn’t logical, but somehow the feeling of being outed at work was horrifying. My private life had just been laid bare to people I had to deal with every day.

I pulled over to the side of the road and cried miserably for about ten minutes. Then I sucked it up, bought myself an ice cream sundae from a Mickey D’s in the same block, ate it in the car, and drove back home.

There were protesters in front of my house, too. Equal numbers to those at my office. Some had strollers and small kids with them, because screaming hateful insults is a family affair. They blocked my driveway when I tried to turn in, and one stupid woman actually put her toddler down on the concrete in front of my car’s bumper. She clearly hadn’t thought that one through. If I was as evil as she claimed, why wouldn’t I just keep going?

I hit the brakes.

Andy wasn’t home; I didn’t even need to check to know that, because if he had been, he’d have been outside with the shotgun, threatening to stand his ground. And that would only have made the situation that much more volatile.

I put the car in reverse and sped away, leaving a gaggle of protesters milling in the street behind me. If my neighbors hated me before . . .

After some thought, I drove to the police headquarters, where Ed Rosen had his office. If there was one place anti-witch protesters weren’t likely to gather, it was there. And sure enough, the coast was clear when I paid for my parking and went to sign in at the visitors desk. Once I had the right ID pinned to my jacket, I rode the elevator up with half a dozen others, savoring the relative quiet. Nobody gave me odd looks. It was like I was just . . . normal.

I had the feeling that was a sensation I would come to miss very soon.

Rosen was in his office and on his phone, frowning intently as he scribbled notes on a yellow legal pad. When he glanced up and saw me through the clear glass wall, he frowned even harder. He got off the call fast, hung up, and yanked his door open to bark, “What are you doing here?”

“Can’t go to work,” I said. “Can’t go home. I’m being picketed. The only thing that’s missing is a bonfire and a stake.”

“Give it a day,” he said. “You were right about the woman. Her name is Portia Garrity, and she’s dead. Beaten in her tarot shop with—get this—her own crystal ball. Throat slit before she was dead. You want to explain to me what her superpower was?”

“She was a seer,” I said. “She saw the future.” He gave me a look of cartoon disbelief. I sighed. “Not her own future. Other people’s futures. She wouldn’t have seen this coming, in other words. Don’t look at me like that—I don’t make the rules, or I’d be able to turn you into a toad for looking at me like that.”

He shook his head, but didn’t pursue the point. “Apparently she wasn’t looking far enough ahead to put in a decent security camera system, either, so we have nothing showing who came in or out of the place during the day. Her last appointment on the calendar was at noon. After that, we’ve got no record of ins and outs until we broke into the shop after your little yard-related incident and found her dead on the floor. ME says she died sometime between two and four in the afternoon, most likely.”

“What about the knife?”

“Definitely administered the death stroke on the throat. As far as we can tell, the knife wasn’t hers, either. Looked old, probably some sort of antique bowie knife.”

Poor Portia. I tried not to think about her last moments, her confusion and horror, but it was all too real to me. As real as those people at my house screaming at my car. I’d been hated before, but as an individual. Those people out there hadn’t known me or cared to know me. To them I was a symbol and that was enough.

Had Portia been a symbol, too, to be beaten and slashed to death just for having the bad luck to exist? Or was it something else? Something worse?

It was also frustrating and frightening as hell to think that somewhere in that faceless, shouting crowd could lurk someone capable of doing this—to Portia, and maybe to me and Andy, too.

My skin tightened, but I knew I had to do it. I said, “I want to bring Portia back.”

Rosen must have suspected that was coming, because he wasn’t surprised. His eyes narrowed, and he was shaking his head before I’d even gotten the last of it out. “No,” he snapped. “Not happening. New department regs. No resurrections conducted with city participation or support. No payments to resurrection witches, either.”

“When did that happen?”

“After Prieto’s murder,” he said. “Guess you didn’t get the memo.”

As much as I resented it, I couldn’t blame them. Detective Prieto’s death had hit everyone hard, especially his fellow cops. “Fine,” I said. “All I need is a tissue sample from her body. You can do that much for me, Detective. I’m about to solve your murder for you, and you don’t have to tell anybody it ever happened or pay me a dime.”

I was afraid, really afraid, that he was going to blow me off completely. It was a risk, because he’d have to put himself and his job on the line for me to get that sample.

Prieto would have done this without hesitation. He’d have fussed about it and pretended to hate it, but he’d have considered solving Portia’s death way more important than his own career. That was part of why he’d been killed.

Rosen was very definitely not Prieto, and I read the very clear debate in his face before he finally, grudgingly nodded. “You’ll have the tissue sample tonight by courier to your house,” he said. “I don’t want to see your face again. Get the hell out and stay out. If you get a lead, you call me, but don’t come to this department again.”

As I walked away with what I’d wanted, the triumph was mostly wiped out by the steady, dispassionate looks of the other detectives in the office. Whether sitting at their desks, walking around, or getting coffee, they all looked at me with identically empty expressions and cold eyes.

Something told me that Rosen’s injunction barring me from this place might not be about his own moral objections to what I did; it might actually be for my own safety.

And that was genuinely disturbing.

I didn’t relish going home, but by the time I got there, the protests had diminished to only a handful of people wandering around with signs. They were keeping very strictly to the sidewalk, and not blocking my drive, so I opened the garage with the remote and parked as quickly as possible, then shut them out. I spotted my across-the-street neighbor standing on his porch, hands on hips, watching the scene with pinched-face annoyance.

There would be interesting dinner conversations all down the block tonight.

Andy met me at the door leading into the house and swept me with a comprehensive, full-body look. Not a sexy one. “You all right?” he asked, in that Texas drawl that let me know he’d been worrying. I nodded. “Guess you saw our new friends.”

“Saw them at the office first,” I said. “My boss said not to come in anymore. Andy, I think they’re going to fire me.” It was ridiculous to get teary-eyed over the loss of a midlevel office job, but it had been mine for a long time. My desk. My routines. And even if they hadn’t been friends per se, my coworkers. “Dammit. This is shit.”

He took me in his arms for a moment, and that felt better. A lot better. The tears were a brief little shower that passed in the warm glow of his body heat against mine.

“Thanks for not shooting the folks outside,” I said, and pulled back to study him. “You didn’t shoot anybody, right?”

“Nope,” he said. “Might’ve cleaned my shotgun a bit on the front porch, but the way I understand the laws around here, I wasn’t breaking any. Just cleaning my sporting equipment.”

Even in Texas, that might have been pushing it, but it had cleared off the less committed fanatics, and I kissed him on the lips for it. Hard. “No shooting,” I said. “Promise me.”

“Can’t promise, but I’ll try my best,” he said. “If you weren’t at work, where did you go?”

I sighed, kicked off my office shoes—no need for heels anymore, sadly—and flopped onto the sofa. Andy moved my legs, sat, and put my feet in his lap. Another thing I loved about him: freely given foot rubs. I might have moaned. “I went to see Ed Rosen,” I said. Then, “Ow. Yes, right there. Oh.”

“What did Austin’s Finest have to say?”

“They found Portia, all right. Just like in the picture. No leads so far.”

“You asked after resurrection?”

“Of course. The city’s not doing it anymore. New rules.”

“Well, it ain’t our rule.”

“Rosen’s going to send over a tissue sample,” I said. “Then we can get to work and make sure we know—”

I was cut off by the sound of our front doorbell ringing. Before I could even swing my legs away, Andy had slipped out from under and was at the front door, retrieving the shotgun that leaned right next to it. He pumped it, an unmistakable sound that would have carried right through the door, and said, “Who is it?”

“My name is Pete Lyons, sir, and I need to speak with you. Am I talking to Mr. Toland? Mr. Andrew Toland?”

Andy looked back at me as I came up behind him. “You know any Pete Lyons, Holly?” I shook my head. He raised his voice. “Ain’t a good time for callers. Maybe you can come by some other time.”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” the man said. He had a deep, soothing baritone voice, an actor’s modulation and control. “I’m your city councilman, and I really need to speak with you, son. Please open the door.”

Andy’s eyebrows raised, and he mouthed, Son? at me in a scandalized sort of way that nearly reduced me to a giggle, but I managed merely to nod. He unlocked the door and opened it, pointing the shotgun one-handed and with pinpoint precision at the man who stood there.

He just about blocked the entire entrance. Lyons was not so much fat as solid. Tall—he towered over Andy by a good six or seven inches. He was built like a linebacker, all shoulders and hard bulk, but it was swathed in an expensive blue suit. He must have had his shirts custom-made, considering that neck size. Only in Texas would that suit have been paired with a bolo tie, complete with a big chunk of turquoise to wrangle the braided-leather cords. When he smiled, he revealed perfect veneer-white teeth in a tanned face that, despite its round cheeks, looked dignified and strong.

“I’d shake hands,” Lyons said, apparently completely unruffled at having double barrels pointed his way, “but yours seem busy. May I come in, Mr. Toland? Miss Caldwell?”

I put my hand on Andy’s shoulder, and he lowered the shotgun but didn’t take his stare off the man. “Come in, Mr. Lyons,” I said, and struggled to put myself in Southern Hospitality mode. I wasn’t feeling it. And I didn’t have my shoes on. “May I get you any iced tea?”

“I’d love some,” he said, and took a step inside.

That was when I noticed the boots.

They definitely did not match the suit. I supposed everybody was allowed an eccentricity, and these definitely were one. Some cowboy boots can play at dress-up, but these were a workingman’s boots, battered and scarred from years of hard use. They were brown, paled by the sun and water and wear.

They gave me the oddest feeling as they walked into my house like snakes slithering over the threshold. Andy, though, didn’t react, and I decided it was just my own nerves getting to me.

I caught sight of the die-hard protesters outside, lined up silently, waving their signs. One of them saw me looking, and pointed to the sign he was holding. It read THOU SHALT NOT SUFFER A WITCH TO LIVE, with the Exodus citation below it.

Then he pointed at me, made a finger gun, and pulled the trigger.

I gave him the finger in silent reply, shut the door, and locked it. Then I turned back, with an artificial smile on my face, and went to the kitchen to pour three iced teas.

By the time I’d carried the glasses back to the coffee table and fetched the sugar and spoons, Andy had relaxed sufficiently to put the shotgun completely aside. Lyons didn’t seem to care one way or the other; he was sitting as if he were in his own home. “Miss Holly,” he said, and accepted the tea with a charming smile. The only thing the man lacked to make him look like an affluent oil baron was a thousand-dollar Stetson. “You’re too kind. It’s getting a mite warm out there.”

“Then you’d think those jackasses would go on home,” Andy said. “Hate to see ’em get some kind of stroke.”

“Now, now, those people are exercising their perfectly legal right to assemble and their right to free speech,” Lyons said. “Those people got convictions, and they’re not afraid to stand up for them. I respect that. I’d think you’d respect it, too.”

“In my time, men of conviction ran the risk of taking a beating, or a bullet,” Andy answered. “Ain’t got no room to respect liars, and fools who believe ’em. As far as I can tell, your world’s got no consequences for telling lies and making threats, and that’s toxic, mister. It lets cowards be bullies, and make no mistake, that’s what these folks are. Bullies. I’ve known heroes. They damn sure ain’t heroes.”

Lyons studied Andy for a moment, sipping his iced tea. Then he turned to me. “Is that how you feel about it?”

“I think someone stirred up a mob, maybe even using magic,” I said. “And put them to work to drive the witches out of Austin. And I think that someone is probably you, Mr. Lyons.”

The smile slipped, like a greased belt on an engine, and for a second I saw the cold, calculating man behind the good ol’ boy mask.

And I saw the power.

Witches aren’t superheroes; we don’t have Spidey sense or any ability to detect things beyond our particular specialties. But from time to time, some things are so powerful they make themselves known, regardless. Even a regular, normal person would feel it.

And Andy and I both knew, in that cold second, that what was sitting there sipping iced tea pretty as you please was not a human being at all. Not in any sense we could have named it.

I expected Andy to make a grab for the shotgun, but he was smarter than that. A shotgun wouldn’t do squat in this moment of revelation. Something like Pete Lyons sneered at mere human violence. We were small before him. Small and very fragile.

The smile came back. “Good iced tea, Miss Holly. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“What are you?” I asked.

“Your city councilman,” Lyons said, perfectly calmly. “I got elected earlier in the year on a platform of clearing out corruption, you might recall. Well, I found some. I’m getting rid of it, and making this city safe for decent folk.”

“I know what you are,” Andy said. His eyes were slitted and dark, and he was as tense as Lyons was relaxed. “Seen something like it before, back in the wars.”

“The Zombie Wars?” Lyons shook his head and laughed. “Old West romantic nonsense. Like you, Mr. Toland. Fables like that are the reason we don’t need witches and their filthy ways. Corpses killing innocents? Horrifying nonsense.”

I knew the story of the Zombie Wars, from the Old West time when Andy had originally lived and died; corrupted resurrection witches had tapped into power that nobody truly understood to launch that war, and the good witches of the time had sacrificed their lives to stop it. Andy had been the last, and he’d died ending it.

“Is it?” Andy asked. “Holly Anne, you ought to know, some bits of that war didn’t make it to the history books. Like where those original bad witches got all that power from. Was a man by the name of Hattan—Joshua Hattan. He was a demon-raiser.”

I felt a jolt, because there weren’t many witches who truly practiced anything like dark magic—magic that was in and of itself completely evil. But demon-raisers . . . they were the blackest of the black. That was a power that could not be used for good; it would taint any action, no matter how pure it seemed. It was the power of rot and ruin, decay and doom.

“I killed Joshua Hattan,” Andy said. “But it ain’t easy to dispel a demon once he’s in this world. Clings on like a stench to anything once owned by the witch that raised him up. You a collector of old things, Mr. Lyons?”

“Why, yes, I do happen to love those bygone days, Mr. Toland,” Lyons said. “Pity about the knife. I thought you’d pick it up. I suppose someone did, eventually.”

The knife. The old knife, driven through the photo, pinning it to the lawn.

“Forensic technicians,” I said. “Using rubber gloves. It’s toxic, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “Well, that all depends on your definitions, I suppose. Let’s just say it opens a window that’s very hard to close. Never mind. I have other things.” He stroked the turquoise hunk in his bolo tie fastener—a massive piece of intense blue-green stone, shot through with thick black veins. It almost looked . . . organic.

But it was a distraction. “Ain’t the tie as worries me,” Andy said. “It’s you wearing a dead man’s boots.”

“You’re welcome to try to take them,” Lyons said. There was that smile again, warm and deceptive and deadly. “Can’t promise you’ll be the same afterward, though. Once you touch them, you’ll have to have them. I killed a man for them. Wore them walking away from his corpse, still warm from his feet. They change you. They give you everything you want.”

“They burn you black inside,” Andy responded. He didn’t seem afraid, or angry. He just studied Lyons now with what I could only think of as pity. “Ain’t nothing of you left in there, Mr. Lyons. So what’s your plan? Drive out the witches, kill what resists like you did Portia, then claim this city for your own?”

“City?” Lyons’s smile didn’t falter. “Thinking too small, son. Austin’s just some provincial little cow town. I’m taking the state. Then I’ll take the country. Wait until you see what’s coming, Andy. Just you wait.”

He drained the tea and put the glass down, then offered his hand for a shake. I stood up and retreated, well out of range. Lyons made the same gesture to Andy and got the same response. “Well, then,” he said. “Guess we all know what’s what. Thank you kindly for the tea.”

“Get out,” I said flatly.

He didn’t object, and he didn’t linger. He walked straight to the door, opened it, and stepped outside. He gestured toward the people on the sidewalk—a peculiar little circular gesture—and as if he’d flipped a switch, they all stopped staring at our house, began chatting amiably with one another, and headed toward their assorted vehicles.

“Tell you what,” he said, turning to face Andy and me. “If you two pack your things and leave town within twenty-four hours, I’ll be generous and let you live. If you don’t, I’m going to have to kill you both in a very bad way. Then I’ll bring you back to serve me in the next phase of my plans.” He tapped his fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. “Good talk. See you soon, ma’am. Andy.”

I couldn’t stand that smile anymore. I kicked the door shut with a boom that must have shaken glass throughout the house, locked it, and leaned against it as my whole body started to tremble.

“Andy?” I gulped for air, trying to calm myself. “Andy, what are we going to do?”

And in that moment, when everything could have fallen apart, Andy said without a quaver, “We burn him down and salt his earth. Because that’s what needs doing.”

The ground seemed to steady under my feet. My shaking went away. I hugged him, and he hugged me back, and the magic between us—the magic that kept him here, held him in this time, in that reconstructed body—it felt strong as steel. It was love that powered Andy Toland. It was the exact polar opposite of what powered Pete Lyons.

Andy had a way of making things clear. Clear and simple. Not easy, never easy, but clear.

“How do we go about that, exactly?” I asked.

“We’re about to find out,” he said. He went to the window and peered through the curtains. The protesters had already vacated the street, and Pete Lyons was pulling away in his black Cadillac SUV, just as a courier van cruised to a halt in front of our mailbox. The uniformed driver got out and trotted up the walk with a small package and a clipboard.

Andy opened the door, signed, and accepted the package, and the driver left in under fifteen seconds, heading for his next delivery.

Inside the envelope was a small glass bottle. In the bottle was a scraping of skin.

Portia’s skin. Ed Rosen had come through.

“Let’s get to work,” Andy said.

Making the shell for a resurrection was a brutal process, requiring a ton of supplies, space, time, and energy. Like cloning, I would suppose, only vastly accelerated. The difference was that the body created was not alive; it was a simulacrum. Everything was in place, held in stasis for the moment that the spark of life entered it.

It also wasn’t something that I could do, or even help to do. So I left Andy in his private workshop, surrounded by supplies, his long steel table in the center, and went to take my mind off my worries.

I cleaned. Any spot that Pete Lyons had touched, I used a cleansing potion on it, brewed of rosemary and sage and witch hazel, activated with my own sweat and brewed with a spell. As I scrubbed, I saw the faint black stain of his presence become visible and then fade away.

The iced tea glass was a total loss, though. I handled it with rubber gloves, put it in a paper bag, smashed it to pieces, and then buried it deep in the backyard. It would kill the grass around it, almost certainly, but that couldn’t be helped. The sugar bowl suffered the same fate. I soaked the spoon in the potion and then buried that, too. The good, clean earth would absorb the darkness, eventually; earth magic was slow, but it was powerful.

When I was certain that everything was cleaned, and every window and door warded for protection, I started the resurrection potion. While that brewed, I made burritos. Hours had passed by the time I unwrapped a burrito and sat down in front of the TV to eat it.

I clicked on the local news—and was sorry I had.

“The controversy over the presence of practicing, for-profit witches in the Austin community continues to grow, with protests erupting at places of business all over the area. In Clarksville, a large crowd gathered this afternoon in front of this store, Magick Incorporated, known to supply local witches with materials used in their spells and rituals. As you can see, Jim, the police failed to contain the protest, which turned violent . . .” I watched, sickened, as the footage played of sign-wielding, screaming people throwing bricks at the windows of my favorite store, shattering the plate glass. They stormed in, pushing and stomping one another in their eagerness to destroy, and I caught a glimpse of Lois Herndon and her two employees being dragged into the street. “Two employees of the store were admitted to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. However, proprietor Lois Herndon suffered a massive head trauma and was pronounced dead at the scene.”

The news anchors didn’t even pause to shake their heads in mock sympathy. They just went on to the next story, which featured one of the protesters earnestly explaining why what they were doing was right and good, and of course they didn’t approve of the violence, but didn’t the Bible say . . . ?

The reporter seemed sympathetic.

I shut it off. I’d lost my appetite, too, though the burrito was delicious; I wrapped up the rest and put it in the fridge, along with the others. I couldn’t take anything to Andy, since he would be locked in the ritual for hours to come; any interruption, however well meant, would ruin the spell.

I went to bed cold and alone, and I dreamed of snakes slithering through the house, up onto my bed, and twining around my neck to choke me.

I woke to find Andy sitting next to me on the bed, his hand gentle on my forehead. Beyond him, the windows were still dark. The clock said it was four in the morning.

“She’s ready.”

I have to admit, this one was hard. Harder than most, because I knew Portia, at least slightly. She was an overweight, kindly lady who’d been vain about her dyed hair and her skin; she’d been obsessive about skin creams and wrinkle prevention, and given that she was lying naked, pale and still on the table, all her faults and flaws laid bare, it seemed a very sad memory to be holding. I tried to think about other things, like the way she laughed, shy and quick, as if afraid she might be caught at it.

This body didn’t hold the wounds of her death; it was her in the moments before the damage was done, as close as could be achieved.

Now for the hardest part.

Andy let me take the lead, because he’d done the tough work of making the shell, but he stayed close, in case of trouble. I opened Portia’s mouth, poured in the potion, whispered the words, and then sealed it with the kiss of life—infusing the potion with my own breath, my own will, my own energy. And through it, reaching through the other side to Portia.

I felt it when we connected; it was a physical shock, like grabbing hold of a hot wire. I felt myself spasm all over from it, and only long experience kept me there, my lips touching hers, as I felt her spirit traveling through the dark, writhing and clawing and fighting and screaming and then present, sinking into that silent form.

Her lips warmed beneath mine, and she took a breath like a sob, and I tasted death flooding out of her and into me, a taste like rancid meat and grave dirt. It was a natural part of the spell. That didn’t make it any better, and I swallowed convulsively, my eyes pressed shut, to make it pass faster.

By the time I’d managed to control myself, she was breathing normally, and her own eyes were fluttering open.

I helped her sit up. She was as clumsy as a newborn, and just as confused; the colors and sharp edges of the world sat hard on those resurrected.

I glanced at Andy, and he moved forward with a warm, soft blanket that he wrapped around her. She tried to help him, but her hands were still too weak to grip things firmly, so I took charge and held it for her, tucking it into a tasteful approximation of a toga.

“Portia,” I said then, as I took both of her cold hands in mine. I could feel her pulse. It was racing fast, very fast. I could also feel the magnetic pull of the dark inside both of us—a pull that would draw her inexorably back to it. There was no such thing as cheating death, in the end; there was only a way to fool it for a while. As a witch, she knew that as well as I did. “Portia, honey, do you know who I am?” Often they didn’t, even if I’d known them before. They had to be reminded, over and over. “It’s Holly Anne Caldwell.”

She licked her pale lips and said, “Resurrection witch.” Her dark eyes shifted focus, to Andy. “Mr. Toland.” That was a very good sign, I thought. I kept holding on. Physical contact helped, in the early stages. “Am I dead?”

That was a question they all came to, eventually. It usually happened right before the memories rushed in—the ones that death held back, at first, out of kindness.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m right sorry, Portia. Do you remember?”

That was the trigger. I felt it hit her through the link we shared. You can’t keep yourself truly separate in this kind of business; it’s messy and sweaty and intimate and personal.

I not only felt her remember it.

I felt it.

A crush of terror, blind and unreasoning terror. The smashing impact of a crystal ball on my upraised arm, shattering bone. Then again, on my shoulder. My ribs, breaking like glass. My skull cracking, then bursting.

And then, as life ebbed, the hot line of the cut across my throat. A sacrificial bloodletting, unnecessary except for ritual, because he’d already done enough damage to kill me. No, her. Portia.

She was staring at me with huge eyes, shadowed with horror. “I know,” she whispered. “What he did, what he did to me, I know—”

“Who?” I had to keep her focused. This was the hardest moment of all, harder even than the pain of her death. “Who was it, Portia?”

“You know,” she said. “It was the man in the boots.” She shuddered, and her eyes rolled up until the whites showed. “He isn’t a man.”

“No,” Andy agreed. “He’s a demon. Portia, you have the gift, and we need you to tell us. You know what we need to know.”

It was shocking, how suddenly her eyes rolled down to focus on his face again. “Yes.” The dark pupils expanded, consuming the brown around them until her irises were completely eclipsed. “There’s an abandoned train station next to the Amtrak station. That’s where he’ll be. But you have to get there fast.”

“Does he know we’ll be coming?”

“He made me tell him where you’d come to kill him,” she said. “Before I died. But I lied. I told him you’d kill him at your house.”

That made me cold, because she’d warned him we’d kill him in our house, and his response? Go to our house. Spit in the face of destiny.

That was just how confident our serpent was of his ultimate survival.

“Thank you,” I said, and I pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ve been very brave, Portia. You’re a hero.”

She smiled, just a little. “I just got murdered, that’s all. But you’ll get him for me, Holly.” The smile faded, and the darkness in her eyes grew to terrifying proportions. “Beware the dog.”

I couldn’t hold her, and I knew it. Some resurrections are like that—minutes, at best. I’d been able to manage more than a day only a handful of times—and one of them had been Andy Toland, resurrected from his Old West slumber, more than once.

But Andy, the most powerful resurrection witch who’d ever existed, had simply refused to leave that last time. And still he stayed, because of me.

Portia couldn’t. She said nothing more, but she silently begged me to let her go, and I did. It was as simple, in the end, as letting go of her hands. The bond severed itself in our minds at nearly the same moment, snapping like a thin silk thread, and her body sighed and sagged and Andy and I eased it back to the steel table. Empty once more, and still.

“I’ll see to her later,” Andy said. That, too, was something done by his brand of magic, not mine; he could unmake a dead body back to the tiny fragments of skin that had created the shell. In the hands of some witches that was a clinical, cold process, but not when Andy did it; he would see her put to rest gently and with respect. “We ain’t got much time now.”

“I’ll get the case,” I said. My potions case—a square leather bag with holders for vials, each one filled and labeled—contained all the secrets the two of us knew, and that was considerable. Was it enough? It was hard to tell.

First, though, we had to get out of the house.

Lyons had dispatched new emissaries—a different group, larger this time, simmering with ugly energy. They crowded the sidewalk and overflowed onto our lawn. Andy, without being asked, loaded the shotgun and extra shells, and strapped on his gunfighter’s rig, with two six-guns. He also put on his leather duster, and a cowboy hat he particularly liked.

Loaded for war.

I just settled for a good pair of sturdy lace-up boots, a leather jacket, and a bad attitude.

“Ready?” he asked me. I nodded, and hit the garage door opener. It rattled up, and I already had the car in gear, moving slowly but with purpose. I managed to get the garage closed again before anybody thought to rush the opening, at least, but that left us pinned, with the protesters swarming around us like angry wasps as we crept slowly down the slanted driveway.

They were climbing onto the windshield, the hood, the roof. Clawing at the doors and hammering on the glass. Something metal hit the windshield and left a mark.

“Go,” Andy said.

“I can’t!”

“Do it.”

We didn’t have much choice, but I felt sick as I nudged the accelerator. It was even odds someone would tumble under the tires, but somehow, miraculously, nobody did.

The car broke free.

As I accelerated, the crowd howled after us; those who’d crawled on lost their grip and tumbled off. One man raced faster than the others and threw a brick that bounced off the trunk and onto the back windshield, leaving an ugly crack.

But we were moving.

I let out a slow, trembling breath, and Andy squeezed my shoulder.

“Good job. Don’t get comfortable,” he said.

I didn’t.

The old train station was one of those places constantly under discussion around Austin—quaintly decrepit, decidedly in need of upkeep, and unused for fifty years, since the thunder of the road had killed the romance of the train. Amtrak now ran out of a smaller, more modern location, one with all the elegance of a cheap strip mall, as the older structure sat in limbo.

It had always struck me as full of darkness somehow. As we parked along the side, in its shadow, I felt it again, only stronger—that vile sensation of snakes and decay. I shuddered, zipped up my jacket, and joined my gunfighter lover on the station’s porch as he pulled off a stubborn piece of plywood to reveal an open, blackened rectangle of doorway.

The potions case dragged on my shoulder, but at least that left my hands free to use the flashlight. I shone a beam ahead, and it lit up a streak of dirty marble. We were entering at one end of the long main terminal hall, strewn with trash and the rat-chewed remains of the furniture that had once graced it. Some things had stood the test of time: the barred ticket cages, still flecked with gilding that looked surprisingly rich; the concrete arches, with an elegance that echoed a hundred years past.

But the whole place stank of rot and corruption, and I heard the hiss and rustle of disturbed animals. This place would house worse than rats and black widow spiders, though.

Portia was never wrong.

“One thing you ought to know about demons,” Andy said softly, as we moved forward. He had the shotgun in both hands, steady and controlled, and his attention stayed riveted on what was around him. “They ain’t all-powerful. A demon inhabiting a human body has to let it cool off, or it overheats and burns up. If he’s been using Pete Lyons as long as I think, he’ll have to let ol’ Pete rest a spell.”

“Here?” I probably sounded more appalled than I meant to, but . . . ugh.

“Here’s a good spot where he won’t be bothered. Pete’s married, got kids. Can’t trust anybody to leave him alone and unobserved at his home. Here, he’s safe.” Andy did a slow quarter turn, checking out a sound, but it must have been nothing to worry about, because he resumed forward motion. “He’ll have to rest without those boots on. Those are where the demon lives, when it ain’t in him.”

“Destroy the boots, destroy the demon.”

“May not be so easy,” he said. “But that’s the answer. Thing is . . .”

He broke off, because something echoed through the thick, fetid, empty space.

A growl. A thick, harsh one, ratcheting up in ferocity until it sounded like a chain saw howl.

“Thing is,” Andy said with unbelievable calm, “he won’t be unguarded.”

And that was when the devil dog opened its red eyes and stepped out of the shadows ten feet ahead of us.

It was massive—some kind of muscular attack dog breed, but bigger than anything I’d ever seen. Unnaturally bulked up. And those eyes were definitely not something that occurred in nature.

Andy didn’t need to mention that we were in trouble, and he didn’t have time to, either.

As the dog leaped for him, Andy dodged to his right, aimed, and fired both barrels as I dove left. I already had one potion out of my box, and now I dropped the flashlight, threw the potion vial to the gritty marble floor, and stomped on it. The glass shattered, and an explosion of light filled the room, white and clean. It lingered on every surface and angle, and gathered around the black dog as if drawn to him. He shook himself, but the swirls of light just thickened like fog around him.

Andy emptied two more shots into the dog, to no effect, and I opened the potions box, took out two more vials, and tossed them both to him.

He dropped the shotgun, grabbed both bottles out of the air, and smashed them together.

The smell of roses and incense filled the air, and something else, something as sharp as knives and as soft as feathers . . .

And the light around the dog rose up into a column, twisted, spread into wings, and as the dog snarled and snapped at it, it took on a breathtaking form. I could not exactly comprehend it, or see it directly, but the impression of wings and light and the stab of a golden spear burned through my closed eyelids.

The dog gave out a howl that pitched higher and higher into a scream, and rolled over and over on the floor, struggling to free itself.

It ripped loose of the light, and I saw its bloody eyes fix on me.

Beware the dog, Portia had said.

I had nothing else to fight it, but I wasn’t going down easy . . . not even to this hellhound. As Andy dove for the shotgun, I backed up to the wall, braced myself, and as the dog launched itself for my throat, I kicked.

The sole of my work boot met it right in the center of its broad, snarling face.

It yelped, landed awkwardly, and scraped claws on marble as it was pulled back into the blazing, sanctified light.

It went down hard, and lay there, pinned in place by what I could only think was . . . an angel. An avenging one.

Andy didn’t seem too impressed, even by a manifestation of heaven. He walked to me, opened the potions box, found what he was looking for, and poured it into the barrel of his shotgun.

Then he walked back to the pinned demon dog, put the barrel to its head, and fired.

The dog vanished in a cloud of greasy, filthy-smelling smoke. The angel faded with it, as if it couldn’t exist without its opposite; the smell of roses and incense lingered, though, after the terrible stench was gone. “Andy,” I said slowly, “we . . . we didn’t just kill an angel, did we?”

“Can’t kill either one of ’em,” he said. “But they’re both gone. That’s all that counts. Now come on. Lyons will be waking up.” We ran fast, dodging broken benches and fallen ceiling beams. The walls were black with mold, and roaches swarmed in dull hordes ahead of us.

We came to the end of the hall, and there, lying in the center of a ruined rotunda, lay Pete Lyons. He was still in his fine suit, flat on his back on a sleeping bag, and his battered cowboy boots were standing neatly together by his stocking feet.

He was already awake, and as we came to a stop, the circle of stone around him flared with hot red light. It looked poisonous, and Andy halted before he touched it. He extended the shotgun—and it hissed and melted where the metal touched the glow.

“You killed Fido,” Lyons said. He sounded different—hollow, somehow, and weak. Portia had been right; this was where he was vulnerable. But there wasn’t any way to reach him that I could see. The circle was an unbroken dome of crimson around him and the boots. “I’ll fucking eat your eyeballs for snacks.”

“You named it Fido?” Andy said. He tossed the melted shotgun aside, and I set the potions box down between us as he crouched to open it up. “Demons ain’t got much imagination. At least call the damn thing Spot.”

He combed rapidly through our bag of tricks, pulled out something, uncapped it, and poured. The silvery liquid sizzled and vanished on impact. No good.

Lyons was reaching for the boots. We had to break the circle.

Andy drew his pistol and fired. The bullets disintegrated on contact.

I tried another potion, then another.

And then I saw one tucked in way at the back—a mistake, really, jammed in with the high-powered attack potions.

Holly’s Balm: Andy’s calming brew, meant only for bringing peace to troubled souls.

I grabbed it, uncapped it, and poured the fluid on the surface of the red shield . . . and a white streak ran down where it touched the red. It had a glassy shine to it, and I yelled at Andy and pointed.

He fired at it, and the hardened shell . . . shattered. Popped like a red blood bubble, leaving spatter on the walls and on our faces, and it smelled foul. I wiped at it with my sleeve, but didn’t pause as I jumped the line.

Lyons had one boot in his hand and was fitting it on his toes. I almost reached for it, almost, but something stopped me—the memory of that feeling of snakes slithering on my skin. Fangs gleaming and ready to strike. If I touched it, it would own me, too.

Instead, I shifted my weight and kicked, hard. I broke Lyons’s fingers in the process, most likely; the boot flew off to smack against the far wall. I kicked its mate over to join it.

When Lyons tried to crawl after it, Andy stepped up, cocked his pistol, and put it to his head. “I wouldn’t,” he said. As always, he sounded way too calm. “Unless you want to see what’s on your mind, friend.”

Lyons froze, breathing hard, and I grabbed my potion box and ran to the boots.

They were moving. The pointed tips turned to face me, and worked into that battered leather was something living, a reptilian, vile face that stared back at me. Something that needed to go back to hell fast, because I knew it was capable of moving on its own now . . . capable of touching me.

And if it did . . .

I fumbled in my case and found what I was looking for; it felt hot to the touch, and I pulled the cap and threw it like a grenade, straight for the boots that were striding inexorably closer to me.

The potion ignited on contact with magic, and I reeled back from the fireball as it exploded . . . white-hot, a fury that held power of its own. The color changed, from white to a clear, fierce blue, and inside it the boots jittered, danced, kicked, and turned into snakes that writhed and bit each other in a frenzy of rage as the fire ate them slowly away into tubes of gray, inert ash.

“You bastard,” Lyons whispered. He was weeping, but it wasn’t in grief—it was bone-deep anger. “You fucking bitch. I don’t need the boots. I don’t need anyone else to take you down. I’ll burn every witch in this town, every one in this country. I’ll build a mountain out of your bones and piss on it—you hear me? I’ll end you!”

Andy took in a deep breath, then let it out. “That turquoise you got there on your bolo? It ain’t demon-touched. Only things you had to give you power were your knife, your boots, and your hate. Guess I’ll leave you the hate. You go out and try to make your case to people without those other things. We’ll see who wins in a fair fight.”

“You’d better kill me, witch!”

Andy holstered his gun. “Mister, you ain’t worth the powder it’d take.”

But he wasn’t above kicking Lyons right in the face when the man tried to lunge for him, and left him moaning in the fetal position on the floor with his broken teeth scattered around him.

“Fine job,” he said to me, and I smiled at him as I shouldered the weight of the potions box.

“You might just have to teach me to shoot for next time,” I said.

“Now, let me keep some advantage,” he said. “What with you not needing me for much else but—”

I kissed him. “But that?” I wiped some of the rotten red liquid from his cheek. “Never mind. I know what you mean. You’ve got demon crap on you. Maybe later.”

Lyons was still trying to make threats, but lying there in his blood and picking up teeth, bubbling tears and snot, he just looked like an angry, beaten old man.

Andy and I walked out into the clean, clear Austin evening, and drove home.

The protesters were gone. They’d left behind a mess of broken signs and rocks and glass, and spray-painted DIE, WITCH in red on our house, but none of them had lingered. I opened the garage door, and we parked the car. Andy took the potions case inside, and I went out to survey the damage.

The neighbor from across the street was on his porch. As I started to pick up some of the trash, he went inside, then came out again, walked over, and silently handed me a pair of work gloves and a trash bag.

He helped me clear it up. Not a word spoken until the very end, when he said, “I’ll be over tomorrow to help you clear that paint off the door. Can’t have that kind of thing in the neighborhood. Leaves a bad impression.” As if it were just gang graffiti.

I gave him a nod, fighting back tears. It was the briskest kindness I’d ever received, and the most meaningful. “Thanks,” I said.

“Well, we are neighbors,” he said, and shrugged. “You take care.”

The next day, Pete Lyons was on TV, red-faced and sporting spectacular bruising and missing teeth as he spouted off an insane rant about witches. He gained a few new fringe supporters; he lost the vast majority of those he’d assembled, who woke up feeling considerably less motivated.

At the next election, he was voted out by a massive margin, in a conservative district, in favor of a guy who advocated marijuana farming and open marriage.

And Austin PD? Started using witches again for investigations. Not right away, of course. But Ed Rosen was the one who got it rolling. He also bought a dealership for Holly’s Balm and became our top seller in the Austin area.

Oh, and for my birthday, Andy bought me a pair of cowboy boots.

Snakeskin.

It’s a good thing I love him.