“No. Jane’s in town. She’s here.”
Cia’s eyes found her across the circles, the feeding vampire, and her victim. “What did you say?”
“I said, Jane’s in town. For the inquiry into Evangelina’s death.”
Cia’s hair rose in an unseen wind. At the sight of it, chills ran down Liz’s arms and into the ground through her icy fingertips. “And you didn’t think I needed to know this?” Cia asked, her words low, full of threat.
“Do you remember taking the heavy dishpan out of my arms this morning?”
“What? What does that have to do with anything? I took it because you’re still weak.”
“And right now the moon is full. And you’re more powerful but less stable. So, just like you took the dishpan, I kept the news off and you busy so you wouldn’t have to deal with it right now. I was trying to help.” Cia didn’t reply. Liz said, “We’ve got two problems here. One—a blood witch who helped to kidnap a human female. Two—a vampire snacking on that human female. It’s our responsibility to take care of the witch. Jane takes care of vampires. It’s her job, and as the Enforcer for the master of the southeastern USA, it’s her responsibility.”
The power wind lifting Cia’s hair settled slowly, the dark red strands falling around her shoulders, which slumped. Her eyes filled with tears as she came back to herself, found her center, and put it all together. “Ohhh . . . damn,” she muttered. She took a ragged breath. “Evangelina was our responsibility, but we let Jane handle it. We were cowards. It was our job and we . . . let Jane . . .” Cia took a slow breath, Liz mirroring the action. Liz could almost see the moon power waver across the circle between them. “We let her kill our sister for us.”
Cia lifted a hand and pointed at the hedge of thorns ward, saying, “Ní mór fós i bhfeidhm,” which was Irish Gaelic for “Must remain in place.”
Liz felt the power of the mountain shoot up through the ground and the moon power smash into the earth, securing the hedge of thorns ward in place. Her sister’s casual use of power when working beneath the moon was a wonderful and frightening thing. But this time it felt wrong. Too potent.
“Something about this place,” Cia said, rubbing her upper arms against the chill.
“Yeah. This was too easy.”
“We actually transported a vampire and her victim out of her lair and into our circle with a simple find spell. I’m good and all,” Cia said, looking up at the black sky, “but I’m not this good.”
“Me neither.” They had until sunrise to figure out what to do. At sunrise the vamp would burn to death. And from the look of her, by sunrise, Evelyn would be long dead.
Thoughtfully, Cia closed the outer circle, and the twins walked to the car.
—
Back at the Subaru, they had a good signal and Liz dialed Jane on her cell. Cia went to work on her tablet, researching the property they were on to see if she could discover why the power levels were so strong.
“Yellowrock,” she answered.
“It’s Liz.” Jane didn’t say anything. Jane didn’t say much of anything at the best of times, and this couldn’t be one of them. “I know we need to talk about Evie, and about family and about . . . stuff, and all, but, well, Cia and I were hired to do a finding spell for a missing woman, who turned out to have been kidnapped in the middle of a blood magic spell, and now we have a psychotic vampire and her kidnapped dinner—that missing human woman—stuck in a hedge of thorns spell on the side of a mountain.”
Jane chuckled. She actually laughed. “Why is this funny?” Liz demanded.
“You Everharts are . . . interesting.” Which was marginally better than other things Jane might have said.
“Fine. You have any advice?”
“Yeah. Send your GPS to my cell. Stay put. Asheville’s heir and I’ll be there as fast as we can.”
“Liz? Don’t hang up,” Cia said, holding her hand out for the phone. Liz passed it to her, and Cia said, “Jane, we’re on a site that used to be called Mayhew Downs, about a hundred twenty years ago. That didn’t seem important until our magic was a lot more powerful than it should have been. So I went back online to the history site and discovered that there was this big mystery about the town in the 1890s. The town was fine one day. By the next week, all the inhabitants had disappeared. Which is weird, right?”
Liz heard Jane grunt an affirmative.
“So I looked through all the daguerreotypes on the site and one shows the mayor and his wife—who is a dead ringer—pardon the pun—for the vampire trapped in our circle.”