“I won’t be needing all these tools.”

“Fine for you, but I prefer using them. Let’s work together, Merlin.”

He lifted an athame to study its carving as she ringed the pentagram with candles. “Will it bother you if I work skyclad?”

“Aye,” he said without looking up.

“All right, in the spirit of compromise and teamwork, I’ll keep my clothes on. But they’re restricting.”

She removed the band from her hair, filled the silver bowl with water from a vial and sprinkled herbs on it. “Generally I invoke the goddesses when casting the circle, and it seems most appropriate for this. Suit you?”

“Well enough.”

“You’re a real chatterbox, aren’t you? Well. Ready?” At his nod she walked to the opposite curve from him. “Goddesses of the East, of the West, of the North of the South,” she began, moving around the circle as she spoke. “We ask your blessing. We call to you to witness and to guard this circle, and all within it.”

“Powers of Air, and Water, of Fire and of Earth,” Hoyt chanted. “Travel with us now as we go between worlds.”

“Night and day, day and night, we call you to this sacred rite. We cast this circle, one times three. As we will, so mote it be.”

Witches, he thought. Always rhyming. But he felt the air stir, and the water in the bowl rippled as the candles leaped to flame.

“It should be Morrigan we call on,” Glenna said. “She was the messenger.”

He started to do so, then decided he wanted to see what the witch was made of. “This is your sacred place. Ask for guidance, and cast your spell.”

“All right.” She laid down the sacred knife, lifted her hands, palms up. “On this day and in this hour, I call upon the sacred power of Morrigan the goddess and pray she grant to us her grace and prowess. In your name, Mother, we seek the sight, ask you to guide us into the light.”

She bent, lifted the crystal into her hands. “Within this ball we seek to find the beast who hunts all mankind, while her eyes to us are blind. Make keen our vision, our minds, our hearts so the clouds within this ball will part. Shield us and show us what we seek to see. As we will, so mote it be.”

Mists and light swirled within the glass. For an instant he thought he could see worlds inside it. Colors, shapes, movement. He heard it beat, as his heart beat. As Glenna’s heart beat.

He knelt as she did. And saw, as she did.

A dark place, mazed with tunnels and washed by red light. He thought he heard the sea, but couldn’t be sure if it was within the glass or just the roaring of power in his own head.

There were bodies, bloodied and torn and stacked like cordwood. And cages where people wept or screamed, or simply sat with dull and deadened eyes. Things moved within the tunnels, dark things that barely stirred the air. Some crawled up the walls like bugs.

There was horrible laughter, high, hideous shrieking.

He traveled with Glenna through those tunnels where the air stank of death and blood. Down, deep down in the earth, where the stone walls dripped with wet and worse. To a door scribed with ancient symbols of black magicks.

He felt the breath go cold in his body as they passed through.

She slept on a bed fit for a queen, four-posted and wide with sheets that had the sheen of silk and were white as ice. Droplets of blood stained them.

Her br**sts were bare above the sheets, and the beauty of her face and form were undiminished since last he’d seen her.

Beside her was the body of a boy. So young, Hoyt thought with a terrible pity. No more than ten years, so pale in death with his cornsilk hair falling over his brow.

Candles were guttering, sending wavering light to flicker over her flesh, and his.

Hoyt gripped the athame, lifted it over his head.

And her eyes opened, stared into his. She screamed, but he heard no fear in it. Beside her the boy opened his eyes, bared fangs and leaped up to skuddle along the ceiling like a lizard.

“Closer,” she crooned. “Come closer, sorcerer, and bring your witch. I’ll make a pet of her once I drain you dry. Do you think you can touch me?”

As she leaped off the bed, Hoyt felt himself flying backward, tearing through air so cold it was shards of ice in his throat.

Then he was sitting within the circle, staring into Glenna’s eyes. Hers were dark and wide. There was blood dripping from her nose.

She stanched it with a knuckle while she struggled to get her breath.

“First part worked,” she managed. “The blinded part didn’t take very well, obviously.”

“She has power as well. She’s not without skill.”

“Have you ever felt anything like that?” she asked him.

“No.”

“Neither have I.” She allowed herself one hard shudder. “We’re going to need a bigger circle.”

Chapter 6

Before she packed, Glenna took the time to cleanse the entire loft. Hoyt didn’t disagree. She wanted no trace of what they’d touched on, no echoes, no dregs of that darkness in her home.

In the end, she put her tools and books back in the chest. After what she’d seen, what she’d felt, she wasn’t going to risk the pick and choose. She was taking the whole lot, along with her travel case, most of her crystals, some basic art supplies, cameras, and two suitcases.

She cast one longing look at the easel standing near the window, and the barely started painting resting on it. If she came back—no when, she corrected. When she came back, she would finish it.

She stood beside Hoyt, studying the pile of belongings as he did.

“No comments?” she asked. “No arguments or sarcastic remarks about how I intend to travel?”

“To what end?”

“A wise stand. Now there’s the little matter of getting all this out of here, uptown and into your brother’s place. At which time, I doubt he’ll be as wise as you. But first things first.” She toyed with her pendant as she considered. “Do we haul it all by hand, or try a transportation spell? I’ve never done anything of this scope.”

He sent her a bland look. “We’d need three of your cabs and most of what we have left of the day to deal with all of this.”

So, he considered the situation as well. “Visualize Cian’s apartment,” he ordered. “The room where you slept.”

“All right.”