Witch's Wrath (Blood And Magick #3)(52)

This was starting to feel a lot like making a deal with the devil, and in those cases, the signatory always lost.

Tamara handed the pen over, and I snatched it out of her hand. “Careful,” she said, “When you make sudden moves like that it makes my friends jumpy, and the last thing I want is to spill more of your blood; not before you’ve signed, at any rate.”

She handed the documents over, and flipped it to the very last page where a large box waited for my signature.

“All you have to do is sign,” she said, “And then this is all over.”

“Let Jared go first,” I said, “Let him go, and swear you won’t hurt Nicole or any of the other witches in New Orleans.”

“No.”

“Then you aren’t getting this house.”

She didn’t have to turn her head, gesture, or even speak. Marie, like a good lapdog, approached Jared’s unconscious body and planted one of her heels at the base of his neck. “All I have to do is push my foot down,” she said, “I wouldn’t even have to push that hard, and he would die in an instant.”

My heart was pounding against my chest, palms sweating. I stared at the heel, then at the pen, and then at the document.

“Turn around,” I said to Tamara.

She eyed me up suspiciously. The ballroom was still clear of tables and flat surfaces from the night of the party, so there was nowhere to put the documents down. Realizing that, she handed the contract to me. “No funny business,” she said.

“I have no magick,” I said, “All I have is a pen.”

“And if that pen does anything other than sign on the dotted line, you’ll be worse off than our one-eyed friend over there.”

I nodded, and Tamara turned around. When she did, I placed the contract against her back and stared at the paper, but my eyes trailed up to the soft, fleshy patch at the base of her neck. All I needed was an instant, and I could drive the pen into it. The pen was mightier than the sword, wasn’t it? But then Jared would die, and I would die only a couple of seconds after that.

Dammit.

I brought the pen down to the dotted line. Droplets of blood fell onto the page. I swallowed, then went to sign, but stopped. I thought I heard something. A voice, maybe, but no one had spoken. My eyes returned to the page. I could tell Tamara was getting impatient, and every second I wasted was another second that brought Jared and I closer to death.

I went to sign again, but this time I heard it clearly.

Don’t sign it

It had been so long since I had heard that delicate whisper, I had all but given up on ever hearing Eliza again, thinking she had left the night Jean Luc left Lumiere. But now that I heard it again, I didn’t need her to repeat herself. I let the pen fall to the floor, then grabbed the document with both hands and tore it in half. Tamara jerked around, awestruck by what I had done. The vampires around the room all flinched nervously, while Marie scowled from where she stood with the heel of her boot still pressed against Jared’s neck.

“That was the biggest mistake you’ve made tonight,” Marie said.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


My ears popped, I blinked, and almost without thinking about it, as if guided by instinct, I sent a wave of telekinetic energy cascading away from me in all directions. The power caught Tamara off guard and sent her sprawling to the floor. Marie, likewise, had not expected to be hit with magick, and when she was hit, she seemed to almost soar across the room, landing on her side and rolling until she hit a wall.

I just used magick, I thought as my heart pounded.

Tamara looked up at me from the floor, glaring, her face twisted with rage. “How did you do that?” she yelled, “You’re not supposed to be able to use magick!”

I didn’t dare turn my head and look, but I could feel a hand on my shoulder. It was cold, but also warm and soothing, and it reinvigorated my tired body. Not only that, my instincts told me the person the hand belonged to was also responsible for my ability to use magick again, and maybe even for the way in which I was able to put up a shield for so many hours last night.

That person, I knew with almost perfect certainty, was Eliza; I could feel her anger and wrath flowing through me. Tamara hadn’t just hurt the witches of New Orleans, hadn’t only come here to trigger a rebirth of the old ways; she had burned Lumière to cinders. My house. Eliza’s house. The place that had sheltered Jean Luc and his family for hundreds of years was now gone.

I took that anger and made it my own.

I reached for Tamara with my mind, wrapped invisible, powerful hands around her, and lifted her off the floor. She kicked and struggled, but was completely unable to resist my magick—Eliza’s magick—as I tossed her aside like a doll, causing her to hit the wall with a loud crack and fall limply to the floor.

One of Marie’s vampires rushed toward me, eyes glowing and mad, teeth barred and ready to fight. But I gave him the same treatment that I did to Tamara, reaching for his body with my mind, stopping him in his tracks, and reversing his momentum so he flew away from me instead. When my hand moved to direct the magick, it was as if there were two hands acting in unison—one belonging to me, and the other to the ghost of a witch.

None of the other vampires made any sudden moves except for Marie, who began to toward Jared, still lying on the floor unaffected by any of my telekinetic blasts.