Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(55)

“You think that primarily, these witches have come to take over your territory,” said Adam.

She nodded decisively, but said, “It is too soon to tell. Sometimes they come one by one, others two by two.” She spoke that sentence in a singsong, as if it were a children’s rhyme. She shivered a little, looking old.

“Ah well,” she said. “I should find a hotel, do you think?” She had planned on staying here, I thought, until she found she could not cross our threshold.

“How worried should we be?” I asked her. “I mean, should we caution our werewolves?”

She frowned. “From the Love Talker, not much, I don’t think. I’ve never heard of one who could influence a werewolf. The Hardesty lineage has had a few who had the ability to persuade vampires. From the one who killed my family? It takes a lot more power to kill werewolves than it does humans. Adam told me that it was your assessment that all of my family died at the same time, no?”

I nodded. “All of your family, all of the animals—” I wasn’t going to tell her about Sherwood’s cat. She might try to claim it, and that would be bad all around. “—all of the insects. Everything.”

“Ah,” she said. “I hadn’t known it had gone that far. That’s not your zombie-making Love Talker who did that, Mercy. There is only one witch I know of who can relieve others of their lives in such a manner. I suppose I should be flattered that they sent Death after my people.”

My heart skipped a beat, because I heard Coyote echoing her voice in my head when she said “Death.”

She smiled tightly and looked at Adam. “If they sent Death, she is after me. But you should know that allying yourself with me will put you in her crosshairs. That thing she does, eating the lives of others . . . she did it in my home. That was a mistake.” Her expression grew hungry and satisfied at the same time. “She will regret attacking my family with her curse.”

“I couldn’t smell or feel the zombie-making witch until she wanted me to,” I said. “I couldn’t even sense the magic of the trap that Sherwood fell into until we were right on top of it.”

“Mercy is sensitive to magic,” Adam said.

“Walkers are,” said Elizaveta with a nod.

“And,” I said, “none of us knew that you had begun practicing black magic—you know that it has a scent that werewolves and I can pick up.”

She froze with her glass halfway to her lips. She knew that we understood what she’d been doing—or she should have known. Maybe she’d been lying to herself until this moment. She glanced at Adam. I couldn’t read Adam’s face, so I didn’t think she could, either.

“The trap in your basement,” she said finally, setting her glass down gently, “that is a simple thing. If a witch knows that there is someone about who might be able to sense magic, there is an extra step that can be used to insulate the spell, separate it from the air around it. It doesn’t work on active magic, but the trap you described to me is in stasis until it is triggered. It might take a few minutes or even hours for the insulating layer to dissipate after the spell is triggered. So you still wouldn’t feel the magic until you walked into the spell.”

“Okay,” said Adam. “And the rest? How did you keep us from knowing you had changed your mind about staying to the lighter path?” “The lighter path” is what the witches themselves sometimes call gray magic. It isn’t the path of light, but it isn’t pure evil, either.

She sighed. “I told you that I was good at talismans, or gris-gris, while we were in Italy.” She tugged on one of the necklaces she was wearing to display an amulet. It looked like something I’d seen displayed in craft fairs when potters tried their hands at making jewelry. It was pretty, made of green and copper glazed pottery, and vaguely resembled a flower, if that flower had been put together by Picasso.

She moved her hand until the amulet dangled away from her skin. As soon as it was no longer in contact, I felt like someone had dumped a bucket of filth over my head.

“I did not want you to know, Adam,” she said. And a tear trailed down her face. She wiped it away with the edge of her free hand. “I did not want you to know what I had become. So I made this.”

She tucked it back into her clothing and the awareness of black magic faded.

“It is a thing of my own devising, using secrets of my family. It is unlikely that the Hardesty witches made such a thing—their magics don’t lend themselves to this kind of working. But my people knew how—and I fear that the Hardesty witches weren’t without allies in my home.”

“There were four who hadn’t been tortured,” I said.

Elizaveta nodded. “I am afraid that ambition is a problem among my kind. They were the ones who most chafed at my restrictions.”

“And one of them was Robert’s daughter, Militza,” Adam said. “We found Robert.”

“That wouldn’t have bothered her,” Elizaveta said. “But she minded the loss of status when her father betrayed me.”

“So why did they kill the members of your family who helped them?” I asked.

“The Hardestys value family loyalty, Mercy,” said Elizaveta. “Those who betrayed their blood—they would never be welcomed to the Hardestys.” She looked at Adam. “I assume you have been looking for them.”