Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(20)
So that was why the Yvain music had died. There were probably ice wraiths in there, too, along with a whole theater now stacked with aisles of ice-pop people. Including my own annoying, overly sensitive, beloved little brother.
The only way this could possibly be worse would be if our mother were here to witness this catastrophe.
The shock abruptly shattered, falling off me in a fractured sheet, the way it always did when an imminent crisis beckoned. My brain thawed in an instant and then hardened, into something swift and dauntless and capable.
“Gareth,” I barked at him, reaching for his hand. Assuming command the way I always did with both my brothers. “Uriel’s Flame, in three!”
My brother stared for one more second, slack-jawed and dazed. Then he grasped my hand with a curt nod, interlacing our fingers, grim conviction snapping over his clean-cut face like a knight’s visor. My brother might have been the epitome of messy in other areas of life, but he was handy as hell in a crisis. Not like I was—not to plan or lead—but he could fall in line whenever needed. Never a commander, but the best lieutenant you could ask for to stand by your side.
I closed my eyes and took a breath, counted down from three, and began chanting the words in tandem with Gareth, drawing the power sigil of angelfire in the air with my left hand. This elemental spell conjured a benign, angelic fire; one that would conquer cold even in its physical manifestations—and also burn to a crisp those who meant you harm. But it would part harmlessly around those who didn’t, would leave any living and innocent thing untouched.
It was a demanding working, best cast in circle, though I could have pulled off a minor iteration even on my own. But since Gareth was here anyway, a mini Blackmoore circle composed of just the two of us would be even more powerful.
As soon as Gareth and I spoke the final, bellowed ignis together, the power that whipped up to meet me was monumental—vast and searing, like a vengeful dragon that had been locked inside me for decades was now death-metal raging its way out. Its scalding wings beating inside my own chest as if I’d become its prison, its claws raking at the bars of my ribs. I actually screamed like a harpy with the force of it—a triumphant, resonating shriek, half ecstasy, half pain, that echoed off the walls and probably scared the tourists just as much as the ice wraiths had.
Then a ceiling-high curtain of flame blistered to life in front of me and Gareth, leaping scarlet and gold, giving off a dazzling refracted light that reflected everywhere like a flaming disco ball.
It was colossal, tremendous, so much bigger than it could or should have been. Uriel’s Flame usually manifested as an isolated sphere of angelfire, which then traveled to wherever it was guided by the igniter’s will. This was . . . not that. This was a fearsome tower of flame, a fiery colossus whole scales of magnitude larger than what the spell had called for, and what I’d intended.
And I knew, from the way the magic had roared through me with barely an effort, that I hadn’t even needed Gareth’s help at all. I could have cast this Godzilla version of the spell, Uriel on All the Steroids, entirely on my own.
Crackling with fury, it surged forward like a towering, infernal wave, burning off the icy mist and dissolving the wraiths as it met them. They melted instantly into harmless wisps of mist, their howls dialing down into fading hisses. As the angelfire seared mercilessly past them, it lapped much more gently over the trapped tourist, thawing him in an instant even as it parted around his shrieking, terrified partner, not even singeing her skin.
Lumberjackhole tumbled to the stones like a sack of stupid potatoes, his companion dropping to her knees beside him, running her hands frantically over his face. I had to admit she seemed genuinely concerned about him; maybe he wasn’t always such a high-key ass.
While the rest of the tourists spilled around us in a confused panic, torn between the oblivion glamour already manipulating their short-term memory and the visceral sense that something was Very Wrong Here, the angelfire kept surging down the hallway, licking up and down the walls without damaging them, throwing its strange refracting light up into the gargoyles’ peaked faces, making them seem alive. Then it flamed right through the wooden doors, again without leaving so much as a scorch mark—blazing right into the theater, where it would lay waste to the remaining wraiths and set free the audience of frozen spectators.
As if on cue, we could hear a slow, growing commotion kick up from within the theater, a milling churn of fear followed by bewilderment as the ice spell broke. At least our aggravating little brother would live to overemote another day, I thought with a wash of deep relief, nearly sagging with it.
“So,” Gareth said conversationally, knuckling back his ash-blond hair, a mixture of awe and trepidation flickering across his face as he turned to eye me with considerable caution. “You and I should probably have us a little chat, then, huh?”
8
What Did You Do to Me?
As it happened, we didn’t have much time to talk.
An entire horde of befuddled (and toasty) normies soon came rushing out of the theater, in the thrall of the oblivion glamour that had—clearly very forcefully—erased their memories of the megawatt production they hadn’t bought tickets for.
“Do you feel like . . . like you even know what that show was about, though?” I heard one groggily murmur to another as they streamed around us, sounding like they’d just woken up from deep sleep or gotten way too high. Apparently the oblivion glamour had had to channel some extra effort to erase the memory of something so epic as a showdown between ice and fire.