Chapter Three
Half an hour later, there was still a lot of screaming going on.
Most of it wasn’t directed at me, surprisingly, but seemed to be generally spread around the several dozen women crowded into a small space. Coven witches, I’d already figured out, did not have a hierarchal structure to their culture the way the Silver Circle did. There, the Lord Protector, currently a man named Jonas Marsden, called the shots, and while there was a council that he led and had to get approval from for certain actions, everything very much flowed from the top down.
It reminded me of a military, even in the areas that weren’t part of the War Mage Corps—the Circle’s military/police branch. Everyone seemed to be slotted into a distinct place in the hierarchy, answerable to people above them and ordering about those below. It was all very organized.
This . . . was not the Circle.
Hilde had gone out for tea a while ago without bothering to ask for permission, and nobody had stopped her. Maybe because everybody was too busy making sure they had a say in the general melee that passed for conversation. I’d expected to be a center point in that, considering that I (A) had just brought a demon into the middle of a bunch of women who hated demonkind, (B) had trashed their shopping center, and (C) wasn’t supposed to be here anyway.
I’d thought there was an outside chance that maybe, just maybe, I might be thanked for helping out with the invasion thing they’d had going on, although given past experience, I wasn’t counting on it.
Probably just as well, I thought, as one of the women broke off her conversation to whirl about and face me.
“You expect to be thanked?” she bellowed, loudly enough to make me twitch. Of course, her appearance was already doing that.
I was getting the impression that the covens intermarried with the fey more than the Circle-led magical community. There were people in here with skin the color of peonies and fresh-cut rosebuds; there was a woman with antlers coming out of her head, which she’d draped with little bows and bells; there was a man with a human face but a cat’s eyes. But, somehow, this woman was the most impressive of all.
I wasn’t sure why. She looked pretty human, compared to some of the others. She had hair the same silver white as Hilde’s, only it wasn’t cut in a cute little permed bob. Instead, it flowed like a mane over her shoulders before cascading almost to the floor. It also seemed to have a life of its own, churning around her on currents of magical power like the mermen’s had on currents of water. It was mesmerizing.
Or it would have been, had it framed any other face. This one, however, was up to the competition. It wasn’t exactly beautiful, being old and weathered and bronzed, but it was arresting, captivating, and hard to look away from. Especially the eyes, which were literally the color of sapphires.
I had blue eyes, too, but mine had never looked like that. No human’s did. I knew without being told that the woman was part fey, like the little fiefdom she oversaw. Or maybe oversaw. She’d been bellowing the loudest, but I wasn’t sure if that meant anything or not. Nobody had actually bothered to introduce themselves, and the few coven leaders I knew weren’t in the room.
And unlike her, I wasn’t a mind reader.
“No,” I said, trying for a calmer tone than I was feeling. “I didn’t come to cause trouble—”
“Too late,” the witch with the antlers said.
“Then why did you come?” the impressive woman demanded, and then her eyes grew round before I could answer. “You want us to do what?”
“What does she want?” the rosebud woman asked, peering over her shoulder.
“She expects—she actually believes—”
“She wants us to fight with the Circle in the war, doesn’t she?” This came from a tiny lavender-colored woman with pixie-like features. “I told you this was going to happen. Didn’t I tell you? Just the other day—”
“Damned Evelyn!” someone said. “She never should have sent her help—”
“Yes, that’s right, that’s perfect!” Saffy said, butting in. “Let’s do what we always do and retreat from everything. It’s not our problem—”
“Everyone already knows how you feel,” a human-looking woman told her. “We’ve heard it often enough.”
“And you’ll hear it again! Until it gets through your thick skulls! This war concerns all of us!”
“This is your doing,” the impressive woman said, looking at her angrily. “You brought her here—”
“Damned straight. Should have done it before—”
“—knowing full well what she is, what she’ll do!”
“You don’t know anything about her!”
“I know she has no business here! She’s no coven witch—”
“She’s as coven as any of you!”
There was a sudden, stunned silence. Maybe because of the decibel level; if I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought Saffy had used a spell to enhance her voice. But she hadn’t so much as made a move toward the wands sticking out of the tops of her boots.
I guess growing up in the covens, you learned to project.
I looked around, the absence of yelling making my ears ring, and met maybe three dozen pairs of eyes. Because more people had been pouring in all the time, and now they were all looking at me. “Uh,” I said brilliantly.
“Well?” A grandmotherly type poked the impressive looking woman. “Is she? Is it true?”
“Beatrice said it, too,” somebody offered.
“Well, where is she, then? She ought to be here, along with Zara and that damned Evelyn—”
“Oh, please, not Evelyn!” someone said. “Hasn’t my day been bad enough?”
“It’s true,” the impressive woman suddenly said. She’d been staring at me intently, ever since Saffy’s declaration. But since I hadn’t felt anything, I wasn’t sure if she was attempting to mind read or just had a headache.
If it was the latter, I could relate.
“What?” That was the grandmotherly type. “What’s true?”
“She passed the Gauntlet. She won her coven—”
Conversation suddenly exploded again.
“It doesn’t mean anything!” the impressive woman yelled. “It doesn’t mean anything!”
“Like hell,” Saffy said, from next to me. “Don’t let them get to you,” she added.
But then, before I could say anything, or ask what the heck was going on, she was swept away on the tide of conversation. I didn’t follow, because I didn’t know how to navigate these waters. I didn’t know anything.