Bereft: Foretold

28 | A Deadly Magic

Bones clicked together when Saule passed under the ice hemlock. The shiver that ripped through her had little to do with the cold and everything to do with the situation. 

As it turned out, the Circe coven wasn't difficult for her to find. Their information was easy to uncover among the proper channels and freely given, like a challenge issued to anyone stupid enough to go in search of them. Saule had thought it'd take her a few days to discover where the coven was hidden—but they weren't hidden. They weren't cowering in a bunk like the La Voisin girls, or way out in the boonies like the Chedipe women. 

No, the coven lived in a renovated mansion right across the bay from the syndicate's tower. They might as well hoist a neon signpost reading "Come if you dare, flash-bangs." 

Saule stood outside the iron gate and peeked through the sharpened struts, hoping the tree strung with bones was hiding her from sight. The Circe witches thought themselves the pinnacle of witch society and did not mix well with the women of over covens. They hated any witches who dared work with or cooperate with mages—and that included the Baba Yaga coven. Saule's coven had tolerated their mage overlords, however temperamentally, and that painted them as traitors in the eyes of a Circe witch. 

Bram nudged Saule's thigh and she almost jumped out of her skin.

"Seriously regretting this," she wheezed, touching a string of bones hanging past the fence line. Saule winced when the spell etched into the bones by an enchantress reacted to her own mana, but beyond the essence of a witch, she could sense the residual spark of a mage. They were flash-bang bones.

Saule didn't know what was more intimidating: the idea of entering the Circe coven's perimeter, or going back to the former Sin of Pride to tell him she'd chickened out. 

The Baba Yaga witch muttered a myriad of curses under her breath as she came to the gate and eased it open.

Hinges screeched, seeming to silence the morning wind. 

"Okay, Bram," Saule whispered to her dog as she trailed her fingers through his glossy feathers. He lifted his eyes to hers and licked his nose, tail whipping back and forth. "Go on."

The dog jumped forward and crossed the property line. The quirk of his mutation that negated spells bent and pried the coven wards apart, allowing Bram and Saule to slip through their blockade. Saule was quick to keep at Bram's heels as they came under the shadow of the southern style manor, and she knew someone would feel their spells changing in her passage. Someone was undoubtedly watching her. 

Swallowing her fear, she mounted the painted steps and crossed the porch to the double doors. Not spying a doorbell, Saule rapped her knuckles on the door's prismatic glass.

A woman years younger than Saule answered the Baba Yaga witch, easing the door open to peer at her. She wore a gossamer veil of gauzy blue material, the ends falling below her pointed chin, the top banded to her brow by a leather strap. It was a traditional alchemist's mask, enchanted to dissuade the inhalation of potentially poisonous fumes. Saule hadn't seen one of those since the last time she and her sister had rifled through her mom's boxes in the attic. Most alchemists just wore mundane gas masks.

"Uh...'etsey, tutghik-iksk—," Saule began, but the other witch interrupted her.

"You're no sister of mine," the younger woman stated without removing her mask, her messy hands still on the door's handle. "We are not open to outsiders. Leave."

She began to withdraw.

Before Saule could consider the consequences of her actions, she stuck her foot in the path of the closing door.