Pike, I thought in panic, but he was still with me, and I snapped a bubble of protection about us, cowering as the roar of thunder became the echoing of the line.
Al had dropped me in a ley line. I had let him, trusting that he wouldn’t leave me here to try to claw my way out without Bis. The last time I had, I’d scraped a ley line across Loveland Castle and burned my synapses to a seared state that took three days to recover from.
But nothing shifted. Nothing changed, and I felt the pinch of worry as the line hissed and echoed in my thoughts. Heartache swamped me again. He’d left me. He’d dumped me in a line and left me!
Al? I thought, fear shiny and bitter like bright silver.
And then, just as I steeled myself to try to escape the line, I felt my aura shift. Fire flickered over my soul as I was pushed out. My knees hit a cold cement pad. I gasped for breath, head down and staring at that stupid takeout bag in my grip. A thump and soft groan of pain beside me was Pike.
My pulse hammered. He could have killed me, I thought. And my trust in Al would’ve let him do it.
But he hadn’t, and I looked through my stringy hair at Pike. His eyes met mine, pupils black in anger.
I heard a seagull crying. There was salt in the air—it had to be more than my tears on my lips. I could smell dead fish, and the light was almost painfully bright. There were people surrounding us, some talking in whispers, some shouting, but all of them wearing the same flat white shoes.
I sat up on my heels, Al’s bag of takeout in my hand.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered, and Pike lurched to a stand, a swollen, scraped hand pressed to his side.
But I half knelt there, staring at the thick, heavyset woman pushing her way through the ring of orange jumpsuits surrounding us. I knew the sound of the surf. I knew those ugly uniforms. I knew the feel of those charmed silver bracelets around their wrists and the scent of rotted redwood. Hell, I even knew the woman, and as she stood before me, Auntie Lenore’s beefy arms going over her chest and a cocky look coming in her eye, I slowly got to my feet.
“Somehow I knew you-all’d land yerself back he-e-re,” the woman drawled in a thick backwoods accent, her flat face jeering. “I jest didn’t think it was gonna be this soon.” Hands clenching into fists, she never took her eyes from me. “Mary, keep them guards busy. Sunshine and I have sometun to finish.”
I sighed, a hand up to try to talk my way out of this. Al had done more than send me away. He wanted to hurt me, as I had apparently hurt him. And as I looked across the desperate, eager faces, I decided he had succeeded.
“Where are we?” Pike said, and then I lurched, dancing back as Auntie Lenore swung.
“Alcatraz,” I said, wincing as the surrounding witches shouted for my blood, content to let Lenore find it for them.
CHAPTER
17
“Alcatraz, San Francisco?” Pike said in disbelief, though we were surrounded by orange jumpsuits and an appalling lack of hairstyling products. I’d never been in the yard, but that was where we had to be, the shadow of the walls from the setting sun cold on the cement.
Lenore swung again at me, and I ducked, darting to the left. If it was anyone else, I’d kick the woman, but Auntie Lenore was like a wall. “Yeah,” I said as a faceless inmate shoved me back in, shouting for me to kick her ass. “Soon as I’m done here, I’ll give you the tour.”
“Why did you bring us here?” Pike said, then glared at the man jostling him until the guy paled and found somewhere else to stand and shout at me. “Alcatraz is coed?”
“This wasn’t my idea.” I jerked to the right and ducked. “One flight-risk facility is a money sink, two is cost prohibitive when holding witches. We can get out of almost anything.”
“Stop moving yer skinny ass!” Lenore drawled. “Arrrgh!” she exclaimed, coming at me with her muscular arms spread wide to give me a deadly bear hug. Her thick feet stomped in an impressive display as she rocked back and forth, coming closer in six-inch steps designed to intimidate. It was working. “Y’all stand still, now,” she drawled, her accent a harsh backwoods rasp. “I’m gonna pulp yer spine, Sunshine.”
“Sunshine?” Pike echoed, and I shot him a glance. He’d sandwiched himself between a red-faced man shaking his fist and a frightened thin woman.
Mary? Monkshood Mary? I thought, recognizing the distressed man beside her with the basketball as Ralph. And then I lurched back as Lenore swung a meaty fist. Grabbing the woman’s arm, I flung her into the surrounding people. Lenore crashed into them, taking three inmates down. But there were more to lift her up, spin her around, and shove her back at me.
Anger and relief were an ugly slurry in me as my thoughts churned: anger at Al for dropping me in Alcatraz, relief that he hadn’t left me in the ley line to scrape my way out by myself. I knew Al still grieved for his wife, but that Hodin might have had something to do with her death was new.
Clearly I’d hurt him. And yet, as I stood on the cold cement and evaded another of Lenore’s swings, I knew that he hadn’t abandoned me completely. He could have dropped me two hundred yards to the right and into the straits to drown, or in an oubliette to starve, or at the top of Mount Fuji to freeze. But no. He had dropped me here, in jail for uncommon stupidity.
“Knock it off!” I shouted, but the woman kept coming, and I finally slammed my foot into her middle in a spinning back kick. The crowd yelled for more and Pike politely applauded as Lenore rocked. Frustration fueled my anger, and I flicked my foot up, snapping her head back.
Arms pinwheeling, Lenore fell into the circling people. She’d felt that one, though, and she stood there, blinking, as the crowd urged her on.
“Some help here?” I said to Pike, and he grinned, head shaking.
“No way am I getting near that,” he said, and I evaded Lenore’s next clumsy swing. “Besides, you’re a demon,” he yelled over the loud shouts. “Do your demon stuff!”
But I was a demon on an island surrounded by salt water. There was no ley line here, and my purse with all my toys was two thousand miles away.
“Rachel, look out!” Mary shouted, and Lenore’s fist slammed into my head, knocking me flailing into the crowd.
Ow . . .
“We gonna see what color black witches bleed, Sunshine,” Lenore drawled, and I scrambled up at the glint of metal in her meaty fist. She had a knife. Of course she does.
Mouth wide in an ugly howl, Lenore came at me, knife slashing the air. Pulse fast, I ducked under and in from her first swing, grabbing Lenore’s arm and using it to yank her down so my knee hit her solar plexus. Lenore’s breath whooshed out. I danced back, shocked when her thick fingers encircled my wrist and jerked me to a stop.