Mixed magics sizzled on the air like burning meat. My left palm, holding the blob, broke open again to leak down my wrist. My hand ached, but I didn’t let go of Evan’s gift. The pain that had been muted by Leo’s blood screamed back, working through the cracks of my fingers where the air touched the burned flesh. If Marlene was here, Tau was close behind. And the spell was stronger now than before. The Nicauds had been scoping out the place and the occupants, a tactical maneuver, similar to the icons in the yard, to see what we had and how we’d use it. They were one step, or maybe three steps, ahead of us all the way.

The red-dressed witch appeared in the doorway. The magics on the air were suddenly so strong they skidded on my damaged skin like hot asphalt and broken glass. Tactical maneuvers . . . Were the Nicauds former military? That wasn’t in the dossiers prepared by the Kid.

As if reading my mind, Eli said, “This isn’t going down like attrition warfare, where success is quantified by enemy killed or disabled, weapons and infrastructure destroyed, and territory occupied. This is going down like a game. A video game.”

“Like the ones we found at the Nicauds’ old house.”

“Yeah. We’ve missed something. Our intel is bad.”

“A game run by a cat,” I said. “Cat and mouse. Play with the mouse. Maybe hurt it a little. Let it go, let it think it was free. Then pounce again.” I knew diddly-squat about video games, but I knew cats. I patted the bar and Eli leaped to the top as I stepped away, across the room, spreading us as targets. Grégoire’s body was now between Eli and the Truebloods and me. Molly, who had been listening to the byplay, nodded at me, looked at her husband, and snapped up her ward, which was a darker tint than before, likely modified on the fly for gaseous spells.

“Options?” Eli asked.

“Not much. We have to keep the spell contained and not let it into the streets. Let’s see what the witches can do. We’re not dying. Yet.”

“You’re worse than Uncle Sam.”

A laugh startled out of me, despite the danger, and I chuckled the words “You wound me.”

Marlene’s dance rhythm mutated, the vibration through the floor, a pounding ethnic beat that had elements of tribal American, African, and island. She moved into the room with balletic grace, the way lava moved. Swirling down a hill, taking everything with it. She was dark-skinned, with a mass of hair that coiled and curled down her back, a turban over her head. Full-lipped, with a broad nose. Wide, glistening eyes. Skin gleaming ruddy in the red magics that spun from her.

She performed a rippling dance step that started at her feet and undulated up her body to her head. A move that was part of the spell, directing it with her will and gestures.

Flames of power flared out from the witch, fire tipped with the pale spring green of her daughter’s workings. Smelling of iron and salt and scorched wood. Everything happened at one, in overlapping segments of time or maybe intersecting segments of my awareness.

Magics and energies slid along my skin. Kissing it. Promising pain unimaginable, except that hadn’t happened. The leathers were spelled against magics, even ones as strong as the green vapor spell. So as long as I kept my clothes on, and I didn’t simply asphyxiate on the gasses, I was good. My partner wasn’t good, however. He was fighting a cough. His skin had gone pale as if he was ready to knock on death’s door.

I tossed him the two charms Molly had given me and instantly he looked better. We shared a nod. Lachish’s huge witch circle at the back of the room was so full of power it was nearly black with the energies.

I clenched the blob. Stupid name, Beast thought. Which made me laugh, a sound more like a frustrated sob. The Nicauds’ spell was growing, stretching, slipping over the working at the back of the ballroom like oil over water, coating it entirely. It was also leaching my own energies as I breathed, feeding the vapor spell.

A human male hiding behind a table in the hallway slumped to the floor with a thump, unbreathing, his energy drained. A busboy racing down the hallway to get away, fell, and tumbled. Crap. That changed everything. The Nicuads were now willing to hurt everyone, human, witches, vamps, me. The only tactic I could think of was to drop the outer wards and evacuate the mansion. Which would take the spell and the fight out into the street and hurt the bystanders and then the first responders.

Run. Hide. Jane is stupid, Beast thought.

Yeah, I thought back.

All this thinking in less than two breaths. My head was swimming. Eli staggered on the bar top.

Already, outside, I heard sirens. Someone, probably one of our sharpshooter teams, had spotted something through the windows and had called police backup and ambulance. But the first responders couldn’t be let in, even if they could get in through the outer house ward. Things in here were beyond unstable. Anything I did might put the victims in greater danger. Flying by the seat of my pants and bashing heads didn’t sound like a good solution to this. I didn’t know what to do.

Eli crouched upright on the bar, still high above the fog, and maneuvered so he was between Marlene and the Truebloods. I fingered the blob, gripping and releasing, the pain in my burned hand easing again. Trying to think. Trying to decide on . . . anything.

Tau entered the room, delicate and tiny, like a tree nymph, with glorious hair, full and curly, standing out as Angie’s did when her magic was high, in a nimbus of power that writhed and snaked. There was an old myth about a woman—a goddess? A demon?—with a head full of snakes. Had she been a double-gened witch, her myth gaining power through the ages into a deity? Tau wore a green dress, a floral watercolor print in emerald, mint, and misty-sage green. She danced like her mother in style, but where her mother moved like molten earth, Tau moved like water, flooding the room with her magics.