Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews Page A

Improbably thick, long hair streamed from her head, coiling like tentacles.“Giiiirl,” the creature sang, stretching her arms to the window.“Neeed…where, where?”
    Hi. And what kind of screwed-up beastie would you be?
    On my kitchen table, crouched atop a crumpled curtain, sat Julie. She had worked the window latch open and was trying to pry the mechanism securing the iron grate.
    I put Slayer down and took Julie by her waist. She clutched at the bars.
    The creature hissed. Her jaws unhinged with reptilian flexibility, baring rows of anglerfish teeth in a black mouth. A strand of her hair whipped at the window, aiming for the kid. The ward reacted with a pulse of angry carmine. The creature jerked in pain.
    I pulled on Julie. “Julie. Let go.”
    Julie snarled something wordless and charged with fury. I dug my heels in and pulled harder, throwing all of my strength and weight into it. Julie’s fingers slipped and I almost crashed to the floor. She kicked, struggling like a pissed-off cat. I dragged her off into the bathroom, dumped her into the tub, and slammed the door shut behind us. With a howl, Julie launched herself at me. Her nails raked my arm. I grasped her by the back of the neck, forcing her down into the tub, and opened the cold water tap. She writhed under my hand, spitting and biting. I dunked her under the stream and held her there.
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    Gradually her convulsions subsided. She whimpered and went limp.
    I shut off the water to a trickle. Julie drew a long shuddering breath and sobbed. Slowly tension leaked from her muscles. “I’m okay,” she gasped. “I’m okay.”
    I pulled her from the bathtub and put a towel on her head. She trembled and hugged herself.
    I opened the door and glanced out. The lavender-eyed thing hovered by the kitchen window, her eyes fixed on the door. She saw me and hissed again.
    “Girl…Come…Want…”
    Julie sank to the tile, squeezing into the narrow space between the toilet and the bathtub, chopstick legs sticking out. “She was in my head. She’s trying to get back in right now.”
    “Try to shut her out. We’re safe behind the wards.”
    “What if the magic falls?” Julie’s eyes widened in pure panic.
    “Then I’ll cut her head off.” Easier said than done. That hair would grab me like a noose. It’s hard to cut hair unless it’s held taut.
    “Girl?”
    “Shut the hell up!”
    Why Julie? Why now? Was that thing her mother, turned into something by the coven’s magic?
    “Julie, does that thing look like your mother?”
    She shook her head, locked her arms over her knees and began to rock. She could only move an inch or two squeezed into that narrow space. “Gray. Muddy, sliding, shifting, nasty purple gray.”
    “What?”
    “Gray like the skeleton. Nasty…”
    “Julie, what’s gray?”
    She looked at me with haunted eyes. “Her magic. Her magic’s gray.”
    Oh God. “What color is a werewolf’s magic?”
    “Green.”
    A sensate. A living m-scanner, who could see the magic, very rare, very valued. I had her with me the whole time. I knew there was something magic about her, but between metal dogs and infected boyfriends, I never got a chance to ask. “That thing, she’s gray and purple? Did you say purple? Like a vampire?”
    “Weaker. Pale purple.”
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    Purple was the color of undeath. If the creature was indeed undead somehow, she had no consciousness. Someone had to control her, the way Masters of the Dead controlled the vampires.
    “Julie, you have to come out. I can’t protect you if you’re here hugging the toilet. Get up.”
    “She’ll get in. She’ll kill me. I don’t want to die.”
    “You will die if you stay here.” I held out my hand. “Come on.”
    She sobbed.
    “Come on, Julie! Show that bitch you have some backbone.”
    She bit her lip and took my hand. I pulled her up.
    “I’m scared.”
    “Use it. It will keep you sharp. In the Honeycomb, why didn’t the magic grab you?”
    It took her a