Night Witch (Weatherstone College, #2)(85)

Five spellcasters joined Jacob, and despite the small flicker of what appeared to be sympathy in his expression, he lifted his hands and released a burst of his power, joining in with the others. It was a stronger-than-expected attack, shuffling Dad and Logan away from me. Before they could recover, a group of elders cast a spelled circle around them, which would hold the two warlocks for only a few minutes. Which was apparently all the time the spellcasters needed.

“Brace yourself, little witch,” a female spellcaster said. She was tiny, no more than five feet tall, but her power was like a blowtorch as she gave it everything she had. “You’re about to be tested.”

If our magic didn’t bloom in the year after our twenty-second birthday, there was a way to force it from within. It was rarely used due to the barbaric and dangerous results, which apparently no one cared about today. Logan’s rage reached me through the bond, and I felt his power smashing into the elders’ spell, almost cracking it in one blow.

“Don’t do this,” I begged. “If you release my magic through force, I might lose control of the monsters.”

Elder Monroe laughed, sounding unhinged. “Like you ever had control of them. Your kind knows nothing but death and destruction.”

“No,” I screamed, fighting the spellcasters’ magic. “You’re wrong, and you’re risking everyone here. I can call the creatures without all of this. I can show you how I control them.”

None of the witches and warlocks holding me cared to listen; they’d already made up their minds. I was the enemy, and all they had to do was prove it.

As I reached for the icy tendrils inside, I closed my eyes and sent one last prayer to Selene that I could stop them from reblooming my magic. An act that would normally be illegal, but clearly the council didn’t give a single fuck in their bid to prove I was a demon-witch.

I couldn’t let them win. I had to take control and call tethered monsters before it was too late and everything I’d fought for was lost.





Chapter 40




“Oh no you don’t,” the female spellcaster said—she must have felt the surge of my icy magic. “You’re not in control here. We are.”

The spellcasters hit me with everything they had, and it was so forceful that my own magic slipped beyond my reach. Energy swelled inside until there was an explosion of power, ricocheting across the room in an echoing boom. It sounded as if storms were rolling in, but it was just magic.

Out-of-control reaper magic.

A veil descended over my vision until the air was midnight ice, my breaths visible in front of my face as it turned to night. I’d called a lot of monsters by accident before, these demons of Purgatory, but this was more than even that.

The spellcasters’ magic had merged our plane with Purgatory’s, thinning the veil and colliding two worlds that should never meet.

“Shut it down!” Logan’s roar shattered the hold most of the council and spellcasters had on me, but he couldn’t take them all. Especially not when one half of his mate bond was spiraling out of control.

The spellcasters released me and turned to take on a now free Logan. Even when their energy stopped blasting me, it wasn’t enough to return the planes to their normal separation. What they’d set in motion could not be undone.

My magic continued to drain, seeping from my essence, until I slumped forward, a sluggish pump of blood and power all that kept me alive.

I felt Noah and Dad nearby, fighting to keep the council from me, but one of them had slipped through their battle: Elder Monroe. He dropped down at my side, wedging his hands roughly under my arms to haul me up. He started to drag me across the stage right as screams rang out in the hall, and that was when I felt the monsters arrive.

Unlike the graveyard, they didn’t pop in one at a time; they flooded through that thinning veil in the hundreds.

“Evil!” Elder Asshole screamed in my face. “Demon-witch. You did this, it’s all your fault, and now you need to die!”

“Dad!” Belle was on the stage, stepping around the battle between the council and my friends. He paused his assault at her soft voice. “You guys forced her magic out and caused this. Paisley is the only one with a chance to fix the imbalance before the demons destroy everything. You have to let her go!”

“What do you mean?” he rasped. His steps slowed as he shook me like I was a rag doll and shouted, “Call your beasts off now!”

He released me as if I were diseased, but Belle caught me before I could face-plant onto the wooden stage. “You’ve drained all her magic,” she said, releasing a distressed moan. “And you never even gave her a chance to show you her control. This isn’t what we discussed. You’re acting outside of our rules, and you brought these creatures by reblooming her magic. Your council needs to either figure out how to send them back or figure out how to give Paisley enough power to do it.”

Panic wreathed his features as he squinted out into the chaos of the assembly hall. The screams were getting louder, and there was more magic blasting around than I’d ever felt as students and professors battled the creatures. “We can’t send them back! Only a reaper calls the demons of Purgatory.”

Belle tightened her arms around me. “If you don’t figure it out and fast, we’re all going to die. You took out our one chance to deal with them.”