“It’s better to change small pockets than to try to change the world. Because the pockets of Light balance the Darkness, and in some way, the Light is stronger that way. You can hold a pebble in your hand, use it to create ripples in a pond. You can’t hurl a boulder, and even if you could, it would displace the water and the pond would dry up.”

Linda pursed her lips. “I get it. It’s like that Forrest Gump quote, about dying being a part of life, but wishing it wasn’t. I wish the other was possible. I hope somewhere, somehow, the answer is hiding in the shadows, that it’s doable.”

It is. It just comes at a terrible price. One that keeps that balance in place. “Don’t look too hard at the shadows, unless you really want to know what dwells there.”

Speculation etched Linda’s face in the growing darkness. Ruby cleared her throat. Looking out toward the marsh, she let the wine she rarely drank take her to a more whimsical place. “Do you know every body of water has a spirit? Even a puddle. A swimming pool does, too, despite the chlorine. A sleek, polished kind of spirit. Saltwater bodies have male spirits; freshwater have female. No one knows why, but it’s said that salt water has a male spirit because he’s surrounded by female tears. All the bodies of water squabble about who’s more important. Lakes argue with the rivers connected to them; rivers argue with the ocean; so on and so forth.”

“What’s your opinion?” Linda raised an amused brow.

“I think it’s like the joke about the argument between body parts. The brain, heart and lungs all thought they were the most important, until the rectum got offended and closed down. In about three days, they figured out the one who handles the shit they cause was the one they couldn’t do without.”

“You are a disturbing woman.”

Ruby gave her a half smile. “Derek did warn you tact isn’t my strong suit.”

“He told me he was sending the most gifted practitioner he knew. Are the two of you together?”

Ruby studied the other woman. “No, we’re not. Do you want to be with him?”

Linda flushed. “Touché. I guess I was a little rude, asking it straight out like that.”

“Doesn’t bother me.” Liar. “Has he shown any interest?”

“He worked with me here for a month before he went to find you. He was so…. All that energy that comes off of him….”

In short, he did the oblivious-Derek thing, which made a woman fall for him like a toddler hitting a trip wire, the detonation just as fast. In the space of time it took him to put a fistful of candy bars on the counter and reach for his wallet, Ruby had seen grocery clerks decide they’d give up indoor plumbing and chocolate for him. And he never noticed his appeal, always infallibly courteous and warmly attentive.

It was enough to make a woman want to shoot him. Or keep him chained and naked on a cot in her basement so she could ride him like a carnival ride with the “on” lever stuck in a permanent up position.

Okay, wow. She really shouldn’t have gone there. The sleeping rabid dog of her libido came fully alert. She tried to fake it out, concentrated on what Linda was saying as if she were offering the formula to cure cancer.

“I admit I’ve been a little intimidated by him, awed by his skill.” The woman firmed her chin. “I need to take the bull by the horns. I’ve made him dinner before, but next time he’s here I’ll make him a meal in the date kind of way, and see what reaction I get. It’s been a while since my last disastrous relationship, so I guess I’m a little gun-shy. The police chief in the adjoining county, Eric Wassler, got divorced a couple years back, and to be honest I’ve always had a little bit of a thing for him. But I haven’t been able to make step one.”

“Well, Justin hooked up with a cop and they sound pretty devoted. Maybe you should give Sheriff Eric a shot. You’d probably have a better relationship with him than a sorcerer who’s always on the move. Long-distance relationships suck.”

Of course, Derek was technically a cop as well. A sheriff of the Light. With the hat and dragonskin boots, all he needed was a silver badge. She should pick him up one from the dollar store. With handcuffs.

Down. Sshh…. go back to sleep.

Linda gave a little laugh. “This sounds terrible, but I wasn’t seeking anything permanent with Derek. I’m old enough to know better than that. But I was thinking he might give me…. confidence. You know how it is. Every woman wants to have a crazy, romantic, passionate night with a guy who’s all the best parts of the fantasy. I expect men are the same way. You know, running into the starlet whose car is broken down….”

“And thus countless Penthouse Forum letters are born.”

Linda snorted. “I’d like to write at least one of those letters in my life, and Derek Stormwind looks like publishable material.”

You’ve no idea. Ruby pantomimed another yawn, rose. “Well, good luck with that.” Not. “Time for me to turn in. I’ll probably go walk the fault line, get a feel for things, then head to bed. Okay?”

“Oh…. sure.” Linda rose. “There’s a phone in the guesthouse. If you need anything, just hit one. That dials the main house.”

As Ruby nodded and took her leave, she could feel Linda studying her. As an accomplished priestess, the woman had intuition skills of her own, and Ruby was sure she sensed something off about her houseguest, a lot of mysteries she didn’t care to share. But that was okay. She was here to teach them, not work magic with them, so there was no need for open flow. Derek would handle the magic part. Great Rites and all.

The irresistible bastard prick.

She was so exhausted her head was a block of concrete on her shoulders, but she needed to walk that fault line now, before the other coven members were here. Nothing disrupting her focus, the night aiding her concentration.

She was in no hurry to get back to her guesthouse, anyway. The anger about what had happened at Raina’s was gone, and all that was left was the yearning created by that experience, exacerbated by the sheer pleasure of it. She could recall every moment, every touch. If she closed her eyes, she could still smell him, feel his heat against her skin. Linda’s innocent imaginings of plundering Derek’s virtue had fed it like kerosene on a fire.

Hoping this exercise would mute that raw edge, help her get things under control, she went to the gazebo, where Linda and the coven did their circle castings. It was on one of the wider parts of the fault line, so Ruby stood in the center, her eyes closed, feeling its shape. She’d slipped off her shoes, so it was with bare soles and eyes still shut she moved away from the gazebo, following that line, seeing it in her mind, experiencing its shape. She drew its power through her feet and the channeling centers of her own body, cycling it back to the earth as she released it through the crown chakra. It was dense, pure. Settling.

She moved through the woods like a shadow, the soles of her feet coming down light, barely breaking the thinnest twigs as she breathed in the elemental energy sources that raised their heads at her presence. Birds and squirrels in their nests, foxes and possums that gazed at her through the darkness. One lone deer, a male.

When she set all her personal shit aside, focused on being the witch Derek expected her to be, she finally detected what he had. There was a problem here.

It emanated from those animal watchers as well, the trees and nearby water bodies— small creeks and tributaries to the marshes and the Gulf. Something had been scooping energy away from the underside of the fault line, like an army of prisoners tunneling out of their cells, one scoop of sand at a time. Not an entirely inaccurate description.

Creatures in the Underworld could wreak all sorts of havoc and mischief through projection of their spirit into the Overworld. However, some of them seemed to have a real hard-on for getting their corporeal selves here. Their personal motive for doing so was complicated, but Derek had once likened it to the way the 9/ 11 terrorists had gone off to party and hang out with strippers the night before they crashed into the WTC to register their abhorrence of Western capitalism. It wasn’t a direct answer, maybe not an answer at all, but it had some oddly right-feeling logic to it.

As far as the higher-level motive, the eternal battle between Dark and Light, an Underworld being could do a lot more damage on the surface than a spirit one. Since a spirit one could fuck things up pretty well, that was really saying something.

But why here? Linda had mentioned a murder in the area a couple years before, the first in the county in nearly a hundred years. Despite the official report of local law enforcement, the motive had been paranormal in nature. It had apparently brought Justin and Sarah together. Linda thought the weakening had started happening then, but she just wasn’t sure, given that hindsight could be misleading. But if she was right, the simplest explanation was that the paranormal activity in the area drew attention and certain beings in the Underworld saw an opportunity to exploit a possible weakness.

Or, like terrorist cells, it might be a plan that had been years in the making. They had all the time in the world, after all, and gradual incursions were far less likely to be detected until they reached this level of intrusion. Dropping to a squat and putting both hands on the earth, Ruby concentrated, reaching. It felt somewhat older than the murder time period. Perhaps the murder simply heightened the coven’s awareness, such that what they had noticed was something already in process.

She walked the fault line back to the gazebo, stood there, breathing deep. Could she reach deep enough in that fault line, follow it to Asmodeus himself? No Guardian of the Light had ever brought the fight into the Underworld. The tug-of-war for balance had always been fought on the borders. You couldn’t kill a demon, after all. You could only send him limping back to the Underworld, and no one wanted to fight one on his own turf. But she’d gone places other magic users hadn’t.

She had a weapon she’d worked on for so long, knowing an opportunity like this would eventually come. If she could get the barbs of that magic into him, she would cause him such pain, he’d beg to destroy himself. He’d cower in the Underworld like a rat for the rest of eternity. But she didn’t want him there. She wanted to make the impossible possible. She wanted to obliterate him.