Free Sorcerer: Witch's Woes: Power of Air (Book 3) by D. L. Harrison

as a threat, they assume
you practice dark magic and want revenge.  Cyndy’s been obsessed with it for
the last ten years.  I’m getting all this from the past, Cyndy is still in
charge, and she has the others… not controlled, but conditioned by spells
against betraying her, like she did to your mother.”
    While I was at it, I reached out for the fire sorcerer and
Christopher again, they were closed off as well, but it was different.  I
couldn’t feel the earth magic blocking me from the coven, but I could feel the
fire magic blocking my magic from the other issue.  It was very subtle, but it
was there.
    “Can we find them through their attack on you?  Trace the
magic back somehow?”
    The coven’s magic was still blasting against the shield I
put over the store, it was a stalemate at the moment.  I should have asked
Carrie last night if it had let up at all, didn’t the coven need to sleep too?
    “How are they maintaining this attack?”
    Tara frowned, “Probably a sacrifice to fuel it, a slow
bloodletting of a supernatural would do it, they’d only need one witch in the
coven to maintain and direct the power of the spell once it was cast, so they
could switch off to rest.  But all their power is still tied up in it as well,
so they will eventually tire.  I could try a spell to trace the magic
back.  That will find the ritual space used though, not necessarily the coven. 
They don’t have to be present there anymore.”
    Yes, because life isn’t complicated enough.
    Sierra and I watched as she got out ingredients and ground
them together with the mortar and pestle, and poured them into her own ritual
space.  Then she stepped inside and raised a circle.  She turned back to look
at us.
    “Ben, you’ll have to lower your shield, I need the
connection of their spell hitting my own wards to track it.”
    I dropped the shield over the store, and tried to understand
what she was doing.  It occurred to me that I could probably back trace the
spell with my air magic as well, if I understood how.  I’d never done anything
like that before, but if I could pull knowledge, and information on people and
objects, did that mean I could do it for magic as well?
    I could still feel the attacks, inside the power of my air
sphere, and I tried to pull information from the magic, the same way I’d do it
from an object.  I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, perhaps a location of where
it originated, but much like an object or picture, what I got was information
on the owner of the magic.  If there was a way for me to do a trace, what I’d
just tried wasn’t it.
    I tried to reach the information on how to do it, and was
blocked.
    It hadn’t been a total loss though, and I was able to get
the location in an alternate way. 
    Barry Dinmore.  Two-hundred-year old vampire, and slowly
being bled to help power the spell, an ongoing blood sacrifice.  Barry was also
in a house on the south side, in a basement.  He was lured in by a witch named Amber,
a part of the coven and twenty-three years old, and almost as beautiful as Tara.
 He was no doubt suckered in by the promise of a nice meal and hot sex. 
    So I suppose what I had done had worked, just not the way I
expected.  Either the coven hadn’t thought Tara could trace a random sacrifice,
or blocking him with a ward would interfere with the spell.
    Tara was already casting, so I kept my mouth shut.  I felt a
little sheepish that she didn’t really have to bother with her spell at this
point.
    Tara finished and said, “In a basement in south Chicago.  I
don’t have an address, but I can lead us there.  Can you get Carrie back here
to cover the wards?  I don’t want my shop to burn down when we get out of range
and I can’t directly support my wards.”
    Sierra frowned, “I suppose, do we have a plan?  Or are we
just going to charge in?”
    Tara shook her head, “I’ll break the wards first…”
    She was interrupted by Todd walking in, “So, what