Free Witches' Bane (The Soul Eater Book 2) by Pippa DaCosta Page A

wrapped tight. Too many times I’ve felt you flooding the hallway. It’s creepy, and I know creepy. Five hundred years, Ace. I’ve been tied to you too long. I know you. I know when something isn’t right, and right now, you’re not right.”
    I’d also thrown a witch against a wall and said something about carving him up to feed to Cat. And then there was the restlessness, the shifting sense of unease as though I were missing something right in front of me. Something obvious, with claws and teeth, that might swallow me down if I didn’t figure it out.
    “What did you do last night, after the museum?” Shu demanded in that business-like tone of hers.
    Leaning into my chair, I thought back. “Took the tablet home.”
    “Walk me through it.”
    I scowled at her, but Shu glared right back. She wasn’t giving in.
    “Got home, ditched the suit, had a shower, and fell asleep.”
    “Did you dream?”
    “No, I…” I hadn’t dreamed. For three months, give or take a few nights, I’d dreamed of Isis and her honeyed words, her poisonous mouth, and other parts. But not last night. Last night, there’d been nothing. A hollow nothing. Not empty, but more a sense that something had been there but was taken away.
    Shu cocked her head. “What is it?”
    “I need to get to Mafdet’s.”
    I was around the desk and scooping up my sword when Shu blocked the doorway.
    “I’ll take you.”
    “I will need you there.” If someone, or something, had gotten to me, I’d need Shu as a witness, but what I wanted was a blast through the streets on my bike to clear my head. “But I’d prefer to take the bike—”
    “I’ll take you,” she said again, this time weighing the words down with a clear threat. She didn’t trust me not to walk out the door and vanish. My life was her life too, and there was no way she’d let me leave without her.
    We’d fought before, many times. In the early days of the curse, we’d tried to kill each other on multiple occasions, but as time wore on, our arguments became fewer, our battles less bloody.
    We’d fight again, but not today. “All right.”

    * * *
    A n electronic bell buzzed as Shu and I stepped from the rain-soaked street into the warmth of Mafdet’s Curiosities store. The bell wasn’t to alert Mafdet of her customers’ comings and goings. It chimed as a warning. Something or someone of power had crossed her threshold, and that someone was me.
    Mafdet acknowledged me over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses. She had a customer at the counter gushing over a personalized papyrus. I nodded, confirming I wasn’t about to throw my weight around, and let her finish her transaction as I wandered down one of the store’s many overflowing aisles. Kapet , a heady blend of cinnamon, myrrh, wine, and a dozen other spices, burned somewhere out of sight. It was a traditional recipe, and one that had my memories bubbling with images of old-world temple ceremonies.
    Shu picked up a squat lapis lazuli statue of the minor god Bes from an array of tiny trinkets and ornaments. She turned it over in her hand as though examining it for faults. The small measure of power emanating from the egg-sized artifact hummed pleasantly against my senses.
    Shu had remained silent during the entire car ride over, likely wondering if any of this would touch her. Dead witches, strange marks, my magic all over the evidence, clear as a smoking gun.
    I hadn’t yet mentioned Osiris’s demand. Oh, hey, Shu, by the way, I agreed to kill Ra’s son. She’d probably kill me herself as a last hurrah before the gods ripped me to shreds.
    “Bes was good for a laugh,” I said. “He once inspired a whole village to dance through the night. Nothing malicious. Just wine and merriment.”
    She grunted. Frolicking gods didn’t usually show up on her ex-demon radar.
    “Good times,” I added with a smile. That had been before I started stealing souls, before the curse, when I’d sneak out of the underworld and revel