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

alongside the people.
    “Still in slumber?” Shu asked, placing the statue back down among its fake counterparts.
    “As far as I know.”
    Most of the old gods slept the eons away. Immortality takes its toll on the soul. The majority of the ancient pantheon waited, at rest forever or until something woke them. The location of the most ancient slumbering gods had been lost through the shifting sands of time, buried by the priests’ deliberate misdirection and fantasies. Then the generations of priests all died out, and the years turned into millennia.
    “Some days, I’m not sure what tales are real or spun from myth.” My gaze snagged on a crude glass skull. Many of the pieces in Maf’s store hummed and sang in the background, their magic alive and needy. But the skull’s tone was jagged and discordant. It wasn’t naturally infused with magic. The skull had stolen its song.
    “It’s a witches bane,” Shu remarked, seeing what had hooked my gaze.
    “Don’t they use them to anchor their rituals?”
    “Without it, their stolen magic would escape.” After a few moments with only the sound of Mafdet’s happy customer filling the store, Shu added with a snort, “Humans wielding magic. It’s not natural.”
    “It started with the priests,” I said, mostly to myself as I listened to the skull whine. I wanted to pick it up and throw it against a wall just to stop the nails-on-glass noise. “Some of the gods imbued their most devoted followers—pharaohs and temple priests—with magic.”
    “It’s always the gods’ fault. All the fuck-ups, right back to when Nut’s cunt squeezed out Isis and Osiris. And they call demons monsters. At least we don’t screw our siblings. Even demons know that’s a bad idea.” Shu noticed my frown. “What?”
    “Is nothing sacred to you?”
    She screwed up her face, my question having offended her. “Life is sacred. Mine, mostly. Not a bunch of inbred assholes with too much power. Take the witches. Gods let loose their magic, and now, conveniently, they look the other way while silly humans go chasing after power, but it’s not woven into their souls like it is with us, so the little people with their little lives don’t stand a chance. Once they get a feel for magic, they can’t go back. They hoard more and more until they’re overwhelmed and obsessed. And where are the gods, huh? Nowhere. Half of them are asleep. Who’s cleaning up their mess?”
    I waited a beat. “Me.”
    She clicked her fingers. “Exactly.” Picking up a pewter ankh, she weighed it and then replaced it on the shelf. “Is that why you hate the witches? The addiction?”
    “No.” I understood addiction all too well to hate anyone or anything for falling into its trap.
    Shu finally turned to me and asked what had really been on her mind since we left the office. “What did the witches do to you?” Her whispers had lost their usual cold-as-stone edge, softened into something more friendly, if such a thing were possible.
    I stared at the skull’s eyeless sockets, listening to remnants of an old world’s magic croon throughout the store. I hadn’t wanted Shu to know about my weaknesses or how bad it had been. Or maybe, just maybe, I didn’t want her realizing how, even today, I wondered exactly how far I would have slipped had Osiris not stepped in.
    “I was investigating an active coven from Portland. They’d moved their operation to New Jersey.”
    “I remember,” Shu said. “They were selling a batch of magically infused coins on eBay.”
    Just a few coins, but they’d been genuine and older than me. As far as Shu knew, the job didn’t pan out and the coven’s presence in New York disappeared. No coven, no investigation. Case closed.
    “It was a trap,” I admitted. “They lured me in, right over a summoning circle. I didn’t feel the spell snap until I was already inside. Once in, they summoned all my magic and yanked it to the surface.” My magic, dark as it is, is woven deep