Fair Game

you remember that Isaac belongs to my father—and to me. He is necessary to us as you are not. You will leave him unharmed or I will hunt you down and destroy you.”
    She hissed at him like a cat. When he just stared at her, Hally scrambled ungracefully around the far side of the console, out of his line of sight.
    Isaac was watching him, his eyes bright gold. And then he tilted his jaw, exposing his throat. Charles lunged forward and nipped him lightly before releasing him.
    From the back of the boat Beauclaire watched them with inhuman eyes, and Brother Wolf wanted to teach the fae man respect the way he’d just put the witch in her place. The moon urged, the ghosts in his head howled…andCharles took a half step away from the gunwale railing.
    “You made yourself an enemy,” Isaac said, his voice quiet and soft, distracting Brother Wolf. Beauclaire dropped his eyes at last and the moment was gone.
    “She is a black witch,” Charles said, equally quietly. “We have always been enemies. For right now, we are aimed at the same target; that is all. If your target is pleasure and you’re sure that’s what hers is, too, that’s fine. Just remember—a black witch doesn’t love anything but power.”
    Isaac swallowed and looked away. “White witches are just food for the rest. Hally had a sister who died when she was sixteen because she refused to take the black route to power. A big, bad wicked witch ate her down.”
    Charles nodded. “You can admire the survivor—but Hally
did
survive. She’ll make sure she
always
survives. You better make sure that the same is true of you.”
    The little boat slowed; the engines quieted. The sky was inky except for the silver moon and the thin ribbon of cloud that crossed between them and her.
    “Here,” said Malcolm unnecessarily.
    The witch took her satchel and the Baggie Goldstein had given her and climbed up the aluminum ladder to the fishing platform above the console. It was the best place to do it—a flat open surface on a crowded boat—but Charles was sure that the witch knew and enjoyed the fact that the height put her onstage and made the rest of them her audience.
    Standing on the top of the ladder, Hally took a small rug out of her pack and laid it out flat. While she was snapping it into place, Charles caught a glimpse of circles and symbols and realized that she’d woven into the rug the protections that a witch would normally have used chalkfor. It was a clever thing, something that would save her time and trouble—and also work admirably well on a boat in the rain.
    Kneeling on the rug, she took out four or five small pottery jars and set them up as if their placement was important. She did the same with eight silver candlesticks holding dark-colored candles—probably black candles, but some witches worked with red. She adjusted and moved things around for a while. At last she set a tall candle in the center of her work.
    “Light,” the witch said, in an ordinary voice a half beat before the candles lit themselves despite the salt-sea air. The flames on the wicks burned steady and true though the wind whipped the strands of hair that had worked their way out of his braid. Magic. Her voice hadn’t been the trigger, just a distraction or embellishment. The smoke told his nose what Charles already surmised—there was human blood worked into the candles she burned.
    The way witches cast spells differed from one witch to the next depending upon a lot of things: their family background, who their teachers had been—and a little of their own personalities. This one was a wiggler and moaner, but she did it with all the grace of a talented belly dancer, and her moans were both musical and mesmerizing. Charles felt her magic rain down upon their little boat and found himself agreeing with Isaac’s assessment: she was a power.
    It made him wish that he’d called the white witch Moira after all. Hally didn’t scare him, but his paranoia didn’t like being in the middle of the ocean on a boat with his mate with a world-class witch who would—as Anna had helpfully pointed out earlier—as soon kill them as not. He intensely disliked being in someone else’s power.
    If we jumped up there, she’d scream and fall in the water,
Brother Wolf assured him, because he didn’t like being in her power, either.
Or we could just kill her and save her the trouble of drowning.
    Hally put the contents of the Baggie in a small ivory-colored potshaped like a toad