Witch's Bell Book One

submit to the punishments of the Coven, she'd have to explain it all to her mother as well.
    Ebony tried to shift around the strap on her dress, in an attempt to make it sit straight and even against her shoulder. Lord, she hoped everything would go well, but she had that feeling in the pit of her stomach that tonight would end with a bang.
    'Why don't you kick the back of my chair again,' Nate suggested, voice harsh and sarcastic. 'You'll find that comes with consequences as well.'
    Ebony thought she caught a glimpse of Ben rolling his eyes from the driver's seat. 'You two are like my kids – annoying as hell when you're together, but strangely companionable when you are apart.'
    Ebony didn't reply, just bore her practiced evil eye through the back of Nate's chair, hoping to give him at the very least that horrible sensation of being watched, if not a mild headache.
    Silence fell again, but only in words. The sound of the tires grinding over the road, Ben's hands sliding across the wheel as he took corners too fast, and the general hubbub of the rest of the traffic made sure that things weren't all that quiet. Still, Ebony started to feel the silence around her. It prickled up her arms like a spider in the night. It was that strange silence that would fall over a group when they were waiting for the yet-unsaid to make itself heard. Only problem was, Ebony realized as she scratched at her arms, there was an edge to this silence, an expectant edge.
    'So,' Nate said with a tortured sigh, 'are you going to tell me what the consequences are, or are you going to leave me hanging? Tell me, consultant witch, what's going to happen to us if we have to call in for backup?'
    But Ebony was no longer listening to his words; she was listening to the pronounced silences that punctuated around them, like hail before a storm. 'Shhh,' she said sharply, 'do you hear that?' she put a hand flat on the window, repositioning herself so that she could get a better view of the sky outside.
    Things were growing dark outside. But not the natural, welcome dark that drew on into night. This one came from the brewing storm clouds above. The very same wisps at the horizon that Ebony had been able to dismiss at midday were now collecting into a wall of blue-gray menace.
    'What?' Nate said, more irritated than interested. 'I don't hear anything?'
    'Precisely,' Ebony bit at her lip. 'It's going to start raining in a second,' she predicted.
    Sure enough, as Ben slowed down at a set of lights, his fingers drumming repetitively on the leather steering wheel, the sky opened up. Tiny droplets of rain started to hit the roof of the car, slide down the windows, and streak the pavement outside. They began to grow fatter as the seconds passed, until Ben slid a hand over the wipers, turning them on with a practiced move.
    'You think I'm supposed to be impressed by that?' Nate intoned, voice drawn out. 'It doesn't take a witch to realize clouds like that-'
    Ebony suddenly clicked her fingers with a poignant snap. 'And then thunder.'
    In a second the heavens opened up with a roar. Though the thunder wasn't close, it still managed to jangle the little lucky-charm that Ben had wound around his rear-vision mirror. Ebony had given him that charm. It was a set of three golden bells on a tiny silver chain. Even though it was something she'd just picked up from a trinket store, and didn't actually have any magical credibility, Ben swore by it. And that was enough, Ebony knew, to make it thoroughly magical anyway.
    Now those little tiny bells jingled with a fitful dance, as the thunder roared above.
    'How did you know that?' Nate turned in his chair when the thunder finally abated.
    'It's not done yet,' Ebony angled her face upward as if confident she could stare right through the top of the car and out at the stormy sky above. She couldn't, of course, but that wasn't the point. 'This is going to be one Hell of a storm.'
    'Sit around in your chair,' Ben said quickly, clapping a hand onto Nate's shoulder and dragging him back around to a respectable seated position. 'I'm about to hit the highway, and hit it hard.'
    'Atta boy,' Ebony said appreciatively. That was the great thing about Detective Ben Tate. Well, one of the great things about him. Though you wouldn't know it, his father was somewhat of a misfit – running bootleg-alcohol around Vale as a young man. Ben's father had gotten quite the reputation for driving like a bat out of hell, to borrow a phrase. A skill