Page 24 of Magic Pussy

Michelle stood, her back to Rain, watering one of her plants. She was wearing a white skirt suit, indubitably power-dressing.

Looking down at her denim skirt and black tank, Rain felt awfully underdressed. It was as if their clothing was showing their respective personalities today.

"I love what you've done with the place," she said awkwardly, looking around.

In one glance, she saw at least three dozen different sorts of poisonous plants, as well as plants used for the most dangerous kinds of spells.

Looked like Michelle had stopped playing nice a long time ago.

"Do you?" her sister asked indifferently, before stepping away from the plant she'd just taken care of.

Rain tried not to gasp. One might have mistaken the flower for a dragon lily, but it wasn't dark purple; the petals were black, midnight black, while the leaves were pure white and the pistil, blood red. Pretty damn recognizable.

Holy shit.

"Are you making immortality drops?" she gasped.

It had been almost two decades since Rain had started using magic and she'd always been fascinated with studying spells and potions. None had seemed more complicated than the immortality potion; it wasn't even magic as much as alchemy. The "mortem arum," the plant behind Michelle, didn't even exist in nature. It had to be created from scratch by blending different plants together and mixing the whole lot with seriously strong magic. That was the easy part. One had to carefully nurture the plant into health until it flowered seven times, before crushing its flowers and starting the most complicated potion in the history of potion-making. One look at the twenty-page-long instructions and Rain had shrugged it off. Sure, drinking a few drops of serum and being entirely indestructible for a month did sound pretty damn cool, but was it really worth years of labor? Besides, there had been a warning along the lines of "getting one thing wrong could result in painful death. Good luck, idiot."

Michelle shrugged. "A girl has to have a hobby."

She had to chuckle. "I'll stick to knitting."

"You would," Michelle replied, unsurprisingly.

She wasn't one to miss an opportunity to belittle her.

"So," her elder sister prompted, putting down her watering can.

"So," Rain echoed.

How did they even start talking after all this time? All they could do was trade insults.

"You texted."

"And you called me home."

Michelle pursed her lips. She didn't like that Rain knew it had come from her; Charles might have been told to keep that to himself.

"I guess I did." Michelle sighed deep, meaningfully, as though she was carrying the weight of the word on her shoulders.

Which, admittedly, she kinda was. Twenty-nine, and she was regent of all seventy-three clans in their damn state. Rain wasn't even sure she could keep a damn pet alive.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush. I called you because you care about Sara, and she's in danger, so I figured you'd help. Someone--something--is controlling the majority, if not the entirety, on the covens. That something has Sara and won't relinquish her. If Sara had anchored the spell, like it wanted her to, it would have won. I want you to anchor it this one time because I think you're too stubborn to let anyone tell you what to do."

Rain wasn't sure that was supposed to be a compliment.

She nodded. "Okay, but what do we do about Sara, and everyone else."

"I am certain that the master puppet is in the outerworld. It wants to pass through when the veil is thinnest, during our ceremony."

Rain had been thinking something along the same line. Everything did point to the ritual.

Michelle still shocked her when she said, "My solution is, we let it pass."

Right. Okay. So, her sister was insane.

"What the hell?"

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