Page 9 of Strike It Witch

“Told you Elaine got him.” Gnath stuck out his chest. “Her garden is renowned throughout the realms. She can growanything.”

“So I was told,” I said with a smile.

Gnath’s chest deflated. He shot me a worried look.

“Wait a minute here. She can grow anything, and she chose to grow a harmless plant for cats?” Ida plucked another piece of greenery from his fur. Fennel tried to eat it. “What a goof.”

“It’s a protectionagainstcats,” Gnath said. “It immobilizes them.”

“Yet he’s here,” she said. “Stoned out of his cute little gourd but not immobilized.”

“The beast isyourfamiliar. You summoned him,witch.” Gnath flung the word at me like an epithet.

“He’s my partner, not my familiar. He comes and goes as he pleases.” My relief at Fennel’s return faded as all the color leached out of the world. I let the mercury flames burn out to conserve the magic I had left.

Ida gave Gnath a dismissive wave. “Catnip.Pfft. I’m less and less impressed with your so-called demonic setup in Purgatory.”

“Elaine grows poisonous plants in her garden, too, you know.” The demon’s voice took on a deep, hollow cadence. “Noxious, venomous,carnivorousplants.”

Fennel flopped over in the dirt and kicked his feet, a wide smile on his feline face.

“Yeah, right,” Ida said.

I lit the rosemary and resumed chanting. Thankfully, I didn’t need much magic to finish this.

Gnath fell to his knees. “Please don’t kill me.”

“Good graves, this one’s a whiner. I’m embarrassed for him.” Ida picked up a very limp Fennel and his burlap bundle and moved away from the containment circle.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I said. “We made a deal, remember?”

Gnath climbed to his feet, dusted off his knees. “Then what are you doing?”

“Sending you home.”

“Not sure that’s much better,” the demon said. “Do you have any idea howboringit is in Limbo? At least open a new portal and cast me into Hades. I’ve got family there.”

“Gnath, servant of iniquity, commander of the second brigade of malfeasance, demon of Highway 86, I banish you, body and spirit, to Purgatory.”

I flicked the lighter and set the rosemary ablaze.

His corporeal form faded like a shadow at twilight. One second, he was as close to human as he could manage, and the next he was a ball of green light hovering before me.

“You owe me,” I whispered, as the edges of my vision folded inward.

The demon’s essence blinked twice then floated like a wraith through the gateway between our worlds. The opening cinched shut, and he disappeared entirely, leaving behind a stench I’d be scrubbing out of my hair for days and a blackened symbol that hung in the air like smoke.

A glyph.

An Aztec skull glyph representing the god of death Mictlantecuhtli, to be precise.

“What the devil was that?” Ida asked.

“No idea,” I said.

My vision winnowed to a pinpoint of light, and I dropped like a stone.

Chapter

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