Page 80 of Filthy Little Witch
“Okay,” I said.
“Do you know the Lord’s Prayer?”
I nodded, the words coming to me from the depths of a little boy’s memory. Dad had taken us to church only a handful of times, but I’d picked up on enough over the years to know that one piece.
“Good,” she said. “Repeat it over and over again. Don’t stop, no matter what happens.”
My mouth had run dry, and my heart sprinted against my ribs, but I opened my mouth to say the words. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”
I carried on with the chant while Marta gathered more candles, red and black, and interspersed them with the white ones already glowing. She lit them with one match, then returned to the incense bowl and gathered dried flowers from her satchel. Marigolds, from the look of it, but I couldn’t be sure.
Then, she placed them in the incense. Next, she pulled something else out of her bag of magic tricks, whispering, “Copal ash for purity and guidance. Light the way. Clear the path.”
I finished the prayer and started over again, just as she instructed. But when she held up her palm and grabbed her knife, I froze.
More blood. More sacrifice. Hadn’t we given enough?
Apparently not. She sliced open a finger and dripped crimson into the incense burner, where it hissed and cracked on the charred remains of her spell. She stood and walked to me, holding out her palm to request mine. I gave it.
“Stop,” the demon hissed. “Stop, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
That was true; we didn’t. But we also didn’t stop. Marta sliced open the pad of my finger and drizzled my blood on top of hers.
“A gift given in sacrifice. Your blood. My blood.” She turned to Wes, her focus narrowing on his shaking form. I restarted the prayer.
Getting his blood took some work. The demon didn’t want to give it, and she’d created a protective circle around him, one she had to invade and escape before the demon could do anything to her. Watching her in her element always amazed me. She exuded an elegant strength, even in the face of everything stacked against us.
“You can’t banish me from the liminal,” Wes shouted. “You’ll kill us all.”
We didn’t listen. We’d had enough of the demon’s ramblings, and demons lied. They couldn’t be trusted, especially not when one was possessing my brother.
“Finally, a little something extra,” she said, retrieving a tiny bottle full of a clear liquid. When she opened it, the heady scent of tequila hit my nose. “Mezcal. Earth to fire. Fire to spirit. An offering given so one may be received.” She dumped it into the chalice and took a deep pull before spitting it into the incense, where it reacted to the burning herbs with a sharp flame and a crackling hiss. Marta walked to me, holding out the goblet so I could drink.
I did, only taking a sip before I repeated her motion, spewing the liquor into the cauldron.
“If you put that in my mouth, I’m going to drink it,” the demon snarled. “Don’t try?—”
“No matter,” Marta said, dripping more into the incense.
The demon let out another loud laugh before its voice dropped to a low, devilish tenor. “You stupid witch. You can’t banish me from a liminal. I am the liminal. This world was created for me. I’m the anchor. You get rid of me, and it all falls down.”
I stopped my prayer. That sounded a little too close to the truth. The coven had to summon the demon and figure out who it was before the liminal could be made. When I glanced at Marta, she seemed to come to the same conclusion, her indecision and sudden discouragement racing down the tie between us.
“That hits a little too close to home,” I admitted. “What if?—”
“We need to do this,” she said. “Sacrifice is always painful.”
I didn’t like it, but she was right. I didn’t have any other ideas, and we were running out of time.
CHAPTER 26
Marta
In many ways, I’d always existed in liminal spaces. Half witch, half biker. Both Catholic and pagan. Attracted to both men and women. A proverbial pie chart of ancestry that included Mexican, Scottish, and Indigenous roots. Now in love with two warriors. Not that any of these were mutually exclusive. I used to think of it as a detriment, not wholly one or the other, never existing anywhere.
Now, I recognized its strength. I pulled from both Mexican-American brujeria and Appalachian folk magic to conjure my spell for the banishment. I recalled old incantations from the coven and blended them with things my tita did when I was little.
Mezcal for cleansing, coral ash for purity and protection, rue for strength. But through it all, blood. My blood. Atlas’s blood. Wes’s blood.
