Patricia Briggs - Strange Brew

"I'll leave you two alone," Martha cooed, swooping across the room to ensnare more hapless victims into conversations about polo and tea luncheons. Poor bastards.

"She's harmless," said Matthew, following my look. "Just a little overbearing."

"Are you a witch?" Whoa, look at you go, Sunflower. Way to blurt.

Matthew laughed, little crinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. They gave him a tinge of authority that kept him from seeming like a frat boy. "No, I'm not. Just a good citizen who's not afraid of a little magick."

"Ah. Well, good. Do you know much about this… whatever it is?"

"For that, you'd have to ask Martha or someone else in the coven," he said. Coven ? Covens went out with putting people in the stocks.

"Maybe I should," I said, squaring my shoulders. "I like to know what I'm getting into."

Matthew clasped my hand as music started burbling from speakers hidden around the perimeter of the room. It was slow, big-band sound doing "As Time Goes By." Good thing I was here instead of Luna. Her sense of cool would be irrevocably dented.

"You know what I think? I think you're way too serious for a pretty girl at a party. Dance?"

Before I could say No, I have the coordination of a drunken fruit bat , he spun me around like the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Las Rojas boardwalk. Crap, I really was going to fall off these shoes. Maybe he'd catch me…

Oh, get a grip, Swann . I gasped and grabbed on to Matthew's shoulders as he dipped me again. From my upside-down vantage point, I saw a flash of red hair disappear into the tall doors at the far end of the room. A couple swung by me, and the door slipped shut.

"You're fine," Matthew said. "I've got you."

"I need to use the ladies' room," I said, disentangling myself from his strong, heroic grasp. "And then I'd like to talk about why I was invited here."

"I'll tell Martha," he said. "But do hurry back. I'm going to look awfully silly if you run off."

"I'll do my best," I said, and walked to the doors, managing to keep my footing in the devil shoes. I didn't actually need to pee. This whole subterfuge thing was easier than it looked.

I slipped inside, following the person I'd seen. "Hello?"

A door creaked and slammed far ahead. The house was dark and dusty, away from the party. The walls were dark-paneled and red-painted, portraits glaring sternly at me from lighted alcoves. Martha Hanover had some really unattractive ancestors.

"Hello?" I whispered, my steps silent on the carpet. I dug out my earpiece and stuck it back in. Only static fizzed. "Fantastic," I muttered. Suddenly, I didn't feel so fearless. Having a badass were in your head will do wonders for your confidence.

I walked the length of the hall, checking doors as I went. Bedrooms, an office, a laundry closet. No dead bodies or anything. It was quiet, and the quiet spooked me. The house felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for the explosion.

The hall ended at a plain door, paint chipped off, locked. I rattled it, and checked behind me, the shadows closing in. I reached into my purse and rubbed my caster. It pricked my fingers. There was ambient magick here, although who was using it was anyone's guess. I hadn't pegged another witch besides Martha and Bentley since I walked in.

I passed over the caster for my wallet, and pulled out my debit card. Luna had lost the keys to our first apartment often enough that she'd finally taught me to jimmy locks. I hadn't paid much attention during the lessons—I had better things to do than hone my criminal skills—but it was a simple bolt, and after five minutes of fiddling and cursing, I had a chewed-up card and an open door.

Which led down a set of slick cement stairs into a black basement.

"This," I said to the dark, "just gets better and better."

I don't smoke, and I don't carry a light, but feeling around the wall got me a switch, and an arthritic bulb flickered on at the bottom of the steps. It buzzed and dimmed, casting pulsating shadows over the stairs and the murky dark beyond.

Okay, Sunny. You can leave, go back to the car, and make Luna go down into the basement, whereupon she will never let you forget this. Or, you can go down into the basement like every horror movie ever, and die in some gruesome manner with your dignity intact.

I took option two. I may be a wuss, but I have my pride.

Shoes in hand, I descended the stairs. In another part of the basement, I heard a gate rattle and muffled laughter. I swore that if the end of this road was a skanky cross-dresser with a poodle, demanding that I put the lotion in the basket, I was going to strangle my cousin.

I made it about ten steps across the cellar, bare except for a few shrouded pieces of furniture, when the light went out with a shower of sparks. I yelped and dashed ahead, blindly. Another light came on, much farther away than the size of the house would suggest. I felt my way along the wall, texture changing from plaster to brick under my fingers. Water squelched between my toes. I was in a tunnel. A tunnel of evil, no doubt. But at least there was light at the end.

No way I was going back to that basement. I walked on.

A long, sticky time later, I hit the other end of the tunnel. An old wooden door was propped closed and illuminated by a spitting lightbulb.

I stopped and listened again. The murmur of voices that had freaked me out in the basement was closer.

Hand on the door, I felt for magick. Nothing, just the same curious dead sensation. That was starting to freak me a lot more than feeling Abrams's raw, tainted power had. It's like when you're in the woods and all the birds stop, and you know the Blair Witch is going to burst out of the trees and eat your organs.

The door opened with only a whisper, and I stepped into a bricked-over rotunda with an earthen floor, the smell of urine and too many bodies making me gag.

"Hello?" I coughed, clapping my free hand over my nose and mouth. The room was mostly in shadow, and I caught a gleam of metal bars in the corners my eyesight couldn't penetrate.

The whisper was quiet, but it almost made me jump out of my skin all the same. A child's voice, harsh with fear. "Help us…"

It was at times like this that I really wished I smoked. A lighter would have solved the whole blindness problem in a heartbeat. "Who's there?" I hissed.

"We're locked up," the voice said plaintively. "Let us out."

Oh, holy crap , I whispered to myself. This was either going to be really sick or really bad. Either way, I wasn't going to end the night without a trauma moment.

The kid—or whatever it was—started to cry. "I wanna go home!"

"O-okay," I stuttered, taking a step toward the shadows. "Let's just think about this for a minute."

As soon as my foot touched the earth in the center of the round room, I felt it. Magick grabbed me like thorns in a briar patch, got under my skin, and wouldn't let go.

Pain exploded behind my eyes, and my legs turned into rubbery spaghetti, dropping me in the dirt without ceremony. I retched as the binding wrapped around me, tighter and tighter, until I had the illusion it was squeezing out my air.

The lights came on, not that I could see anything, and footsteps came toward me, not that I could pick out how many over the amount I was screaming.

"Stop that," a voice ordered me crossly. "No one can hear you."

Hands dragged me into the shadow, the magick following me, holding me in place and stamping out anything I might have been able to pull down myself. As a final insult, the hands wrenched my purse away, taking my caster with it.

Luna's purse. Luna's dress, muddy. She was going to kill me, if whoever had caught me in their binding didn't get to the job first.

I thought about that, and I started to cry in earnest, not from pain but from a pure cold fear that ate at me from the inside.