By Moon by T. Thorn Coyle

Author:T. Thorn Coyle [Coyle, T. Thorn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PF Publishing

21

Selene

Raquel had tucked Selene up on one end of the overstuffed red living room couch, with Brenda at the other end to keep an eye on them. If it hadn’t still been eighty degrees outside, Selene swore Raquel would have wrapped them up in a throw, too. Joshua was ensconced in one of the chairs flanking the impressive fireplace, dressed in a bathrobe that clearly came from Raquel’s new boyfriend, Charlie. It swamped Joshua’s thin frame.

Huh. The robe must mean Charlie was sleeping over, and that Raquel’s son, Zion, must be cool with it.

“Where’s Zion, anyway?” Selene asked, still groggy from the magical backlash. They’d been yanked from the æthers by Tobias. That was never fun. Could have been worse though, and was, from the looks of Joshua, who had passed out from the pain of it.

Tempest was doing some sort of energy healing work, focused on Joshua’s head. His color was slowly returning, but he still didn’t look so great, a little sweaty despite the air conditioning. There were dark pouches beneath his closed eyes. He looked a little like something that wandered in from a children’s fairy tale, and not one of the nice ones.

Selene should have given Joshua the couch. He was clearly in a lot worse shape than they were.

Apparently Joshua had gone astral traveling without warning, then slammed back into his body when he figured out Selene was in danger. That sort of thing always left a headache, and sometimes nausea, too. You wanted to exit and enter the body very slowly, in a measured way. That was what coven training had taught Selene. And Selene had no idea how thorough Joshua’s training had been. They had a feeling he was one of those scattershot, auto-didact, half-trained people with a lot of natural talent.

Nothing wrong with that, except when it exacted a steep price.

And magic always exacted some price, whether the witch or magician was aware of it or not.

Magic could be tricky, even in the best trained people’s hands.

Selene was thinking of the servitor. It turned out it didn’t particularly like being a servitor. The Alchemist had messed up.

A servitor was basically magical AI. Creating a servitor—at least what Selene had studied, they’d never done it themself—required the magician to infuse it with a certain amount of intelligence. Too much, and it could develop its own ideas, and maybe even, eventually, its own will.

Despite being a creation of the Alchemist, this servitor had somehow decided it was more strongly aligned to the spirit of tobacco than to the man who made it. Probably because tobacco was the food the Alchemist was giving it. You always had to feed a servitor something to keep it going. Tobacco was the obvious choice here.

Selene bet the Alchemist had no idea the servitor was gaining in autonomy. That could prove useful. At least they hoped so.

Anything they could use to track the dangerous idiot and stop him from poisoning more people, the better.

Goddess. Poor Janice. No way did she deserve to die because this idiot had some who-knows-what plan.

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