Lady of Misrule (Marla Mason Book 8) Read Online Free Page A

don’t know, you’re an ocean witch, that’s basically the same as weather magic, and anyway, won’t this hyperborean vortex mess up the Gulf Stream or something – Huh. That’s – right. Okay. Uh, no, yeah, I’m still gay, not planning to hit the coast soon anyway – right, sure, thanks.” He hung up, if that was the right terminology to use for putting an enchanted conch shell back down on the table.
    “That didn’t sound good,” Pelham said.
    “Zufi was in a pretty lucid state of mind,” Rondeau said. “Not having one of those days that’s all non sequiturs or talking in rhyme or making dolphin noises, so at least I got a straight answer, even if the answer was ‘no.’” Zufi, the Bay Witch, was one of the more powerful sorcerers they knew from their old days in Felport, and she’d given them a hand in Hawaii not long ago, so they’d had hopes she might intercede this time too.
    “Did she say why she can’t help?” Pelham said.
    Rondeau shrugged. “She’s an ocean witch. Nevada is landlocked.”
    “There are planes ,” Pelham said. “Rivers, too, if she insists on swimming. Lake Mead isn’t entirely frozen over yet.”
    “You ever try arguing with Zufi via conch shell? It’s even more pointless than arguing with her in person.” He sighed. “Who’s next? And what will we have to sacrifice or chant or en chant in order to call them?”
    “I suppose we could try Hamil,” Pelham said. “He actually answers his phone.”
    Rondeau nodded. Hamil had been Marla’s consigliere when she was chief sorcerer of Felport, and he was still a big deal there, second-most-powerful figure on the council, and a master of sympathetic magic. “I don’t think he has any particular reason to hate me,” Rondeau said. “And at least he’s extremely unlikely to turn either of us into a lemon.”

Marzi in Santa Cruz
    Marzipan McCarty, known as Marzi to everyone other than her whimsical parents, gasped herself awake in the tiny apartment over the café she co-owned. She rolled out of bed, her boyfriend Jonathan grumbling beside her at the disturbance. He knew she was a light sleeper, and had long since grown immune to waking up himself just because she had a nightmare. She had them often: mostly about mudslides, earthquakes, wildfires.
    But this dream hadn’t been one of the usual sort. This one seemed meaningful in a way that was familiar, and unwelcome. A few years earlier, her dreams had contained messages from powerful forces dwelling among the hidden machinery of the world, and she’d done what was necessary to stop the evil those dreams had revealed, but damn it, she was done . No more visions, please.
    She went to the little round window in their attic apartment, the one that looked down onto Ash Street. Santa Cruz streets in summer were rarely entirely deserted even this late at night, and a chattering group of twenty-somethings went by laughing and babbling, probably a little drunk. About as normal as normal could be. Dreams didn’t have to mean anything –
    A shadow detached itself from the wall of the hot tub place and spa across the street, and Marzi stared, waiting for it to resolve into the form of a drunk, or a homeless guy, or even a mugger. She’d be grateful for a nice mundane mugger.
    But it just remained a shadow, even when it entered the pool of light cast by a streetlight: a swirling coil of darkness, like a long black chiffon scarf twisting in the wind... or like a sea serpent, undulating through an invisible sea, moving gracefully toward the four people walking.
    Was she dreaming still? Because she’d dreamt of something like this. Only in the dream it had been a rippling shadow drifting across the sky, growing larger and larger until it hung over the world like a veil, blocking out all the light, plunging the world into a somehow carnivorous darkness.
    She rubbed her eyes. It had to be a trick of the light. Or, okay, it didn’t have to be, she knew better than that, but she