Shadow Rites: A Jane Yellowrock Novel Read Online Free

Fortunately the neighbor’s ugly, hairy yapper dog wasn’t out this time of night. It didn’t like the way I smelled, and kicking a lapdog was bad form and downright mean, no matter how much Beast wanted to play bowling ball with it.
    I hadn’t been through the neighbor’s yard in ages, and I slunk around under the dripping banana tree leaves until I was at the front of their house and could see the witches. The rain increased to misty drizzle and ran down my neck and under my T-shirt, and it further obscured the witches. The larger woman with her red magics was only the width of the street away, standing in a tiny patch of grass and dead flowers, less than twenty feet from me. I peeked around the wall and saw the pale green lights of the magical working flicker in the front windows of my house. The squad cars turned onto my street and moved in, blue lights flashing, sirens wailing.
    Both witches looked up. I had to move.
    The green and red energies of their working snapped and brightened in a blast of force. The flash of witch energies left my eyes burned and blinking as the working snapped to a close. The woman nearest bent as if to pick up something at her feet and the smaller girl slammed into her, moving fast. The rain pelted down; the girl slid. They both almost went down, stumbling from the patch of grass into the road. The rain bent around the obfuscation spells they were hiding under, making them visible as human-shaped shadows for a moment, but the splattering rain kept me from getting a clear look.
    The girl screamed, “Go, go, go, go, go, go!”
    The larger woman caught her balance and followed the girl, both of them running. The drivers of the NOPD units could see the shadows of them inside the rain-drenched spells, and seemed to assume that a running person was a guilty person. The cars sped after them, toward an alley between two houses, down the street from me, sirens wailing. Lights were coming on in the houses up and down the street. I could see heads peeking through windows.
    Inside me, a voice repeated,
FUBAR, FUBAR, FUBAR
, and it wasn’t Beast. It was me, starting to panic. Humans in danger, everywhere, all around me, if the witches intended to release some form of magical working. And to stop the witches, I might have to kill them.
    As the cars raced down the street, a speaker blared, “Stop! Police. Stop, and put your hands in the air.”
    But the witches turned as one and the girl reached into her shirt pocket. Time slowed for me, that battle-time change that made it seem as if I could see everything and everyone, almost—but not quite—standing outside of time. Me, moving through it, faster than normal. As if I had all the time in the world, but that was a lie. I raised my gun but forced my muscles to wait. To fire at a witch was a cop call, not mine.
    The NOPD units both rocked to a halt, tires screeching. One cop opened his car door, weapon leading through the crack of the unit’s A pillar and the door itself. “Stop!” he shouted. “Put down your weapons. Show me your hands!”He was young, and his voice went high and breathless. Over the noise, I heard the other officer calling for backup. I was right. We were about to get FUBARed.
    Still in a stutter-slow motion, the girl pulled something out of her shirt. She screamed a
wyrd
. Or part of it. The older woman grabbed her and shook her, the girl’s head snapping back and forth, the wyrd only half spoken—the powerful spell, contained in a single word, ended before it began. The turbaned older woman snapped her fingers and red sparks of power flashed out, visible to the human eye. The cops ducked.
    The girl screamed, “No!”
    The older woman wrapped her arms around the skinny one in a mighty hug. Threw out the fingers of one hand.
    A blast of white smoke burst from her fingers and . . . the witches disappeared.
    Just like that. In a vanishing act worthy of Las Vegas.
    I shook my head.
    Nothing made sense. And I hadn’t gotten a