Bitter Night by Diana Pharaoh Francis Page B

clawing through her. With rigid fingers she shoved the hailstone back into her front pocket.

    She couldn’t think about it. Doing so made her compulsion spells claw at her. It felt as if her flesh were being flayed from her bones. Max closed her eyes and tried to let herself drift into sleep, but the spells weren’t fooled. Then, too, the fire of unexpected hope was like a fist punching a dead heart to life. She didn’t know when she’d be able to sleep again.

    Less than an hour had gone by when she heard a key fitting into the driver’s door.

    “It’s me, Lise,” came the careless voice of Oz’s second-in-command. The Tahoe shivered slightly as she got in. “You’ve got Giselle climbing the walls. Should be a good show when we get back. I’ve got popcorn in the microwave and front-row seats. Try not to disappoint, won’t you?”

    The smell of coffee curled through the cracks of the box, making Max’s mouth water. Trust Lise to taunt her with it. “Sometimes you’re a real bitch,” she said, eyeing a Gatorade with loathing.

    “Mostly I’m a real bitch,” Lise replied with perfect equanimity as she turned the engine over and backed the Tahoe out. “Gotta be what you’re good at, right? Just like you’re a hard-ass with authority issues and a knack for scaring the shit out of people.”

    Max grinned. “I don’t scare you. Rabid bears with grenades don’t scare you.”

    “On the contrary. I’ve had to change my panties more than once after seeing you in action. I’m just glad you’re on our side.”

    They took a sharp corner and Max braced herself against the steel. On our side. That was the hard part about killing Giselle’what would happen to everyone else who lived in Horngate? It was easy to say they’d all get along fine’join other covensteads or live free like most everybody else, but the truth was that joining a covenstead was no easy task, and most wouldn’t know what to do with themselves without a witch to serve. That was the part Max wasn’t sure she could live with, and it made her want to kill Giselle even more, if that was possible. The witch had done this to her. She’d chained Max with magic, then reinforced it with razor-wire bindings of loyalty and friendship.

    Horngate was small, made up only of the twenty-two coven witches and their families, the Sunspears and Shadowblades, and a handful of others. It was situated in the unforgiving mountains west of Missoula, Montana, and spread across ten square miles of Rocky Mountain forest, though Giselle’s territory ran south to Pocatello, east to Ennis, north to the Highline, and west to Kellogg, Idaho. As an elemental witch, Giselle drew magic from the powerful geological forces at work below the stone skin of the mountains. Most of the minor witches who served in the coven were also elementals, though a few practiced Glyph magic, which used symbols such as numbers, words, pictures, gestures, and so forth to generate and harness magic. There were no flesh mages in Horngate’they didn’t have much to work with in Montana. The populace was too sparse.

    The main hall of the covenstead was an underground fortress where Giselle lived with her Sunspears and Shadowblades. Most everyone else had built cabins in the surrounding mountains, close enough to be summoned quickly, far enough to gain a little privacy. Most of the witches and their families worked in the Keep or in the massive greenhouses that provided a steady income to Horngate. Through the year, they grew every manner of vegetable and fruit and sold them throughout the Pacific Northwest. Thanks to magic, the greenhouses were lush and productive, their produce in heavy demand. That business provided a stable income’enough so that the IRS didn’t look at them twice. A few witches and family members worked in Missoula or Hamilton. Two were surgeons, five more were nurses, one was a farrier, one was a machinist, and two were teachers. But the bulk of Horngate’s