Chaos Burning by Lauren Dane Page A

walked, her magick surging through her body. She let it lead. Let her magick do what it did best. It knew more than her brain did just what to look for. The cold gave the air a sharpness, a clean scent that helped her cut past anything but signatures she cared about. Around the back of the house she saw it. The muddy smudge of a turned witch. “Here.” She pointed and kept walking.
    The wards were amateurish. With all the danger around for them, it seemed criminal for two full-council witches with all that power not to have warded better, or at the very least to have had witches who were good at warding come out and do it for them.
    “Wards are weak.” The words were sort of offhand as she moved. Her magick sang through her consciousness, filling her with that sharpness of wit and attention she needed to do her job.
    She saw the world she moved through. The furniture, other people, all that. But with her othersight open, she saw the energies all around. Energies most people never noticed. But magick created a subtle change in the air, left an imprint. That’s what her othersight helped her focus on.
    Inside the back door and she saw more. “Two distinct signatures here. A turned witch and…” She came to a halt, breathing deep. “Well now, this is interesting.” Crouching, she caught a wisp of something different. “What do we have here?” Yellow with some orange. Jagged like a prickle burr.
    Portia knelt next to her, looking. “What the hell is that?”
    “It’s Other, that much I know.” She pulled out her little notebook and jotted down some impressions. “It’s not mage. It’s not turned witch. Not Were, not vamp. I don’t know what it is, but I know what it isn’t. So let’s keep looking.”
    She did so, keeping low and catching more from that angle than she would have standing. Learned that one from her father. Smart criminals tried to wipe their tracks, but they often forgot what clung to carpet in corners or the feet of chairs and couches.
    Lark continued to move through the house, going room by room. At the end she got to her feet.
    “Your witches were taken. Taken by a turned witch and something else. I don’t know what. I’ll consult with some people I know to see if they have any suggestions.”
    “I can’t believe I missed that.” Dray hung his head.
    “Next time, get on your hands and knees. You’ll miss less that way. Otherwise, it’s not like this is taught in third grade. You can’t beat yourself up over it. What you can do though is make sure your witches have decent wards on their homes. If this house had been warded better, they may have had the time to at the very least have called for help. They had shitty locks and they had shitty wards. It would have been embarrassingly easy to walk in to this house.”
    “Vivienne, the Septiem, she wants to meet you before you go back. If you could bring it up, then I’d appreciate it. She’s old school. It was hard to ask for help, but she did. So if you could find a way to bring up the inefficacy of the wards, it would be better received from you.” Portia shrugged.
    Many clan leaders of Edwina’s generation were prideful and hesitant to make necessary changes. Lark understood a lot of it. Part of it was that they were proud and they loved their rules and liked to be in charge of their own little fiefdoms. But mainly it was that witches had thousands of years of bad examples of what happened when humans found out about them. None of them was anxious to expose their people to angry mobs and inquisitors again.
    But there was no way to avoid the fact that change was coming whether they wanted it to or not. “All right. On to the yard and surrounding area and then to their workplaces, please.”
    When they got outside, a Were waited at the fence line. “Did you find them?”
    Lark went over. “I hope we can. Did you see anything?”
    “This is Hansen. He’s a member of the local pack. We interviewed him yesterday. Hansen, this is