And, most importantly, destroying her heart before I cheated on my diet.
A warm hand rested on my shoulder, and that touch made it easier to shake off my mood and rise.
“Thank you for that.” Asa made a gesture at his navel that reminded me of a Catholic signing the cross.
“We all deserve last rites.” Pitiful as they might be. “Let’s find Clay.”
Golem or not, Clay had his breaking point. We had to reach him before a rabbi was required for repairs.
A steady thump, thump, thump guided us straight to him, and the dryad.
The nature spirit had inhabited a rotting pecan tree, but that didn’t limit her reach. The roots had ripped from the earth, leaving them to slither across the dirt in search of anchors for when it swatted at a foe it was having trouble pulping.
Clay might not be fast, but he moved well, and he was tough.
“Need help?” I kept a safe distance from the tree. “Or is this a con job to get us to do the work for you?”
A turn of his head revealed the far side of his face. “Shish look like a con shob to you?”
Had he been anything other than golem, he would have been dead. The first blow might not have done it, but it would have put him on the ground, and that was the last place you wanted to be during a fight.
An inch to the left, and she would have destroyed his shem, leaving her with a clay statue to pummel.
From the corner of my eye, I spotted a black SUV up a tree and wondered if she smacked him with it.
“I can take her down,” Asa said from beside me, “but it won’t be pretty.”
“I haven’t done the white witch thing in the field,” I confessed with a twinge of embarrassment, because honesty with your partner, even a temporary one, kept you both alive that much longer. “I might need a helping hand once I expel the dryad from the tree.”
“I’m right here.” Hearing Asa say so shouldn’t have made a difference, but it did.
I didn’t trust Asa. To be fair, I didn’t know him. But I trusted how Clay behaved toward him.
A direct order could force him to vouch for Asa with me, but it couldn’t make him like the guy.
Clay didn’t give nicknames to people he didn’t like. Well, okay, nicknames used in the person’s presence.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered under my breath. “Wand, don’t fail me now.”
A black witch had power in proportion to the amount of magic she consumed, aka hearts eaten.
A white witch had spells, charms, or potions from her spell kit, made in advance, and her own essence.
If I swaggered into the ring bent on reliving my glory days, more like gory days, I would KO myself.
Prowling closer to the enraged pecan tree, I let Clay do the hard work of distracting the dryad while I got in position behind her. The downside of using a wand was the fact it required contact with its target. The flick-your-wrist spell-slinging in movies was wishful thinking. Wands were conduits for power and intent. I had to mentally prep a spell and then make a conscious choice to unleash it on someone or something.
The wand was thirteen inches long, which meant I had to get close. Handy as a cloaking spell would have been right about now, I couldn’t risk expending my power willy-nilly until I rediscovered my limits.
I was out of practice sneaking, but I crept in until three feet separated me from the splintering trunk.
“Black witch,” the dryad spat. “I smell the death caked on your soul.”
A limb wider than my waist swept in an arc that almost knocked my head off my shoulders.
“You’re no better than I am.” I dove into a roll. “I saw your handiwork a few minutes ago.”
“You’re wrong.” Blistering rage shook her leaves. “I’m not like you.”