Original Sin by Allison Brennan Read Free Book Online Page B

spillage and faint smells. But Fiona and her coven were smarter than that; they wanted to intoxicate their victims, not poison them. They didn’t make those kinds of mistakes.
    If Abby Weatherby was dead, they wanted her to be dead.
    Jared put his fingers to Abby’s neck, presumably to check for a pulse, but Moira snapped, “Don’t touch her!”
    “We have to get her to a hospital,” he said.
    “She’s dead.”
    “How do you know? You don’t know that. She could be—”
    Moira said, “Look at her eyes, Jared. Open, glassy, and her mouth—dammit, she’s dead and you must not touch her.”
    She didn’t know why that was important, or even if it was. Maybe it was more important for the cops, none of whom would believe that something supernatural had killed the teenager. Without a doubt this was Fiona’s handiwork. The drama, the location, the oversized circle, the elaborate symbols.
    Moira cast her light around the site. She hated being inside this spirit trap, even though it had been violently broken. A pile of incense was scattered across the linen. Dried candle wax mixed with dirt and rocks. Any vegetation or plants, here at the lot where the house had burned, were all dead. Nothing living could survive above a gateway to Hell.
    What had happened? The ritual circle was a mess. It was a big no-no in the occult world to leave behind signs of any rituals. Witches were hunted as fiercely as they themselves hunted. If demon hunters—like her, Moira acknowledged—could trace a coven’s symbols, they could better track and stop them.
    Leaving anything here, at the ruins on the cliffs, told her that Fiona and her minions had been stopped.
    Before or after they summoned the demons? Moira didn’t know for certain. But based on the earlier lightning and darkness flying over them, Moira suspected there was at least one more demon on earth tonight.
    Jared paced. “Where’s Lily? What happened to Abby? Why is she naked? What’s going on, Moira? You didn’t tell me anyone was going to die!”
    Moira countered his hysteria with a calm voice. “I don’t know where Lily is. She and Abby were playing with dangerous things. Where there’s danger, there can damn well be death.”
    Moira turned away from the dead teenager, deeply sad and angry at the loss of life. She said, “I don’t know what happened here, but there was a fight—and they left fast. Picked up most of their supplies, but there are two candles over there.” She gestured toward two black pillars on the edge of the circle. “And they didn’t completely eradicate the symbols. Very sloppy, and Fiona is not sloppy.”
    Leaving Abby here … that was plain stupid. They always disposed of their victims. They had to, or news of the crime would get out to the public and they would have to be even more cautious. Murder was a crime; occult worship was not.
    Ignoring her own advice to Jared, Moira squatted next to Abby and touched her body with two fingers. Her skin was cool and slick with moisture from the ocean fog. Moira was no cop, but she didn’t think the girl had been dead long. And the recent dead were ripe for the picking of demons. If Fiona had brought forth something, it would be around. Or coming back. Demons always returned to their origins—one of many truths Rico had pounded into Moira’s head during their lessons.
    She pulled out a container of salt from her pack and poured it in a circle around Abby’s body. She didn’t know whether it would do any good—if the demon was powerful enough, it could just lift her body out of the circle. But it would slow him enough to buy her time. Salt was a purifier and a preservative, a mineral that naturally repelled demons. But like virulent bacteria, the strongest demons built up resistance to any defenses, including ancient defenses like salt.
    “What are you doing?” Jared asked her, looking at Moira as if she were a nut job. She was used to it. She’d never been normal, and it seemed that now, at