As soon as the doors opened on the fortieth floor, cloying power rushed in to fill the elevator. It smoothed along their skin like black silk, seductive and dangerously lulling. All the men in the elevator groaned under the crushing weight of it.

It was familiar to Jack.

The sound of the chanting filled his ears. He remembered that sound and the feel of the magick tickling through his mind and over his body. It dropped the Coven witches to the floor of the elevator, but Thomas and Jack struggled out before the door could shut on them again.

He glanced back at the closed elevator car. Great. Apparently, they were going to have to take on a whole room full of power-rich warlocks on their own.

Jack blinked and pushed through the nauseatingly strong power. He made his way through the lobby and down a polished corridor on the heels of the sound. Jack staggered and lurched his way to the room where they had Mira under the weight of it. Thomas followed him, stumbling and tripping.

He lunged into the room through a sheer force of will and caught himself on the back of a chair before he collapsed, but no one even noticed him. Thomas wobbled in after him and fell to his knees. The Duskoff had counted on the magick being their watchdog. They hadn't assumed any witch would be able to travel through it, but he and Thomas had the strength because of their deep love for Mira.

Mira.

She knelt in a circle with three other witches, all of them hanging suspended on their knees in the magick of the circle. Her expression was blank, her eyes closed. Her face appeared sheet-white, her lips and eyelids purplish. The sight of her like that made adrenaline surge through him and denial scream through his mind.

No, she couldn't already be dead. Gods, no. It simply wasn't possible.

"Help her," sobbed a woman tied to a nearby chair.

Annie? He glanced at her right before a surge in the magick nearly brought him to his knees.

Like velvet, the power rubbed along his bare skin. Within the magick he could pick out a strand of Mira, that distinctive scent of fresh linen and lemon filling his senses.

In that moment, Jack understood what he hadn't as a child. The power filling the room was the raped magick of the witches in the circle—the more powerful the witches in the circle, the more potent the "recipe" of the magick.

This mix was pretty damn heady.

Jack helped Thomas to his feet, and together they made their way to the end of the room where William Crane and the highest of the Duskoff stood chanting. The men and women in the circle had looks of beatific joy on their faces. They had no idea anyone else was even in the room.