SATYENA WAVED A HAND before her as the elevator reached the top, willing its machinery and its bells silent, then froze in position as its doors rolled open, revealing a lengthy kitchen which was the size of the common room in their old coven building, the building which now lay smoldering amidst its slums—a fact she could blame upon the Witch Doctors but which she really blamed on Samain, for having let it fall outside her sphere of protection, purposely, Satyena was convinced. And that’s when she realized that Samain was right in front of her, that she had been all along, only cloaked—a façade she now dropped—and before Satyena could respond the older woman had opened her mouth and launched a stream of black bile directly at her head, which Satyena narrowly avoided by ducking and rolling
