Here's the unedited second chapter of my next release!
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Kirsten automatically shielded Mary and Rose with her body while Jo threw up a shield. Glass smack the magickal ward and tinkled to the linoleum as the projectile cracked against wood. Jo muttered an obscenity and charged for the locked front doors.
“You two okay?” Kirsten asked her friends. Both women nodded. They all looked over at the chair that had been knocked over. A softball-sized river stone lay on the broken back slat of the chair. It looked like the same stones the landscapers used as barriers around the flowering plants on the courthouse grounds.
Before Kirsten could reach her aunt, Jo had one of the doors unlocked and stormed outside. The bell jangled with her anger. Jeering and booing came from much closer, even accounting for the broken window. Kirsten raced after her. If Jo did anything to the crowd, it would only add ammunition to their claims that supernaturals were dangerous.
Outside, the protestors formed a semi-circle in the middle of the street, the open end facing Jo’s Coffee Shop. Cars honked and a couple of truckers blared their horns, which added to the cacophony. The two officers assigned to keep an eye on the crowd tried to guide the members of Humanity Now back to the sidewalk in front of the courthouse, but they not only were ignored, but woefully outmatched.
Worse, Jo stood toe-to-toe with Warren Simon in the middle of the semi-circle. Kirsten couldn’t catch exactly what they were shouting at each other.
Over the mob’s heads, a familiar mahogany ponytail bounced toward them from South Monroe Street. Cory Parsons, the Monitor’s staff photographer, towered over the crowd at six-six, and he was headed east on Jackson toward Mom’s direction.
Mom’s job as the editor-in-chief was to report on events objectively. And right now, Jo sure wasn’t being objective.
Kirsten ran out into the street and grabbed Jo’s arm. “Come on, these jerks aren’t worth it.” She said the words aloud and telepathically.
Jo jerked out of her hold. “I’m going to sue your ass into the next century, Simon!”
“Go ahead!” he shouted back. “Then everyone will see your immorality!”
Kirsten pushed her body between Jo’s and Simon’s. Don’t let him bait you, Jo. He’s doing this to make you look bad.
“I don’t care!” Jo jabbed her finger over Kirsten’s shoulder. “They could killed you or Mary or one of our customers!”
“And you breed heathen, Satan-loving sluts,” Simon shouted behind her.
With the volatile emotion raging around them, someone really was going to get hurt. Where the heck had the two police officers disappeared to?
Jo, for the sake of the Goddess and everything on Earth, please go inside!
A troubled look appeared on Jo’s face. Maybe their predicament was finally getting through to her. She took a hesitant step back, obviously forced herself to calm down, and took two more steps back.
Kirsten relaxed a hair and started to follow Jo when someone plowed into her from behind.
She’d been body-checked enough times over the years of playing basketball. Fighting the instinct to put her arms out, she curled and rolled with the force of the shove.
Except the asphalt of Jackson Street was a heck of a lot harder than the wooden boards of the West Holmes High School basketball court. The landing knocked every molecule of air out of her lungs.
The crowd surged forward. Primal fear consumed her. This crowd wanted blood. Her blood.
A fireball whizzed over her head between her and the crowd. It startled the Humanity Now protesters into silence. The acrid odor of fear was a tangible thing permeating the street.
“Get the hell away from my daughter now!”
Mom.
The one person who never displayed her talents in public.
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