Eww, Ick, and Grody
It was early by vamp standards, but I hadn’t slept and if I didn’t get some shut-eye, I was in trouble, so Eli and I went to the break room. I spent little time in the room, mostly because on one memorable occasion, I met two heavily tattooed men who later tried to kill some people. And succeeded. More vamp machinations. In the back of the room was a small door, set flush with the wall, a door I hadn’t known about back when. Behind the door was a small bunk room, available to anyone, human or vamp, seeking a place to sleep. There were twelve double bunks in a row, so close together that any hope of privacy was long lost. But it was better than asking to bunk in with a vamp.
Three of the bottom bunks were inhabited. A greater number of the upper bunks were being used. The room stank of sweat, old beer, bad breath, and the sort of bodily gasses that tended to accumulate around people who ate a lot of highly spiced food. I didn’t care. The sheets were clean and the room was dark, so I crashed on the bottom bunk closest to the door. Eli swung up into the one above me.
With Leo’s clan home still not finished, and stuck in the peculiar hell of seeking a certificate of occupancy permit while not really being ready to be occupied, HQ was stuffed full and the room was seeing a lot of action. Too many humans in one small place meant very restricted sleeping arrangements. Leo had thought he could speed up things in his clan home by offering a building inspector a little cash flow and had the misfortune of meeting up a parish employee who had an unbreakable moral code. Or who hated vamps. The guy had turned Leo over to the police, who’d had no choice but to file charges. Leo had been ticked off. I’d had the wisdom not to laugh. Go, me. On that self-congratulatory note, I fell into dreams.
* * *
There was a new dream, but familiar to me. A green eye in my left palm, opened to see me, to read me. The feel of energies scanning through me, learning who I was, what I could do. And then the dream was gone, as if it never was. I dropped deeper into sleep.
* * *
It was after midnight when Eli woke me, his watch making a tiny beeping noise, too soft to wake the others. I had kicked off my shoes in my sleep and I pulled them on, stretching before following my partner into the break room and the hallway beyond.
“I got a text from Alex,” he said. “Ming of Mearkanis is in the special lair.”
“Okay,” I said, counting and resetting the stakes that had come lose in my bun. “Special lair, as in the one between floors where Leo keeps my favorite redheaded psycho, Adrianna, the so-far-immortal vamp Leo won’t let me kill?”
“One and the same.”
“You know it ticks me off to wake up from a nap after too little sleep, to see you looking so wide-eyed and bushy-tailed,” I grouched.
“Babe. My tail is not bushy. Syl says it’s slick as a baby’s butt.”
I almost said I wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole, but thought better of it. Instead I made a gagging noise and let him lead me down the hallway to the elevator, and then down more hallways, some steps, and finally to the special scion lair.
The guard, a tall, slender woman with prominent shoulders and a narrow waist, let us into the lair. The room was small, white, and featureless with one door and no windows. The floor was smooth and sloped to a drain in the center, presumably for hosing off the inmates, though the opportunity to use it for torture had occurred to me. Vamps are treacherous, double-crossing, unstable creatures. Torture would seem to be right up their alley.
Tonight there were six steel mesh cages, like small jail cells. Each made of woven steel strands, making the walls and floors of the cages pliable but strong. In the bottom of each cage was a stainless steel, traylike bottom. The edges of the trays were cupped to hold whatever the chief suckhead wanted to put in it—mixed blood to speed healing, some newspapers to catch droppings, bird kibble, whatever. For now, there were only two occupied cages, one imprisoning Ming of Mearkanis, who was sleeping on the filthy foam mattress that had been in the transport coffin, and swaddled in a mass of linens and an electric blanket. To say the former clan Blood Master stank was an understatement, but I had to guess that sleep was more important than a shower.
At the door to her sister’s cage stood Ming Zhane, the Blood Master of Clan Glass in Knoxville, not breathing, heart not beating, something my kind can hear. She was doing that motionless, more-immobile-than-a-marble-headstone thing vamps do when they aren’t trying to ape human. I had been around vamps for a long time, but it still unnerved me.
Ming of Glass was wearing black from head to toe, some kind of tone-on-tone-striped, silky fabric pants and a Mao jacket. Her black hair was up in a tight bun and her claws were out, suggesting that she was close to vamping out. She was holding her own wrist and when I caught a whiff of fresh vamp blood, I knew that she had fed her sister. I stayed at the door to give the Mings some privacy.
The room’s other occupant was Adrianna, my nemesis and a vamp I had killed several times. Leo kept bringing her back to undeath, and while I didn’t understand it, I figured he had his reasons and I’d figure them out about ten seconds before Adrianna tried to kill me again.
The last time I’d seen the blue-eyed, nutso vamp, she was an unbreathing, lifeless, naked body lying in mixed vamp blood like something a chef was about to barbecue. At the time she had a hole in her head made by a silver stake, and gray matter had been seeping from the head wound. A horror movie trope. Now she was sitting on a beanbag-style cushion, her head appeared healed, and she was fully dressed, wearing Lycra yoga pants and a stretchy top, her feet in soft fuzzy slippers. Her scarlet hair was up in a French twist and she was wearing makeup, something sparkly like mica on her cheeks, mascara, and coral lipstick. She looked fantastic, but her blue eyes were still mad as a hatter, and she laughed as if she found me amusing and a bit silly, like a younger sister who needed to grow up.
I turned my back on her as I stepped into the room. Adrianna was more dangerous than an atomic bomb and no way was I giving her any kind of attention until Leo allowed me to behead her. Even he couldn’t bring a vamp back from that.
“Jane Yellowrock,” Ming Zhane of Glass said, without turning, knowing me by my scent from when we met in Knoxville. From when I rescued her scion from a group of cultists.
“Yes, ma’am?” I took three steps inside, my shoes loud on the smooth floor, but I kept my distance from the vamps. The mixed scents told me that Ming of Glass was emotional, and no way was I getting closer unless I had to.
“You will find the persons who did this to my sister,” she said, her tone so low it was hard to hear, even with me drawing on Beast’s hearing. “You will bring them to me. Do you understand?” It wasn’t a question. It was more in the nature of a threat. And I didn’t work for either of the Mings, I worked for Leo, so it wasn’t as if I could agree to her orders. Beside me, Eli drew two vamp-killers, not trying to hide the sound of steel-edged blades leaving leather sheaths. Someone stepped into the lair behind my partner and I knew it was Cai, Ming Zhane’s primo and Enforcer, without even turning. I lifted a single finger to Eli, knowing he would understand the cautionary gesture. But I had waited too long to answer and had been unintentionally rude. Ming Zhane was turning her head to me, a slow, controlled swivel like a doll’s head, but too far, inhumanly too far. Her eyes were vamped out, though her fangs were still in place. I had a chance to fix this. One.
“Blood Master Ming—” I started.
From the open doorway Leo said, “Jane will bring the culprits to me.” Ming whipped her entire body to him, vamping out so fast I missed it altogether. Leo didn’t seem distressed by her emotional reaction or her three-inch-long fangs, however, stepping in behind me, saying, “Together we will decide their fates, my old friend, you and I. Together we will mete out justice. Allies, as always.”
Ming’s shoulders, which were hunching up under her black jacket, halted their rise. A moment later she said, “You will not withhold from me the right to vengeance.”
“No. I will glory with you in vengeance against our enemies. Together, in the way of the Vampira Carta, by rule of law. As always. But for now, come, you and your blood-servant. You scent of hunger and blood loss and your sister sleeps.”
Ming seemed to be on the verge of refusal, but after an interminable time, her shoulders drooped and her fangs schincked back into her mouth. Almost visibly, she pulled the power and dignity of her Blood Master status around her and said, “The hospitality of the Master of the City of New Orleans has always been most exemplary.” She gave Leo a small bow, her elegant and perfect face a total contrast to her sister’s cadaverous one. “I am honored.”
“No, it is my clan that is honored,” Leo said. “Come. I have a small repast set aside for you, one who has been known to bring healing to the long-chained.”
“Ahhhh,” Ming said. “I have long desired to taste of this Mithran scion. My master,” she said to Leo, “will the Mithran, Amy Lynn Brown, be offered to my sister as well?”
“The very moment it is deemed fully safe. Until then, Katherine, my heir, has fed Zoya of the mixed blood of the gather, and your Zoya is much improved.”
“You show much kindness to your old friend, my Leo.”
“There is little I would not do help one of the Mings, loyal and beloved, friends, allies, and comrades at arms.” Leo was pouring it on thick, but Ming of Glass seemed to take him at his words—every flowery one of them.
“For now, you shall taste of me,” Leo said. “You spent much of your powerful blood to bring your sister ease, and I sense your weakness. Forgive me for saying such, but my regard is too high for Ming of Clan Glass, and I will not have a guest who hungers.” His voice held a laughing note when he said, “And as tonight is a night for celebration, for rejoicing in the return of your sister, I have also chosen a young man for you, one who might fulfill the desires of the Ming I remember from our last visit.” Leo took her hand and their heads bent close together, his black locks waving toward her as if with a will of their own. “Your stamina was enough for four men the last night we spent together, but I have found a treasure, who has been waiting just for you and your primo.”
Eww, ick, and grody. But I didn’t say it.
Together they left the room and the door closed behind them. Eli muttered under his breath, “Blood and orgies.”
I said only, “Mmmm,” and wandered over to the cage holding Adrianna, to stare down at her. Despite being a captive, she still managed to give off an air of stylish superiority and predatory arrogance. Her eyelids slitted nearly shut and she tipped back her head, exposing her throat to me a in gesture that said, Come on. Try it. You couldn’t take me even if we started with my throat bared. I didn’t rise to the bait. Instead I turned my back on her again and walked out of the room, Eli on my heels.
The door closed with a solid thud that said it was soundproofed. I didn’t remember it being so solid last time. I asked the guard, “Why didn’t Adrianna talk? She used to be big on taunting and threats.”
The slender woman said, “No one’s heard her speak in weeks, ma’am. There’s speculation that the part of her brain used for speaking is still regrowing. And then there’s other speculation that she’s forgotten English. No one’s bothered to spend the time with her to see which it is, or if there’s something else going on.
“We haven’t met, ma’am. I’m Ro Moore,” she added.
“I’m Jane or Legs. Not ma’am.”
“Copy that.”
“Military?” I asked her.
“No, ma’am. Alabama backwoods hillbilly, boxer, wrestler, and MMA cage fighter.”
“MMA?” I asked.
“Mixed martial arts,” Eli said, approval in his tone. “Why not military?”
“I tried, but they wouldn’t have me except as officer material ’cause I got a bad ear. I wanted to fight, sir.”
“Hearing aid?” Eli asked.
“Had one. Vamp blood healed me. Now I got twenty-twenty hearing,” she said, laughter in the words.
Eli nodded. “I’m an MACP level-four instructor. We should spar.”
“I’ll kick your butt,” she said, totally without braggadocio.
Eli said, “It’s a match.”
“I’ll bring snacks and beer and cheer you on, Ro. Come on, Eli. We got people to see and fires to put out.” And I needed my bed, but I knew that was unlikely until after dawn.
* * *
The elevator doors opened on the conference room level, and I saw Bruiser. He was leaning against the hallway wall, one hand in a pocket, the other dangling. He looked nothing like the mud-spattered man in the video screens, but was dressed in brown cuffed pants, brown belt and shoes, and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his forearms. I had developed a serious appreciation for his arms, the veins corded, muscles long and ropy beneath lightly tanned skin, the hair thick enough to make me want to run my fingers through it as I slid my hands down his arms. Bruiser was no waxed and smooth man, and I loved that about him.
“Hello, love,” he said.
“Bruiser,” I said, not running to him like a sixteen-year-old with her first boyfriend, but letting my happiness show, not hiding it. I didn’t know what we were to each other yet, but I liked it, whatever it was.
“Get a room,” Eli said.
“We have a room,” Bruiser said, a half smile warming his face for a brief moment before falling back into solemnity. “And we have a problem. Is the Enforcer available to talk?” I saw the headset he was wearing around his neck. Business, not fun and games, then.
“That sounds ominous,” I said, sharing a look with Eli as we followed Bruiser into a room off the gym. The room had a small sofa, chairs, and a few tables, and reminded me of a private waiting room in a hospital, the place where they put a family for a private chat with a surgeon who was about to deliver bad news. I sat on the couch. Bruiser and Eli both took chairs.
“Before I left the pit where we found Ming, I called the local parish law enforcement agencies and PsyLED,” he began.
“Okay.”
“An experienced forensic pathologist or medical examiner will see the bones. The damage to the bones will eventually point to a vampire.”
“Okay,” I repeated.
“The last vampire who was known to eat humans was Immanuel, and law enforcement has his teeth imprints on record from the postmortems on the police officers he ate.”
“And the imprints won’t match. So now they’ll assume that vamps killing and eating humans is common,” I said.
“When it is not at all,” Bruiser said.
I let out a tired-sounding sigh. “I’ll notify Dell to prepare a PR response to those potential problems. And Jodi,” I added, “just in case someone calls her about the cop-eater vamp.”
“The second item I need to share with you,” Bruiser said, “was something that we found at the bottom of the pit. A small gold knife that once belonged to Edmund Hartley. He claims that it was lost during the time he moved from clan Blood Master to minor scion.”
“And since no one understands how a freaky powerful vamp like Edmund lost his clan to a weaker vamp like Bettina, that makes him suspect in some machination to overthrow Leo or cause trouble in general,” I said. “Got it.” I might not like vamp politics and quarrels, but I was getting a handle on them, even the quarrels that went back centuries.
“Edmund has been bled and read to verify his claims.”
Bled and read. I liked that. “Has Bettina been asked to HQ?”
“She has, and she arrived some hours ago. She has refused to be questioned about the Blood Challenge that led to her taking over Clan Laurent, Edmund’s old clan, however, so Leo is simply serving strong vintages to her, to Ming of Glass, to Cai, and to Shaun Mac Lochlainn, Bettina’s anamchara, in a party room, in the hopes that some verbal insight might be allowed to slip out in the gaiety.” His tone was droll, and I knew that gaiety meant way more than party hats and balloons. Strong vintages meant that the humans the vamps were drinking from were terribly drunk on expensive liquors, making it possible for the vamps to enjoy themselves as well. Sex and blood, as Eli had said.
I was too tired to put what it all might mean together without banging my head on the nearest wall in frustration, but Bettina had once been clan master of Rousseau. She had been taken down by rivals within her own clan, not according to vamp law, in personal sanctioned combat—Blood Challenge—but outside proper channels. Clan Rousseau had been ruined in the war and the claimants to her title had died. Then Bettina called the sire of Clan Laurent, the powerful and charismatic Edmund Hartley, to personal combat and she had bested Edmund.
Bettina, a beautiful, tiny, curvy woman, was of mixed race heritage, mostly African and European, and while her sexuality could make the air burn, she hadn’t appeared that powerful in other vamp gifts, as least not to me. Vamp one-upmanship stuff wasn’t my department, but I said, “Okay, so we have two witches.” I raised a finger, counting. “Ming in a pit with dead humans.” A second finger. “With Edmund, who wants to be my primo, and maybe Bettina, who is keeping secrets, and a Witch Conclave coming up.” I had five fingers in the air. “Just five little things to deal with. So far.”
“So far,” Bruiser agreed.
I dropped my hand. “And two, count ’em, two, magical brooches tying them all together. Were there fingerprints on the brooch you were carrying?”
“Yes, but no matches with AFIS or military databases. The brooch that was on Ming of Mearkanis had been underwater, so no prints there at all.”
“May I see the brooches?” I asked. “Together?”
“Yes.” Bruiser slid the headset up and into place, switched it on, and said, “Bring the brooches to me.” He gave his location and said, “And please bring the small repast I requested. Tea and some scones for the Enforcer. Coffee for Eli Younger and myself.” He switched the set off. Eyes twinkling, he said to me, “In case you didn’t get enough donuts while I worked in the mud to . . . satisfy you.”
I flushed slightly but held Bruiser’s eyes and said, “I was satisfied at the time, but there’s always room for more.”
“Room. Room, you two,” Eli said, sounding long-suffering, keeping his eyes on the far wall.
Bruiser and I sat silent, waiting on the brooches and the small repast. So dignified, that. Way better than a snack.
Following a discreet knock, three blood-servants entered the room, one carrying a tray with a carved wooden box on it, the size of a child’s jewelry box. The other two blood-servants brought in the repast and a tea table with folding legs, which they set up in the center of the room. “That will be all,” Bruiser said. When the door closed, he poured my tea into a porcelain teacup so fine I could see the tea through the cup, and placed it on a saucer. Moving gingerly to keep from breaking the expensive china, I added sugar and real cream and stirred with a sterling silver spoon while Bruiser and Eli helped themselves to the carafe.
When I had sipped and eaten, Bruiser slid the wooden box across the table to me. The wood was unfinished, the top and sides roughly carved in lotus blossoms. The wood was unfamiliar to me, but the tingle of magic when I reached for the box wasn’t.
I opened the top and caught a single glimpse of the gems. A bright greenish magic slammed into me, sizzling into my left palm like a red-hot branding iron. The light in the room telescoped down to a single pinpoint of light. And then even that went black.
* * *
I came to, ears-first, hearing the conversation around me.
“She’s breathing.”
“Heart rate one eighty-five. BP two fifty-six over one twenty-seven.”
“Too high. Too high. Stroke territory.”
“How do you know what a normal blood pressure is for a . . . whatever she is?”
“Skinwalker. Cherokee skinwalker.” That was Eli. He sounded pissed. “And it’s too high no matter what species she is.”
“O² level is ridiculous. Two fourteen. I’ve never seen one that high except in a full code.”
“I have,” Eli said. “It isn’t a problem. The only thing I’m worried about is the BP and the partial shift.”
“When she wakes up she’ll finish the shift. What’s the big deal?”
“If you don’t get him out of here, I’ll shoot him,” Eli said, using his combat voice.
I heard a door open and close. I wanted to chuckle, but my body wasn’t responding. And my left hand was in misery, feeling as though it was in the middle of becoming a paw, all the bones expanding and breaking and reforming, but in slow motion. Stuck. They said I was stuck midshift. “Well, crap,” I whispered.
“She’s awake.”
“Mr. Obvious,” I muttered, taking a breath that stank of blood—mine—and magic—not mine. A stink of burning hair and ozone had filled the small room, and beneath it was a faint, distant reek of old iron and salt. The smells of the green magic that had scanned my house. And me. I remembered. In the moment of waking, I remembered what the scan had spelled me to forget. The familiar awareness of the reading. I had been read exactly that way once before, when I first came to New Orleans, by a magic user named Antoine. Antoine was dead, killed by the creature who had taken over the form of Immanuel, Leo’s son. A skinwalker, just like me, but one who had gone to the dark side and started eating people.
And the green eye in my hand allowing Gee DiMercy to keep tabs on me, because he thought I was a little goddess, whatever that was. It was all tied in together. Somehow. And it was too much going on. “I need Gee DiMercy. And I need to talk to Rick LaFleur,” I said. “And make it snappy before I pass out again and forget everything I just figured out.”
My mouth wasn’t working well, but Eli understood me and rephrased my orders, adding, “Get George back in here. Jane, do you need Edmund?”
He meant to drink from to help me heal. “No. Just . . . Just Gee.”
I must have passed out again, because suddenly Gee was in the room, the smell of him pine and jasmine, like lying in a cold waterfall surrounded by a conifer forest and a garden in bloom. “Sit me up,” I said, speaking louder this time, my voice a croak. I got my eyes open and when I was halfway upright, my spine pressing against the sofa foot, said to Eli, “Everybody out but Eli, Bruiser, and Gee.”
“And me,” Leo said.
“Sure. Whatever.”
When the door closed behind the others, giving me some oxygen to breathe, I said, “Call Rick LaFleur’s number. Y’all need to hear this.”
“It’s the middle of the night, Jane,” Eli said, cautiously, as he found my cell in my pocket.
Bruiser said nothing and his scent didn’t change, but I read between Eli’s words and said, “I’m in my right mind. Rick was in town when something similar to this magic hit me once before.”
Eli tapped the screen and held the cell to my ear. The number rang. And rang. I heard the line open and on the other end, a door closed. “Jane,” Rick said. The one word. Toneless. Waiting. Knowing that I wouldn’t call him except for business. Not anymore. Rick. My onetime boyfriend, who had publically dumped me for a black wereleopard, and who now worked for PsyLED, the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security. My life was so weird.
“Sorry to wake you,” I said, my tone matching his. “Speakerphone.”
Eli punched a button and set the cell on the table nearest me.
“You sound like shit,” Rick said deliberately, to annoy me, because he knew, good and well, how I felt about cursing, even when I was the one who cursed. “What happened.”
“I think I was spelled. It was a similar spell to the one used by Antoine, your friend who ran the diner. The one you took me to meet, so he could tell you what I was.”
“Antoine’s dead,” he said, but I heard the undercurrent of interest in his voice.
“Yeah. I was there. But in the diner, when he shook my hand, he scanned me. Read me. For you. Who was Antoine? What was Antoine?”
“Antoine No Last Name. He wasn’t in the system. No prints on file. Went by the name Antoine Busho, an alias, as far as I could tell. Shaman. Originally from the Pedro Cays, underdeveloped islands south of Jamaica. No running water, no sanitation, no electric, no schools, no nothing but people living on the edge. I don’t know anything more about his magical system or who trained him. Except . . .” Rick paused, and I could almost see him tilting his head, thinking, remembering. “One time he said something about apprenticing to an African priestess for a summer. If he ever said the name, I don’t recall. How bad are you hurt?”
Not are you hurt, but how bad, as if the connection we once had was active even now. Dang it. “I’m still breathing. Antoine said something about a wife. Marla? Maria? Marion? Something with an M?”
“That was a joke in the diner. Something to lure in the tourists. So far as I know he was single. That’s all I got.”
“Thank you for the information,” I said.
“Take care.” The call ended.
I nodded to Eli, who was already texting Alex with the info and the name to see what the Kid knew or could dig up about Antoine Busho. He spelled out, “Busho, Bucho, Buchoux, Boucheaux. Maybe a dozen others. There are so many names pronounced that way.” We heard a ding and Eli said, “Alex is on it. He’ll get back when or if he gets something.”
It hurt like heck, but I got my head to turn on my neck and focused on Gee DiMercy. The small man was sitting on the chair farthest away from me. He was no longer bloodied and beaten. No bruises. No cuts or abrasions. The Anzu could heal others of most were-bites, if he got to them in time and was given enough time to work his magic, but he couldn’t heal himself. Someone had fed him vamp blood to heal.
“You look better,” I said.
His eyes flashed to my left hand and away. I still hadn’t looked at it.
I said, “When we first met, you tagged me with a magic something-something. And I took it for my own somehow. Tell me about that spell.”
“It wasn’t a spell,” Gee said. “It was part of the goddess’s power, the remnants of her curse that touches all weres and the remnants of her personal power, the energies that generated all skinwalker archetypes and all shape-shifters. That you made my magics your own said only that you were of her get. That she was responsible for your being. It made you easy to track, to follow, and to offer assistance had you needed it.”
“The one you call a goddess. Artemis. Was she, like, an angel?” I had a feeling that she had been an arcenciel, but I had never gotten evidence to back up my hunch.
“No. Angels are all male, in every scripture and history. No females existed. Ever. Despite the pretty sculptures in graveyards and paintings that Christians hang on their walls.”
Which I knew. I wanted to ask how angels procreated with only one gender, but that wasn’t germane to this discussion. “So she was, what? And this time, don’t blow me off, Gee. I need the answer.”
The slight man shrugged. “She belonged to the tribe that eventually became the Greeks. She was a prototype to modern-day witches but with the ability to charm and control any animal on Earth and in the sea. She was a legend who was elevated to the status of goddess by the worship of foolish humans around her. She was grace and beauty and power and wisdom.”
I said, “Was. She. Arcenciel?” I enunciated.
“I do not know, Enforcer.”
My title, being used to call attention to his purpose. I asked, “How did something get hold of your magic and make you attack me? Who has that kind of power?”
He looked at me from the corner of his eyes. “There are few who might wield such might. Perhaps you, skinwalker?”
This was getting me nowhere. I felt like I was dancing around the rim of a fire pit, almost on the edge of being scorched, almost on the edge of nothing at all. And the pain in my hand was growing steadily worse. I could smell my blood on the air. Eli knelt beside me and placed a linen tea napkin below my hand to absorb my blood. “You told me once to ask one of the Old Ones what it meant to be goddess-born. What is an Old One?”
“One of my kind would do. One of the old arcenciels would do. You might ask Thales, Arcesilaus, Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. Even Hegesinus of Pergamon might know.”
Recognizing some of the names, I said, “They’re all dead.”
“True. The oldest of the weres might know. Alas, I do not. I am only a few thousand years in age, not as ancient as the maker of were-kind. But the witches of old were different from the witches of this day. They were the first of the magic users, and they”—his head tilted from side to side as he searched for a word—“are our forbearers. The term goddess came from them, the women of power.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the sofa. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine. I accept that your magic is something more intrinsic and less ritual-based than modern-day witch gifts.” I opened my eyes, focused on Gee, and said, “Tell me about the spell of watching that you put on my palms and in my soul home when you healed me of the were-taint.”
Gee sat bolt upright and I caught a hint of blue flaring light, like an aura, the action of his magics, the layers of glamours that hid what he was to the world.
“Tell me about the blue eyes and handprints that claimed me as your own. Molly Everhart Trueblood said I stole your watching magics. Then I burned them off and out of my soul home. And then I used the last eye I had scraped of the walls to track you down.”
Gee stared at me, his face unreadable. A waiting silence stretched between us before he said, “You should not have been able to find me through my own magics. You should not have been able to burn them away. No one should. No one but Artemis.”
I gestured with my right hand to Eli and the small carved wooden box on the table near him. “The person who used the magic on the brooches used a form of the watching magics to spy on me, to read me. I think they got to me so easily though the remnants of your original spell. I think that because they used the same seeing eye on my palm, but greenish, not your woad blue. We’re going to open the box, and you are going to tell me what you can about the energies on the brooches, and how their magic worked on your spell.”
“Should we take the box elsewhere to open it again?” Bruiser asked.
“No,” I said. “He should see what happens if it happens again. He can maybe tell us something about it.”
Slowly, as if he was defusing a bomb, Eli opened the box. The stink of iron, salt, and burned-hair magic filled the air, nose curling even to Eli. The energies of two brooches were far more than simply the sum of their magic. It felt like the magic squared. I wanted to take them home and have Molly and Evan inspect them. But for now I watched as Gee DiMercy sniffed the brooches, then extended a hand over them, as if feeling for radiant heat. Finally he picked one up and hefted it, as if checking the weight, held it to the light overhead. Then he placed it back in the box. “It is unlike my magics. It is purely witch magic, but a working that draws from many doctrines and follows more than one set of principles. It is my feeling that it was constructed specifically for you, not me, Enforcer, and that you are correct in saying that it passed to me through the old healing I performed when we first met. Its purpose is to read and understand. To control. To pacify. And to enslave.”
That was nothing new.
“But the main peculiarity of the workings contained in the brooches is that they can fuse the energies of differing magics and use them. If the magics found a place in your spirit that was still touched by the memory of my magics, it was able to read that and return the information to the creators of the spells, who could then craft a new working using that information. And it would be able to use any other magics it discovered.” He looked again at my left hand. “Even the magics that belong to you alone. I have never seen such a thing.”
“So could it also have traced back, through me to you, and used your magics against you?”
Leo said, “Girrard? Is this why you attacked my Enforcer? Because your magics were turned to another’s purpose?”
Gee’s face was pinched with worry, his black hair falling over his ears, tangled in front of his eyes. “It is possible. I do not recall much of the duel between Jane and me. I recall only a sense of euphoria and bliss. I do not recall other than the emotions of great joy. Until I smelled her blood. Then I began to awaken.”
I needed to think, to meditate, to find some kind of healing, but my pain was too great and this was too important. I managed “Okay,” thinking about other things that had been inside, or part of, my soul home. Eli poured me glass of cold water and I took it in my good hand and drank it empty before passing it back. Casually, watching Leo’s face, I asked, “Do you think the green magic could reach out and control Leo?”
The expressions that flitted across the face of the Master of the City of New Orleans were too swift and too numerous for me to catch, all except the ones that rode the crest of the emotional storm. Shock. Recognition of danger, followed by fury. Realization that he had screwed up majorly when he tried to force a binding on me, a binding that might let him be controlled or attacked through me. I almost said, Karmic payback is such a bitch, but I held it in and let a sweet smile onto my face, waiting him out. “I will have Grégoire drink of me regularly,” he said stiffly. “If there is external magic he will detect it.” With those words, Leo left the room.
As the door swung closed behind him, I said very softly, “Karma’s payback is a bitch.” There was the barest movement of the door handle that let me know Leo had heard.