Everything’s Better with Bacon
I wasn’t sure what happened in the next few moments. Other than the witch adults and the vampire all agreeing that Angie was too young to make or sign contracts, and that until she was eighteen, she couldn’t swear to anyone. Which seemed like a good compromise to me, but left Angie mutinous again. The entire household was in the living room: the witches, the children, the humans, the vampire, the werewolf, and the grindylow, whom I hadn’t seen appear but was making itself at home with the nonfamiliar cat, all three beasts curled on the rug in front of the couch. The children were on the couch only feet away, again watching the improbable Disney movie with dreadful gender role models but great hair. And the witches were chatting with the vampire.
My world was . . . not falling apart. Was becoming something I had never been able to conceive. Never would have believed.
“You need to put on some makeup, babe. We’re expected at vamp central and you look like death warmed over. And not in a vampy-undead-pseudo-sexy way. More like in the Walking Dead way.”
“Dear God, yes,” Edmund said. “Shall I work on your hair?”
“I saw in the mirror,” I said. “No. I can do my own hair.” Not sure how all this had happened, I walked away from the gathering to my room to change clothes. And do my hair. And put on makeup. To go to vamp central and do . . . do whatever it was I did there.
* * *
I was dressed in black, natch, when I smelled Molly at my door. “It’s open,” I said when she didn’t knock. She entered and closed the door behind her, standing with the door at her back, her hands on the knob. “You look awful,” she said. “Are you sure you should go out?”
“No, I’m not sure. But I have a job.” I sat on the bed and rebraided my hair, fingers working on their own.
“Big bad vamp hunter and vamp Enforcer,” Molly said. “A contradiction in every way.”
“What’s up, Mol?”
Molly made a sound that was part exasperation and part uncertainty. “I have a concern. About the conclave. And you.”
“Okay.” I twisted my braided hair up in a tight bun, just in case I had to fight someone again at HQ. I shoved silver stakes into the bun.
“Evan and I took a ride out to the vampire cemetery today.”
My eyebrows went up and an unanticipated shiver of panic went down my spine. The vamp cemetery was where I was struck by lightning during a witch working. I still had the occasional nightmare about that. “Okay. Why?”
“You were struck by lightning during a working. It’s never happened before to anyone I know. Evan and I think it wasn’t an accident. That it wasn’t a fluke. That the storm was attracted to the power on the ground, and that someone used that to direct an attack against you.”
She waited for me to speak, so I gave her a shrug and went to the bathroom. She was right. I still looked awful. I pawed through my meager makeup, which I kept in a tackle box, and removed some concealer and powder and seven tubes of scarlet lipstick. “Okay. And?” I started dabbing the concealer onto the rings beneath my eyes. I wasn’t good at putting on makeup, but anything would have made me less corpselike.
“The lightning strike was probably a deliberate attack on you.” She enunciated the last words as if I was too dense to understand them.
“Okay.”
“That’s it? Okay?”
I shrugged again and applied powder over the concealer. Then chose a tube of red lipstick, one with a hint of yellow in the tint, and put a couple of dabs of the lipstick on my cheeks and rubbed them in. I could have used some blush, but I had never been adept at getting blush shades to match my lipstick, and my face usually ended up looking wrong. With the lipstick on my cheeks, I looked marginally better, so I smeared some on my mouth and dropped all the tubes into the tackle box. “Molly, I’ve thought it through too. I figured it had to be a premeditated, well-planned attack. But I’ve made so many enemies in this town, there would no way to pick out who might be behind it.”
“A witch at the scene is the most likely offender.”
And Molly had told the witches some things about me. Not secrets exactly. Probably all in innocence, but . . . still. It had hurt. “Yeah. I know.” I blew out a breath and sat back on the corner of the bed to slip into the shoulder holster and secure the matching Walther PK .380s. With my best friend in the world watching, I pulled on boots. I was wearing the fancy-schmancy ones Leo had given me. Lucchese, hand-stitched, one-of-a-kind, gorgeous boots, which I loved to death. Grunting, I said, “I figured that out back when the lightning happened.”
“All an attacking witch or witches would have needed was something of yours—hair, fingernail clipping. If they had that, the assault could even have been long-distance, directed to the working and targeted on you.”
Keeping my voice carefully expressionless as I slipped into my lightweight jacket and tugged it to fit over the weapons, I said, “I clip my own nails. I’ve never had my hair cut. The likelihood of someone getting genetic material from me by going through my garbage isn’t impossible, but it also wouldn’t be easy.” I hesitated before saying the next part, but it needed to be said, to clear the air between us. “Unless you’re telling me you gave them something of mine, which I don’t believe.” I dropped my gaze to the floor, not wanting to look at Molly. “But you did tell the witches things about me.” I could hear the hurt in my voice, and knew that Molly could too.
“They asked me about you. I confirmed things that were readily available on the Internet and on your business Web site. I never told them secrets. And I never gave anyone genetic material. You know that I would never do that.” Molly gripped her skirt in her fingers, a new, nervous habit. “Don’t you?”
And I did. But knowing it intellectually was one thing; hearing the truth in her words, smelling the truth on her body, made me feel better. “Yeah. I do,” I said. “Wait.” I blinked slowly, eyes closed, letting memories stir together inside me. Beast had said, Jane has hair.
“That was back then,” I said, the words coming slowly as my brain flew through possibilities. “Now, with this witch scan spell, I keep smelling burned hair.”
Molly’s perfect bow lips parted.
My hair? Yes . . . maybe it had been my hair. And if so, then it was a very specific spell, a black-magic spell tied to my genetic material. If Molly was right, then the people at the lightning debacle in the vamp cemetery were part of what was happening now. “What if . . . What if you’re right and they burned my hair? That would explain why the spell was so specific, and so deeply attuned to me. Then and now.”
“No one does DNA-specific spells anymore except for healing spells, and they take a coven of at least five well-balanced witches. Without that, the workings are too delicate and fall apart too easily. They’re unpredictable and end up flying.” When a spell didn’t work, Molly made a paper airplane and flew it across the room to entertain the children. Her eyes traveled left and right slowly as she put that together with what we knew. She said haltingly, “Until I met you, I thought I understood magic. But now? Anything is possible.”
“But if we’re right, where did they get my hair to use in a spell? Unless someone else is involved. Like, maybe someone took a hair sample from a workout mat or skin scraping or blood from HQ after a battle or sweat after a workout or a spar.” I gave Molly what might have been a small smile and she nodded, the motion jerky, not happy. “It’s possible. I’m putting my money on a disgruntled vamp working with the two witches who attacked my house and me. If Edmund hadn’t just sworn to me, I’d say he was a perfect possibility, having lost his status and wanting to get back at the whole vamp power struggle. But . . . someone like him.”
Molly pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and walked to me. I didn’t want to, but I took the paper and unfolded it to see a list of nine names. Only Lachish Dutillet and Molly and the two witches who went by akas were familiar to me. Some had no last names, which was odd. She said, “Lachish says you never asked her for a list of the witches who were there, in the cemetery, that night, so I asked for you. This is all of them. All of us.”
No last names. I didn’t know how to point that out. When I didn’t say anything, her scent spiked with adrenaline and grief pheromones. She asked, “If you thought it might be a targeted attack, why didn’t you ask me for the names? Did you think I would pick witches over you?”
“I didn’t want to . . . put you on the spot?” Make you choose. That was what I meant, and Molly seemed to know that. Her scent spiked, hot and peppery with anger. Again. Pregnancy emotional swings.
Tears of frustration gathered in her eyes. “You’re my friend, damn it. Damn, damn, damn it! I put you first! Before witches. Before everybody!”
I smiled. Molly had just cussed out loud, where her kids might overhear, which she never did. I said, “I know you do. And I love you too.” At which point Molly’s tears pooled over and spilled down her cheeks. I was making everyone cry. I sat and patted the mattress and she fell on the bed beside me, doing the pregnant-woman boohoo at a loud wail and with full waterworks. I put an arm around her and gathered her close. Big Evan opened the door, took us in, and closed the door, leaving her to me. Coward.
I held Molly and rocked her while she cried and moaned and said things like “You can trust me.” And “I’m not a death witch anymore.” And “I love you. I love you. I love you. You’re my bestest friend in the whole entire world!” And “I never held Evangelina’s death against you!” And a dozen other things that may have been in Gaelic, but were sure not English, and made no sense. At all.
When she calmed a little, enough that I thought the baby might not suffer from the emotional overload, I said, “I trust you, Molly. I’ve always trusted you. Even when the death magics rode you so hard.”
“You do? You have?”
I patted her shoulder even while I eased her away from my now-drenched clothing. “Yes. I do. I have.” I patted a time or two more, wondering if this was enough physical contact or if Mol needed more. I wasn’t good at this stuff. After a few more pats, I said, “So, while you’re up close and personal, can you check out my hands and body for any spells and crap that may be clinging to me?”
“Spells and crap?”
I gave an overly nonchalant shrug. “Workings. Come on, Mol.”
Molly wiped her eyes and dried her tears on her skirt. She took my hands, turning them over and inspecting both sides. I felt a tingle of power, of her magics. They feathered across my palms, delicate energies, a soothing warmth, and then stronger, like the hot/cold electric touch of sparkler fireworks when lit. Oddly similar to a master vampire’s magics, cold and hot all at once.
I pulled in a breath, sharp and quick. “I guess you’re inspecting me for the spell.”
The ghost of a smile touched her lips. “Gotta bring home the bacon. And to that, I gotta have a bill to hit Leo with. Now shut up. I’m working here.” She set my right hand in my lap and held my left, her fingers tracing across my palm. The sparkler heat changed and she pressed her fingernails into the pads of my palm. A branding iron of heat shot into my hand. Into my nerves. My bones. It was all I could do not to jerk away, but I bared my teeth and my breath hissed. “Oh,” Molly muttered. “This may hurt a bit.”
I breathed through the pain. Hurt a bit, my butt.
After what seemed like an hour later but was more likely only ten minutes, Molly shook her head. “I can see leftover energies. Nothing more. If there’s anything here, I don’t know what it might be.”
“So there’s no chance it’ll explode and blow us all to smithereens?”
Molly laughed, a happy, healthy laugh, and rewiped her cheeks. “I never said that. There is always a chance for destruction and violence, big-cat.”
She had a point, but I still felt better, and by her scent, so did Molly. “I gave you the general descriptions of the witches who attacked the house. Do any of the names match the descriptions?”
Molly’s tears had stopped; her eyes were still red and watery as she said, “Several of them are large women, but only one matched the little woman. This one.” She pointed to the name. It was only three letters, no surname. “It might be a nickname.”
“Tau,” I said. “Okay. Thank you. It’s a place to start. But I havta ask. Why no last names?”
Molly shook her head. “Lachish says that after the coven couldn’t stop hurricane Katrina, the anti-witch sentiment was so bad that most witches went underground and stopped using family names. To protect the humans in the families. She refused to give me more.”
Which made sense and eased away some of the worry that clutched my spine. But only some of it. Witches might have tried to kill me. Why not give me the full names to protect me?
* * *
Later, on the way out of the house, I left the list with Alex, with the request “See what you can find?”
“I heard,” he said, taking the folded paper and snapping a photo of it on his phone before handing it back. “We all heard. Emotional women.”
From upstairs Molly shouted down, “You try carrying a baby for nine months while chemicals and hormones run through your body making you nutso and fat and swollen and then push an eight-pound lump of squalling human out through an opening big enough to fit a straw in and see if you don’t react from time to time. Until then, shut your trap.”
Wisely, Alex did.
* * *
On the way to vamp central, I wondered again how I survived the lightning that struck me. And if the angel Hayyel had saved me in a far more concrete way than I had originally thought. Did God want me alive for some reason? Did the angel work deliberately and independently to stop the witches trying to kill me? Are angels even allowed to interfere? If Hayyel acted to save me, was he in trouble with the Big Guy Upstairs?
If anyone could do something with the list of names, Alex could. Maybe he’d have something for me when we got back. Like full names. Photos. Their social media pages. Or their favorite things—walks in the rain, puppies, honesty, and laughter. Oh! And using magic to try to kill Jane Yellowrock and start a vamp-witch war.
Maybe not. I was good at the moment, no matter what he discovered. Mostly because of Edmund’s words “Yellowrock Clan,” which still reverberated through me. Yellowrock Clan. Yeah. I could live with that.
* * *
We went through security measures at HQ, much more stringent than the ones we had been through before. We were issued the brand-new, updated headsets, each with a small built-in camera. They were heavier, more bulky than the older models, not only so we could communicate with the security team while we were on the move, but so we could see what they saw if the poo hit the prop. I didn’t care for the extra weight, but for the upcoming events—all of them—the portable cameras might come in very handy proving innocence on the part of the team.
While we were still at the front entrance, Wrassler limped up and delivered to Eli the carved box holding the brooches. “Courtesy of Leo,” Wrassler said. “He knows you have the Truebloods at your house. He wants you to have them inspect the magics on the pins and see if they can track the witches on the other end.”
“Sneaky,” I said. “Pit the Truebloods against the witches who probably want the conclave and the witch-vamp parley to end before it begins. Divide and conquer. No wonder Leo’s so politically successful. What did he do? Study under Machiavelli?”
Wrassler rubbed his hand over his shaved skull and gave the old grin, the one he used back before he’d been so terribly maimed under my watch. Seeing it made my heart tumble over. “Not exactly. But it’s my understanding that the MOC owns one of the few copies of the sixteenth-century political treatises, in the original Latin, by the Italian diplomat and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. It’s possible that they were pals. I never asked.” Wrassler winked at me, turned on his prosthetic leg, and disappeared into the bowels of HQ.
Eli tucked the box under his arm. “One should remember the source when making fun of fangheads,” he said to me.
“True. Let’s check in with HQ’s security arrangements for the conclave and get outta here. I’m still beat.”
The meeting with the security team covered every planned moment from the time Leo left his private rooms, walked through the building, exited under the porte cochere, and was whisked into his limo. It covered the two other teams in similar limos who would leave at staggered times to throw off any bad guys or media types who might be watching HQ through telephoto lenses or drones. It covered the armored and well-armed SUVs that would keep pace with Leo’s limos. And it covered the motorcycle backup, crotch rockets carrying armed guards, most of them in white riding leathers and with full radio coms beneath the white helmets.
Weekend traffic in New Orleans wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t good either. I had learned firsthand how trapped a car could become. I still missed my bike and the ability to weave between cars, take one-way streets the wrong way, outsmarting traffic and never being late. I had big plans to head to Charlotte the moment the Harley was repaired enough for a test drive. Until then, I was making sure that Leo had motorcycle backup among his guards and among the police.
We also discussed with Derek which shooters would be utilizing the rooftops surrounding the Elms Mansion and Gardens, what ammo and equipment they would have access to. And who was in charge of their taking a shot. If our people shot anyone—even an attacker—there would be hell to pay, not only with the legal system, but also with the political situation. The smart thing, and our second choice, would be to have observers only, no weapons, but if our men saw a bomber or witches casting a deadly spell, and they didn’t intervene, the consequences could be even more lethal. The third option placed off-duty NOPD officers on the roofs with high-powered rifles. There were dangers in each of the three options. It was such a dicey discussion that by two in the morning, we called Leo and Grégoire in on it.
The two joined us in the conference room and sat side by side, listened to our proposals, and studied the photos of the Elms and the surrounding buildings and streets. When we were done, they conversed in low voices, in ancient French, the black-haired Leo leaning often to listen to his blond, blue-eyed bestie and secundo heir. They looked like very young, elegant, princely, educated, moneyed, metrosexual men who lived in a constant state of ennui, but they were also fighters with over nine hundred years of warfare and politics between them. Finally Leo sat upright and asked, “Jane, which option do you prefer?”
“I’ve become a control freak working for you, so I think we need armed men, our men, and that Derek should run things.”
“Eli Younger? You are the most currently experienced warrior in this room, even more so than my own men, with the most up-to-date knowledge of electronic warfare. What say you?”
Eli glanced sidelong at me and said, “If we were on foreign soil, I’d be all over Jane’s choice. But I’m torn between using our own men and using police. They might not take a shot our own men would, but they would also be responsible for any political fallout.”
“Derek?” he asked his soon-to-be-full-time Enforcer.
“I don’t want any of my men facing charges,” he said. “I say use cops.”
“And, Grégoire? Your thoughts?”
In a languid tone Grégoire said, “We could use off-duty police officers in tandem with our own men, and put them all under the control of Jodi Richoux.”
Which was bloody brilliant. It put all the responsibility under the wings of an NOPD officer, it divided the responsibility of whether to take a shot or not, and it placed any political or legal fallout in the hands of cops. I started laughing. So did the small team gathered there as they understood what the implications were.
Leo said to me, “And so you see the benefit of a few centuries of political strategizing. I’ll have my Enforcer, Derek Lee, contact Detective Richoux when she goes on duty this morning. We will allow her to choose the men and women she wants on the roofs. Derek, it will be up to you to assign men and women who will work well with the people Ms. Richoux suggests.”
“Yes, sir,” Derek said. “I’ll handle it and bring the full team in for vetting and instructions. Unless you think that should take place off grounds?” he asked Grégoire.
“If you could arrange that meeting for NOPD Eighth District, that would be preferable.” Grégoire sent me a smile, the kind that belonged on the face of the teenager he looked. “I do believe that Jane and George Dumas have recently met the police commissioner?”
“Yeah. Go, me. You meet all sorts of people when you get handcuffed and taken to the pokey.”
Grégoire looked at Leo and they smiled together. “The pokey,” Grégoire said.
“She is charming, is she not?”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “I’ll call the woo-woo room and see if I can get you on a conference call before you go to bed in the morning.”
“Excellent,” Leo said, standing. “Shall we?” he asked his secondo heir, and led the way out the door.
When it closed, Eli said, “And that right there is why fangheads scare me. Three moves ahead of us on the chessboard.”
“At least,” Derek said.
“Later,” I said. “I need my bed. Almost dying takes a lot out of me these days.”
“Wimp,” Derek said.
I just shook my head and left the room for the outdoors, dialing NOPD, the in-house number of the woo-woo room, the Paranormal Cases Department, headed up by Jodi Richoux. Eli was close on my heels as I set up a conference call between Derek and the woo-woo cops. I could mark one conclave responsibility off my shoulders.
* * *
The lights were on in Bruiser’s apartment when Eli deliberately drove slightly out of our way and pulled into an empty but illegal parking place on St. Philip Street. He didn’t look at me, staring out the windshield, his thumbs tapping out a slow, syncopated rhythm on the steering wheel. “Fine,” I said.
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately, usually when it isn’t fine. Wanna talk about that or you wanna go bump bones with Bruiser?”
I yanked my cell out of my pocket and texted Bruiser, Out front.
He didn’t text back. Instead he stepped onto the third-floor gallery of his apartment, unit eleven, and leaned out, hands on the iron railing. He was wearing a pair of loose pants. No shirt. Even through the distance and the armored glass, I could feel his eyes on me.
“Fine,” I said to my partner. “I know when I’m outsmarted.” Not that I didn’t want to go up. It just sounded so much like a booty call. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I opened the door and stepped into the fall heat and the cooler night breeze. The winds changed direction often, the Mississippi, the bayous, Lake Pontchartrain, and the Gulf of Mexico creating their own unpredictable weather system. Eli pulled away from the curb, the car door shutting on its own.
Heels tapping louder than I wanted, I went in through the wide hallway-like entrance and climbed the stairs to the top floor. I smelled Bruiser before I saw him. Man and Onorio and heat and that vaguely citrusy cologne he wore. Just a hint. Not too much to mess with my sensitive nose. Saw the light pouring across the floor, angled to indicate his door was open. I climbed the last steps.
Bruiser was waiting in the doorway, one shoulder on the doorjamb, still shirtless, barefoot. His pants rode on his hips, abs ripped in the angled light, the line of hair pointing down from his chest, to disappear beneath the low-hung waistband. There was heat in his eyes, though his face showed nothing. No emotion at all. I didn’t drop in often. Okay, never. Except for that first time, I always waited to be asked. Waited to be invited. This was different. I could feel the Onorio heat of his body when I slowed two feet away.
On the music system, something classic R&B with a hint of rambunctious country in the instrumentation was playing, a musician I didn’t know. The lyrics flowed out into the hallway.
“Blindsided by love, with no chance to put up a fight.
Well, I never saw it coming. I know I can’t recover. I’m a victim of the night. . . .”
The words were perfect for Bruiser and Leo. Or for Bruiser and me. Ohhh, I thought. Bruiser and me. I realized I had stopped moving and forced my feet to take the last steps. Right up to the man in the doorway. He smiled at last, and when he did, he caught me up in his arms, one arm like a vise across my back pulling me to him. The other hand slipped up to cup the back of my head. His brown eyes sparkled with laughter and a curl of dark hair dropped forward, to tangle in his eyelashes. The lyrics continued.
“Blindsided by love. Yes, I’m a victim of the night.”
His lips hesitated before they met mine, a millimeter of space between our mouths. I let my lips curl up and felt the tension slide away from me. I lifted my arms to his shoulders, wrapped them around him, wanting out of the shoulder holster that was suddenly constricting. “Blindsided, huh?”
“Everything’s better with bacon,” he whispered. And that was the last thing either of us said for a very long time.
* * *
On Bruiser’s gallery, we drank tea and ate French toast that had been delivered exactly five minutes after I woke. Wearing his shirt and nothing else. My ankles were crossed, resting across Bruiser’s legs, and we were nestled close on the love seat that hadn’t been there the last time I visited. He leaned in and licked syrup off my lips with a quick flick of his tongue, reminding me of other things he had done with that tongue during the night.
I made a small “Mmm” of pleasure and he chuckled, that manly, exhausted sound they make when they know just how well they have pleased. The vibration of the quiet laughter shook his chest. I rotated my head to rest it on his shoulder, my body in a C shape that should have been uncomfortable but was instead cozy.
Bruiser was one of very few men taller than I was, tall enough to make me feel small and delicate sometimes. Like this time. My hair slid across him and he gathered it up, smoothing it back.
“I love the way your hands feel on my hair,” I said on a sigh.
“And I love the feel of your hair,” he said. So far, that was the closest we came to saying the three magic words. After the debacle of Ricky-Bo’s betrayal, I wasn’t ready to say words that were more . . . sugary. And Bruiser acted as if the words were not even in his vocabulary. Which suited me just fine. Really. It did.
He freshened our mugs and I added more sugar and cream to the extra-strong English Breakfast Blend. It was the perfect start to a day destined to be anything but perfect, because the conclave was soon and the final preparations had to be honed and refined and today was the day for hundreds of details to be dealt with. Already a few witches were descending on the city and taking hotel rooms, gathering in cafés, chatting informally in bars. Starting the political yammering and lobbying and scheming and intriguing, trying to firm up or change the agendas. Trying to create or destroy alliances. Stuff I hated. Stuff that would change the world as I know it.
Yet, around us, the night lightened, graying the world through a rare fog, misting its way off the Mississippi River and through the Quarter. The fog made everything seem personal, intimate, as if we were the only people left in New Orleans. Bruiser tickled my soles and I kissed his scruffy chin. It was a rare, peaceful moment and I so totally owed Eli for making it happen.
Behind us, framed in a shadowbox and hanging over the bed, was a brown, yellow, and pink T-shirt, ugly as all get out except for the cute pig on it. And the logo BACON IS MEAT CANDY. It was the T-shirt I’d worn the first time I came to visit him here, bringing lunch from Cochon Butchers, and had ended up staying for more than lunch. As long as my T-shirt hung over Bruiser’s bed, I knew we were good, no matter how bad things might get in reality.
The fog heralded cooler air, the first hint of real fall, and promised rain soon. No surprise there. New Orleans got an average of sixty-four inches of sky juice a year, and had no rainy season. Or, rather, it was rainy season all year long. In the distance, I heard a tugboat sound, long and low, and the fainter roar of traffic starting. Not even dawn and it was starting up.
My cell tinkled. Bruiser handed it to me and I answered, “Morning, Molly.”
“It’s Angie,” she said, tears in her voice. “Something’s wrong, Aunt Jane.” And then she dropped the phone. I heard it clatter.
“Angie,” I whispered. “Angie!” I shouted.
Bruiser was already moving. I whipped my entire body through the long narrow doors and inside, gathering up my clothes and weapons in one arm. In a single lunge, I leaped for the gallery and landed on the street three stories below. Bruiser hesitated a fraction of a second before he threw a satchel at me. I caught it one-handed, hearing the clank of weapons and gear. He gripped the railing on his gallery and swung to the railing one floor below him, then leaped to the ground. He beeped his car open while he was still in the air.
I was still dressing when a half-naked Bruiser peeled us out of his parking space and made a tire-screeching turn the wrong way up a one-way street. I had only two vamp-killers, a few stakes, and the two matching Walther PK .380s, loaded with standard ammo. No silver. None of Molly’s preset spells. And, “How did someone get through the wards?”
“What’s new at your place?” he asked as he took a turn too fast.
“People. Witches, a nonfamiliar cat, a vamp, a werewolf, and a grindylow. Pretty much everything,” I said, pulling on last night’s pants under Bruiser’s too-big shirt. I slid my arms through the shoulder holster, which was permanently sized to me, handmade of nylon and leather, the grips turned out, for a fast two-hand draw. I didn’t bother with the jacket. “Oh. Wait. Crap. Leo gave us the brooches to have Molly and Evan look at them, check out the spells on them. Eli would have taken them inside, but it was too late to wake the Truebloods. If it’s the same two attackers—”
“They got in with a Trojan horse spell.” Bruiser braked hard and the antilock brakes stuttered on the wet pavement two blocks from my house. The fog was thicker here, the SUV’s lights vanishing into it only inches from the front bumper. The streetlights were off the length of the street. So was the electricity. I remembered the scan spell. The entire street hadn’t lost power, then. Bruiser pulled into a parking space and killed the motor. “Can you see the wards?” he asked, opening the door and dressing fast while standing in the street.
“Yes.” In mixed human and Beast-vision I could make out the wards, the overlapping color stamp of an Everhart Trueblood working, red and blue and bright emerald green, sparking through with rainbow-hued motes of power. “I can’t tell much through the fog. They look fine, but . . .”
“But you know they aren’t,” he said, stamping into combat boots. “The ward is keyed to you. I won’t be able to get inside.”
“If it’s the same two witches, they took up places under two streetlights across the street from my house.”
“Got it.”
I got out and we closed the doors softly, simultaneously, though the sound of them slamming would have been swallowed by the fog. A form swept at us through the night and Bruiser was suddenly standing in front of me, a sword I hadn’t seen him strap on in his hand and held to the intruder’s throat.
The man made a small “Eeep” of sound, his arms out to the sides to indicate a lack of weapons, before saying, formally, “It is Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley, the Enforcer’s primo.”
Bruiser dropped the point of his blade and Edmund moved to me. He was fully vamped out, fangs, talons, and the blown black pupils in scarlet sclera, but he was in complete control, calm, which was something I seldom saw a vamp do. His power sparked along my skin, frigid as sleet. “There are two witches, under strong multiple wards, obfuscation workings, keep-away workings, and something I have never seen before, which strikes fire and burns hot. I saw a rat incinerated and I backed away.”
“Did they see you?” I asked.
“No. They do not know any of us are here. But their workings are attacking inside the wards, and the Truebloods have not keyed their protections to me,” he added with a snarl. “I may only enter when they permit.”
“I’m going in.” I heard the men talking as I dashed to my house, but their voices were swallowed by the mist. I raced ahead, nearly tripping when a curb appeared where I hadn’t expected one. I ran through the ward, a heated zip of power. Silently I opened the front door. A pale greenish liquidlike gas roiled at my feet and out the door. I left the door open and it poured into the street. I slipped inside, and the smell hit on my first attempted breath. Something bitter and so pungent it stole my breath.
Poison? A magical equivalent of poison? I left the door open and the spell flowed into the street. Forcing my lungs not to cough and therefore inhale a deeper breath, I raced up the steps and into the kids’ room. I threw open the windows in their room, grabbed both of my godchildren up, Angie off the floor and Little Evan off his bed. Molly’s cell phone clattered to the floor. As it hit, I saw something in the shadows that didn’t belong there, but there wasn’t time to examine it. I raced back down the stairs, lungs burning, oxygen starved, fighting to take a breath. Desperate for air, I lowered a shoulder and shoved through the side door, banging it open, hearing wood splinter and snap. Through the ward again, I stumbled into the backyard, where I started coughing and sucking fresh air. The sound was dry and rough and I wanted to throw up, feeling weird, as if I couldn’t get enough air, though I was hyperventilating. I pulled on Beast to make it to Edmund’s car. I opened the driver door and laid the kids on the seats.
Edmund dropped from the air to my side, having leaped over the tall brick fence. As I practically coughed up my diaphragm, he said, “Poison gas. I have notified Leo, who is calling in Lachish Dutillet and a magical Haz Mat team to deal with the gas flowing into the streets. We have to get them all out, strip off their clothes, get them oxygenated, and wash their bodies.” While speaking, he had been stripping Little Evan and laid the child in the grass. He leaned over and began artificial respiration on the little boy while scooping Angie to him and starting to strip her as well. Part of me wanted to stop him—it felt wrong to see the adult stripping the kids, but he worked with almost military precision and there was no yuck factor. And I was pretty busy, hacking up my lungs, coughing with an awful tearing, wet sound, pulling on Beast for healing. It was surreal and awful and— “Jane!” Edmund barked. “You can breathe later. Get the others. Now!”
“I’ll drop them down to you,” I said. Turning, I raced back through the ward, inside, forcing myself to hold my breath. Breathe later. Right. Tears streamed down my face as the poison magic stung my eyes. My lungs burned as if they were melting, but I held the coughing in.
The wards were air-permeable. Therefore they were gas-permeable. Open to any spell that used air to attack, and with the brooches here, the witches had a focus to use to set the spell. Stupid, stupid, stupid, each and every one of us.