by Melissa Marr
“You understand why I did it, then?” Mama Lauren asked again. “You were just so young, and I was hiding you. They started showing up when you weren’t even teething yet, and I was a single mother and . . . scared.”
There was no way this conversation was going to good places. She was a single mother to an aberration by her own choice. She took fertility teas for months and actively tried to conceive me with a draugr. I wasn’t a miracle baby, an oops, or even a birth control failure. She chose me.
“I don’t blame you for binding me,” I said. I kept the list of things I did blame her for to myself. We both knew it was there just under the surface.
“No child has been as wanted as you were, Geneviève.” My mother stared at me, and there was no way to deny the sheer love in her expression. She had wanted me enough to break the laws of nature. There was power in her that few people realized. She had done the impossible.
I knew, though. She was a terrifying woman, a powerful witch, and a devoted mother. I would rather face a field of angry corpses than my mother when she was angry. I still asked the detail she’d pointedly ignored addressing: “What did you give in exchange?”
“It doesn’t matter, Geneviève.” She waved her hand as if she could physically ward off my words. She could, but to get her anger to the point of silencing my voice was a thing I hadn’t managed since killing the corpse that fathered me—and intended to use me like breeding stock whether I agreed to it or not.
I shoved that thought back into the recesses of my mind to address more pressing issues. “So . . . the fee was huge then?”
“Geneviève!” Mama Lauren looked at me and sighed. “It’s a favor for a faery called Doran. That’s all.”
“To do what?”
“Whatever is asked of me,” she said quietly. “No restrictions.”
I took several deep breaths. Then I repeated the process. I folded my arms over my chest. And in the calmest voice I could summon, which admittedly was like angry bean sidhe on a bender, I asked, “To clarify, you gave an open-ended vow for an unspecified favor to a faery?”
“Yes.” My mother tilted her chin up and stared at me. “You are my baby, Geneviève. I would carve out my heart for you if that was what it took to protect you. Those corpses and the draugr, they were everywhere. Like maggots on rot. And they weren’t like your father. They were terrifying.”
I closed my eyes. “We will not discuss him. You agreed.”
“Fine!” Mama Lauren touched my face. “You are my world though, Geneviève. Surely you understand. When you’re a mother, you’ll—"
“Please. Don’t.” My voice cracked. “If you are contacted, you tell them to find me. Whatever faery it is, I need to be present. I want you to be safe. Agree to that, and . . . and I’ll forgive you.”
“You have my word,” my mother said softly.
I nodded. Her madness over motherhood wasn’t a thing I understood. Maybe it was a Jewish thing, or a pagan one. Both faiths uphold maternity as nearly holy. Maybe it was just her. Some women felt the call to mother as if it was their divine function. Whatever it was, the one and only thing she ever wanted out of this lifetime was to be a mom. She insisted everyone call her Mama Lauren. Not just me. It was her identity.
And me? I never wanted children. All I could think of was passing my own wrongness on. And I suppose it didn’t help that the dead man who helped her in her quest for motherhood wanted to use me as an incubator for draugr reproduction. To me, motherhood was a trap, and to her it was a gift. We would not agree on this.
“I’m heading out.” I pretended not to see the heartbreak on her face, but I still hugged her tighter than any human could do and reminded her, “No mother has been as loving as mine, and I am the luckiest child to have you as a mom. I know that.”
She sniffled. “I love you.”
“I know.” I kissed her on both cheeks and her nose. “I love you, too. If you hear anything, let me know? Something is wrong with the rise in new draugr.”
Mama Lauren nodded. She might not always make sense to me, but when it came to lending a hand—or a spell—I could count on her. No human could gather information from the otherworldly quite like a witch. A draugr was previously-human. A faery only looked human. Witches were both human and otherworldly.
And then I let myself flow back to the park to catch the first bus back to New Orleans. I felt better physically, and I had a few answers, but I had new questions, too.
Tonight, I’d see my friends. Tomorrow, I’d meet Tres. And in the middle, I’d pretend not to know secrets I ought to share with Eli.
Until recently, finding steady work had been harder than I’d like. Then, in the last two months, I had more removal jobs than time to do them. Part of me wondered why. Draugr weren’t keen on creating an excess of mouths to feed on the population. They’d kept themselves a secret for centuries, so they were well-aware of how many of their kind they could feed and hide.
So why was there a bump in newly-infected draugr? Had one of them freed Marie Chevalier? And who injected Chaddock? Was the woman with the syringe there because of Marie? Had Marie been injected, too? Why?
The injections mentioned by Tres certainly set off alarms, but he was one man with one theory. Alvin Chaddock could have been getting injections for pain medicine or vitamins. I had no reason to believe that there was a conspiracy or that the injection was tied to his death or the increase in beheadings I had to do. And sure, Chaddock was weirdly alert, and he’d seemed strong—but I was tired and my magic was wonky. Three days of rest and one night in the relaxing bed at Jesse’s flat had calmed my worries. The visit to the Outs had me feeling like I was invincible.
The need to help Tres pressed at the back of my mind, and I decided to reach out to the police. Subtly. The fucking lectures Gary had already given me were my ceiling for well-intentioned worry. And I wasn’t about to hang out an old-school detective shingle. I was making a few calls. Asking Mama Lauren. Monitoring obits. But I was still me—just a woman with weapons and the skill to use them.
Tonight, though, I was ready to relax with my friends—and get my phone back from Eli. Maybe I’d call Tres to follow up and see if he’d learned anything. There was no reason to wait until lunch tomorrow. We could meet later tonight. I could see what he’d learned and—
I paused. My desire to help Tres felt like more than guilt. I wasn’t sure why, but the list of things that made no sense was growing too long.
“Fucksicles.”
Having my magic untethered was making me off kilter in way too many ways. I needed stability, and that meant seeing my friends. I could sort out the rest later.First, I’d drink and see friends at Eli’s bar. I needed friendship and liquor, and I thought they needed to see me, too. Both Christy and Sera were worrying in their own ways, and I felt guilty for not talking to them about my magic being weird—and about my feelings for Eli. I just tried to limit what I told them about my job. No sense making their stress levels higher.
I’d delayed later than I should’ve, stayed inside out of the glaring sun, and now I was scurrying through the streets at a pace just shy of flowing. Sometimes, I would call myself careful. Tonight wasn’t such a time. I could feel tendrils of energy, a sort of low hum that told me draugr were near. The warehouse district was two blocks away, and somewhere there was a group of dead things. They felt like gaps in the world, pockets of vacancy. I couldn’t feel just one with pinpoint accuracy, but if several were together, I sensed it much as hearing sirens or smelling cigars.
The sirens lifted and fell like a strange song. Voices rose in anger, in greetings, in excitement. And things that skittered on paws and claws ran nearby. My mind sorted through the sounds faster than I registered most of them.
And with my internal sundial, I realized how close to careless I was tonight. Put me in a windowless room, and I’d still know. Sunset was in three minutes.
Three g’damn minutes.
I slammed open the doors to Bill’s like I was r
unning from a pride of hungry lions.
“Slow down,” Eli grumbled as his hand stopped one of the doors from contact with his face.
“Life’s short,” I said drolly.
“We’re all going to die, cupcake,” he said. “I’d rather not die because you kill me with my own door.”
I grinned. “No murder, bonbon. Just trying to make your perfect face match your flawed personality.”
He made a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh. Honestly, we both knew I wouldn’t want to kill him, most days. Maybe I liked Eli because he wasn’t going to die of natural causes. Fae creatures lived longer than most draugr. I wasn’t sure if I was going to live longer than a human, but if I did, it would be nice to have a few familiar faces.
Perfect partner, a little voice whispered. It sounded like Mama Lauren, but it was my own neurosis, not her magic. I needed to tell him—maybe ask about Doran, too.
I wasn’t about to discuss it here, though. Tonight, I wanted to pretend I was plain old run of the mill human. Witches were human, and humans died. I’d be gone long before a faery.
“Afraid of the dark?” Eli asked as he looked into the dusk behind me before pushing the door shut, as if it would trap the bad things outside. “Or something in it tonight?”
“Sometimes. Or maybe how much I enjoy what I do in it.”
“Your job doesn’t define you, Geneviève,” Eli said quietly. “You hunt in the dark, but you are not dark.”
I laughed in a combination of relief and amusement. I loved that Eli called what I did “hunting.” I leaned in and said, “I kill in the dark. It’s very different than mere hunting.”
“And you are radiant as you do so,” he said, unperturbed by my words.
“I am not.”
He pressed his lips together as if trapping words from escaping again. He did that more and more. Silently, he opened a box on the table and handed me my phone.
I looked at it. Four messages from Tres.
Eli’s disapproval was beyond obvious. “His messaging feels more obsessive than normal.”
“He’s grieving. People do that differently.”
“Send me a bottle?” I asked in a flirtier tone than I should have, pointedly shoving the phone in my back pocket. Eli had read the texts, and that meant I didn’t need to read them just now. Tonight was a night out with friends—and maybe a little careful flirting with Eli.
I cleared my throat. “Join us for a drink later?”
“Of course, my dear meringue.”
“Good.” I paused before adding, “I like being around you.”
“I know.” He gave me a wicked smile. Then he passed by me closer than comfortable and whispered, “Sunglasses.”
I pulled my shades off, and winced at the loss of detail that followed. But as I left him there, I was smiling. I liked us this way. Easy. Light. We simply weren’t suited for long conversations right now. Perhaps we never would be.
Perfect partner, my ass. We’d be a disaster.
Eli motioned to the bartender as I scanned the room, looking for my two closest female friends. Honestly, I was suspicious of the sort of women who lacked good female friends. Mine were people I’d easily kill for or die to protect. Hell, I’d even sit through pedicures for them, and that was a lot less fun to me than killing.
The bar was dim in the way of my preferred bars. I saw better in the dark, and if I had my way, the only kind of place I’d be in would be dark rooms, darker rooms, and carefully chosen areas on nights with a New Moon. Those were a sort of perfection that I wished I could enjoy without being aware of what else was in the dark with me. The world took on a kind of clarity that only happened when the sky was perfectly dark.
In the darkest corner of the bar, I saw Christy and Sera beside a pool table. Several old men watched them. I wasn’t sure if it was because Christy was running the table or because she was bent low and wearing a shirt with a lot of cleavage. She had several degrees in esoteric shit, but research didn’t pay the way her pool hustling could.
Consciously slowing myself, I slid between tables and waitresses, bodies and beers. Sera sighed in relief at the sight of me.
“Thought you weren’t going to make it,” she said as she stood and hugged me.
Christy’s gaze lifted from the table, assessed me, and that was that. We didn’t talk when she was earning the rent, and goddess love ’em, tourist after tourist bought her sweet and fumbling act most nights. She was adept at a lot of things, but an affinity for physics meant that she steered pool balls like she had a magic wand instead of a pool cue.
I settled in at a table to watch.
“Dinner.” Sera slid a glass of whisky, neat, toward me. Not a dram. Not some terrible “water added” nonsense. A generous tumbler of booze.
I put my hand on my heart and said, “I love you best in the whole world.”
“As you should.” Sera slid a plate of greasy, onion-and-bacon-coated fries toward me.
I did eat. Solid food, too, just like a regular person. Okay, mostly like a regular person.
“Bless you,” I said.
Sera and I watched Christy fleece the fool who agreed to play against her. The old men in the corner chortled and high-fived her. I swear I hadn’t figured out yet if they were more entertained by watching her because she was such a curvy girl or because they were in on the secret. Either way, she paused to talk to them as she folded her cash and tucked it into her cleavage.
“Where were you the last two nights?” Sera asked.
I shrugged. “Work?”
“I heard from a friend at the station,” she pronounced, as if she’d caught me in a lie. “Jesse’s place?”
“Still work.”
“Both nights?”
“Outs last night,” I whispered. “Needed to see Mama Lauren.”
Sera looked ready to say something more, but Eli paused at our table with a bottle just then. I knew not to remark on the fact that he delivered it himself. Everything with the damn fae had meanings, ritual in old ways that I was still trying to learn.
“Well, aren’t you sweet?” Sera murmured. “Or are you just sweet on Gen?”
Eli’s mouth curved into a smile, transforming his face in a way that screamed “not human.” It wasn’t exactly a secret, but in that moment, it was glaringly obvious.
“I don’t believe one could be ‘sweet’ on a creature such as Geneviève.” Eli opened the bottle, cracking the seal in front of me. “In awe? Frightened? Fascinated? I dare say that no other creature in all of New Orleans is quite so rich in contradictions as she is.”
Christy came over mid-proclamation.
“House cut,” she said, withdrawing a folded bill from her cleavage. “Left them drinking cash this time too.”
“Be still my winged heart,” Eli murmured.
The doors opened without a sound, but I didn’t need sound to tell me what had walked into the building. I felt their tug on my skin, tightening muscles as my body wanted to flow. Like called to like.
Tonight, though, they were trying to read me. Tendrils of grave magic pounded against my mental shields. I was on my feet without knowing how or when I moved.
Eli stayed at my side. “Sugar frost, I believe you have a small duty before relaxing. May I assist?”
Short sword already in hand, I glanced at my friends. “Guard them.”
“As you wish,” he murmured. Draugr were pleasantly frightened of fae blood until they reached around a century old. By then, they could control themselves. Fae blood looked a lot like liquid silver, and in any dose but a quick sip, it acted like silver, too, leaving the draugr sickened and ravenous all at once. Eli had an innate safety with most of these, but not this one. She was old, and that meant Eli was in need of protection, too.
And without thinking about the consequences, I let myself flow. In the flicker of a moment, I was at the front of the bar, sword in one hand and gun in the other.
Chapter Sixteen
“You need to come with
us,” the front draugr said. He had the perpetually elongated teeth of an again-walker in his second-decade. It made him harder to understand, but at least he was more articulate than grunts.
Behind him were three more walking corpses and one who stood drooling around the gag in her mouth. One of the draugr held onto the prisoner, who appeared to be a nice grandmother with a growling and hissing problem.
The two draugr not guarding a prisoner stood on either side of a woman who was dressed like she’d watched Interview with a Vampire far too often. Added to that was make-up that looked like she was prepping for her own funeral. She was old, though; the sort of old that told me I wasn’t fast enough to shoot her. My bones tingled at the chill she radiated. When she died, there would be no need for a Con Crew pick-up. Dust and air would be all that remained of her.
And I wasn’t sure I could kill her even if I was prepared, even if I was facing just her.
My hand was wrapped around the hilt of my single-handed sword, and the blade was resting on my left shoulder. Only the forward edge and a few inches at the curved tip were sharp, so it was more comfortable to rest the blunt edge on my shoulder than hold it aloft. A standard weight sword was only two pounds. Still, I felt better with it in a waiting position—and less silly than standing poised to attack.
“I’ve been over this with almost a dozen of you.” I sighed and met several dead-eyed stares. “You all need a social media site or newsletter. This is my bar, and anything other than a human has to have my permission to be here.”
I ignored the technicality that it was Eli’s bar. It was mine only in the sense that I was happy here.
“We need to talk to you, Geneviève,” the older woman in the center of their clutch said. She was the most articulate monster I’d met, more so than most humans. It still didn’t mean I wanted to chat.
“I have nothing to say,” I told her.
“Darius,” the one in front said.
Maybe because it was my so-called father’s name, or maybe it was because the dead guy reached out. Either way, I brought my sword down reflexively. His hand flopped to the ground, a rotting putrid lump. It looked like week-old meat.
