by Melissa Marr
“Do you all eat people?” I asked cheerily. I’d rather be cheerful and fight her than see Eli look wounded. Admittedly, I’d caused that look more than a few times, but I was trying to do better, and I sure as sugar wasn’t going to let anyone else cause it if I could help it. “Nosh on the living? Nibble unwilling necks? That sort of thing.”
“Yes, we do require living food.” Beatrice straightened her very elegant dress. “Not flesh. Merely live blood. The young only take flesh because they are uncontrolled.”
“Huh. Good to know,” I muttered.
Eli gave a single nod at her. “I, and my blood, belong to Geneviève Crowe. . . and she to me.”
Beatrice looked back at me appraisingly while I was trying to figure out what that vow was. Beatrice smiled, and I swore she belonged in a court, not a crumbling asphalt parking lot outside a funky smelling morgue. She looked like there ought to be a throne, elegant cloak, and simple jeweled circlet. Nothing ostentatious, but definitely not this kind of run down.
Her royal deadness fixed that imperious gaze on me and half-ordered, half-offered, “Gift Odem to me. I will mind him and ask the pertinent questions. If his conversion to clarity is temporary, I shall inform you.”
“And you won’t release him to his family,” I said. The brief flicker of seeing Beatrice’s humanity seemed to vanish at hearing her admission that even those draugr I did not see were killers. She was a killer.
But then again, so was I.
“Agreed,” Beatrice said. “I will safeguard him and take him as my subject. I will neither murder him nor release him into the wild.”
“Geneviève!” Tres called. “Miss Crowe!”
I ignored him. I knew I was handing his hope of more answers to a monster. I knew, too, that if there was information about the injection, Beatrice would learn of it. She might be a draugr, but on this, we were on the same side. At least, I thought so.
“Beatrice, I release Mr. Odem to your care.”
I watched him, wondering if the transition of the binding to her would change anything about his grip on reality. Had I accidentally created his sentience by binding him? Or was it the injection? Or was it simply a result of my magic being released?
Beatrice held out her hands, and Odem took them. In that moment, it looked like the strangest handfasting ceremony I’d ever seen. Beatrice looked bridal in her Victorian evening gown as she gazed at Odem in his mismatched suit. No words were spoken, and we had the necessary witnesses—which left me as the armed minister. It was an apt, albeit amusing, image in my head. Beatrice was about to bind him to her until one of them had a second death.
I felt her magic flare out as she tied the recently revived draugr to her. It was familiar in a way that answered a question I hadn’t thought to ask until now.
“You’re a w—”
“Hush, daughter.” Beatrice held a finger to her lips.
Maybe it was knowing that she was a witch, too, or maybe it was that she was a more-or-less-dead witch in a Victorian dress. Questions. More of them. She was like a bottomless well of details and clues I didn’t understand. There was a draugr-witch standing in front of me. Like me, but far more dead—and I truly doubted that she’d been born like this.
When I opened my mouth to comment, she said, “Shush!”
I shuddered at the creepy, draugr-witch standing in front of me with a glee-filled grin. Not even the unblinking china-faced Victorian doll at my mother’s house looked as eerie as Beatrice did in that moment. I didn’t speak her secret, although it was clear to me. Beatrice, who was seemingly whatever the draugr called their leader, was a witch before she walked as a dead thing.
“I have questions,” I said once she’d released Odem’s hands.
She nodded once. “Of course, you do. I would expect no less.”
But then she flowed with Odem trailing behind her. I had no answers, no corpse, no quarrel or anything else to explain the unsettled feeling rippling over me. I couldn’t have left Odem unsupervised, though. If he lost the clarity he seemed to have or even just got too hungry, his family would die.
As would neighbors.
And strangers.
So, I was left standing in the darkened lot with Eli, Tres, and the suits.
“What just happened?” Suit One asked.
The other suit shrugged.
“Miss Crowe sent Mr. Odem away with a draugr,” Tres said coldly.
“Not just any draugr,” Eli amended.
Tres glared at me. His adoration of before was tinged with a hostility that was equally unwelcome. I was neither goddess nor demon. I was a woman who had an uncanny gift for ending up in bad situations, and I was over it. “What if he didn’t stay coherent, Mr. Chaddock? Would you let his entire family die?”
“You healed him,” Tres insisted with the obstinance of a man who just couldn’t grasp that I wasn’t able to be what he wanted me to be—or maybe it was the privileged rich perspective. I had no doubt that Tres was used to getting exactly what he wanted.
“I did not.” I pointed at him with the sword that was hanging loose in my hand. “He was injected. I simply bound him to me, and I cannot draugr-sit. My neighbors are still pissed about covering the lawn with the ‘zombies.’”
I made air quotes with my free hand because, really? Wrong damn word. There wasn’t anything Haitian about the dead folks that were scattered on my lawn last year. I didn’t create them. I simply summoned the dead to life. Basic necromancy.
“But . . . two men have been killed,” Tres objected. “At least two more are missing.”
He walked closer, and I felt Eli step to my side. I wasn’t a bone to be tugged between two men either. Tres was a client, and Eli was my partner. I pushed my rising temper away. It wasn’t really about the word, or the anger from Tres, or even needing to summon Beatrice.
“Two more?” Eli asked.
“There are four members of my father’s club unaccounted for,” Tres said.
“Perhaps they are on trips, yachts, or with mistresses.”
“Not every businessman has a mistress,” Tres muttered.
As calmly as I could, I explained, “I want answers, too, but I won’t risk the Odem family’s life to get them. Beatrice—”
“The draugr?” Tres asked.
“Yes.” I cleared my throat before saying a sentence I’d never really expected to say: “I trust her.”
Eli shot a quizzical glance at me.
“On this,” I added. “She wants answers, too. She’ll get them if he has them. I’ll figure it out from there, but I’m not babysitting a corpse—or releasing it to eat people. So”—I shrugged— “I asked her to take him.”
I turned and headed to the car. I’d already let Eli see me flow twice tonight, so I didn’t bother being circumspect. It felt freeing.
In not much more than a blink, not as fast as Beatrice, but a lot faster than most draugr, I was beside Eli’s car. I thought briefly that in this state, I could flip the thing. Not that I would, but it was a detail to file away for future encounters with monsters. If I thought I could, I was sure some draugr could too.
I watched Eli walk toward me, trying to ignore the smile he wore as I stared at him. I refused to look away. I liked looking, and tonight, I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. He’d offered himself up for my use. His kisses left me feeling languid.
“Do you suppose we should discuss your ability to flow, peach pie?” Eli asked as he reached the passenger door.
“As soon as we talk about you telling the dead lady that your blood was mine or I was yours, sweetbread.”
He raised his brows. “Sweetbread is not a baked food. It’s part of a dead animal.”
“True.”
“Are you threatening me? Or admitting to craving me?” Eli gave me the sort of smile that probably resulted in most women or men hastily shedding clothing. “You should realize that I’m content either way.”
“Why would you say I was in possession of your blood?” I asked
in a slightly calmer voice.
“Why did you declare me yours? I heard you, Geneviève. You said ‘mine’ in a way that was far from meaningless.” He paused. “And asking me to watch your corpse after you died? We all have secrets, but you can trust me with yours. My body or my blood, Geneviève. Fighting at your side. Tell me what you want, and I will give it to you.”
For a moment, I stared at him. Quietly, I admitted, “That isn’t working, is it? I asked for space.”
“You did. You also kissed me,” he said just as quietly.
Instead of answering, I jerked open the car door. “Either drive me home, or I can flow and get there on my own.”
Eli motioned for me to get into the car, closed the door, and got into the driver’s side. Even when facing my temper, he was a gentleman, and sometimes I wanted to punch him for it.
Chapter Twenty
Eli stayed silent as he put the car in motion. Sometimes, I stared at the dim alleys, the people sliding into the shadows, and I wondered at our world. I realized that New Orleans was seedier than a lot of cities, but there were plenty of places like ours. Someday, I would visit Prague or Amsterdam. I’d see what it was like there. Did they have more police? Was it simply that they let the again-walkers feed on the homeless who were out at night or was the tolerance a tactic, a cheap way to deter criminals? Were there fewer muggings in the large cities with draugr?
I knew on some fundamental level that the draugr had not suddenly appeared in the world. Were they few and rare at the beginning? Had the draugr grown in relation to the food—humans—populating so much of the planet?
I surely didn’t buy the “angry god” answers. I didn’t see the rise of the dead as a sign that the divine was angry at humanity for this or that, especially when it usually boiled down to folks grumbling over women having opinions, people marrying folks they loved, or the like. But then again, I’d never been a fire and brimstone, hell-is-waiting-for-you, person. Jew and witch by birth didn’t lead to that. Instead, I wondered about the science of it all. Were the diseases, the plagues of modern life, a divine pay-attention-or-else, or had we created them in our labs? Or, with our destruction of other predators, of the very earth, had these man-shaped killers grown more numerous?
I had no answers.
“Geneviève?” Eli’s voice tugged me out of my thoughts.
“Just thinking about draugr,” I said.
He kept his gaze fixed on the road as he said, “I offered my blood because you have enough draugr traits that I’ve had my suspicions about your humanity. If you need blood, mine is available. I would’ve offered sooner if I thought you really did need it now.” He glanced at me and teased, “But mostly, you appear to need liquor not blood, so I offered that instead.”
His smile had me making a rude gesture at him, even as it eased the tension between us. There was only so far we could contain whatever was between us, and my impulsive kiss earlier had eroded some of that peace. Honestly, the fluctuation of my magic had started it months ago.
It hit me that it was related. “My magic . . .” I shook my head, feeling like an idiot. My magic had identified him as my partner, and it was erratic from being unbound, but magic was not some weird thing with no rules. The thing binding me for most of my life was magic, too. It and my own gifts were at odds. I needed to be tethered. “I think I need to have sex.”
“I’ll offer that, too,” he said lightly. “If memory serves, I have offered.”
I sighed. “And I am considering it, but—”
Eli stopped the car alongside the street, sliding into a narrow parking spot as if he could drive with his eyes closed. He still had one hand on the wheel, but he twisted to stare at me. “Truly?”
I sighed again. “Yes.”
“With me?” he clarified.
“I liked kissing you.” I shot him my wickedest smile. “The handcuffs idea wasn’t without merit either.”
Eli’s quiet groan made me need to muffle my own response. Whatever else we were, our chemistry was excellent. It was the “what else” part that complicated my life. Still, I felt like I had to tell him.
“Eli?”
“Cream puff?”
“It’s not just that. My magic is weird lately because my mother made a bargain. A faery bargain.” I felt like the air itself went still when I said it. I also felt like he deserved to know, since he was a factor. My shift happened because Eli had become my partner, and of course, he was dealing with the fallout. “And that whole ‘mine’ thing that happened was just my magic being crazyballs.”
He made a “continue” gesture.
“I went to see my mother. She made a faery bargain so my beacon to the grave would be tamped down,” I said. “And my draugr traits tamped down. Until I met ‘a true partner, loyal and able to stand at my side.’”
Eli stared at me as if I’d just declared him a frog who ought to kiss me, or maybe since I was the one who’d been restricted, I was the frog in this fairy tale. Either way, I felt like he was hearing sentences I didn’t mean to say.
“Geneviève . . . I am honored.” His voice was thick with emotion I didn’t want to identify.
“Honored?”
“That your magic chose me,” he said in that same voice. He took my hand in his and lifted it. “It means more than I can say.”
I was running out of fight. “I trust you.”
His lips brushed my knuckles. Such a gentle thing ought not make my heart race or my knickers damp. His allure somehow ignored what ought to be and how my body ought to react. I pulled my hand away.
“And you have my back,” I said as calmly as I could. “You protect me. Who else would be my partner?”
“Geneviève . . . I have waited for years to hear you admit these things.”
Again with the perhaps-we-weren’t-in-the-same-conversation. This was why dealing with the fae—and probably the draugr—was fraught with misunderstanding. It was like cross-cultural conflicts, but cross-species. A friend of mine had accidentally ended up engaged because she’d accepted a gift that she thought was sweet, and the man thought was a statement of intentions.
Carefully, I said, “You’re one of my closest friends.”
Eli gave me a look with so much heat in it that I was suddenly grateful he’d respected my requests not to seduce me. Then he said, “And I am more than ready to prove that you will never need another person in your bed.”
“Somehow, I don’t have any doubts of your prowess after that kiss,” I said quietly. Admittedly, the women at the tavern who stared at him like they would sell their souls for another night with him had already convinced me that I would more than enjoy being naked with Eli.
“Tell me that if you are taking anyone to your bedchamber tomorrow that it will be me?” He leaned forward.
I closed the distance to brush my lips over his. “Can I think about it?”
“You have been.” He kissed my throat. “For years. As have I. Why delay? We’re here.”
“In a tiny car,” I said softly. Despite the skills I knew he undoubtedly had, I wasn’t going to try to do anything in his little convertible. The gearshift between us, and the lack of a backseat didn’t leave too many options. Even if the seat were to recline enough, I wasn’t sure there was room for the things I wanted.
“Name the place. I’ll bring the handcuffs,” Eli tempted.
I shoved the thoughts of Eli at my mercy back and leaned away with a loud sigh.
“I’m just grateful that my mother worded the bargain like that. Can you imagine if she’d said a word other than partner? I’d never be unbound. Fae literalism actually worked in my favor. Put that one in the books. A faery bargain working out on the bargainer’s side doesn’t happen often.”
Eli gave me an incredulous look, but he said nothing as he pulled the car out of the parking spot and rejoined the flow of traffic. I felt a bit unnerved by it.
He kept his silence until he arrived at my building.
When he parked, he lo
oked into my eyes, and said, “Sometimes, my tiramisu, you are an absolute fucking idiot.”
My mouth opened, but no words came.
“Faery bargains do not benefit the bargainer. Not truly.” He caressed my face. “We play to win, and you, my love, are lying to yourself. The words—and your own magic—know what your infuriatingly obstinate self denies.”
I met his gaze for a moment. “You are my business partner and friend, and I . . . care about you a lot . . . and want to fuck you. That’s all.”
And Eli laughed. It was a joyous sound, but I wasn’t in on the same joke, apparently.
“What?”
“That’s all? My dear, surely you realize that my people marry with far less compatibility. You count me as a friend and a business ally. You care for me and want me. Our interests align. Our sexual compatibility is intense enough to make you run from me. And you would fight the mistress of the risen-dead for me. How can you not see that we are perfectly matched?”
Romantic partner? Magic choosing? I mean, I wasn’t exactly new to powers-beyond-my-control fucking with my life. . . but I wasn’t a picket-fence kind of woman. I really really wasn’t ever going to be the marrying sort.
And I was dangerous.
This couldn’t happen.
Eli caressed my face. “I do not think your magic or the bargain misunderstood at all, Geneviève.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I stepped out of the car and was instantly folded into Eli’s embrace. There wasn’t anything magical about a hug, but there was a sort of magic to finding someone who felt like home. In my heart of hearts, I admitted that this was why I had to push Eli away. Losing him would tear a wound in my heart that couldn’t heal.
But there was a perfection to the way I felt as Eli held me that I didn’t think existed anywhere else in my past—and I feared it would never exist with anyone else. We simply fit. Dear Goddess, we fit. There was a point at which total denial was impossible, and I was finally there. I closed my eyes, let myself not think, and simply feel.
