I looked around, searching in particular for one person. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen, so I ran back toward the building.
Lizzy lay on the floor of the room where I’d left Nava, her head in Trevor’s lap. She was covered in blood and clutched her stomach. I knew immediately what had happened. She Saw Nava shoot me and jumped between us to try and prevent it.
“Oh, Lizzy,” I said, kneeling down beside her. I pried her hands away from her abdomen and ripped her dress open. The bullet had entered just below her ribs on her right side and exited her back. There was an awful lot of blood.
“Call an ambulance,” Blair shouted. “Get a doctor.”
“Why, Lizzy? I was shielded, silly girl. I told you to stay behind me.”
“It hurts, Erin,” she said, tears rolling down her cheeks. “It hurts so damned bad.”
I stood and walked over to Nava, who was unconscious on the floor. Grabbing him by the hair, I dragged him over to where Lizzy lay. I shoved one hand inside his shirt and put my other hand over Lizzy’s heart. Then I began pulling his life’s energy out of him and feeding it into her.
“She doesn’t need a doctor, Trevor,” I said. “She needs a healer, and she needs one fast. We’re going to lose her.” I felt tears roll down my own cheeks. I could feel her pain, but I had my own pain, too. She was my friend, and I felt as though Nava had reached inside me and ripped something precious out of me.
Trevor reached for Lizzy’s purse, pulled out her phone, and punched a couple of buttons.
“Lizzy’s hurt very badly,” he said into the phone. “She needs you now.” He listened for a moment, then said, “The carriage house at Carleton House.”
He put the phone down, and shot a glance at Nava, who was visibly shriveling, then looked at Lizzy’s face. He gave me a nod of approval.
Five minutes later, a woman walked in. Several inches short of five feet, with thick pink hair past her waist, she had large, sharply slanted eyes with slit pupils, sharp cheekbones, a heart-shaped mouth and a pointed chin. She was beautiful, but no one who saw her could possibly think she was human.
She knelt down on Lizzy’s other side and put her hand on Lizzy’s head, then her other hand slid next to mine on Lizzy’s chest. The Fae woman raised her eyes to meet mine, and then I felt a jolt of magic of a flavor that was completely alien.
The bleeding stopped, and Lizzy slipped into what seemed like a restful sleep. The Fae woman picked Lizzy up and rose to her feet. She carried the girl outside, then turned back to me. In a voice that sounded like silver bells, she said, “You saved my daughter’s life. I will not forget.”
The two women sank into the earth, leaving no trace of where they had gone.
I felt someone come through the door into the bar and turned to see who it was. Frankie Jones slid onto a barstool and smiled at me.
“And what can I do for our Acting District Attorney?” I asked.
“A cosmo.”
“Coming right up.”
I mixed her drink and took it to her. She pushed a twenty across the bar and said, “Thanks, Erin. Thanks for saving my life.”
I winked at her and said, “No problem. I mean, if you can’t depend on your friendly neighborhood bartender, who can you depend on?”
When I took her change to her, I asked, “Any luck on your investigation into the Columbia Club?”
“Some. My father has been a big help. So far, we haven’t turned up any evidence of the Illuminati, except for what we found at Nava’s and Mietzner’s houses. And even that wasn’t much.”
I hadn’t expected she would find very much. The Illuminati hadn’t stayed hidden for centuries by leaving evidence of their existence lying around. Everything I knew about them I carried in my head, except for the contents of a book no one had ever planned for me to read.
“They both had satellite phones, and we can’t figure out who manufactured them,” Frankie said, “but they don’t connect to anything.”
We chatted a while longer, then she said she was going to try and get a good night’s sleep and left. I watched her go, hoping that my life would have a chance of getting on some kind of normal track now that the threat of the Illuminati looked like it was over.
I had hidden the Hunter’s satellite phone with the book, just in case I might ever need it. But when I asked Trevor about the Illuminati’s website, he shook his head.
“I tried to check on it, just out of curiosity,” he said. “It throws a four-oh-four error.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Page not found. I tried to ping their server, and it’s gone. Not even any old artifacts. Looks like they completely turned everything off and disconnected it.”
“Or maybe they weren’t paranoid,” I said.
He gave me a strange look. “How so?”
“Well, they were a conspiracy group, right? Maybe someone bombed them.”
He laughed and then we went out and got a pizza.
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Books by BR Kingsolver
The Dark Streets Series
Gods and Demons
Dragon’s Egg
Witches’ Brew
The Chameleon Assassin Series
Chameleon Assassin
Chameleon Uncovered
Chameleon’s Challenge
Chameleon’s Death Dance
Diamonds and Blood
The Telepathic Clans Saga
The Succubus Gift
Succubus Unleashed
Broken Dolls
Succubus Rising
Succubus Ascendant
Other books
I’ll Sing for my Dinner
Trust
Short Stories in Anthologies
Here, Kitty Kitty
Bellator
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