“Etienne might find a visit not to his liking,” Jean said. “Perhaps I also should travel to Vampyre in search of Monsieur Hoffman.”
No, he’d go in search of revenge on Etienne and get himself killed. Again.
Not on my watch. He’d already been murdered twice since I met him, shot once by Alex and once by me after being possessed by a now-dead wizard necromancer. Jean wasn’t going on this mission.
“First, let’s see what I can find out from scrying. There are no windows in the kitchen, so I should be able to do it there.” I opened the door to the hallway and found an eavesdropping elf. What a shocker. “Come on, Rand. You can help us.”
“Why did you lock Gruffydd in the kitchen?” He wore the beginnings of his petulant I-Am-Elf look, although he hadn’t yet begun to glow, which meant he wasn’t that upset.
I walked to my magic kit, which I’d spread out on the closet floor, and pulled out my one small Mason jar full of holy water. “Because I didn’t want the dog drinking the holy water when I scried Adrian Hoffman.” I raised my voice to hide Rene’s soft laughter. “I have a limited supply, unless you want to steal some from a local Catholic church.”
“I think not.” Rand walked back to the kitchen. “And Gruffydd knows the word ‘no,’ so there’s no need to mistreat him.”
I’d locked the dog in the kitchen with a pillow, his water bowl, and a hunk of cheese for less than twenty minutes, which hardly constituted mistreatment.
Not that Gruff shared my opinion, looking up at me with sad puppy eyes and drooping ears as soon as Rand opened the door. I walked over, scooped him up, and apologized, and got a cheesy face-licking in response. I hope I didn’t go to the council meeting smelling of Eau de Brie.
“Fill me in on Hoffman,” Rand said, pulling out a heavy bowl of black marble. Scrying was an elven skill, so he’d be much better at it than me. He certainly had a nicer bowl than my dark-colored glass from Walmart.
Jean told him the basics, and I added my opinion that having a vampire who could do Blue Congress wizard’s magic could be helpful to us. “He’s a strong wizard, but hates the Elders because they betrayed him,” I said, exaggerating. Adrian was, like me, very conflicted where wizard loyalty was concerned. “He hasn’t been turned vampire long enough to lose his magic, plus he studied elven history at school. He’d love helping you.”
Actually, Adrian didn’t love helping anyone but himself, but Rand didn’t need to know that, either.
He shrugged. “Let’s see where he is. Do you have something that belongs to him or that will work as a scrying navigator?”
Crap. “You mean four related items, right?” That’s what I always used.
“One will suffice for me,” said His Elfness.
Show-off. I dug through my stuff in the bedroom and came up with a pen that had originally belonged to Adrian; everyone at Barataria had been passing it around for months because it was the only one that still had ink in it. Jean preferred a quill and dipping pot.
Back in the kitchen, Rand had poured about half the holy water into the bowl and was taking some herbs from a Hoosier cabinet in the corner. I made note of that cabinet; I wanted to plunder in there for supplies of my own, probably proof I’d spent way too much time with the pirate.
Once he had the setup completed, lit candles set at square corners around the bowl, and turned out the overhead fluorescent light, Rand stuck one finger in the water and said a few soft words in his guttural Elven Welsh. Flickering lights appeared in the bowl, and the water turned a murky, opaque green.
“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Rand said, frowning.
“Try using the staff.” I turned to go back in the bedroom, but found Charlie standing propped against the kitchen door. He’d begun following me again; I wasn’t sure if it was my proximity to Rand or because I was in danger. Or both.
I didn’t offer the staff to Rand, but used it myself, slipping it into the water and saying, “Adrian Hoffman, Vampyre.”
With Rand’s native magic plus the staff, the water stayed green but turned translucent. It still took a few seconds for me to understand what I was seeing.
“Is there water in Vampyre?” Rene asked, leaning over the bowl. “Looks like he’s in water.”
“There is a….” Jean paused, and I knew from his expression that he was looking for a word. “Something like la lac. Like a small lake they have dug as a natural cistern. There are no creatures within it.”
A probably-small, vampire-made lake to hold rainwater runoff, then. I looked back at the bowl. There were creatures in it now. Adrian was curled into a fetal position, with Terri in the same pose beside him. They were crammed into what looked like a bamboo cage barely large enough to hold them. And they definitely looked underwater. Both had their eyes closed, but that meant nothing. Vampires didn’t have to breathe. Most did it out of habit.
“It looks pretty deep,” Rand said.
“If you’re right and the vampires have decided to support Florian, the prince could have been sending them a lot of rain to help convince them,” Rand said. “They hate water.”
“Tell me about it.” I reminded him of our paralyzed-vampire invasion.
Rand laughed and removed his hand from the bowl. “That’s a useful thing to know.”
I continued to study Adrian and Terri. What a horrible thing to do to someone. They wouldn’t die, but they also couldn’t feed, or stretch their legs, or find any measure of comfort.
“Jean, do you know where this lake is in relation to that big arena in Vampyre?” There was a transport just outside the arena, because Jean and I had the misfortune of accidentally going there once. He was chasing Etienne Boulard, and I was chasing him. What vampires needed an arena for, I had no clue.
“Oui, it is very near there, to the north.”
“Dru, you cannot go to Vampyre.” Rand the Imperious butted in. “It is entirely too dangerous. If the vampires captured you, you could be held as leverage against me.”
Yeah, never mind that if the vampires captured me, they could kill me. “God forbid you were compromised,” I said. “Still, I’m going. I have the staff and can protect myself. And I have been there, so I know the terrain.”
I wouldn’t think about the towering cliff the arena sat on, or the endless fall if one went too far west.
“DJ and me, we’ll go and get him.” Rene gave a slight nod toward the hallway, which told me he had a plan. “We can go as soon as the council meeting is over. Jean, you need to stay on the hunt for Christof, not trackin’ down Etienne. We’ll kill him if we get a chance.”
I gave Rene a sharp look. “Only if it’s in self-defense.”
A dazzling, sudden smile from the pirate did not inspire confidence. “But of course, Jolie.” Which meant I needed to keep an eye on Rene.
“Can you walk us out, babe? Get us through the door?”
What was Rene up to? “Sure.”
I set Gruff down and told him to stay. He sat and grinned up at me. The dog was up to something too.
The answer to Rene’s plans came as soon as we cleared the stairwell and Jean had gone out to buy a pastry before finding a cab back to the French Quarter.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Why do you even want to help Adrian Hoffman?
“He might be useful to us, plus I want to keep Jean out of there—he’s not as likely to insist on going with you if I’m there. For a smart dude, he ain’t got good sense when it comes to Etienne Boulard.”
Thank God Rene realized it. “So you don’t plan to kill him?”
“I don’t even want to see the son of a bitch.”
Rene gave me a wicked little smile, and I grinned back. Never mind the serious guy who’d been my companion the last couple of months. This was my Rene, the playful, reckless merman who enjoyed an adventure with a side dish of danger. “What do you think about you and me doing another power-share so I can use your magic underwater to open that cage?”
My grin faded. Earlier,
I’d suggested it in theory; now, I wasn’t sure. The only other time we’d done this, so Rene could do magic underwater to repair a rift in the bed of the Mississippi River, we’d been inside each other’s heads for more than twenty-four hours. The side-effects—communicating mentally and having full access to each other’s thoughts except for those we worked hard at shielding—lasted a week.
I hadn’t known Rene as well then, so “too much information” hadn’t been such a problem.
“I don’t want to do anything that could hurt our friendship.” I kept my voice soft. “You mean too much to me.”
He gave me a long, serious look, then pulled me into a hug. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere, DJ. I won’t ever leave you, not like the others.”
I fought back the sudden pressure of tears. Rene understood me, understood what all the losses had taken out of me. But he couldn’t promise not to leave me. He could only promise not to leave me intentionally.
In the meantime, I’d have to decide whether or not to tell Rand about the power-share. He couldn’t read my thoughts, and my ritual magic wasn’t something he took too seriously. I had the staff to back me up. But I wanted to be as open with him as I could be—until I couldn’t.
“Meet me here at eleven-thirty tonight with an apple,” I whispered. I had the holy water, belladonna, knife, and blood. The Interspecies Council started at seven-thirty, and Rand would want to arrive late to make an entrance with his bondmate at his side. We should easily be home by eleven.
Unless, of course, we were dead.
Chapter 9
Rand and I spent most of the afternoon talking about the upcoming council meeting. Or, rather, I asked questions that he refused to answer. Would he begin the meeting with an announcement, or wait until Zrakovi’s head exploded upon seeing me? Would he provide any details of our arrangement? Should I take the staff with me openly, or hide it? Were we pretending to be a couple—or a ménage à trois, if Jean Lafitte were mentioned?
Either the elf had no plans, or he had no plan to share them with me. My bet was on the latter.
Finally, about six-thirty, he took Gruff to Elfheim for a walk, the streets of New Orleans being too risky for His Elfness. After tonight’s drama, I hoped to walk the dog myself in broad daylight on Magazine Street. As long as I stayed around a lot of humans and had the staff with me, I should be reasonably safe.
In the meantime, I took a shower and investigated the contents of the closet in my bedroom. I’d found jeans and sweaters in the same chest of drawers as the underwear, so that had worked for today. Tonight, I wanted to look like the legitimate bondmate of the man who headed the Land of Elfheim. Rich, powerful, and obnoxious.
Rand had already laid out his clothing—a dark charcoal wool suit, black boots, and a winter-white cashmere sweater—so I planned to coordinate. After much trial and error, I chose a cashmere sweater the same shade of white as his, a black pencil skirt that stopped just above the knee, black tights, and cream leather boots that hit me mid-calf. It was very “Real Housewives of Elfheim.”
Then I sat at the dresser-vanity thingamajig and studied my reflection. I had no makeup with me, but a quick look through the vanity drawers and bathroom cabinets revealed that Rand had bought very expensive, deliberately chosen sets of daytime and nighttime cosmetics from Sephora. They were still in the packaging, all in the perfect shades for me, and I had no doubt Eugenie had given my elf a very detailed list of what to buy. He wouldn’t know Marc Jacobs from Mark Wahlberg.
I found a clutch that would hold a few charms and almost choked over the receipts, then added them to the stack of price tags I had taken off the clothing so far. I’m glad Rene had paid cash for my land, and well above its market value. I might have to work out a payment plan with Rand, although his interest rates might prove unacceptable.
For the next hour, I carefully applied makeup and arranged my hair in an intricate variation of a French braid. I said a silent prayer of thanks to Eugenie, who’d be proud that her hair and makeup lessons hadn’t totally been lost on me. My usual ponytail and tinted sunblock wasn’t apropos for tonight’s spectacle.
“We’re back,” Rand called from the vicinity of his bedroom, although it was unnecessary since Gruff had already appeared in my doorway, tongue hanging from his mouth, the entire back half of his body wriggling.
“Did you have fun on your walk?” I asked him, earning a yip in response. I sighed, flopped in the armchair, and reached down to rub behind his ears to keep him from jumping on me and adding a layer of corgi fur to my ensemble.
“You seem to understand way too much of what I say,” I told him. “You’re adorable, but I hate having to tiptoe around you. You’re too much like your puppy daddy.”
“I am not that dog’s father. And you can trust both of us,” Rand said from the doorway.
No, I couldn’t, proven by the fact he’d shown himself as good at eavesdropping as Jean Lafitte, whom I did trust.
Instead of answering, I stood and gave him a twirl. “What do you think? Appropriate for the bondmate of the elven king?”
“Lord of Elfheim,” he said with a smile. “You look gorgeous. And sexy. Alex Warin is so going to regret choosing that wizard asshat over you.”
Except I was attending the meeting with the man I frequently referred to as an elven asshat. In fact, I think he’d learned the word asshat from me.
He bit his lower lip. “You’re absolutely perfect except for one thing. Hang on.”
If he thought we’d wear matching hats or overcoats, he was insane. New Orleans had returned to better-than-usual weather, so frozen-elf hibernation wasn’t a worry. The weather had been so good, in fact, that I suspected Florian was making it warm and sunny to lure more potential human Mardi Gras victims outdoors.
Rand returned with a box covered in black velvet. The kind of box that usually held rings.
I took a step back. How could I politely say I’d rather poke my eyes out with the horn of a faery unicorn than take a wedding ring from him, even one representing a sham marriage?
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing ceremonial or official. Just sentimental and very practical.” He opened the box to reveal an emerald-cut peridot the size of a small nation, surrounded by diamonds at the four poles and set in antique gold. “It belonged to my mother and holds lifelong aura-camouflage magic. I thought it would be safer if you had something to mask your own aura while you moved around the city. It looks about the right size.”
I slipped it on the ring finger of my left hand because I knew Rand would like the symbolism of the placement, and his smile told me I’d been right. It didn’t hurt me to suck up a little and, besides, the ring was a really good idea. “How’d your mother get a wizard to put a lifelong charm on it?”
Only a wizard could provide that kind of magic, and lifelong meant the protective powers of the peridot would last as long as the stone itself. Such a thing didn’t come cheap. For months, Rand had hidden his powers from me using charmed peridot, not that elves gave off much aura anyway. But it might help me show up on wizard tracking devices as someone else or, better still, no one at all.
“When my mother, Vervain, was a young woman, before she met my father, she lived humanside, in San Francisco. She fell in love with a man who was a Yellow Congress wizard—that’s the ones who have mental magic, right?”
I nodded. “Although not nearly as strong as that of the elves. So he gave this to her?”
“Yes, he loved her as well. But she was of the royal bloodline, so it was expected that she would return to Elfheim at twenty-five and marry my father, who was in line to become chief of the fire clan. I think she always loved the man who gave the stone to her, but she did her duty.”
Ah yes, the duty of an elven bondmate. I looked down at the ring, which didn’t look nearly as appealing as it had a few moments earlier. “Your mother was a very strong woman. I’m glad I got to meet her.”
I could be generous toward Vervain. She’d set herself up to be slaughtere
d so Rand and I could survive.
We stood in silence for a while, wrestling with our guilt and thoughts and emotions.
“She thought what I did was wrong,” Rand said at last.
I gave him a sharp look. “What do you mean?”
He stared out the window. “She thought I was wrong to trick you into bonding with me. She knew you got something out of it since it saved you from turning loup-garou, but she said I was wrong not to tell you what bonding meant in my world. I was wrong not to tell you it was the same as a marriage, and irrevocable.”
Well, hallelujah, and raise a glass of bourbon to Vervain. Not that Rand had listened to her, but it was the first time he’d admitted to intentional trickery. “A bit late to admit that now, isn’t it?”
“I still think I was right.” He turned back to face me. His deep blue-green gaze bore into mine, and I found myself unable to look away. My head swam a little, and my heartrate took off at a gallop. I took hold of the bedpost to stay upright, which brought a small smile to his face. He finally broke the stare, and I would have fallen if not for that bedpost.
“You aren’t completely immune to me, Dru, even now. That’s why I still think we can make a good mating, but I’ll never force you, even if I could. You’ll come to me eventually. I’m a patient man with a long lifespan.”
He turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him and leaving Gruff and me to stare at each other. Gruff whined when I collapsed into the armchair. Jean Lafitte had said something similar to me not so long ago, but this was different. Quince Randolph had more power over me than he’d let on. He had let me think I was immune to his influence after the bonding.
One thing was certain and also lifelong: Rand and I could never be alone when I didn’t have access to Charlie.
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