He sighed. “I don’t want her to hear my news before we decide what to do. DJ, her sister is dead.”
I stared at him, a niggle of worry sending a wave of chill bumps across my shoulder blades. “Violette? She lives in Shreveport.” And had a husband and twin daughters who were six years old. “Eugenie didn’t mention anything about her being sick. Was there an accident?”
Deep in my heart, I knew no accident would make Alex send Ken to Barataria.
Ken took a deep breath and shook his head. “Not a chance. She was found on the sofa in their living room, posed with her ankles crossed and her hands over her chest, four puncture wounds to her neck. She’d been completely drained of blood. The newspapers are all talking about a”—he made quote marks with his fingers—“‘vampire killer.’”
The tick tick tick of Jean’s grandfather clock sounded abnormally loud in the silence that followed. My mind had frozen at the words drained of blood.
Ken leaned forward. “Are you okay? You look like you’re about to faint. You’re kind of green.”
“I … No, I’m not okay. None of this is okay.” I stood up and began to pace, trying to quell the panic that made me want to jump on one of Jean’s frigates that was anchored offshore and sail off to parts unknown. “This is sick. Vampires. Why would vampires want to kill Eugenie’s sister? She has little kids. She’s in Junior League, for God’s sake. What about her family?”
“Alex said they’re fine—he sent someone up to Shreveport as soon as he heard. They were all home when it happened, but the husband found her. At least it wasn’t the kids.”
The ostrich side of my brain wanted to convince the hard, practical side that it could be a coincidence. Rogue vampires occasionally killed humans, after all. But deep down, I knew better. A rogue could find an easier target than a young mother in her own home in a suburb of Shreveport, Louisiana.
The vampires as a group would have no interest in hurting Eugenie, or even me, for that matter. They would, however, have an interest in aligning themselves with a more powerful group.
“Rand ordered it.” I hated saying those words, hated thinking that my stupid elf-mate could be capable of such an act. He was selfish and arrogant and volatile, but going after Eugenie’s family seemed too extreme even for him.
Ken hesitated, then spoke slowly. “Alex thinks so, too, but there’s no proof.”
I stopped pacing long enough to take a healthy kick at the side of Jean’s fancy recliner. “There’s no other explanation. The vampires wouldn’t even know where Eugenie’s sister lived, or care. I can’t believe Rand would do it.” If for no other reason than it could cause Eugenie enough stress to complicate her pregnancy. Who knew what to expect with half-elven pregnancies?
“I don’t understand that damned elf.” I kicked the heavy side table, leaving a mark but not budging it. I hoped it wasn’t a priceless antique pirated from an early nineteenth-century Spanish vessel.
“Alex wanted you to decide whether or not to tell Eugenie.”
“Oh, God.” I flopped in Jean’s recliner, reached over to the side table for my glass, and drained the remains of the wine I’d left earlier. “How can I tell her? She’ll want to go to Shreveport for the funeral, and you can just bet Rand and his elf buddies will be waiting to grab her.” And me, because I’d have to go with her. No way would I let her go alone. Although I’d been contemplating a trip to try and talk to Zrakovi in a rational way, so maybe I could meet him in Shreveport.
“I want you to consider something else,” Ken said, his voice slow and calm. “Promise you’ll hear me out.”
I set my glass down and sat up straight. Ken’s anxiety level had risen, when it should be lower now that he’d shared his news. “What?”
“Alex didn’t consider this because he’s too damned loyal for his own good, but I have to wonder if it wasn’t the wizards behind it.”
“Not a chance.” My glare could cut glass.
Ken flinched, but kept talking. “Look, I wasn’t there a couple of weeks ago when all the shit went down, but according to Alex, Zrakovi wanted you to abort Eugenie’s baby, even by force if necessary. Then he was willing to turn Eugenie over to Rand without a thought as to what it would do to her.” Ken took a deep breath. “To me, that sounds like a man determined to hold on to his new position as First Elder and desperate to keep the peace, no matter what it costs.”
Ken waited for his words to sink in while I tried to mentally bat them aside. My pro-wizard bat was splintering, however.
“DJ, they consider her expendable.” Ken’s voice softened. “I’m human and I’ve felt that kind of condescension from half the pretes I’ve met, even the noncriminal ones and, except for you, that includes the wizards. They don’t think we matter.”
I closed my eyes, thinking back to what had driven me to such loggerheads with the Elders in the first place. I’d refused to obey Zrakovi’s direct order to abort Eugenie’s baby. I’d sidestepped Zrakovi by going to Rand for help. I’d fought Zrakovi at every turn.
“You’re right.” The words burned my insides worse than the wine. “It could be either wizards or elves. It could be both. The outcome is the same. And I don’t know what the hell I’m going to tell Eugenie.”
“Then you better decide, DJ, because I’m standing right here.”
I hadn’t heard the door to the entry hall open, but there Eugenie stood, alongside Collette. Behind them, Jake’s soft Mississippi drawl wafted in from the hallway, mingling with Jean’s deeper rasp.
“What is it you don’t want to tell me? What have those crazy prete people done now?” Her face deepened to a dark claret that clashed with her auburn hair.
“How much of that did you hear?” I really might throw up this time.
“Enough to know somebody has done something bad and it involves me,” Eugenie said, giving Ken a peck on the cheek on her way past and taking a seat next to him on the settee. Collette quietly left the room and closed the door behind her. “Start talking.”
CHAPTER 5
Ken’s face assumed the demeanor of a stag head on a hunting lodge wall—wide-eyed and immobile and wondering how the hell he’d gotten into such a position. His terror at seeing Eugenie skittered over my skin like ants. God forbid a man should have to endure an emotional scene with two women.
I threw the dog’s best friend a bone. “Ken, would you mind waiting in the entry hall while Eugenie and I talk?” I thought a moment. “Stick close to Jean. I don’t want Dominique to shoot you again.”
He’d do it just to annoy me.
“Do you mind if I go on back to New Orleans? I doubt anyone will notice I’m gone, but no point in taking chances.” Ken stood up and retrieved his damaged jacket from the settee with desperation-fueled speed.
I wanted to talk to him more, to know how Alex was really doing, but I knew he needed to get out of Barataria. The wizards might consider Ken unimportant in the grand scheme of prete politics, but he was a link to Alex and thus to me and thus to Eugenie.
They might be watching more closely than he and Alex thought.
“Sure, tell Alex…” I couldn’t bring myself to send my love via Ken. It felt too weird and mushy; I’d barely managed to say it to Alex himself. The words had kind of slipped out accidentally, although I’d had no urge to take them back. “Tell Alex to be careful.”
“I will. Oh, wait—I’d forgotten. Alex wanted me to give you this.” Ken handed me a wrinkled envelope from his coat pocket, spatters of his blood forming a Rorschach splotch over my name, which had been written across the front in Alex’s neat, precise cursive. Something heavy jingled inside.
Ken gave Eugenie a quick look, saw her eyes narrowed in suspicion, and made a hasty about-face toward the door. “Hope you guys can come home soon.”
That made a bunch of us. I suspected the only one of us enjoying this experiment in preternatural communal living was our undead host.
Eugenie waited until the door closed behind Ken before pouncing. “W
hat news? You might as well tell me. What awful thing has Rand done now?”
I took a deep breath, folded the bulky envelope and wedged it into my pocket, and settled back into the big armchair. Eugenie and I occupied the reverse spots that Jean and I had taken earlier for our unpleasant conversation. I could grow to hate this room.
“DJ, you’re scaring me. Just say it.”
My friend’s short hair lay limp, its usual spikes beaten down—evidence that she’d been away from her Shear Luck salon and her abundance of tonsorial products for three days. I saw her—really saw her—for the first time since we’d fled New Orleans. I’d missed the dark smudges under her eyes, and if anything she looked as if she’d lost weight. Her hazel eyes regarded me with an open trust that made me loathe myself, my fellow wizards, and any prete who’d ever crossed her path. How had I let her get into this mess? How could I deliver this news gently?
I moved to sit next to her on the sofa and took her hand. Only from sheer will could I force my voice to stay level. “It’s about your sister, Eugenie. She’s gone.”
Gone sounded better than dead, but its meaning missed the bull’s-eye.
“Violette? Gone where? Why would Ken know about Violette going somewhere?”
“No, Eugie. I mean she’s … she died. Violette died last night.”
The long, awkward silence had a soundtrack. The metallic click of Jean’s grandfather clock had, if possible, grown even louder since the room’s last uncomfortable conversation. I might take Charlie and burn the damned thing to ashes after everyone settled in for the night.
“She can’t be gone.” Eugenie frowned. I could tell the instant it really sank in, from the widened eyes to the rising panic in her aura. “It’s four days before Christmas. Amanda and Amelie are only six.” She closed her eyes, and a single tear trailed a jagged line down her cheek, dragging molecules of my guilt and anger along with it. “Was it a car wreck? I always told her she talked on that damned cell phone too much. How’s Matt?”
Eugenie’s brother-in-law probably wasn’t coping well at all, based on the part I hadn’t yet told her. “Sweetie, it wasn’t an accident.”
“What? Was she sick?” Her eyes narrowed and slowly, so slowly, her panic gave way to a numb calm that scared me more than her fear had done. “Tell me the whole thing, DJ. Just say it.”
I didn’t realize I’d been biting my lower lip until I tasted the blood. “According to Ken, Violette appears to have been killed by”—I took a shaky breath—“by vampires.” That sounded blunt, but I didn’t know how to make it prettier.
She stared at me a few long moments, and I waited for the tears to come or the hysteria to be resurrected, prayed I’d have the words to help her.
Instead, she wrenched her hand from mine and her voice turned flat. “That’s not even possible. Is that what Ken came to say? He’s wrong because it’s just too ridiculous. Violette lives in Shreveport, for God’s sake. There are no vampires in Shreveport.”
I didn’t want to tell her more, that her sister had been drained and posed on her living room sofa, lifeless and empty—or that vampires were everywhere, even Shreveport. “It’s true. Alex sent Ken so we’d know. He wanted to make sure you didn’t hear it somewhere else and try to go to Shreveport, because it’s a trap. Alex and Ken are sure of it, and I agree.”
She continued to stare at me, a frown setting a deep crease between her brows. The truth was going to hit her hard when it finally settled in, but I recognized the whole ostrich game. I’d played it enough myself.
Pretend it’s someone else you’re discussing.
Pretend it isn’t real.
Pretend it won’t feel like shit and rip your heart out when you finally acknowledge it.
Her voice remained cold and flat. “Where did it happen?”
I fiddled with a fold in the upholstered seat of Jean’s sofa, avoiding eye contact. “At her home. Matt and the kids are fine.” Well, not fine at all, I was sure, but at least alive and not bitten. The monsters had been in their home while they were sleeping, though. The monsters might have even taken Violette from her bed without waking Matt. Goose bumps spread over my arms at the idea, followed by a flush of anger that turned my face hot enough to leave grill marks.
Damn it. Going after innocent family members for political advantage was unforgivable no matter who was behind it, and I had no doubt that’s exactly what had happened.
“Was it a coincidence?” Anger seeped into her flat tone, giving it heat. “Don’t even answer that because it’s obvious. The wizards were behind it, weren’t they? Your Elder Zrakovi made a deal with the vampires to try to force me to come back.”
I looked up, surprised that her first suspect was Zrakovi and not Rand. “Alex thinks it might have been the elves.”
Although the more I thought about it, the more certain I became of Rand’s innocence. Well, he was far from innocent, but at least in this case, I didn’t think he was guilty. The act had been too artless and direct, too blunt. Rand was subtle and clever in his deviousness.
“It wasn’t Rand.” Eugenie looked down at her hands, which were the only part of her that showed the anguish building inside. Her fists clenched so tightly that her knuckles had turned a mottled shade of white.
“How can you be sure?” I wanted to keep her talking, to keep Violette’s death as abstract as possible. That way, when reality set in, maybe it wouldn’t be as crushing. Yeah, right. Because that always worked so well for me.
“Rand wouldn’t go after my family, not like that.” I had to trust her instincts; she knew Rand better than I. In a whole lot of ways. “Even if he does think humans aren’t worth the dirt under his shoes, Rand’s lost too many people himself and he’s still mourning his mother. No, sorry, DJ, but this was your people.”
She shot me an accusatory look, and I closed my eyes.
Speaking of ostriches, however, I had to extract my own head out of Jean Lafitte’s sandy beachfront.
“Yeah, it’s very possible.” I opened my mouth again to say I was sorry, but closed it. The words would come out empty. She knew I’d never condone or excuse this, and if Zrakovi was behind it, I had to know. The more quickly I could set up a meeting with him, the better.
Eugenie stood up and strode toward the door. “I’m getting out of here. Matt and the girls need me.” I raced after her, then she stopped and turned so abruptly we collided in front of the door. “Do you have a gun I could borrow? Of course not. I’ll ask Jean Lafitte. I bet he has a lot of guns.”
Holy crap. Eugenie could not make a run for Shreveport carrying one of Jean’s big pistols. She’d either kill someone or end up in jail, where she’d be a pregnant sitting duck for a marauding wizard or elf.
Before I could verbalize that, she’d flung open the door and come face-to-collarbone with what appeared to be a brazenly eavesdropping pirate. He didn’t feel the need to pretend he hadn’t been listening in on a private conversation. Then again, it was his house.
“Pardon, Mademoiselle Eugenie, but Drusilla is right. You must not attempt a trip to see to your family’s affairs. The safety of neither you nor your child could be assured.”
Smartass pirate. He’d played the safe-baby card before I could.
“But I have to … to…” Now the tears started, and she threw herself into Jean’s arms. He patted her on the back awkwardly and looked at me over the top of her head. “Perhaps you should assemble our friends, Jolie, so that we might devise a plan.”
A plan was good, plus assembling friends didn’t take a lot of work; I didn’t have that many. Rene, Jake, and Collette came inside from the broad front porch, and Adrian had already emerged from his upstairs room to see what the fuss was about. We all sprawled around chairs and on the rugs in the study while a couple of pirate flunkies stood guard in the entry hall.
“It ain’t safe for any of us.” Rene summed the situation up pretty well after I’d gone through the options, including the possibility of Eugenie not going to her sis
ter’s funeral, which had brought on a fresh flood of tears. “Even if vamps can’t be trottin’ out for a daytime funeral, babe, the elves and wizards can.”
“I could protect Eugenie using Charlie,” I said. “Rand wouldn’t hurt me.” At least I didn’t think he’d hurt me. I might still be of some use to him in the future, plus the whole mating bond threw our relationship into some realm I didn’t understand. In killing me, I suspected he’d at least weaken himself.
Rand loved himself way too much for self-sacrifice.
“Your elf might not murder you, Drusilla, but your wizards would imprison you in order to sway the balance of power and that would kill you,” Jean said. “I forbid you to make this journey.”
Who the hell did he think he was? I swear, the more I hung around the pirate, the more he acted like Alex Warin. We were going to discuss his attitude, and soon.
Right now, however, he was unfortunately correct. “Right, and Jake can’t go for the same reason. He could be used as leverage. What about Collette? She isn’t on anyone’s radar.”
“Sure, I’ll go.” The leggy brunette ignored Jake’s frown.
“She can’t fight wizards,” Jake said, sounding a lot like his bossy cousin, Alex, and his boss, Jean. “They’d throw one of their spells at her, take her out, and Eugenie would be unprotected. Collette doesn’t know how to handle a gun well enough.”
She gave him a frown of her own, but bit her lip. I had a feeling they’d be discussing Jake’s bossy attitude later and sympathized. I’d had quite a few similar conversations with Alex.
We turned our gazes to Adrian. Since joining the crew at Barataria, he looked more like his old arrogant, obnoxious self and less like the haunted, frightened wizard he’d been a month ago. A handsome black man with a shaven head and a penchant for stylish clothes, his current wardrobe of tight trousers and a white shirt with ballooning sleeves and a frilly lapel made me fear what Jean would find for me to wear. Adrian couldn’t go without risking arrest, either, however, even if he could walk in daylight—which he couldn’t, nor could the red-haired, fanged girlfriend he was trying to extract from Vampyre.
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