“You can say that again,” I muttered.
He looked at me, puzzlement narrowing his eyes. “Very well. In normal times, I would not begrudge—”
I held up my hand. “It’s okay. I heard you.” Sometimes, conversation with Jean could be a lot like a “Who’s on First” riddle.
The funeral mass began, with much sitting and standing and praying. I didn’t understand most of it, having been brought up with my magic-eschewing grandparents in a casserole-toting Methodist household until moving in with Gerry at age seven. His interaction with organized religion consisted of driving past churches on the way to buy groceries.
In twenty minutes, it was over, and I held my breath as the family left through a different exit than the public. “Look for anything that appears to be out of place,” I told Jean and Adrian. “Watch the perimeters.”
As the family walked to the small gated cemetery beside the church and I manipulated Charlie, the view in the scrying bowl moved with them.
“Wait, look there near that tree—and that one, too.” Adrian held a finger above the water on the right side of the bowl, then the left. “I know those men; they’re both Blue Congress wizards from New Orleans.”
The Blues had been Adrian’s congress, specializing in re-creation and illusion. I’d seen him do amazing things from animating the ruins of the Katrina-flooded Six Flags amusement park to moving a live oak tree the size of a building close enough for us to escape off the roof of the city’s museum. They could also alter memories in humans. The only time Blue Congress wizards were on standby was when trouble was expected that they might need to clean up.
“Damn it. What are they up to?”
We watched as the priest spoke to each family member. When he got to Eugenie, I fed an extra bit of energy from Charlie into the water, hoping to amp up the volume. It worked.
“Thank you,” Eugenie was saying to the priest. “I’m sorry it was so hard for the family to reach me. I’d gone…” She ran out of steam and looked at Christof.
“We had gone away for a few days,” said Mr. Smooth Faery, who seemed to be playing up his accent. It sounded vaguely Eastern European. “I am Eugenie’s intended, Christof Prince. Between planning our wedding and with Eugenie carrying our child, we needed to relax and thus were difficult to reach.”
“Mon Dieu,” Jean muttered just before I said, “Holy crap.”
The priest, to his credit, only blinked at the news of an impending shotgun wedding and a pregnant bride, not realizing it was a clever ruse to explain his presence. At least I prayed it was a ruse. And thankfully, he didn’t know Prince was a title rather than a surname.
“You are not that child’s father, you faery bastard. He is elf. You’ll never get near him.”
“Oh God.” I’d know Quince Randolph’s imperious voice anywhere.
Freaking elf.
CHAPTER 13
I don’t know what bush Quince Randolph had been hiding behind, but he clearly didn’t want the Winter Prince of Faery claiming fatherhood to the heir of the elven fire clan.
Just in case things weren’t spiraling into Wonderland territory already, Rand began glowing as he made a grab for Eugenie’s hand. Instead, his fingers ran into the midsection of Christof, who’d stepped in front of her and began his own soft chanting. He raised his fingers toward the sky, which couldn’t be a good thing.
“Oh no no no no,” I groaned. What a train wreck. I didn’t want to know whether Rand’s fire would melt Christof’s ice, or if the elf would spontaneously hibernate there in the graveyard, which would serve him right.
Adrian moved closer. “Where’s the merman? Wasn’t he supposed to get Eugenie out if this happened?”
Jean, Adrian, and I bumped shoulders as we crowded around the scrying bowl, scanning the image on the water’s surface and searching for a glimpse of Rene. He wasn’t there. I knew, because I could see the face of everyone gathered for the graveside service. They’d formed a circle around Rand and Christof, with Eugenie behind the faery and the hapless priest trying to talk down creatures that, if he realized they existed, would have him on his knees before the altar, praying for divine intervention. Even the grieving widower stood frozen in place, wide-eyed.
Since divine intervention probably wasn’t forthcoming, they might have to settle for wizard intervention. “What are your Blue Congress wizards doing to stop this?” I leaned farther in, trying to find them.
“Standing around with their thumbs up their arses, apparently.” Adrian pointed toward a tree on the far side of the cemetery, under which the two wizards appeared to be smoking cigarettes, oblivious to anything else going on.
“Pardon, Monsieur Hoffman, but why would these wizards place their thumbs up their—”
“He doesn’t mean it literally,” I assured Jean, although they might as well be plugged up, for all the crap they were letting amass. “Damn it, I’m going over there. Something’s happened to Rene, and Eugenie’s going to get stuck right in the middle of a preternatural showdown.”
Maybe Christof had somehow become my ally, but I didn’t trust him any more than I trusted my elf.
I jerked Charlie from the scrying bowl, blanking out the scene, and wheeled around to return to the house.
Jean grabbed my sweater from behind, stopping me mid-step. “This is not acceptable, Jolie. Haste will prove your undoing. In order to go to this place you must travel through Faery. Do you not imagine Florian will be watching the Winter Palace, if the transport still exists?”
“Thank you for caring about me.” I turned and threw my arms around Jean’s neck, giving him a tight hug. The shock of it threw him off his game so much that I was able to push away from him and stalk toward the door before he figured out my ploy.
“The transport is still there,” I said over my shoulder. “Otherwise, Christof and Eugenie wouldn’t have been able to make it to Shreveport. I’m going.”
He caught up with me. “Then I shall accompany you.”
“Then you’re both fools. It’s a trap.” Adrian caught up with both of us, and I stopped. Daylight was wasting, at least in Shreveport.
I tamped down the anger that threatened to boil over. “Adrian, you’re probably right, but I have to try to get Eugenie out of there. I’ll move fast, and my elven magic will work in Faery if there’s trouble.”
I turned to the pirate, whose own anger approached my own. Speaking of other people’s unwanted feelings, I needed to grab my mojo bag on the way out.
I appealed to his practical nature. “Jean, you need to be here if Rene somehow does make it back with Eugenie or if Rand shows up, with or without Christof. The people here need you.”
I appealed to his pride. “You’re the only one who can protect Maison Rouge if Florian sends his people here looking for his brother.”
I appealed to his ego. “And you’re the only one I trust to protect Eugenie if they come back.”
His aura reeked of indecision. “This is not a safe move for you, Jolie. Your enemies are watching the borders, and, pardon me for saying thus, but you have many enemies.”
More and more by the hour. “I will be careful.” Somehow.
I stopped by my room and grabbed the mojo bag, the small packet of herbs and magic-infused gemstones that tamped down my empathic abilities. Sliding it onto a long leather cord, I slipped it over my neck and tucked it inside my sweater. It nestled against Alex’s anti-faery locket. Into my pocket went two or three premade potions from my bag, the only ones I had left. They wouldn’t work in Faery, but they would be fine in Shreveport.
Tucking Charlie into a thigh holster Alex had made for me back when the Axeman of New Orleans was chasing me, I raced out the front door and down the beach a few yards to where I’d powered up a new transport after destroying the old one in the center of the island.
Jake and Collette reclined on the sand on either side of the transport. She still looked pale, but had no trouble jumping to her feet before I got halfway down the length of
the banquette.
“Where d’you think you’re going, sunshine?” Jake moved even faster than Collette, blocking my path to the transport.
“I’m going to get Eugenie out of Shreveport. Rand and Christof are having a preternatural pissing match in the graveyard of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.” I shoved past him and stepped into the transport. As I knelt to touch the elven staff and take off for the Winter Palace of Faery, I looked up to see Jean standing in the doorway, loading the semiautomatic Rene had brought him and that Jean had always refused to use. I wasn’t sure if he was going to use it on me or insist on going with me.
“Jean, I really need you to stay here.”
He walked to the transport and held the gun out to me, butt first. “Oui, but I insist you take this. It is quite simple to use. Perhaps your bullet will find its target better than your fire.”
I thought it more likely I’d shoot my own ass off before actually hitting an intended target, but I took the gun, made sure the safety was on as Alex had taught me, and stuck it in the back waistband of my jeans so that I could literally shoot myself in the ass should the opportunity arise.
Jean placed a hand on my neck and pulled me gently toward him, giving me a kiss that was both bittersweet and filled with promise. “Courage, Jolie. I shall wait for you.”
“I’m counting on it.” I smiled at him as I fired up the transport, and as I squeezed through space and time on my way to God only knew what, I heard him ask Jake, “Why is she counting?”
I’d sure miss that pirate if I died today.
I stayed in a crouch during the transport, which intensified the feeling of being squeezed through a toothpaste tube but made me a smaller target should anyone decide to kill anything arriving at the Winter Palace.
Or what was left of it. The round floor of ice where Jean and I had transported earlier remained, although large cracks crossed it in jagged, twisted lines. The part of the round wall where the doorway had appeared was no more than piles of shattered ice that looked slick, as if it had melted and refrozen. The magical warmth of the area held, however, so at least I didn’t have to worry about hibernating.
Beyond the demolished wall, impaled on a thick stalagmite that rose from the floor, was Tamara’s head; her body lay a few feet away. Acid rose in the back of my throat, and I was glad I had skipped lunch. Her long amber hair fell in crimson-covered, bedraggled waves. More blood ran down the melting stalagmite, staining it a jolting, festive color of magenta.
Lying near her headless body was one with its head still intact. The man’s face wasn’t visible but I’d know that grungy LSU sweatshirt anywhere. Rene.
Heart pounding, I stayed in a crouch and forced myself to look in all directions before crawling my way toward a guy who, against all odds, had become one of my best friends. Somebody was going to pay for this. Somebody named Florian.
I let out a breath when I got close enough to see that he was still alive. An outcropping of ice that had probably formed part of another wall sat a few feet to his left, so I crawled to him as quickly as I could on the slippery surface and dragged him to the small hidden space behind it.
This part of the palace ruins were a lot colder than the transport room, and my breath billowed out in front of my face like a cloud. I couldn’t stay here long. Rene’s face was white and pale but his breathing was steady, so I pulled out the potions vials from my pocket and studied them. I kept a random supply in my portable kit and had no idea what I’d had left. I hoped if I combined them with a shot of elven magic, they’d work.
A freezing potion would be a fine joke—for Rand. I stuck that one back in my pocket. A confusion charm wouldn’t work; things were confusing enough already. The aroma charm had the most potential. It was great to use in controlling gremlin outbreaks, not that there had been many. They were so fond of alcohol that an aromatic that smelled like rum could lure them off a cliff like lemmings.
The only thing Rene liked more than sex—well, as much as sex; well, almost as much as sex—was food. Thanks to our power-share a few months ago, I knew he was a sucker for andouille, a smoked sausage of which I was pretty fond myself. So it was simple enough to tip the edge of the staff into the small jar, infuse some nice elven magic, and imagine a heaping plate of andouille just out of the smoker. Within seconds, the ruins of the Winter Palace smelled like Jacob’s Smokehouse in LaPlace, Louisiana, the andouille world capital.
Despite the knowledge that poor Tamara’s head was piked a few feet away on the other side of the ice pile, my stomach rumbled.
“Rene, wake up.” My voice sounded so loud in the quiet, icy surroundings I might as well have used a bullhorn. I held the vial close to his nose. “Hungry? Rene, I have sausage.”
“Go away, babe,” he mumbled. A few seconds later, his eyes flew open, a beautiful dark liquid brown that almost looked black. “I smell andouille.”
He sat up and looked around. “And where’s the iceberg with the dead chick’s head on it?”
Thank God, he’d survived with both his bluntness and lack of tact. “On the other side of this pile of ice. It’s Christof’s sister. What happened to you?”
“His sister? Oh man.” Rene rubbed his eyes. “I got no clue what happened. I followed Christof and Eugenie here, about five minutes behind them. Soon as I landed in that round ice room, somebody shot me.” He pulled out the bottom of his sweatshirt and stuck his finger through a jagged hole. There was blood around it, although it was hard to see since the sweatshirt was a dark brown.
“Why hasn’t it healed?” I edged the bottom of his sweatshirt up farther and saw where the bullet had gone in, near his rib cage. There was an open, oozing spot in the shape of a bullet hole. “Did your body pop out the bullet?”
“Yeah, but something ain’t right, babe. I’ve got a nasty headache and the room’s spinning.”
“We need to get out of here.” I helped him to his feet. Rene was solid and muscular, but with me in boots, he wasn’t that much taller. I pulled his left arm around my shoulders, and we walked slowly back toward the transport under the open, sightless eyes of Tamara.
“I feel like we should do something for her,” I said, pausing as Rene stopped to catch his breath. He’d gone from icy pale to kind of green, and I wondered if the bullet was tainted in some way. Shifters like Rene, as opposed to were-animals, were not poisoned by silver, so a silver bullet wouldn’t do this. But God only knew what faeries had in their arsenals.
“Ain’t nothing we can do to help her now. Let’s get out of here.”
I settled him into the transport. “I’m sending you back to Jean’s house in Old Barataria. Then I’m going to Shreveport to get Eugenie, assuming this transport’s still set up for it.”
“No, DJ, that’s too dangerous. I’ll go with you.” Rene tried to stand up, but couldn’t. He sat back down with an oof, then rolled onto his side. “Shit, what did those faery freaks do to me?”
“I don’t know, but if you don’t improve soon, better go and talk to your people’s doctor.” I assumed mermen had doctors. Before he could argue, I touched Charlie to the edge of the transport and sent him to Maison Rouge.
Once Rene was gone, I checked around me again to be sure there weren’t faeries skulking around, and then went back to where Rene had been shot. After shoving some ice chips and chunks around with the toe of my boot, I finally saw the bullet, a misshapen lump of metal that had a bronze cast to it. Not a normal spent bullet, or at least not one like I’d seen before. Being with Alex meant I’d seen my share of bullets.
I stuffed this one in my pocket. I’d show it to Alex later, assuming I got back from Shreveport in one piece. And assuming I’d found Eugenie and gotten her back safely. And assuming I could even find Alex.
Those were a hell of a lot of assumptions.
CHAPTER 14
I had no clue where the faery transport into Shreveport had been drawn, but I landed in a clearing, the transport symbols etched in some kind of white powder into a thickly ma
tted bed of pine straw. Around me, spindly but closely spaced trees formed a dense barrier, and I stayed in a kneeling position until I got a clear view around me and saw no one.
“Hey!” A loud click drew my attention to the right, where a burly guy with a shotgun stepped from behind the tree line. Not as tall as Alex, but at least six feet and built like a big shaven-headed linebacker. His buzzy energy was more like Jake’s than Alex’s or Rene’s, so he was a were-something. Hired security, then. Probably werewolf; they were the most common.
I let out a girly squeal. “Oh my God, you scared me!” Girly fit the winter-white jeans and pastel pink sweater I wore with my glitter-covered white boots. All of which, at some point, Rene was going to get an earful about.
Then I crumpled into a heap on the ground and lay still. I’d never pretended to faint before, but how hard could it be? I’d had the forethought to stick my hand in my pocket as I fell, so I got the top off one of the two remaining potions vials. Now that I was back in the modern world, they’d work just fine.
“Hey, get up. Uh, lady?” Wolfie’s heavy boots came into view but weren’t yet close enough. He stopped, probably trying to decide what to do. I willed myself to look as small and helpless as possible, which sadly wasn’t hard. “Damn. You’re the sentinel, aren’t you? Nobody thought you’d really be stupid enough to show up. Wait’ll they see what I caught. I can’t believe you fainted. Ain’t so tough now, are you, sweetcheeks?”
What an oaf. I’d sweeten his cheeks.
He moved closer, squatted in front of me, and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. I didn’t want him announcing his catch to anyone nearby, so while his gaze was on his phone, I slid the vial from my pocket and flung the contents in his face.
Ah, the freezing charm. One of my favorite old standbys. Wolfie turned into a big old werewolf statue, brown eyes wide and surprised, mouth hanging open, phone still clutched in his fingers. I plucked the phone from his hand to make sure he hadn’t made a call, then decided to keep it. It might come in handy since mine was dead and I wasn’t supposed to be here anyway.
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