Madison arched an eyebrow and didn’t quite keep a straight face as she said, “So, you’re not just an honorary bitch then?”
Fran leaned toward me. “That’s so cool. The best stuff happens to you.”
I just stared at her. Fran’s a great friend, but sometimes—okay, all the time—she’s a little clueless.
Fenn said, “Can we all get over our issues and amazedness, and dish out the pizza already?”
“I just fed you,” I protested.
“I’m half kachina,” he said. “Your Spam and beans was just a warm-up, not that it wasn’t good.”
Virgil handed him a box of pepperoni pizza. The smell was a delightful tease. I found myself growing hungry again.
Madison gave Fenn a steely-eyed survey. “Kachina, huh? Native American star people. We haven’t covered you in class yet. What’s it like to be a myth?”
“Half kachina,” Fenn said. “That makes me half a myth. My mother was human, with bad taste in men.”
“Now that’s rude.” I knew that voice coming from the front door. Father Vincentia, A.K.A the Trickster. He’d tracked us down somehow.
The black suits whipped out their weapons.
Tukka growled.
So did Fenn.
I sure hope Wocky stays away. There’s not enough pizza to go around as it is.
SIXTEEN
“Got mad running thru my dreams,
thru my veins, venom’s in my soul.
I need to break something quick,
just so you know.”
—Pissed
Elektra Blue
The party swept on with Tukka and his boys handling security outside, while Virgil and his black suits patrolled indoors. Mom and Cassie took over hosting the party, making snackage, handing out drinks, hauling off empty pizza boxes. Fenn stayed near his father, the Father. Whatever the Trickster wanted, he wasn’t forth-coming to Fenn, or anyone, acting like this was all normal. Ignoring Cassie, he took pains to ingratiate himself with my Mom, paying her a great deal of attention.
Later, when she came by with a tray of drinks, I pulled her to a corner for a warning.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked.
“What do you mean? I’m serving tea, cocoa, and coffee.”
“No, I mean hanging around with Father Vincentia. You can’t trust that guy.”
“Now, he seems very nice, and he is a priest, from the Vatican no less.”
Doesn’t mean they know who or what he really is.
She went on, “I understand he’s worked with your Mr. Langley before on security issues dealing with paranormal threats. Both of them speak quite highly of you. Why didn’t you tell me you were a consultant with the government? I’m so very proud of you!”
This conversation is fighting me.
I tried again. “Mom, I know you’re hurting from things going wrong with Dad, but—”
“It’s not going to get any better. It’s over between your dad and me, but that’s our problem, not yours. He’s still your father. No matter whom I rebound with, you can relax.” She patted my arm. “I’m not out to find you a new father.”
Good, I already have a new father. A shadow-man who wants to run my life. And again, this isn’t where I want this conversation to go.
“Look, Mom—”
“We’ll talk later, I promise. Let me finish handing out these drinks, okay?”
“Wait, this is important! I…”
But she was gone, and Fran and Madison were back from the hallway restroom near the kitchen. They kept me pinned in the corner as Mom vanished. Madison leaned in and whispered, “So, this Fenn guy, you and him doing it yet?”
I played innocent. “Doing what?”
Fran leaned in, copying Madison as usual. “The hot and heavy, cowgirl. Have you ridden him into the sunset? Done the nasty? Gotten freaky? Done the horizontal mambo? Made that Coyote roll over and beg for more?” Fran was going to blather on, but thankfully, Madison quelled her with a glare.
They weren’t going to leave it alone until they got a little dirt, so… “We might have locked lips a couple times.”
Madison and Fran parted like the Red Sea; it was Cassie who appeared in that gap, not Moses. And her hearing was kitsune sharp. She draped her arms over my girlfriend’s shoulders and made a cage to contain me. Cassie’s eyes were golden coins as she studied me. “C’mon, Grace, spill—Fenn or Onyx?”
I felt my face flushing. “C’mon, guys, don’t any of you have a life? I can’t be the biggest event in town.”
Where were the bad guys, making yet another attempt on my life, when I needed them?
I was tired. It had been a long day. And though shape shifting had healed me up pretty good, there was a cost to my endurance. “Look, I’m beat. I really need to go and lay down. Someone help me upstairs.”
Cassie’s eyes darkened. “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re right. We can’t have you overdoing it. Come on.” She swept in and guided me across the room to the stairs that went from the front hallway up to the second floor. I used the railing, finding out I was even more tired than I’d thought. Instead of the bedroom I’d used last time, Cassie opened a door on the opposite side of the hall, so my windows looked out over the woods of the back property; trees, trees, and more trees.
Going in, I flipped a wall switch and discovered a rustic space with no pictures on the walls, no curtains on the two sets of windows, and an old, oval area rug done in sage and tan. The walls were beige. There was a brown door that I thought was probably a bathroom, and further along the bedroom wall, a chocolate-colored dresser. Between dresser and windows, against the far wall, were shelved headboards where two large twin beds that had been pushed together. Old, pink floral sheets covered the bed, and a forest green blanket. On the foot of the bed were a couple of overnight bags. One was open. A toothbrush kit and black jammies covered with red hearts had been unpacked, along with a crossbow and a couple of very sharp stakes.
“Wrong room,” I said.
Fran and Madison came in behind Cassie and me. Fran called out, “Nope, it’s the right room. Us girls are staying here. It will be kinda like that sleepover you had at our school that time you escaped from here.”
“Cool,” I said. “We can catch up on things.”
Cassie gave Madison—the responsible one—a firm stare. “Have fun, but put Grace to bed and don’t keep her up too late.”
Madison nodded gravely. “I’ll see to it.”
Cassie started for the door. I caught her arm, stalling her out. She turned back to me with questions in her eyes. I gave her a small peck on the cheek. “G’night, Mom.”
She hugged me with murderous strength. If I’d been human, I think she’d have broken me. She let me go, shifting to a sunny, cavalier demeanor. “We’ll be pulling out in the morning, before any of the ISIS hags remember we once used this place.”
“Even if they remember,” I said, “they know that we know they know, so they’ll probably figure we wouldn’t use it again.”
“Hah!” Fran said. “Little do they know we’re exactly that stupid.”
“Speak for yourself,” Madison said.
Cassie breezed out, pulling the door closed behind her.
Madison came over and dragged me to the side of the bed, making me sit down. “You stay there until I get you a change of clothes, then we’ll toss you into the shower, then into bed.”
I fidgeted a little, feeling an ominous itch on my shoulder blades. I tried to ignore the sensation, trying to will my body not to betray me by growing yet another set of baby moth wings. Fran had thought they were cute last time, but I was getting tired of having them surgically removed by people Virgil knew. The whole contaminated-by-moth-man-DNA thing had gotten old, weeks ago.
I moved further down, turning so I could set my back against the headboard and watch the whole room. I glanced at the windows with no shades or curtains. The ceiling light made a mirror of the glass. We couldn’t see out, but anyone—or a
nything—out in those trees could see in. That bothered me. Wocky was still flying around out there in Ryan’s hijacked corpse, and there were probably mothmen around from last time. I’d gotten a lot of them shot up, so they no doubt held a grudge. I mentioned this to the girls.
Fran ran toward the hall door. “I’ll get something to hang from the empty curtain rods. Be back in a minute.”
Madison laid out a towel, crimson shorts and a pink tee that said BITE ME!
I stared at her choice. “Bite me? I thought you were against vampirism as a general rule.”
She flushed in embarrassment. “My mom bought that for me on my last birthday.”
It spewed from my memory: what I knew about Elektra Blue, her mom, an underground legend of the indie music scene. She wore LED bracelets, Christmas lights, black chains on occasion, and a lot of tinfoil accessories. She sported a spiky indigo Mohawk down the middle of short-cropped, bleached-white hair. Blue eye shadow, lipstick, and matching nail polish usually finished her look. I’d seen her on TV, and on a few magazines. “Is she still, uh…”
“A thrall? Yeah. Claims the vamp snacking on her really loves her, that one of these days he’ll make it right by turning her.”
“Making her a—”
“Blood-sucking fiend, too? Yeah.” Madison sat on the foot of the bed, staring absently at the bathroom door. “I wake up in the night sometimes, in a cold sweat from this dream where I’ve staked the both of them. I can’t tell myself that it’s just a dream. It might come down to offing them one day. I’m a slayer. It’s who I am, what I do. It’s what Fran had to do to her mother. I don’t think she ever really got over it. It’s why she hates vamps so much. If not for them, she’d have had a mom, a home, and a lot less guilt.” Madison’s face turned hard as flint. “Vamps got a lot to answer for.” She fell back on the bed, turning her head to see me. “I envy you. You’ve got two moms that love you enough to stay in touch. One is normal, and the other is cool in an I-can-totally-kick-your-ass kinda way.”
“Yeah, I get smothered a lot, but it’s nice. It’s everyone else wanting to own me that gets old.”
“Hey, you ever want to throw Fenn to the side, I’ll take him out of the goodness of my heart. I’m totally selfless that way.”
“I’ll, uh, keep it in mind.” A funny thought occurred to me. “Hey, I’ve got a demon-possessed mothman you can have. I won’t even mind if you want to stake him two or three hundred times.”
“Yeah, Fenn was telling me about that. He said you had some big plan for dealing with him if he didn’t take off that demon mark. What was it?”
It was just like Madison to ask. A master strategist, she was always adding to her field of expertise.
“Well, while Tukka had him pinned down and all, I was simply going to use my shadow-flame sword to cut out Ryan’s heart. It would have bonded to Wocky’s immaterial one, two hearts for the price of one. With Wocky’s heart held captive, I can enforce his good behavior.”
Fran came back with a baby-blue sheet and some clothespins. She got busy hanging the sheet over the windows, singing something under her breath.
Madison stiffened, snapping up into a sitting position. She bounced off the bed and hurried to the bathroom door. “I’ll get the shower going for you.”
That was odd.
Fran finished the second window, jumped off its ledge, and padded over to the bed. She looked around. “Where’d Maddy go?”
I pointed toward the bathroom as the shower came on. “Jumped up and left rather suddenly.”
Fran’s eyes widened. Her brows lifted. She put her fingers up to her lips in a classic display of shock. “Oh, no, I’m so stupid.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I love that new Elektra Blue album that just came out. Maddy got it in the mail from her mom and gave it to me. She can’t stand to listen to her mom’s music: the darkness in it. She gave the CD to me, and I sometimes forget and start singing parts of it. Like I said, totally stupid.”
“Kinda was,” I agreed. “Do both of you a favor and stick to Lady Gaga, or Pink.”
Fran stared at the door. Madison should have been out already. “I’d better go and—”
“No.” I eased off the bed and snatched up the clothes off the bed. “I’ll handle this. Need a shower anyway.”
“Thanks,” Fran said.
I nodded and went into the bathroom. It was small with an odor of pine-scented cleaner. There was the usual toilet, sink, and wall mirror. The tub had been sealed in with sliding glass doors on its closest edge. They were frosted with rippled indentions. Madison had one door slid open, and the shower hissing. Her back was to me. “Water’s just about right,” she said.
She sounded all right, but my sensitive kitsune nose smelled her tears, and her shampoo and soap scent, and her sweet toothpaste, and her deodorant. I quickly dialed my nose back down, having too much of a good thing.
“Fran loves you. She didn’t mean to hurt you, and she’s sorry.”
“I know, my own fault. When I gave the CD to her, I should have realized…” She turned to face me and gave me a weak smile. “There, is that better?”
“Sure.” I put fresh clothes on the tank of the toilet and quickly undressed, leaving my castoffs piled in the floor. Madison moved out of my way as I stepped into the tub and the warm spray of water.
“Grace!”
The piercing excitement of her voice had me spinning, expecting a rampaging goblin or something. I saw nothing unusual in the room. “What is it?”
“On your back. I thought you said you got Wocky to remove his demon brand.”
I showed her my bare arm. “I did. It’s gone, see?”
“Uh, no, Grace. Or rather, if he took one off, he left another on your back.”
I screeched, “What!”
“Look for yourself.” She pointed at the mirror. Dripping, I stepped out, put my back to the mirror and strained to look over my shoulder at it. There it was, black and writhing on my right shoulder blade. “That motherless sack of pond scum! I knew I should have cut his heart out when I had the chance. You can never trust a demon. When I get my mitts on that lying, lousy so-and-so I’m gonna peel him like a grape and stake him out over an ant hill! That dirty, rotten piece of—”
Fran burst into the room. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“He’s going to be mulch!” I cried. “Anyone know where I can get hold of a wood chipper?”
SEVENTEEN
“Pirouette on the stage,
The lights of Hell are blazing.
And I’m so tired of all the crap,
You find so damned amazing.”
—Innocence
Elektra Blue
It took a while to calm down. No surprise there. Finally, I was washed, clothed, and settled in bed with a slayer to either side. The ceiling light was out. Moonlight made the sheets on the window glow. Fran broke out several glow-sticks, shaking and bending them so they emitted a low-level, spectral green light that added to the spooky atmosphere. The sticks were left on the nightstands.
“Let’s tell ghost stories,” Fran said.
Maddy mumbled into her pillow, “I will stab you with your own stake.”
“Or not,” Fran said.
I smiled, lying on my back, enjoying the freshness of the sheets, the soft mattress, and pillow. My eyes were closed. I was almost asleep.
Maddy said, “Mom’s coming to town to do a show.”
Fran thrashed up out of her top sheet. “What? You’re serious?”
“Yeah.”
My eyes snapped open. “Is Van Helsing going to want you to stake her?”
“No, thralls are still human. That would be murder. The meeting’s just going to be … awkward,” Maddy said. “Mom’s going to try to talk me into leaving the slayer school. I’m going to get the whole ‘Vampires-are-just-misunderstood-predators’ speech.”
“Can she make you leave?” I asked.
“No. Van Helsing had me go thr
ough a lawyer to get myself emancipated. It pissed Mom off that I sued her to get control of my own trust fund. She’d been about to hand it over to her vampire lover’s Domus.”
“Domus?” I asked.
“Latin for House. It’s what vampires call their colonies. She has more freedom than most donors, touring as a poster girl for vamp whores everywhere. A lot of her groupies wind up as fang food.”
“So what are you going to do?” Fran asked.
“I’ll have to see her, but I’m not going alone. Her handlers might be nearby, wanting to grab a slayer, even if it’s just one in training.”
“I’ll back you,” Fran said.
“Me, too,” I said.
Maddy rolled over and set her back to me. “Thanks.” I heard tears in her voice she’d never show. We were alike that way.
Conversation died down. The girls’ breathing grew deeper and slower. It took me a little longer to drift off. I slid into my inner darkness wondering if I’d meet Tukka in my dreams, or if he’d be too busy guarding the lodge to indulge in play.
* * *
The cloudy edges of sight, and the floaty feeling I had, combined to tell me I was asleep, that and the fact that Taliesina—my inner three-tailed fox—was prancing down the aisle beside me. Since this was a dream, we could have separate bodies. It had just never happened before. We were in a huge auditorium with red-velvet seats, predominately filled with teenage Goth girls looking like raccoons with way too much eyeliner. The crowd was happy and agitated, bouncing in their seats, generating a sea-like murmur.
Taliesina and I walked toward the stage. There were stacks of Marshall Amps up there, backlit by purple and blue colored spotlights. A massive drum kit was center stage, toward the back. Left and right were long-haired roadies laying out cables, testing connections, placing microphones. This didn’t seem to be a regularly scheduled event with set-up still under way and an audience present.
I suddenly had a bad feeling about who was going to be playing here tonight, wherever here was.
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