Sophie perked up, “I never thought of it that way.”
With her slight appeasement, he went back to his initial observation, “Something really is off here. I can’t pinpoint it exactly. Stay on guard.”
Sophie raised a quizzical brow at him. The plantation was well warded and filled with feisty vamps. With her blood bond to the other Coffin Girls, she’d easily detect if something were amiss with them. “Is it a fae thing?” she asked.
“I think so,” Sylvain replied. “Especially if you can’t pick it up.”
They walked past the much grander entrance facing the magnificent Mississippi and entered the temperature controlled kitchen. Sophie was grateful for the respite from the heat. She glanced at Sylvain. He smiled cheekily as was his MO, but Sophie could sense his unease.
“It smells like heaven in here,” Sylvain said as they stepped into they kitchen (AKA: chaos central). Miss Suzette was laboring over a mass of pots. The smell permeating from them hinted at spice and seafood. Rose was seeing to the final details on the canapés lined up on dozens of platters. Sylvain expertly sneaked a canapé off the tray while air-kissing the sides of Rose’s cheeks. That Rose only slapped his hands away when she caught him was testament to his friendship with them. Anais was stuck with a phone to her ear, barking out orders to the staff scurrying about the formal dining room in preparation for the evening’s ‘small’ wedding. Sophie had already stepped in to help with the cooking. Marie and V were on the other side of the Atlantic so resources were spread thin. Thus being blithely ignored, Sylvain dropped a kiss on each of their cheeks to greet them, content to let them get on with what they were doing and for him to get out of the way.
He found Conall in the study, pouring over documents on the witch-kidnappings. He didn’t have an opportunity to greet him as Anais, hot on his heels, stormed into the library, slamming the door behind her.
“What, Sylvain, was the point of kissing my ear?” she demanded.
“He what?” Conall roared, scattering papers on the floor as he bounced off his chair.
“Hold up,” Sylvain demanded. “I did it for a reason.”
“With tongue,” Anais barked.
“He what?” Conall repeated, lurching towards Anais.
Sylvain held up his hands, “Wait. I was not making a play for Anais. It was the one way to guarantee that she’d follow me here.” At their confused expressions, he explained, “Miss Suzette in there,” he waved a hand in the direction of the kitchen, “is not Miss Suzette. It’s a changeling?”
“A what?” Anais asked, baffled. She’d made a pass at Sylvain before when she’d thought that her relationship with Conall was history. Loyal to his friend, Sylvain had firmly declined and had gone on to help reunite them. That he kissed her out of the blue made little sense.
“Are you sure?” Conall sat down, grave concern stamped all over him.
Sylvain nodded, “Sorry. I felt something off the moment I arrived. When I saw ‘Miss Suzette’, I knew.”
“Okay,” interrupted Anais, “take it a step back. What is a changeling? Then where is the real Miss Suzette.”
Anais’ eyes had turned blood red. Concerned, Conall got up and led her to a chair. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t stress. You have to think of the baby.”
Sylvain’s brows shot up, “Baby?”
“Yes,” Conall turned towards him, lips curved from ear to ear. “We’ve not told a soul, because it is new to us and with the baby having so many strands of magick in her, we wanted to wait a while.”
Sylvain nodded in understanding, “You have my word that I’ll keep your secret.” His face then broke into a smile. He grabbed Conall in a big man-hug before kissing both Anais’ cheeks. “Congratulations. You’re both going to make great parents and if there’s anything I can do to help, my resources are at your disposal.”
“Thanks,” Conall nodded, “I appreciate it. And I might just take you up on that. I’ve got a team of medical witches researching the possible outcomes of the pregnancy, but it would be great if a fae healer could assist them.”
“Consider it done,” Sylvain nodded in confirmation.
Anais, eyes turning red and angry at being ignored, bit out, “If you gentlemen are finished handing out the metaphorical cigars, I’d like to get back to the matter at hand.” She glared at Conall, “I am pregnant, not an invalid. Remember that or else you’ll find yourself trying to make this sofa a comfortable bed at night.”
Blanching at the horrid thought, Conall nodded. Sylvain, watching the exchange between the two, tried to hide his grin. A centuries old vampire with the spirit and skills of an independent woman and an even older witch monarch with chivalrous principles definitely made for an interesting match.
Anais’ silence and raised brow was enough of a prompt. Sylvain explained, “A changeling is a form of Unseelie fae. They kidnap and hide a person whose identity they then assume. They’re hired hands so someone to do this has tasked the changeling. They’ll then methodically infiltrate the community, household or town, and change the inhabitant’s perceptions to what their employer wants.”
“Ayden,” Anais said angrily.
“Most likely,” Sylvain agreed. “It could be that he and whomever he works for now in the Vampire Council are trying to get you all into the ‘organic blood’ movement.”
“Fuck movement,” Anais scowled. “It’s fucking barbaric and downright evil. So how do you know that the person in there is not Miss Suzette?”
Conall, at pains not to tell her to calm down again, sent Sylvain imploring looks to take things down a notch. Catching the hint, Sylvain explained, “The only beings that can detect a changeling are fae. Luckily, I am the Fae Prince and although the changeling would be under my sister’s rule, I know how to identify one, and how to get rid of it.”
“And then, we have to find Miss Suzette,” Anais demanded.
“Therein lies the tricky part,” Sylvain stated, ignoring Conall’s glares. Anais would be a lot nicer to Conall for protecting her than she would to him if he lied. He had never pissed off a hormonal witch-vampire before and wasn’t about to start. Besides, she was a woman and a friend and he would never fight her. He didn’t care what feminists thought about that, it was how he was made.
“But it can be done if stealth is employed,” he explained. “The first thing to do is to find out how the changeling plans to manipulate you. It will be something so obvious it is overlooked. The second is to find out where it is holding Miss Suzette. Once we know where that is, we can rescue her and stop the changeling’s plans and kill it. Unfortunately we can’t send it back to my sister because it has a new temporary master and will only come back again and again until the job is done.”
“Why is it that that plan seems too simple?” Conall asked dryly.
“Because it is,” Sylvain responded. “The obvious is the hardest to see. Ever wonder where the adage, ‘hiding in plain sight’ came from? Our natural inclinations would be to go to the bayou or Miss Suzette’s house and search it. It would be futile, because it is too complicated. The Bayou is vast and Miss Suzette’s home is here, not there. Changelings are masters of manipulation, but they’re also exceptionally lazy. Clues will be found here where Miss Suzette spends most of her time going about her daily routine and where her chicks are. I guarantee that.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” Anais cocked her head to the side. “We’ll use magick to find Miss Suzette. I’m not taking chances though, so I’ll ask Raulf’s second-in-charge to send weres out in the bayou, and to her house. I’ll make sure they don’t come close to the mansion. We don’t want the changeling to know we’re onto it.”
“I’ve got that covered, Anais,” Conall stated in a tone that brooked no argument. When she glared at him, he shook his head. “Please humor me. And, you also need to be with the girls. You have a wedding happening later, so if you spend most of your time with me, it will raise suspicions.”
“Okay,” Anais nodded. She wasn’t ha
ppy about it, but it made sense. “She’s the mother I never had Conall, Sylvain.” They acknowledged her profession with gravity. The accompanying nods held the promise that they’d do whatever they could. Anais blinked back the threatening tears and addressed Sylvain, “Could you please look for the obvious, Sylvain? Find the changeling, cher. But then,” scarlet eyes flashed at them, “we kill the fucker together.”
xxx
They were all in the kitchen, the pre-wedding meeting having just ended. Conall and Sylvain had claimed boredom and had joined them, offering to help. They all pitched in to remove the dishes of food Miss Suzette had prepared for their pre-wedding meal. Already a naturally lengthy affair, weddings at Papillion tended to be the realization of bridal dreams and thus tended to go on for much longer. It didn’t help for a vamp to be hungry surrounded by that many pulsing veins nor a witch to feel drained. The Coffin Girls were both witch and vampire, so the amount of food and bagged blood was astounding.
“Dieu! I’m thirsty,” Anais exclaimed. In a blur of vampire motion, she opened the blood fridge, warmed up a bag, and guzzled it down without even stopping to breathe. Technically the vampire half of her didn’t have to survive on oxygen, but the witch part did. She felt an overwhelming need to drink and eat as though she just couldn’t be satiated.
“Do you think it’s the baby making her that … er … hungry?” Sylvain, eyes wide, asked Conall telepathically.
“Could be,” Conall sent back. “But, I don’t think it is.” He cocked a brow at Rose and Sophie. Their fangs pierced bag after bag of blood while they guzzled. They had the same starved look as Anais.
Before Sylvain could reply, they were on him. Literally. They pushed him onto a chair at the table and each straddled one of his legs. Sophie was trying to ‘nuzzle’ his neck. Rose was cozying up on Sylvain’s other side, rubbing her face in his hair. Their eyes were vamp read, fangs dropped, and they looked ravenous.
Anais climbed onto Conall’s lap, straddling him and ran the tip of a fang along the vein in his neck. A pot Miss Suzette moved to the sink slipped and the hollow sound of metal against metal run in the air. Anais lifted her head up from her fang-dripping administrations and shot Miss Suzette a glare.
“Anais,” Sylvain knocked on her mental door. “It’s the food. That’s what the changeling is using to manipulate you. It is a ploy to get you to drink ‘from the source’.”
Startled, Anais looked at Conall. “Dieu!” she swore. “Thanks Sylvain.” Anais pulled Conall into the conversation. Because of their blood bond, she didn’t need to knock at his mental door. “Aye,” agreed Conall. “It’s the most obvious thing.”
Miss Suzette’s noisy disruptions provided a perfect distraction. Recalling their newest mission, she cocked her head to the side as she received a mental communique. “I think the weres have found Miss Suzette’s location. Sylvain, will you bring the fake Miss Suzette to the library while Conall and I cast a circle. Let’s get rid of this changeling, shall we? I’d like your throats intact.”
Sophie was doing some fang teasing of her own against Sylvain’s skin, effectively trapping the Fae Prince beneath her. Rose was scowling at Sophie like a bad-tempered toddler—a tantrum was imminent and vampire tantrums were not without spilled blood. “And our own throats intact too,” Anais added.
“I don’t want to hurt them,” Sylvain confessed. “Anais, will you call them off?”
Anais nodded and as their maker, compelled them to stop. “We have a wedding to prepare for, ladies. Let’s get to it,” Anais stated for ‘Miss Suzette’s' sake. The ladies got up from the Fae Prince’s lap bearing sullen expressions and set to work on finalizing the preparations for the wedding.
“The guys have offered to step in during V’s absence. I’ll be going over the security detail with them in the library if you need me,” Anais informed the others. She sent Rose a pointed look over her shoulder. “Rose, beverages are for our human wedding guests, so, please no need to make that blood cocktail.” Looking from Anais down to the ingredients for a Bloodjito (blood-Mojito mix), she scowled and cussed under her breath, alternating her longing stares between the blood fridge and the guys’ necks before packing the ingredients away with an elongated sigh.
“Any news from the weres?” Conall asked Anais when she entered the library.
Anais shrugged, “They told me they are close to narrowing down her location, but that’s it. I’m sure they’ll check in again soon. I see the changeling is wearing the necklace I gave Miss Suzette, so we can’t use the magickal GPS. The locator spell didn’t work earlier either.”
“I imagine Raulf,” Conall referred to the pack leader, “will seriously damage any of them if they don't find his aunt.”
Anais nodded, then flipped a switch behind an old tome that graced the library shelf. The shelf shifted to reveal a hidden room. It was protected with magickal wards using the combined royal witch magick of Anais and Conall as well as the voodoo magick of Miss Suzette, Raulf’s wolf alpha magick, and Sylvain’s fae magick. It represented the unity and the belief in standing together against the bad that purported to affect the balance of the supernatural world. And, in that way, it also represented the mission they’d committed to for the Goddess. The room was hidden because humans just would not understand what wedding planning had to do with silver axes and machetes and the type of arsenal that would make any military organization pant with envy. Humans rarely ventured into the plantation library, but it was not worth the risk to test that assumption.
Anais looked at Sylvain, “How do we kill the changeling?”
“Like most things,” Sylvain answered.
Anais stepped deeper into the room to inspect the sharp metal weapons lining one wall. The other walls were lined with bows, guns, and knives. She easily picked up a heavy ax. This ax was iron—the only substance that was poisonous to fae. Tossing it from one hand to the other, she quirked a brow at him. “Will this do?”
Sylvain blanched, and then nodded. As Prince of Fae, he was not immune to the effects of iron, but magickal protection helped him survive in the steel jungles of the metropolitan human cities when required, which was another reason why he and the fae preferred their hollows to be in remote places like the bayou.
“Great,” Anais smiled, exiting the room. As she passed by Sylvain, she slanted a glance at him. With the sweetest of smiles and a good dose of vamp speed, she swung the ax and neatly decapitated him. The head rolled onto the wooden floor and stopped inches away from Conall’s feet. Anais’ stealth and speed was so profound that Sylvain hadn’t seen it coming and the head still showed the same smile he’d given Anais when she smiled at him before beheading him. Blood spurted onto the Persian rug that no longer looked like it could grace anything let alone the magnificent library.
“Goddess,” Conall exclaimed, putting down the chalk he had been pretending to use to set up a magickal circle. He stepped over the head and went over to Anais to bring her into his arms for a hug. “You’ve become bloodthirsty, love.”
Anais glanced at the dead fae at their feet. “That blood won’t mar my fangs,” she growled furiously.
Impatient knocking at the library door alerted them to the presence of others. “It’s okay,” Anais stated then called out, “Come in. It’s done.”
Sophie entered the room first and turned ashen at the sight of the two parts of Sylvain. She turned into the arms that wrapped around her from behind.
“It’s okay, Sophie, it had to be done,” Sylvain’s voice whispered consolingly in her ear. “The feelings around death, even righteous ones, are hard for any empath.”
“I’m not upset,” Sophie, corrected his assumption. “I’m pissed off.” She looked at the body and head again. It no longer looked like Sylvain. Instead, it looked like a body of a man without any distinct features, as though he wore a camouflaging skin-colored stocking over his entire body - from top to toe. “I hate that something,” she pointed to the dead changeling, “thought it could fuck with us
by using you. I’m just sorry I couldn’t be the one to axe the fucker!”
A number of eyebrows rose at Sophie’s expletives, but all remained silent. “I need some romance to wipe away this crap,” Sophie continued her tirade. “Let’s go. We’ve got a wedding to throw.” Again, no one said a word, although many shielded thoughts were speculative as to what exactly had happened at the hollow. Anais threw Conall a satisfied look. Sophie was growing the balls Anais always knew she had – the female vamp kind. And it was kinda nice if she got a dashing fae prince in the bargain.
“Hello,” a strong, lyrical voice from the doorway stopped them from heading out of the room.
They all turned to see a beautiful, petite woman standing there. She had the pale complexion only attributed to porcelain, which was accentuated by hair and eyes as dark as sin. She was dressed to kill, literally and figuratively. Her black leather bustier fit tight, but was cut to allow her all the room she needed to maneuver. The matching leather shorts she wore were anything, but tacky. They fit snuggly and showed just enough leg before her black leather ensemble was completed by black leather boots, platforms thick enough to lend her height and kick the shit out of anyone that got in their way.
Supernatural Seduction (Book 2 of the Coffin Girls Series) Page 14
