A Veiled & Hallowed Eve

by Hailey Turner

  “You don’t get to play word games with Pat using Setsuna’s name.”

  Carmen snapped her teeth at him but didn’t seem cowed in the least as she brushed shattered glass off her lap. He supposed that’s what came from living so long—a sense of inevitable life. But she wasn’t immortal and could still be killed. Fenrir rumbled a question through his mind, but Jono mentally shrugged off the offer of murder.

  He wondered if some bit of the god had come through somehow—his aura or his eyes maybe, if not his voice—because Carmen’s demeanor changed just enough that Jono could see Naheed reach beneath the bar counter out of the corner of his eye, most likely going for a weapon.

  “We’re on the same side until after Samhain,” Jono reminded her, moving so that he could once again see everyone in the club.

  “And after, we will no longer be bound by alliances,” Carmen said in a low, sweetly dangerous voice as she waved off Naheed’s protectiveness. “None of this changes the fact Ashanti wants to see Patrick.”

  “Tomorrow night. We’ll make the time.”

  “Now.”

  “Jono’s right. We’ll meet with Ashanti tomorrow night at a place of her choosing. We’re going to Salem tonight, and I need to deal with the SOA tomorrow at some point regarding the attacks,” Patrick countered.

  “You are not going to Salem tonight,” Nadine said with a frown.

  “We have to. A phone call isn’t going to cut it.”

  He didn’t know Eloise well enough to ask over a phone call, which was why he had no plans to reach out to her. There was no truth to be found in a call, not right now. Setsuna had always warned him about his mother’s family, and while they worshipped Persephone, Patrick didn’t think they were aligned with any other god. Besides, he knew better than to telegraph their intent right now.

  He swallowed hard, the knot lodged in the back of his throat something difficult to undo. Compartmentalizing Setsuna’s death didn’t mean he forgot her; it merely meant the grief would keep trying to break through at the most inopportune times despite him trying to wall it off.

  “You’re talking about a four-hour drive. You’ve been up for almost twenty-four hours already and had to fight off Zachary. You don’t know what’s waiting for you in Salem.”

  “Nadine—”

  “You know better than to go on a mission blind while fucked out of your head from possible backlash. Get some rack time, a couple of hours at least, and then get on the road. Tired makes you slow. You can’t afford to be slow.”

  “Considering that you don’t know what you’ll find in Salem, it’s even more imperative you meet with Ashanti tonight.” Carmen slid off the barstool, her eyes cold.

  Nadine hummed softly before nodding at Patrick. “We’ll go with Carmen, then back to Sage’s to get some sleep. I’ll go with both of you to Salem tomorrow. You could use the backup.”

  Patrick scowled, looking ready to argue, but Jono shook his head. “Unfortunately, I think she’s right. And Pat, I love you, but you’re not thinking straight right now.”

  Though his tone was kind, Patrick still shut down, expression going absolutely blank. Jono sighed tiredly and stepped closer to wrap his arm around Patrick’s shoulders. Patrick didn’t lean into him, not right away, but Jono was nothing if not persistent. He wasn’t going anywhere, and Patrick eventually folded into his touch.

  “You aren’t in this alone. If the Fates are to be believed, you were never going to be,” Jono murmured.

  “Fine,” Patrick said after a moment. “We’ll see Ashanti tonight.”

  Carmen gestured at Naheed without looking at her. “Let’s go.”

  Jono lifted his free hand to rub at his eyes. They’d feel like sandpaper right now if he didn’t have enhanced healing. He was tired, and the night wasn’t over yet.

  “Right, let’s be off,” Jono said, steering Patrick toward the entrance, refusing to let him go.

  As far as neutral territory went, the New York City Public Library next to Bryant Park was one that offered up a better escape route than most. After how their night had gone so far, Jono much preferred the open-air meeting to one indoors.

  Ashanti and Lucien weren’t the only ones waiting for them at the park after hours. Several of the vampires Jono remembered seeing at the other meeting were present as well. They stood well away from the nearest streetlamp, Jono’s eyes easily picking out the vampires in the dark. Patrick fixed that problem for them by casting a small number of witchlights to illuminate the area enough so he and Nadine didn’t trip and fall.

  Carmen sauntered her way into Lucien’s arms, shedding her glamour like a coat. Lucien pulled her close in a proprietary way.

  “You’re all right?” Patrick asked Ashanti before anything else.

  Ashanti waved aside his words. “Tezcatlipoca was always a fool to think he could ever find me unawares.”

  “Was anyone else with him? Santa Muerte brought Zachary along with some magic users and hunters when she came after us.”

  “No one but Tezcatlipoca.” Ashanti tipped her head to the side, studying Patrick intently. “It appears we were kept busy while Ethan went after you.”

  “Yeah, looks like it.”

  “Samhain is less than a week away at this point. We need to find Ethan. We will use your blood to do it.”

  “No,” Jono got out before Patrick could agree to something so bloody idiotic.

  Ashanti’s searing attention settled on Jono, but he wasn’t one to cave in the face of her desires. “You seek an end to this war, do you not? A means to an end still provides us with an end.”

  “You aren’t using Patrick. Find another fucking way.”

  “Watch how you talk to her,” Takoma snapped.

  Jono ignored the out-of-state vampire in favor of the goddess looking for a favor. “We’ll talk to her however we like.”

  Takoma stepped forward before Lucien could, and Fenrir reared up through Jono’s soul, stealing control of his voice and body between one breath and the next.

  “There are other tricks in play, cousin. They must be seen to first,” Fenrir said through Jono.

  Takoma was brought up short, while Lucien merely looked bored as he hooked his chin over Carmen’s shoulder.

  “Enlighten us,” Lucien bit out.

  “I need to go to Salem. I think Zachary did something to Eloise,” Patrick said, looking at Ashanti and not the other vampires.

  “As we said. Tricks,” Fenrir said.

  Lucien flashed his fangs at them. “But no treats. You go to Salem, wolf. When you come back, Patrick bleeds.”

  Jono railed against that order, but Fenrir didn’t let him speak. Patrick was the one to agree, and Jono would’ve thrown a fit if he could.

  “Fine,” Patrick said flatly.

  Ashanti smiled, iron teeth dark between her lips in the faint glow of witchlights. “I will use the spell book you brought me from DC. You just need to bring yourself.”

  Fenrir gave Jono back his voice, and he turned his head to scowl at Patrick. “You don’t need to bleed for her.”

  Patrick wouldn’t look at him. “This isn’t your choice. It’s mine.”

  Jono would’ve flinched if they were alone, but he refused to give their audience the satisfaction of watching their disagreement. Choice was important, especially considering Patrick’s past. Clenching his teeth, Jono kept silent for the rest of the meeting, which was mercifully brief.

  With the promise dragged out of Patrick, Ashanti saw no need to stay and fled into the night with all of her children except Lucien. The master vampire stayed behind with Carmen, his black-eyed gaze not friendly in the least.

  “You brought Nadine,” Lucien said.

  “The gods brought her, but she’s been recalled by the PIA. So have others,” Patrick said.

  “What passes as reinforcement from your government has never been very impressive.”

  “We did all right during the Thirty-Day War.”

  “Aim to do better than you did
back then. Ashanti isn’t dying for you again.”

  “I’ve never wanted anyone to die for me.”

  Patrick’s voice was quiet, flat in a way that spoke of buried trauma, and Jono wanted badly to hold him. He wouldn’t appreciate the outreach in full view of Lucien, so instead, Jono reached for his hand, sliding his fingers between Patrick’s.

  “Let’s head to Sage’s,” Jono said.

  They had a long day ahead of them, and it started with getting a few hours of sleep before they faced whatever—or whoever—waited for them in Salem.

  14

  They were on the road by dawn, having only slept a handful of hours. Patrick’s eyes felt as if they had glass in them, the dryness irritating. Not even the coffee Sage had prepared for them all in massive travel mugs was enough to make him stop rubbing his eyes.

  They’d stopped at JFK International first so Nadine could retrieve her luggage. It had required her badge, but what she’d packed in Paris was currently tucked away in the Mustang’s trunk, sans an outfit that, while not super fashionable, would be durable in a fight.

  “Who do you think will be there when we get to Salem?” Nadine asked, the familiar sounds of her cleaning her service weapon coming from the backseat.

  Patrick stretched out his legs and rolled his left ankle, feeling it pop. “I don’t know. Maybe members of Eloise’s family. I think they do brunch every Sunday or something, but I’m not sure if we’ll get there when that happens.”

  “We’ll get there during brunch,” Jono said.

  Nadine sighed. “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  Patrick let his head thunk back against the headrest, staring blankly at the road lit by headlights. “I don’t know what we’ll find when we get there.”

  “We haven’t had a call from Georgelle, so if anything has happened to Eloise, it was out of sight of the packs up there, and quite possibly any SOA agent,” Jono said.

  He was driving because Patrick was apparently not allowed behind the wheel, and Wade had stolen his keys and wouldn’t give them back. Patrick was fairly certain Jono had them tucked away in his pocket, but he hadn’t had a chance to check.

  Wade had wanted to come, but with everyone pairing up, he’d had no choice but to stay with Sage since she was holding their territory for them as proxy with her dire rank. Patrick knew he’d be fielding more phone calls than he already had from Priya and General Reed after last night. Nadine had already taken a nearly hour-long one with PIA Director Franklin.

  With five days now left until Samhain, the veil thinning from the other side, there was only so much time they had to get everyone in place. Federal agents were all well and good, but Patrick hoped General Reed could get boots on the ground through the National Guard with the governor’s support. If not, getting anyone from the Department of the Preternatural would be even more difficult.

  But soldiers on the streets of an American city wasn’t typical, and Patrick couldn’t be sure that support would come in time. It was a numbers game, and he knew they were coming up short.

  “We should’ve asked Lucien for a carbine,” Nadine muttered.

  “I wasn’t going to ask Marek to front that kind of money like last time. We have too many eyes on us right now, and I’m still not sure our finances aren’t being watched,” Jono said.

  Patrick’s murder charge had brought a lot of scrutiny. While he and Jono were operating as any other god pack when it came to tithes and money handling, he wasn’t stupid enough to think the federal government wasn’t monitoring their activities.

  “As much as I’d like a carbine, showing up for brunch with a rifle would probably get their threshold to block us,” Patrick said.

  “How powerful is it?” Nadine asked.

  Patrick sighed. “Strong. It’s had generations to build in that one spot. It might toss you out if you try something.”

  “Duly noted.”

  It was going to be tricky, showing up how they were. No one had announced Eloise was missing, but that wasn’t to say the Patterson family was hiding that information. The Dominion Sect had clearly been making exploratory forays into Salem. While Patrick was more and more certain New York City was where Ethan would cast whatever sacrificial spell he had in his repertoire to turn himself into a god, they couldn’t rule out Salem.

  They had too much ground to cover and not enough people to guard it.

  Halfway to Salem it started raining, a downpour that turned the windshield into a waterfall no matter how fast the wipers moved. Jono never let go of the steering wheel, keeping his eyes on the road, while the drenched scenery passed them by.

  “This doesn’t feel normal,” Nadine said.

  Patrick nodded in agreement. “I think it’s safe to say the reactionary storms are growing in strength.”

  It was a problem no number of magic users with an affinity for weather magic could fix. This was the natural world responding in a slow rise to an imbalance of magic. An action would always cause a reaction, and one couldn’t mess with magic on a large scale and think everything would be all right.

  If the storms held, as Patrick was pretty damn certain they would, they’d be fighting in what amounted to a landed hurricane. It wasn’t anyone’s idea of fun.

  “So what’s the plan?” Jono asked when they finally drove into Salem, the sun struggling to get light through dark rainclouds. It was midmorning but could’ve easily passed as early evening.

  “We knock and hope we get asked inside,” Patrick asked.

  “And Eloise?”

  “Best-case scenario? She’s there and fine, and we just make a fool of ourselves. Worst case?” Patrick shook his head, curling his fingers between the straps holding his dagger in place to his thigh. “At this point, I don’t know what the worst-case scenario is.”

  Because death wasn’t the comfort people tried to make it out to be at times. He didn’t want his grandmother to be dead, but he also knew the nightmares that came with every other option his mind dredged up.

  Tension left Patrick hyperaware as Jono parked some ways down the street from Eloise’s house. Nadine cast a discreet shield to hold off the driving rain as they headed for the home.

  “It has defensive wards around it,” Nadine said as they turned up the walkway.

  “SOA agents should’ve set them after our visit the other week,” Patrick said, taking the lead.

  He climbed the porch and rang the doorbell, hearing muffled voices from inside. The curtains shifted slightly over the window to his right, wide eyes peering out. Then the door opened, Madelyn standing there to greet them in surprise.

  “Patrick! What are you doing here in a storm like this?” she asked, gesturing them all inside with a hurried wave of her hand.

  “Sorry to drop in unannounced,” Patrick said.

  “We saw the news this morning about what happened to you last night. We wanted to call you, but Mother said to leave you be, that you were probably busy. Are you all right?”

  “We’re fine.”

  Behind him, Jono and Nadine crossed the threshold. Patrick saw Madelyn’s gaze linger on his and Nadine’s sidearms, a faint frown settling on her face. “Are you here on SOA business?”

  Patrick ignored the question. “Is Eloise here?”

  “Of course. We’re having brunch. We can make up a spot for you three if you like.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Madelyn eschewed asking them for hospitality and led them to the back of the house, which was packed with family. It was a whole coven affair, presided over by the woman sitting at the head of the long dining table, who only had eyes for them.

  “Pat,” Jono said in a low, warning voice. “It’s not her.”

  No hint of ozone stained the air; no cut of recognition burned through his soul and magic from hell or something else. Patrick might not be able to sense the imposter—the more powerful a god, the harder it was to find them when they were playing at being human sometimes—but he trusted Jono and whatever abil
ity Fenrir gave him to sniff out a problem.

  “Demon?” Patrick asked.

  “No.”

  Patrick unsheathed his dagger, the matte-black blade erupting in bright white heavenly fire, and stared at the person wearing his grandmother’s face. “Where is she?”

  “Patrick?” Madelyn asked, staring at him. “What are you talking about?”

  She wasn’t the only one starting to look concerned at their arrival. Finley and Grant stood from the table. Brittany and the other cousins twisted around in their seats at the table and in the living area to stare at them.

  Patrick pushed past Madelyn, eyes on his target. “I won’t ask again. What the fuck did you do with Eloise?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Finley demanded.

  Patrick ignored him. Grant tried to step in Patrick’s way but came up short against Nadine’s shield. His expression of shock lasted only a moment before he conjured up a mageglobe, the spell in it not tactical in any way. For all that he was a mage, Grant wasn’t trained in combat, and his magic’s affinity was for weather.

  “Get out of our family’s ancestral house,” Grant ordered.

  Nadine made a punched-out sound behind him as the threshold rose up to defend against a perceived threat, the power of it sliding right over Patrick. He spared a single glance back to see Jono with his arms wrapped around Nadine, keeping her in place, the blue in his eyes replaced by the shining white fire of Fenrir’s presence, the god more than enough to stand up against a threshold. Nadine’s shields held, cutting around his mother’s family in a desperate bid to keep them safe against the threat in their midst.

  The imposter masquerading as Eloise put down her fork, expression never changing. “Is this any way to behave, Patrick?”

  Grant’s mageglobe exploded harmless against Nadine’s combat-ready shield as Patrick skirted past the man, holding his dagger tight.

  “Answer my fucking question. Where the hell is Eloise?” Patrick ground out.