I silently summoned energy to my casting prism before shrugging. “Maybe he just doesn’t like you.”
Penny’s eyes blazed orange, and her fingers bit into Vega’s throat.
“Fuoco!” I shouted.
Energy coursed through me in fits and starts, gained strength, and then opened out in the embers. A fireball roared from the hearth. Penny screamed as it swallowed her.
I stood and drew my cane, shouting another Word. The force invocation sling-shot Vega from Penny’s faltering grip toward my waiting arms. She was coming in too fast, though. The impact knocked the breath from my lungs and both of us to the floor. We landed with a hard splash.
Beyond my soaked legs, Penny was roaring and beating the flames that climbed her hair. Foul smoke filled the room. I forced myself to stand, pulling Vega up beside me. She coughed weakly.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
“I’ll live,” she said hoarsely.
Good, because I could feel Thelonious licking his chops, waiting for me to exhaust myself with another high-energy spell. With an arm wrapped around Vega’s waist, she and I splashed from the sitting room. At the front door, I pushed her across the threshold but remained inside.
She staggered against the front-porch banister and squinted back at me. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Find one of Arnaud’s blood slaves,” I said. “Tell him everything we’ve learned. That should get your son back.” Before she could respond, I swung the door closed and sealed it with a locking spell.
Drawing the sword from my cane, I stalked back to the sitting room.
Time to finish this.
38
I returned to find Penny thrashing in a puddle of water on the floor. Desperate to extinguish the last of the flames licking from her hair, she snapped and yipped, eyes rolling back into her head. Though only part-werewolf, she had inherited their fear of fire. I don’t think she even saw me as I stood over her and raised my sword.
I remained clueless as to why Arnaud had set us on her trail. Didn’t know what he stood to gain by us finding out what he already knew. But Vega and I were marked now because of it.
Unless I eliminated the threat at the source.
I tightened my grip on the sword handle. The blade was steel, not silver, which meant I would need to decapitate her. Not an act I was relishing.
I braced a foot against her stomach. Her head reared back, exposing her throat. The muscles in my shoulders and upper back bunched…
And a shot rang out.
Something kicked me in the right side of the chest. I dropped the sword and stumbled backwards, knocking over the couch. A pulsating numbness swallowed my right arm as I splashed seat down on the floor. I pressed my hand to where I’d been hit and felt warm blood.
“I couldn’t let you do that.”
I raised my face to where Budge stood on the stairs, a pistol in hand.
“She’s done some bad things,” he said. “But I depend on her. I need her.”
“Her daughter,” I managed. “We helped her earlier this evening. She’s not a monster anymore.”
“Alexandra’s okay?” The gun drifted down to Budge’s side. “She’s safe?”
From the floor I nodded my head, a gray nausea washing over me.
“Thank God,” he breathed. “Where is she?”
Penny moved in front of my view of Budge, her blackened scalp showing through what remained of her hair. Furious, orange eyes stared down on me. She spoke from a protruding jaw. “Yes, where is she?”
“That stopped being your business eighteen years ago,” I mumbled.
She straddled me and knifed a talon-like nail into my gunshot wound. White-hot pain seared through me. I bit back a scream and seized her wrist, but my strength was no match for hers. She gouged deeper until my hands fell away. I slapped the floor to keep from passing out.
“You’re sticking your nose into something you know nothing about,” Penny said. “And I know what you’re thinking. That your knowledge of Alexandra’s whereabouts is going to keep you alive, that you can use it as a bargaining chip to finesse your way out of this. But if Arnaud told you about Sonny, I’m betting he also told you about Lady Bastet.” Her lips spread into a crazy, canine smile. “Yes, that’s where you took her. I can smell the fear pouring off of you.”
“If she’s not a monster anymore,” Budge ventured from the staircase, “can’t we just leave her alone, honey?”
“Silence!” Penny shouted.
I whipped my head from side to side as she gouged my wound again. The room wavered.
“Call for reinforcements,” Penny told her husband. “I want one group to find and eliminate Detective Vega. The other will go to Lady Bastet’s in the West Village. I’ll join them when I finish with this one.”
Something glinted just beyond my left hand. The silver bullet I’d dropped earlier. I stretched and closed my fingers around it.
“I’m just not sure I like the idea of offing all these people,” Budge said.
“Well, you won’t be offing them, will you?”
As I imagined Budge nodding in reluctant assent, his marital advice from the gala floated around me: It’s pretty simple, kids. Know when to agree, when to disagree, and when to agree to disagree.
I chuckled through the haze of pain.
Penny’s eyes glared down at me, then fell further to the bullet I was aiming at her chest.
“Protezione,” I mumbled. In the wetness, magical energy hissed and snapped through my prism and down my arm. A small orb manifested around the base of the bullet. I tightened the orb, willing it smaller. I just needed the pressure to ignite a single grain of the powder charge.
Penny laughed at my grunting and seized my throat. “Oh, you pathetic man. Trying to fire a bullet without a—”
The explosion kicked the shell from my seared fingers and blew the bullet into Penny. I caught her as she collapsed forward. Twisting, I deposited her on the floor on her back. Her eyes stared at the ceiling while blood bubbled and smoked from the wound below her chest. I had hit a large vessel, but missed her heart.
I collapsed against the couch, exhausted, my own blood soaking the arm of my jacket.
Budge hustled down the stairs and splashed into the sitting room. “Oh God,” he cried, staring down at his wife. “Oh, Penny.”
“She didn’t give me a choice,” I said.
His large eyes shifted to mine. They looked almost sad as he raised his gun.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
His silence seemed worse than any assertion he might have spoken. The gun’s bore stared at my face. My magic spent, I squinted away, hoping Vega and I had done enough to fulfill Arnaud’s terms.
“Stop!”
I rolled my head to find Vega standing in front of the broken window she’d climbed through, her pistol pointed at the mayor. Though Budge’s gun remained on me, his eyes wavered with uncertainty.
“A couple of ways we can play this,” Vega said. “One, you shoot Everson, then I shoot you. Two, you let Everson walk, and we make a deal that you never come after either of us.”
“Why would I do that?” the mayor asked.
“Because I just got off the phone with someone,” Vega said. “And I told this person everything that Everson and I know. Your wife was right; I was bluffing before. But not this time.” Her eyes were dead serious. “Rest assured, the information is safe with this person. But should anything happen to Everson, myself, or anyone close to us, they know what to do, who to contact. And I’m talking political opponents, media outlets, bloggers. You really will be finished.”
The mayor’s gaze moved between me and Vega, then fell to his bleeding wife. He lowered his gun.
“Go on,” he said softly. “Get out of here.”
39
Vega powered down the bollards blocking our exit and climbed back into the sedan.
“Any word from Arnaud?” I asked as she pulled from the driveway of the mayor
’s mansion.
“Nothing. You all right?”
I grunted as I pulled my arm from my blood-soaked jacket. “I will be. How about you?”
The bruising under her right eye had spread to include shades of pink and deep blue. She turned onto East Eighty-sixth Street and scanned the brightening sidewalks. “Where the hell are they?”
I squinted around. “Sunlight won’t kill a blood slave, but it does strip their powers. They tend to avoid it.”
“I’m through with this shit.” At Third Avenue, Vega took a hard left, snapped on her siren, and weaved through the growing traffic.
“Where are you going?”
“Where do you think?”
“The Financial District?”
“He has my son.”
“We’ll never get through the—”
“What would you have me do, Croft? We followed every one of his goddamned leads, and now he decides to go mute. Hasn’t answered any of my texts or calls. I’m done playing his games.”
I tented my fingers over my bullet wound and uttered a Word. With an agonizing tear, the bullet dislodged from bone and shot into my palm as though to a magnet.
“Christ,” I hissed, dropping the bullet on the dashboard.
Vega glanced over. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”
I touched my cane to my chest and incanted until healing energy cauterized the wound and anesthetized the shredded tissue. I sagged against the seat, the sweat that had sprung out over my body now soothing me.
“I can drop you off somewhere,” Vega said.
I shook my head. “I’ll go with you. But I need you to call Lady Bastet.”
“Why?”
“Penny guessed where Alexandra was. She ordered her husband to send wolves down there. If I had killed Penny, I’d say Alexandra’s safe, but I missed her heart. She could still pull through.”
Vega drew out her phone and called.
“Yes?” Lady Bastet said over the speaker.
“It’s Everson and Detective Vega,” I shouted toward the phone while keeping myself a safe distance from the device. “Look, there’s a good chance some werewolves are on their way to your store. You need to get yourself and Alexandra out of there and someplace safe.”
“Do not worry, Everson. Alexandra is already someplace safe.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I foresaw the danger,” she said. “I also divined who was in the best position to protect her. She’s in their care now.”
“Who?” Vega asked.
“The fewer who know, the better. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I nodded at her logic. If and when Penny recovered, she would order a full-scale search for her daughter. She would squeeze the location out of whomever she could. “Well, what about you?” I asked.
“Wolves do not concern me, Everson. I will be fine.”
I thought about the mystic’s impressive powers as well as the protective wards I’d sensed in her store. “All right,” I said. “But be careful. And thanks for your help.”
One less worry anyway, I thought as the connection clicked off.
Seconds later, the phone rang. Vega checked the number and pressed the phone to her ear. “What’s going on, Camilla?”
I could make out a fit of sobbing punctuated by attempts at speech.
“I can’t understand you,” Vega said. “Take a deep breath and try again.”
There was a pause as her sitter inhaled, but her exhale turned into a sobbing wail. Amid the bawling, all I could make out was a name. An ice-cold hand closed around my heart.
“What about Tony?” Vega said.
Sobs surrounded more distorted word fragments.
“What about my son?” Vega repeated, shouting over the noise. “Are you at the apartment? Stay there, I’m on my way.”
Vega hung up and stared at the road ahead, the engine rising another octave.
I pictured the beautiful, curly-haired boy in the photo Vega had given Hoffman.
God, please let him be okay.
I followed Vega as she sprinted up the stairwell of her apartment building and charged onto her floor. At her broken door, Vega stopped, firearm drawn. She pushed the door open with a foot.
“Camilla?” Vega called, stepping into the apartment.
The sobbing I’d heard on the phone returned, now emerging from Vega’s bedroom. When Camilla appeared, she was holding a young boy. “He—he back, Ricki,” Camilla managed amid the sobs. “They br-bring him back.”
Vega holstered her weapon and rushed forward. She took her son from Camilla and held him up at arm’s length. Tony blinked around blearily. Vega examined the fresh Band-Aid on the side of his neck, then looked the rest of him over. “Are you all right, honey? Are you hurt anywhere?”
When he didn’t answer, Vega looked back at me.
I opened my wizard’s senses until I could see the boy’s aura.
“He’s himself,” I said after a moment. “He hasn’t been turned into anything.”
Vega sighed and pulled her son to her, burying her nose in his hair. Tony clamped his arms around her neck. “Thank God,” she whispered, rocking him back and forth while Camilla looked on, crying more tears of relief. “You’re safe, honey,” Vega said. “Momma’s got you.”
She disappeared with her son into her bedroom.
“They bring him back,” Camilla said to me, as though still trying to convince herself it had happened. “The men bring him back.”
“The ones in suits?”
Camilla nodded. It appeared we had met Arnaud’s terms, whatever the intentions behind them.
Ten minutes later, Vega emerged from her bedroom and closed the door softly. “He looks fine, but I’m going to take him to a doctor later this morning,” she said. “Make sure he’s all right.”
While Camilla wrung her hands in prayerful thanks, Vega walked me to the door.
I pointed to her stomach. “Be sure to get yourself to a doctor, too.”
“I will,” she said stiffly.
“Look, I’m really sorry about…” I cocked my head toward the bedroom.
Though Vega nodded, her eyes remained unmoved. “I appreciate all of your help, Croft, but I meant what I said earlier. This is where our partnership ends.” She shook her head when I tried to talk. “I know you didn’t mean for anything to happen, but it did. I can’t work with someone who would put my child at risk like that and not tell me, regardless of the circumstances.”
I pressed my lips together. What could I say? She was absolutely right.
She extended her hand, but not to shake. “I need my pager back.”
I pulled the iron-encased device from my pocket but hesitated before relinquishing it. “You have every right to feel the way you do,” I said. “I screwed up. Badly. All I can say is that it will never happen again.”
“The pager,” she repeated.
I wanted to add that I would help her wherever and whenever she needed me. All she had to do was ask. But I knew my words would change nothing. I set the pager in her palm.
“I’ll call you a cab,” she said.
I remembered how vulnerable Vega had looked after I’d patched up her bullet wound, how I’d kissed her cheek. It was the first time I had considered her a friend, someone I cared about. “Ricki, I…”
“I’d prefer it if you waited outside.”
40
I returned to my West Village apartment just before seven a.m. Instead of opening my door, I paused to lean against it, my blood-stained jacket over my cane arm, a heavy shroud over my heart. In the last twelve hours we had prevented a gang war, stopped a homicidal creature, saved a young woman, and seen the safe return of Vega’s son. For all intents and purposes we had won.
And yet I felt like a colossal failure.
I had lost Caroline to the fae. I had lost Vega to her own good judgment. And I had played into Arnaud’s hands somehow—I was sure of it. I was also sure that nothing good would come of the last.
> I sighed and inserted the key into the top bolt and twisted. Already unlocked. My heart sped up. Ditto the other two bolts. I thought back. My last visit to the apartment had been a frantic race to collect some items before Moretti’s men arrived. Had I forgotten to lock the door? No, more likely Moretti’s men had picked the locks when they’d come looking for me.
But my wizard’s intuition was telling me different.
I dropped my jacket and drew my cane apart, my chest hot and aching around the bullet wound. I rechecked the wards before opening the door.
The apartment was dark, the drapes drawn across the tall windows. I knew I hadn’t done that. I scanned the sitting area, looking for Tabitha’s glowing green eyes. Instead, I found a silhouette of the back of a head in my reading chair.
“You’ve had quite the night,” the intruder said.
I turned on the flood lights. A white mane of hair glowed into view at the same moment I inhaled an odor of leather and musk.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How did you get in?”
“You invited me,” Arnaud replied calmly.
“Invited you? What in the hell are you talking about?”
I rounded the chair, staff and sword held out, until the vampire Arnaud waxed into full view. He wore a black cape over his stylish suit, one knee crossed over the other. On the right armrest, he held a glass of Scotch. Arnaud grinned as he gave the drink a light swirl.
“Yes, yesterday,” he said. “I asked if you would prefer to meet at your place the next time, and you assented.”
I tightened and then relaxed my grip on my weapons. The vampire had baited me into issuing an invitation, one that would temper my wards. And in the confusion of the opiate mist, I had obliged him, dammit.
“Well, I uninvite you now,” I said. “Get out.”
He chuckled. “The power of invitations doesn’t work that way. You can only prevent me from returning.”
I looked around for Tabitha.
Arnaud followed my gaze. “Your companion didn’t much care for me. We had some words, I’m afraid. My, what a tongue she has.” He waved a hand at my distressed look. “The feline is quite all right. Rather than tolerate my company, she elected to go out onto the ledge.”
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