Zrakovi stared at him. “By what means are these verifications taking place?”
Rand gave a nod to Alex. “One does not need a canid shifter in order to use a dog’s hair for glamour detection. One only needs a common dog.”
Zrakovi soured a bit more and frowned at his notes. Alex frowned at me. Melnick frowned at Rand. I frowned at Melnick.
“There is also the matter of the expulsion of the water species from representation on the council, as Toussaint Delachaise has chosen to remain neutral in our disagreements. Are there any objections?” He speared me with a look. “Although I believe Mr. Delachaise’s youngest son has, indeed, taken sides and yet is not under Mr. Randolph’s protection. Is that correct?”
Damn it, Zrakovi would go after Rene just to spite me. In a panic, I glanced at Rand. Include him? Please?
Rand stroked my back. “No, that is not correct. For the time-being, Rene Delachaise also has elected to remain neutral in the matter. Since you bring up his name with obvious malice, however, I now add his name to those who have asylum through the power of Elfheim. Consider him under my protection.”
I wasn’t sure how Rene would feel about it, but better protected by Rand than dead. Not that Rand wouldn’t exact a toll from all of us eventually, and it would be high.
Zrakovi shifted in his seat and sucked more proverbial lemons. “Is there anyone else you would like to include?”
Rand pretended to think for a moment. Anyone else? he asked me.
Had circumstances been different, I would have included Alex. Instead, my only answer was, No, thank you.
“No,” Rand said. “Thank you.”
Chapter 11
The rest of the meeting was uneventful and consisted primarily of various speculations about the source of the New Orleans fireworks and whether they were of preternatural origin. In our new spirit of cooperation, Rand mentally asked me if he should confront Garrett Melnick about vampires setting up the fireworks for Florian, but we had no proof yet.
The meeting adjourned with an awkward silence broken up by the sound of booms and whistles somewhere to the south; everyone rushed out front to see the source.
Can I tell Alex our suspicions about the vampires? I asked Rand. He’s already sniffing around those fireworks sites, and he won’t believe it if it comes from you. My comment earned a sharp look from Rand, but he nodded.
To prove I wasn’t trying to get around our transparency agreement, I took Rand’s hand and pulled him with me to stand in front of Alex. The anger—maybe even hatred—in the eyes of this man I had loved caused my heart to skip a beat, but I took a deep breath and plowed ahead.
I kept my voice low. “Keep an eye out for vampires around these fireworks shows. We think they’ve secretly formed an alliance with Florian and are getting New Orleans as pumped up as possible before Mardi Gras.”
Alex stared at me a moment, those melting-chocolate eyes as hard as ice. Then he gave me a curt nod before turning his back to join Zrakovi and Melnick in a snarky conversation about Rand’s car. Boys and motorized vehicles.
“Welcome back, DJ.” Uncle Lennox gave me a hug and stepped back. “You two make quite the power couple.”
“I keep telling her that,” Rand said. “She doesn’t listen very well.”
Lennox smiled. “It runs in the family. Her father was deaf until you said something he considered worth hearing.”
Ha ha. “Where is Audrey?”
Lennox glanced around to make sure Zrakovi wasn’t listening. “Hidden in London, for now. Until things settle down with our fearful leader, I don’t want her here.”
My cousin was five years younger than I but had a lot of physical magic at her disposal. She couldn’t control it, and Lennox had overprotected her rather than training her. She could never hold her own against Zrakovi or one of his minions. During the incident where I hadn’t been able to kill Zrakovi, Audrey had magically fried a Blue Congress wizard who’d been brought in as Zrakovi’s backup.
The whole time we’d been talking, I’d kept an eye on Melnick, trying to figure out what was wrong about him. It finally hit me. Vampire auras were humanlike, but with a slight buzzy edge. Melnick had no aura whatsoever. I looked down at the peridot ring that had belonged to Rand’s mother and then back at Melnick.
Rand! I interrupted his story of having the elfmobile shipped from England, omitting information about backseat transports, cold iron, and bulletproof windows. Did you notice if Melnick was wearing peridot?
He paused. No, why?
It would stop Alex from telling if he was really a faery glamoured to look like Melnick. Can you tell by touching him?
Rand gave a slow nod and walked around the Rolls, slapping a friendly hand on Melnick’s shoulder. Melnick was startled enough to jump, but not suspicious enough to move away.
Until Rand grabbed a fistful of the man’s leather jacket and hurled him to the concrete. “Reveal yourself, faery, or I’ll search you to remove whatever you’re using to camouflage your true identity. Or kill you.”
The fake Melnick snarled and held a fist into the air. We all started at a deafening crack of thunder. A streak of lightning hit the ground between Rand and the faery, forcing Rand backward. When the blinding glare of the lightning was gone, we were left with singed earth, no faery, and hard droplets of rain that quickly became mixed with hailstones the size of golf balls.
“Take cover!” Zrakovi yelled, making a run back toward the house. Everyone followed except Rand and me. We both jumped into the Rolls.
“It’s probably just hailing on this block,” I shouted over the staccato pounding of hail on the roof of the car. “Drive out of it.”
He backed out of the drive, tires crunching and sliding over ice, then drove south along Bellaire, back toward the city. On the next block, the hail disappeared. On the second block, the night was clear enough to see the quarter-moon.
“That was powerful Arch magic,” I said. “You think it was Florian himself?” Arch and Academy differentiated the two types of Faerie magic. Most of the fae had one or the other, Arch being nature and Academy being science. Only those possessing both types could be king or queen, which left Florian, Christof, and their remaining sister, Kirian, as the only royal options. If Christof was still alive.
Rand pulled over beneath a street light on Pontchartrain Boulevard and opened his car door.
Was he nuts? Florian could still be running around out here. “What are you doing?”
“Checking my car for dents.” He stood on the car’s running board to better see the roof. “If there are dings in it, I’m sending Florian the bill.”
Somehow I thought Florian had bigger agenda items than whether or not he’d dented Rand’s royal carriage.
He slid back behind the wheel. “Looks okay—the extra protections probably helped.”
This had not been the way I wanted to leave tonight’s meeting. “Can you loop back around and go to the house? I want to get some stuff out of the attic while I have you with me as backup.”
He laughed and turned at the next cross-street. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever wanted me with you anywhere unless someone was trying to kill you.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”
His only response was a catlike smile.
In less than a minute, we were back at the house. No one milled outside unless Zrakovi was hiding in the bushes, and the weather had cleared. “You think they’ve all left?” I asked, pulling my key out of my pocket.
“Probably.”
I unlocked the door and Rand went inside first. He checked in the living room and kitchen and returned to where I waited in the foyer. “All clear.”
“Stand guard and let me run upstairs for a few things.” The stairway to the second floor stretched from the back wall of the foyer, so I trotted up the stairs as quickly as I could in a pencil skirt, walked into my father’s bedroom, and fought a wave of nostalgia as I pulled down the ladder into the attic. At least
the house no longer smelled of Gerry’s aftershave or his books or his favorite cigars. Now, it smelled of lumber and Sheetrock and paint. The bones of the house were the same, though. The air felt the same.
I struggled up the ladder, reached behind a support beam, and pulled out two thick books and a backpack full of magical supplies. The supplies had been purchased shortly before my flight into the Beyond. The two ancient volumes of illegal spells, charms, and potions had belonged to Gerry and warded with so much black magic that they weren’t even damaged when my house across the street from Rand had exploded.
Worry about what Zrakovi would think when I pulled the occasional black spell out of one of these books once had kept me awake at night. What a waste of energy.
I climbed back down the ladder, holding onto the rail with one hand and my other hand juggling my stuff. The distinctive sound of a footstep came from behind me, followed by the distinctive sound of Alex Warin.
“Figured you’d be back for the books, DJ.”
I turned to face him. Whatever hurt or conflict I’d seen in his face earlier had given way to pure anger. Inside, I kept the terms of my bargain: Rand, Alex is up here. Please don’t start a fight with him.
“I thought you’d be heading toward the fireworks,” I said. “You do realize Florian is just building up maximum exposure for Mardi Gras, and meanwhile, people are getting hurt.”
“Ken’s on his way. Any other tips?”
“No.” I had nothing else to say to him. We’d said too much already.
He thought otherwise. “I can’t believe you went to Quince Randolph for help. That you would live with him. You got over us awfully fast, DJ.”
I struggled to rein in my temper and be the mature person I aspired to. “You left me no options, Alex—at least none that would allow me to be true to myself. My magic is a big part of who I am, both wizard’s magic and elven magic.” It had taken me a long, long time to accept that.
“Your magic and your poor judgment put everyone around you in danger.” He paused. “Or gets them killed. I don’t understand why Rene doesn’t blame you for his brother’s death; you were behind Robert’s death as much as Jake’s. You’ll end up getting Rene killed, or your precious elf—no great loss there. Too bad you can’t get Lafitte killed once and for all.”
“Enough.” Rand had been standing behind Alex for most of that speech, and the grim line of his mouth told me how hard he was working to hold his temper. Somehow, the petulant elf and I were the mature people in the room. It was a night of firsts.
Alex turned and pulled a pistol on Rand, but he didn’t fire. He could kill me without repercussions, but he could not murder the elf.
“Come on, Dru. Let’s go home.”
Rand took part of my armload of stuff as I walked past, then followed me downstairs. Behind me I heard Alex say, “Watch your back, DJ.”
I felt empty, spent, exhausted. But the cheery lightworks show to the southwest couldn’t be ignored.
“Let’s go to the fireworks scene and see what we can find,” I said. “Obviously, Alex isn’t going to investigate this one.”
“No,” Rand said.
I waited for an explanation, but none seemed forthcoming. “Transparency, please.”
He snorted. “We don’t have that long before the pirate and the merman arrive to talk about this power-sharing thing, so you and I need to get home.” He paused, and though it was hard to tell in the darkened car, I thought he was grinding his teeth. Transparency was awfully inconvenient.
“What else?”
“I have asked the dragonmaster to send one of the dragons from Elfheim to the area to see if there are any clues. Their senses of vision and smell are better than ours. Now that I know to look for vampires, I was able to give better instructions.”
I stared out the front window, counting to ten. Then twenty. “You can bring a dragon into New Orleans to track for you? To the vacant lot? And the dragon can report what it sees back to you?”
Rand huffed. “The whole greenhouse is a transport now; I couldn’t use it last night because I couldn’t get Melanwahr inside without people seeing. We don’t need that kind of attention. The dragons will talk to me, but I don’t know if they would talk to you. They can be peculiar.”
Well, God forbid anything in this whole scenario should be peculiar.
“Fine.” I leaned against the pillowy headrest and closed my eyes, glad my entrance back into New Orleans’ preternatural society hadn’t ended in anyone dying. The thing that bothered me most was not Zrakovi’s hatred; I’d expected that. I wasn’t really even surprised by Alex’s surprise, or anger, or hatred, if that’s what it was.
What surprised me was my own lack of emotion where Alex was concerned. Sure, I’d felt a pang of loss when I first saw him, but it had been short-lived. I’d felt much more emotion over having my house confiscated by the Elders. I had loved Alex, still loved Alex.
Didn’t I? Or did I love the idea of Alex?
Another thought occurred to me.
I turned my head slowly and squinted at the elf as he guided the Rolls through Mid-City. How unfair that God had made him so beautiful on the outside and so utterly elven on the inside. I used to think he was spiteful and delusional and evil, and he was—by my standards. What I had come to understand, though it had taken a while, was that he was perfectly normal by elven standards. He was complex, capable of both kindness and cruelty, and emotionally alien. I would never fully trust him, transparent or not.
“Rand, did you do anything to manipulate my emotions before or during the meeting?”
He glanced over at me and, to his credit, frowned in confusion. “No, why?”
“I just wondered.”
He let it go a few seconds, then said, “Transparency, Dru.”
“I don’t like it that you call me Dru,” I said. “Dru was my great aunt.” The black sheep of the family. Well, until I came along.
“Don’t change the subject. Why would you think I’d tampered with your emotions before the meeting? I can’t do that, by the way. I can hold your mind, but I can’t change it.”
Good to know. “I just thought I’d feel more when I saw them all again. It surprised me that I didn’t.”
“Didn’t respond to seeing Alex, you mean?”
That elf understood way more than I thought. I sighed. Transparency. “Yes. I thought it would hurt more when I saw him.”
“You’ve been drifting in opposite directions for months, Dru. Even I could see that. Eugenie talked about it too. She didn’t think you guys would stay together. I don’t think she’ll be surprised when I tell her you’ve separated.”
Yeah, but she’d be very surprised to hear I was living with the father of her unborn son. I’d like to spin that story to her myself. “I want to see her, Rand.”
“Not now.”
Another non-explanation.
“Do I have to say the T-word?”
“Elfheim is locked tight as a drum, especially my lands and house. Some of the Fae Hunters who back Florian have been caught skulking around the Royal Manor House. Security is paramount.”
I counted to thirty this time. “You mean you have her locked up and don’t want me to see it?”
“It’s for her own safety, and my child’s. Eugenie and the baby are the best weapons anyone could use to try and control me. You could be used as a weapon, of course, but you can take care of yourself. They can’t.”
What he said was true, but I didn’t have to like it. And I didn’t have to stay out of Elfheim.
If I couldn’t wear him down, I’d go in alone. Well, maybe with a pirate or a merman.
Chapter 12
Cue the déjà-vu music. At 1 a.m., Rene and I sat cross-legged inside a containment circle I had drawn in salt on Rand’s kitchen floor—more for others’ protection than for ours. We faced each other, knees touching, and I replicated the power-share ritual we’d done last fall. It involved a small amount of belladonna, an apple, a knife, and s
ome blood.
Instead of conducting the ritual in secret, however, this time we had an audience. Jean Lafitte sat at Rand’s kitchen table with a glass of brandy. He’d had to pour it from his own flask when he’d learned, in horror, that Rand was a teetotaler. Yet another reason for him to distrust the elf.
Rene was too nervous to care, and so was Rand, who prowled around the kitchen with his arms crossed over his chest, muttering to himself in his elven version of Welsh. He tripped on every turn as Gruff tried to keep pace.
Might as well admit it; I was nervous too.
The last time we’d done this, we had a more concrete plan in place than “wander into Vampyre and rescue two prisoners.”
Last time we’d done this, Rene and I weren’t such close friends, and I didn’t care if his primary motivators in life were his appetites for sex, money, and food. I probably shouldn’t care now, but I did.
Last time we’d done this, I hadn’t been bonded to a pure-blooded elf, and a powerful one. Rand’s presence tossed in a whole new risk. Would Rene take on some of the elf’s powers because of me? Would Rand turn into a dolphin or sprout gills? My pretty-boy elf would surely be pissed about that, and my sexy merman wouldn’t be too excited, either.
Rene and I touched bloody palms together, spoke the words of the ritual, then held hands and waited. Nothing happened for a while, until I realized the room had begun a gradual fade to gray. And grayer. Then black…..
DRU! Wake up! A faint voice in my head grew louder and louder. It wouldn’t shut up.
My eyes popped open, and I blinked at the harsh kitchen light. Next to me on the floor, Rene had curled into a fetal position with his eyes closed. Damn it. Last time, nobody had lost consciousness. It must be the elf factor.
I’m okay, I told Rand, then said it aloud for Jean’s benefit. Both of them were kneeling outside the circle, on the verge of a joint undead pirate-elven lord freakout.
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