Shades of Gray: A Jude Magdalyn Novel

by L. M. Pruitt

  Once I was sure he was gone, my knees gave way, and I slid down the wall. Leaning my head back against the wall, I took a few deep breaths, and tried to get my lungs to work properly again. The canister of brick dust glinted in the dim light, mocking me.

  “Screw you and the mason who dropped your ass.”

  “Jude, you’ve been ignoring me for the last ten minutes. I would be secure in saying you have no idea what I’ve just told you.”

  Since I’d actually been ignoring Gillian for more like fifteen or twenty minutes, I didn’t bother to correct her. I was intent on finishing my experiment and if what she had to say was really all that important, then she could tell me again. Or do the zappy thing she was fond of.

  My encounter with Williams had wiped me out, especially on the heels of my five plus hours of training with Gillian. While calling air had been a big entry on the plus side of things, being semi-seduced and scared silly in the span of fifteen minutes was an equal in the negative column. When you look at it that way, the day was even and I was exhausted.

  The night, or rather the day, had apparently passed uneventfully. When I woke up around seven, after a good twelve hours of sleep, there weren’t any assassins or dead bodies in my room. Which for me meant the day, or night, was off to a really good start. Thirty minutes later, my masterpiece of a shower had cleared out all the cobwebs and I skipped breakfast to go hunt down the brick dust again. One of my guards, with the unique name of Tancrede, kindly pointed out the other way down to the storerooms. After finding the brick dust, I gathered up the rest of what I would need and headed toward the Ritual Room, or the R.R.

  Gillian had informed me the kitchen in the R.R. was for spell-mixing. Everything in it had been cleansed and blessed, and ready for use once you got past the dust. If I could deal with vampire assassins, a little thing like allergies was so not going to get in my way.

  I don’t know how long I was down there before Gillian found me, but I knew how long she’d been there. And since she was pacing and swirling and gesturing, I even had a pretty good idea what she was so pissy about. So for me, deciding between paying attention to her and paying attention to what I was doing was pretty much a no-brainer.

  She stopped in my line of sight, and I blinked to bring her into focus. “What, precisely, is so important that you cannot pay even the slightest attention to the discussion we’re having?”

  I refrained from pointing out it wasn’t a discussion so much as a lecture. “A little security system. Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  “Well, that was informative.” I hope one day I can sound as scornful and sarcastic as Gillian does. Her we’re so worried, whatever shall we do act had worn thin pretty fast. I liked the real Gillian better. “I’m not sure if it’ll work, but I figured I’d give it a shot. Although, I was doing much better when I wasn’t being distracted by irate figures who know I’m trying to ignore them.”

  Rounding the island counter to stand next to me, Gillian peered down at the ingredients spread on the surface. “Brick dust. Rowan wood. Holy water.” She turned her head to look at me, eyes puzzled. “I confess, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re attempting here, Jude.”

  “That makes me feel so much better,” I muttered, raking my fingers through my hair. Unlike Gillian’s, which had fallen back into place once she stopped moving back and forth semi-frantically, my hair was tangling with me standing in one place. I tugged at the knots for a moment before giving up.

  “Brick dust is laid across a doorway to prevent any living person who means you harm from entering.” Gillian nodded, and I continued my explanation. “The rowan tree was laid across the door to protect the inhabitants, traditionally, in Ireland.”

  My fingers ran lightly over the bottle of holy water. There wasn’t a great deal, and I made a note to see what needed to be done about replenishing it. Given the current supernatural climate, it seemed to be one of those things you should have too much of rather than not enough. Better safe than sorry, or dead.

  “And holy water is something vampires are highly non-compatible with.”

  “Well, that’s one way of saying it.” Gillian waited a beat, and then tapped her fingers on the counter. “I’m still not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “Maybe nothing. But if you could soak the rowan wood in the holy water, sort of making an essence of rowan, you could add it to the brick dust.” I realized I was tapping my fingers to the same internal beat Gillian was, and forced myself to stop. “If the brick dust recognizes the living, the holy water the undead, and the rowan anyone with ill-will…”

  “Then you’ve covered all your bases.” Gillian shook her head, laughing softly. “Ingenious, Jude. Well thought out.” She pinched the brick dust, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger. “You’re right, it should work. Laid across all doors, windows - all entrances, the house should be well protected.”

  There it was again, a flush of pride and accomplishment. I hated to admit it, but the feeling was addictive. “Well, thanks. I don’t want to tell anybody what’s in the brick dust, because it’s easy for people to change their thoughts, and then they’d be able to get around the rowan wood.”

  “Again, a good idea.” Gillian sighed, and I knew we’d shifted from the moment of togetherness back to business. “Unfortunately, the arrival of the Council is going to postpone your experimentation.”

  I choked on air, something you think would be impossible to do. Gillian was helpful enough to give me a few thumps on the back, and for the first time in three days, it didn’t cause an avalanche of pain. “Sorry, I thought you were ranting about something else. Guess I should check in a little more often during your tirades.”

  “Amusing. Come, the Council as a whole is not patient. Mostly because one half despises the other, two thirds are less powerful than the other third, and individually they’re more neurotic than even you.” Not realizing, or caring about the insult, Gillian rubbed her hands together briskly, shaking free the last of the brick dust. “Out of the eleven that comprise it, maybe three are worthy of their position.”

  “Wow. I pretty much assumed the only thing that got you this worked up was me kissing Williams.” Rubbing my hands on my jeans, I pulled my hair back into a loose ponytail in an attempt to look less like a rag-a-muffin.

  “Most of the Council annoy me. You and Williams…frighten me.”

  I stopped, funnily enough in the exact center of the three circles. “Forgive me if I sound naïve, but I’m under the impression you don’t really scare easy. If at all.”

  “Years of practice at hiding emotions.” Gillian grasped my elbow, turning me toward her. “Entanglements such as the kind you seem to be aiming toward almost never work out. The end result is often, at minimum, heartache.”

  “For some people that might be the worst thing.”

  “Generally speaking, death is considered worse than mere heartache. Not for your mother.” She sighed, folding her hands over her waist. “But you are not your mother.” Her eyes had the same intensity Williams’s had shown last night, serving the purpose of keeping me frozen in one place. “You are stronger than your mother. More centered, despite what you show. Your years at the orphanage and on the streets have given you a core of strength that all her years with the Covenant were unable to provide.”

  I waited for a moment, unsure if she was finished. “So, you’re saying that being a street-urchin is really an advantage, and I wasn’t being all that flippant when I said that earlier.”

  “No, you were, but since it was truthful it was in the best interest of the moment to ignore the flippancy.” Gillian’s eyes were scanning my face, searching for something. I didn’t have a clue what, and I had doubts on finding out without dragging it from her. I sighed, as ready to change the subject as she was.

  “There’s my good news for the night.” I rubbed my arms, slightly chilled. “Now that things can only go downhill, I guess it’s time to go meet the Council.”

  Chapter Ten />
  As soon as I entered the informal parlor I knew I’d been absolutely right. The night was going downhill, and fast.

  A pair of ice-blonde twins, a good ten years younger than me, shot me a pair of eye-fucks. A rail-thin, twitchy, man sat scratching in the far right corner, jonesing for a fix of whatever he preferred to poison himself with. To the left of the fireplace an elderly woman snored. She appeared the most approachable out of the bunch.

  It was the priest standing to the side of one of the tall guillotine windows, hands clasped behind his back that sent a frisson of fear down my spine. With everything I’d gone through, to be scared of a priest was tantamount to finding out Superman was afraid of a mouse. Unless you’ve been raised in a Catholic orphanage, most people don’t understand being afraid of priests and nuns.

  He turned away from the window, a knowing smile creasing his face. I’d been caught staring. Damn. He was younger than I would have expected, no more than forty-five, but looked old for his age. It suggested he’d seen too much, too young, for it to not show on him somehow. His smile was friendly, borderline sympathetic.

  “I thought the Church had a thing about psychic powers. Like they’re not real, or they’re from the devil.”

  His cheeks flushed a delicate pink. His smile grew into one I couldn’t call sheepish. “Well, what the Church doesn’t know won’t hurt it, will it?”

  Before I could think of a suitable remark, a voice across the room boomed out. “Gillian, bring the girl over here so I can get a good look at her. You know I can’t see that well these days.”

  A chuckle made the rounds, and broke some, but not all of the tension. Shaking her head, Gillian guided me to a tiny woman perched on one of the endless amount of chairs around the room. I noticed more than a few of the people present bowed their head as we passed, although the Ice-T’s, as I was starting to call the twins in my mind, continued with their demon stares. I made a mental note to re-watch Village of the Damned to see if any of those kids made it out alive - and where they might have gone if they did.

  We stopped in front of the old woman - there wasn’t another way to describe her. She had to be a hundred years old, and she looked like she would blow away into little particles with one good, strong wind. Her hair was long and unbound like Gillian’s, although where Gillian’s had gone the silvery color dark hair turns as it ages, this woman’s hair was snow-white. Her hands, when they latched onto mine and tugged me to my knees in front of her, were as wafer thin as the rest of her looked.

  Slowly, she patted her way up my arms, inward to my neck, each touch a little gentle glide. I kept my face motionless as her fingers roamed over my features and ran through my hair. When she let her hands drop back into her lap, I let out a small sigh of relief.

  “Well, as best as I can tell, you don’t have that horrible Roman nose your father did. How your mother ever got around that, I’ll never know. But at least you got his skin tone, as opposed to that milk-white of your mother. She always looked half-dead, even before she was.”

  The boom of her voice was more staggering up close than it had been across the room. Her words startled me and knocked me from my heels to my butt. I heard a quickly muffled giggle behind me, and I had the sudden urge to see if I could call a little wind to mess with the perfect hair of the Ice-T’s. Instead, I addressed the possibly crazy woman sitting in front of me.

  “How is it you can’t see my nose, but you can see the color of my skin?”

  She loosed a fog-horn laugh. “Gillian, you’ve not told this child nearly enough. Girl, I’ve been blind my whole life, but the forces that be were kind enough to grant me a second sight of sorts. Small compensation, but sometimes you take what you can get.”

  I waited, certain she wasn’t done talking. I’d discovered the older a person gets, the less likely they are to confine answers to a simple sentence or two. Experience proved me right. “Feeling you up, which definitely wasn’t as much fun as when I was younger and out on the town, is just to make sure the picture in my head matches reality. For all I know, you’ve got a few of those crazy piercings in hidden places, and as far as I’m concerned they can stay hidden.”

  “Great-grandmother Lisette, you do remember the conversations we’ve had about inappropriate comments.” A man around my age pushed off one of the bookshelves. He blended into the background enough for me to not notice him and his sudden appearance startled me He stepped forward into the lamp light and I gave myself a mental shake. He was the kind of person you didn’t not notice.

  He wasn’t tall, close to my height, but well-proportioned. I had the idle thought he was hopefully that way all-over, and I bit my tongue. My hormones were problematic enough around Williams, I didn’t need to add a yen for a Council member into the mix. His skin, the same golden hue as mine and presumably my father’s, set off the chestnut colored waves around his face. His eyes, when they met mine, were a nice, ordinary sort of brown, and amused.

  He held a hand out to help me up and not to appear ungracious, I took it. He pulled me to my feet with hardly any effort, and I wondered where all the men worked out. I shoved the thought away quickly, and tried on a smile, a different sort of look for me. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Great-grandmother Lisette tends to forget what’s acceptable for public comment and what isn’t.”

  “I do no such thing, boy.” The old woman, Great-grandmother Lisette as he’d called her, banged her tiny fist on the chair of the arm. The force in her voice danced goose bumps over my skin. “I’ve reached an age where I can say whatever I damn well please, whenever I damn well please. One of the few benefits of getting old, I say.”

  “Yes, Great-grandmother Lisette.” The un-named man rolled his eyes, making me smile wider. I didn’t detect a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but his great-grandmother did.

  “Stop rolling your eyes, Theophile. One of these days you’re going to do that, and they’ll end up pointing in opposite direction, you mark my words.”

  “Theophile?” The question popped out before I could practice the same thought-censoring Great-grandmother Lisette couldn’t quite get down. Her grandson blushed, and it reminded me of a priest caught watching two healthy, young people semi-flirt.

  If this wasn’t my own version of hell, it was getting pretty close.

  “Old family name. Most people just call me Theo.” His hand was still holding mine, and the warmth coming off him was like being in a cocoon enveloping me. I was aware of Gillian behind me, and wondered how she was taking the idea of another guy on the scene, so to speak. When I pulled my hand away and turned back to her, a puzzled expression covered her face, but nothing approaching the disapproval the same gesture from Williams would have garnered.

  “Perhaps the Prophecy could take some of her valuable time to greet the rest of the Council. If it’s not too much to ask?”

  The prissy, nasal voice could have only come from one of two people. Although which was going to be virtually impossible to tell. I felt more than heard Gillian sigh next to me, and I got the feeling the two little demon brats were about as high on her list of favorite people as they were on mine. In other words, they could drop off the face of the Earth and I wouldn’t notice or care, unless it was to do a happy dance.

  “Jude Magdalyn,” Gillian shot a warning glance at the twins, careful to keep her hand on my elbow as she steered me in their direction. “These young ladies are known as Lies and Guile.”

  I waited for an explanation. Four, five minutes ticked by, but nothing came. I wasn’t going to ask why, because if I had this thing down, they were supposed to volunteer information to me. If I had to verbally compel them to do something, I would look weak in front of the other people present, and that little bit of information would wind its way through the whole Covenant. Not going to happen.

  Finally, the one on the right – Lies, I think, let out a huff of air, stomping her foot once. The one on the left, Guile – I hoped, narrowed her eyes. “We don’t like you.”
r />   “Well, that’ll just keep me up every night for the rest of my life.”

  She swung her arm suddenly, fingers curled and ready to claw at my face. I grabbed her hand, twisting her wrist sharply. She gasped, and her sister let out a sound perilously close to a growl. “We really don’t like you.”

  I smiled, although it wasn’t kind like the priest or Theo’s had been. “That’s fine. I don’t have a problem telling you that I think you’re both first-class bitches, and I don’t like you either. But until I’m dead or replaced, you’ll respect me.”

  “Or what?” The one who hadn’t been stupid enough to try and swing on me asked, her voice on a lower register than I would have thought possible given the earlier nasal quality of their voice. I sighed, shoved the stupider one away from me, sending her into her sister and the pair of them to the floor.

  “Or I’ll see the pair of you replaced.”

  “You mean dead.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, sliding my hands into my pockets. “Whatever. I’m not real picky about how some things go down.”

  “Girls.” Gillian spoke up, her tone taking on the scolding edge I was all too familiar with. “Let’s see if we can control our tempers for at least tonight.”

  “Finally time somebody stood up to the pair of them. Little demons,” the priest grumbled loud enough for the room to hear. No one commented, and I wondered if they had the same feelings or if they were just enjoying the show.

  “Perhaps it might go faster if we simply stood and told who we were.” Finally, somebody with a smart idea. I swiveled my head to see who was doing some thinking, and zeroed in on the man who looked like an addict. My surprise must have shown on my face, because he sent me a bitter smile. “Not exactly the look of a man who has a thought or two, is it?”

  With no polite way to answer the question, I shrugged again. The man rose from his crouch, bending at the waist to send me a bow of sorts. “Rian, at your service. As best as can be managed.”