“You might as well relax, Drusilla.” Mace leaned against the kitchen counter, a picture of relaxed arrogance. “We’re just going to get to know you better, and then you can go home. We’ve saved a lot of time and political maneuvering by having Rand bring you to Elf heim.”
I gave Rand my surliest look. Words weren’t needed. He shrugged and looked cute.
Some pretes were easy to type. Vampires were pale, had an unmistakable air of world-weary resignation, and projected emotions like humans. Mers and werewolves and other shifters were full of buzzy energy.
Not elves. I tried to find any similarity between Mace and Rand, something that should have tipped me off besides Rand’s lack of aura. Even with no peridot, their energy was like a whisper across skin. Rand was tall, Mace was of medium height. Rand was bright and shiny like a silver Mardi Gras doubloon; Mace was dark and suave, but looked prone to brooding. No pointy ears. Brown eyes versus blue. Stylish, charcoal sweater and slacks versus crunchy-granola sweater, jeans, and long hair.
I should give myself a break—there was nothing about Quince Randolph to set off my radar, except for his weird preoccupation with me. I’d even suspected he was an elf; I just hadn’t suspected he was a kidnapping elf.
I rethought the wine and snatched the glass off the counter. Rand laid his hand over mine. “It’ll be okay. Everyone promised to behave.” He spoke softly, his eyes on Mace. The Synod leader had strolled to the far side of the room and was looking out the window with his back to us.
“I was going to meet with the Synod in just over a week anyway.” I spat the words at him. “What is the hurry?”
“There are political considerations which are none of your concern.” Mace turned away from the window. “It has become important that we understand the scope of your abilities and your use of our ancestral staff.”
As Mace spoke, a crackle of power sent a ruffling shiver across my scalp. Forget that whisper-across-skin thing. They could turn it on and off. Mace oozed power of a kind I’d never encountered, and my fear of him jumped another notch. How can you fight what you can’t understand? One touch from him few weeks ago had almost incapacitated me and had freaked out Jean Lafitte. Jean was immortal, plus he’d seen some dangerous things in his day. Whatever unsettled him had to be bad.
“No doubt Elder Zrakovi will be unhappy about our methods, but we wanted this meeting on our terms,” Mace said. “We’ll learn more by talking to you alone.”
So this was partly about me, and partly to show the Elders they couldn’t call the shots? Willem Zrakovi would take this kidnapping very seriously. If Mace Banyan wanted to get the Elders’ attention, he’d definitely have it. But what was so urgent? I’d been using the staff for three years.
“You’re an arrogant jackass.” My anger overtook my fear, and I ignored a hiss from Rand to be quiet. “You underestimate the Elders. If your political considerations are serious enough to pull this kind of stunt, you might get more than you expect. And you”—I turned and stabbed a finger in the air at Rand— “should be ashamed of your part in this.”
I met Rand’s gaze, and his voice sounded in my head. They won’t hurt you. Stay calm. Don’t antagonize him.
My breath caught in my throat. How had he done that? Did I imagine it?
I tried to think something back at him—how did you do that?— but he just frowned and blinked.
“What are you doing?” Mace’s voice wasn’t in my head, but across the room. He spoke sharply to Rand. “Can you communicate with her?”
“Of course not,” Rand said, his voice smooth and easy. The elf was a good liar. “She’s just a wizard with a few minor elven skills. You’ll see.”
“Yet Mahout, one of our most revered relics, claimed her.” The cold brilliance in Mace’s eyes was at odds with the easy smile on his lips.
The elves wouldn’t dare hurt me, or at least I told myself that. Doing any real damage would end a centuries-long truce between the wizards and elves. Unless, as Adrian Hoffman kept telling me, I just wasn’t that important.
Or unless they were trying to break the truce. Tucking that thought away to consider once I got out of this mess, I focused instead on not hyperventilating. Suddenly, my lungs had trouble drawing air, and a headache began a steady rhythm behind my eyeballs.
“Lighten up on her, Mace.” Rand’s voice was soft. “You can’t influence her emotions. She’s one of Vervain’s—and mine.”
I could tell the second Mace’s gaze left me, and I took a deep breath. He’d been trying to control my emotions?
Mace and Rand had some kind of stare-down I couldn’t interpret. “She might be one of Vervain’s, but she’s not one of yours yet,” Mace finally said. “Don’t forget your place.”
I sat in one of the armchairs across from the sofa where Mace had taken a seat and banged my cell phone on the end table to get their attention. I’d been trying to get a signal but it was dead. Guess Verizon couldn’t hear me in Elf heim.
“Wait just a damn minute, both of you.” It wasn’t like I couldn’t hear them talking about me. “What do you mean, I’m one of yours and Vervain’s?” I asked Rand, and then turned to Mace: “You can influence a person’s emotions?”
“You don’t need to know more about our skills—you know too much already.” Mace went to pour more wine. He needed a serious attitude adjustment, and I had just the staff to do it with. If it even worked on elves. Not that I had it with me.
“Reading and manipulating emotions is an elven skill,” Rand said, coming to sit on the arm of my chair. I wasn’t sure if he was being his flirty self or was there to protect me from Mace. I suspected the latter, which made me both grateful for his presence and even more furious for bringing me here. “But it only works with members of other species, and within our own clans. Your skills seem to be aligned with my clan, the Tân.”
Fire elves, just as Adrian had suspected. “And Mahout was the staff of the Tân.”
“Yes, it—”
“Silence, Quince Randolph,” Mace snapped. “We don’t discuss Synod business in front of wizards.” Mace said wizards much as I might say toad spawn.
I looked up at Rand. “You’re not Synod, are you?” The Tân chief ’s name had been Vervain.
Mace came to stand in front of us. “No, he’s not, and he’d do well to remember that.”
Rand rested a hand on my shoulder, and I felt myself relax involuntarily. Mace couldn’t manipulate my emotions, but Rand could. He’d hidden his power when he was spying on me in New Orleans and pretending to care about Eugenie, and that thought was enough to help me shrug away from his hand and welcome my anger back. I was tired of this crap.
“Ask your questions, and then let me go home,” I said. “The wizards have been nothing but cooperative. I’ll ignore the fact that you’ve taken me against my will.”
Mace’s smile gave me chills. “Don’t be impatient. The other Synod members will be here shortly.”
Reclaiming his seat on the sofa, he reached over to a side table and pulled a thin cigarette from a carved wooden box. As he lit it, the smell of lavender and olive filled the room. “Would you like one? They’re quite mild.”
I shook my head. “No, and if you’re using the herbs in your smoke to calm me down, that’s not going to work either.” Tricky, smooth-talking, kidnapping elf. I’d match my Green Congress herbal knowledge against his any day.
It looked like I was about to have my meeting with the elves whether I liked it or not. I looked at my watch. Forty minutes had passed since I left Alex sitting behind the counter at Plantasy Island, assuming time in Elf heim ran parallel to the modern world. He’d probably been raising holy hell for at least a half hour and had already called the Elders. No way repercussions from this weren’t going to be ugly.
Mace took his seat again, then raised his chin and looked at the ceiling. “The others are almost here.” I couldn’t hear anything but the crackle of the fire.
I assumed the others were the three rem
aining clan chiefs. “What is it you hope to accomplish tonight?” Did they want the staff? To know what I could do that they’d consider elven magic?
Mace took a drag on his happy smoke. “We’ve been watching you for a long time, the first wizard with enough elven blood to hold some of our magic. You’re woefully unskilled, of course, but that might be just as well considering the quality of instruction you would have received from the wizards. Have you had any at all?”
I pondered my answer. Would the Elders want the elves to know they were trying to teach me to use my elven magic, or that Gerry had encouraged me to use it my whole life? Probably not. “None to speak of. This is all about the staff? Because it claimed me?”
A darkness crossed his face, and his expression sent a spear of unease through me. Those refined manners could dissipate in seconds.
“One of our ancient staffs should never have fallen into wizard hands. The fact that it claimed you as its master is”— he clenched his jaw so hard it could have cracked nuts— “unacceptable.”
I smiled at him, seeing a solution. I loved the way the staff enhanced my magic, but I’d survived without it before and could do so again. Long before I lit a flame at Six Flags and burned down a good chunk of the protected wetlands in Plaquemines Parish, I’d set a table in the Napoleon House banquet room on fire (I’d been aiming at Jean Lafitte), exploded a goodly number of ancient crypts in the Beyond’s version of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, and had done lots of damage to my own house.
“No problem,” I said. “Just send me home, I’ll return the staff to the elves, and our business is finished. I’m sure you’re too busy to worry about me, and I have a necromancer to find.” And a life that doesn’t involve sinister, cigarette-smoking elves and their pretty flunkies.
“Once a staff has claimed you, you cannot give it up while you still live,” Mace said, his voice flat, the threat understood. Rand reached out to give me what was no doubt a comforting touch, but at my glare, he pulled his hand away.
There was more going on here than just the elves wanting to reclaim Charlie. Political considerations, Mace had said. Maybe it had something to do with the Interspecies Council, but those negotiations were far, far above anything a wizard on my level would know about.
“If you don’t want the staff, what do you want?”
“We first verify your lineage, to see if you really are of Vervain’s fire elves,” he said. “I understand you can use hydromancy but that’s not specific to any clan. I’ve seen no sign that you hold any of the skills unique to my airfolk or Lily’s water elves, but that remains to be seen.”
“How did you know I could do hydromancy?” It wasn’t a skill I advertised since the Elders didn’t like it.
“We have ways.”
The number of people who knew I could do hydromancy was limited, and unless he pulled it out of my mind, Quince Randolph wasn’t one of them.
“Who talked to you?” I leaned forward in the chair. Other than Alex and Jake, no one outside a small group of wizards— including Zrakovi and Adrian—knew of my skills. Although Gerry could have told people I didn’t know.
A woman’s voice, whisper soft, spoke from behind me and sent a wave of tingles over my skin. “We keep track of these things.” I stood and turned, fists clenched. Couldn’t elves just knock on the door like civilized people instead of this scary appearing-out-of-nowhere shit?
In this case it was two elves. I stared at the woman who’d spoken.
“You.” It was the tall, pale- haired woman who’d been in a tête-à- tête in Etienne Boulard’s office. And she’d been sitting with Etienne’s assistant Terri when we came out of our meeting. Had Adrian been running his vampire-besotted mouth and telling people things they didn’t need to know?
“I am Lily,” she said, and I fought the urge to hide my hands behind my back. I couldn’t pinpoint where the impulse came from, but I really, really didn’t want to touch her. Still, if I could salvage any relationship with these people I needed to try. I forced myself to take her hand, and a light tingle of energy rushed over me before I jerked it back.
“Fascinating,” she murmured. Lily’s hair, pulled atop her head in an elaborate up-do, set off her pale green eyes. Now she was an elf, or at least what I expected an elf to look like. She hadn’t seemed so exotic in the dim lights of L’Amour Sauvage. Then again, maybe she could assume some kind of glamour in public. Or maybe she’d been wearing camouflage jewelry of some kind. Rand had been even prettier once he stripped off the peridot.
A short, dark- haired man with swarthy skin and charcoal eyes came to stand beside her. He too held out a hand for me to shake. I wondered if the elves had a secret handshake and if they were waiting to see how long it took me to figure it out. It was all terribly polite for a kidnapping.
“I am Betony, of the people of earth,” he said, and turned to Mace. “She is definitely one of Vervain’s—look at her.”
I wasn’t one of anybody’s, thank you very much. “I’m a Green Congress wizard. That’s the only cult I belong to.” Well, it felt like a cult. And it was better than an elven clan, which probably had its own Kool- Aid.
“Then let me greet her.” I looked around for the source of the voice and saw a woman rising from a chair in the shadows of a darkened corner I would have sworn was empty a moment before. The elves must have their own type of transports.
She was petite, a bit shorter than me in my overpriced designer boots. Her rich blond hair ran in a braid down her back, and while her skin was smooth, an old wisdom dwelt in her blue-green eyes—very similar to the color of mine. And Rand’s. How whacked was that?
Her demeanor was more imperious than the others, not arrogant like Mace, but regal. She held herself with detachment, showed less curiosity. I couldn’t read elven emotions but I got that much from the set of her jaw and the tilt of her head. She was older than the others.
“You’re Vervain?” I held out my hand to get the secret handshake over with.
She nodded and smiled, and the difference it made in her face was dramatic. Years dropped away, and her cold beauty melted into something warmer and prettier. How much of it was illusion? I got no uncomfortable vibes from her touch, just warmth.
“You’re right, Rand. Her dominant ancestor was of our clan.” My elfnapper had retreated to the corner chair now that his chief was here. The suck- up merely nodded.
I looked back at her, fascinated—we were sort of cousins forty-thousand times removed. I spared a moment of sadness for Gerry that, as enamored with the elves as he’d been, he hadn’t ever met one. They rarely left Elf heim, and for many years the Elders had let people believe the entire species was extinct. “Both of my parents had elven blood. Can you tell which of my parents was dominant?”
Vervain smiled. “We might be able to tell.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked. “This family reunion rocks it, but I’d like to go home.”
“Sit here.” Mace pointed toward a round table, and I reluctantly followed the others. There were five chairs and six of us. Rand sat in an armchair a few feet away, his eyes glued to me, face tense. His posture and tight expression told me he was uneasy, which in turn made me nervous. The irony that my stalker seemed to be my only potential ally in this funhouse wasn’t lost on me. Although if I got home in one piece, I planned to rip him a new one.
Mace took the seat to my left and Betony to my right. The two women settled across the table. I waited expectantly. This was their show, and I figured I’d do well to keep my mouth shut, although remaining quiet wasn’t one of my stronger skills, elven or otherwise.
“What we must do, Drusilla, is learn about you, about your skills, in order to determine exactly what of our magic you have inherited, and how you’ve used it,” Mace said. “It seems clear you are of Vervain’s people, but it’s vital we be sure. Looks can deceive.”
“Questioning her will take too long, and wizards are notoriously clever at twisting the truth,” Lily said. “We need
to do a regression.”
“No!” Rand’s voice was just short of a shout, and we all turned to look at him. He leaned forward, fingers turning white from the pressure he exerted on the chair’s wooden arms. “That wasn’t what we agreed to.”
“What’s a regression?” I might as well have been talking to myself, for all the attention the elves paid me. But if Rand didn’t want this regression thing to happen, it had to be bad.
“You will learn your place, or you will leave,” Mace told him just as Vervain murmured, “Peace, son.”
Son? Was she Rand’s mother?
“Very well, we will learn what we need to know using the old methods.” Mace turned to me. “Then, we’ll talk about how we might be of service to each other, if you’re still able.”
CHAPTER 22
I was still pondering the words old methods when he got to the part about if you’re still able.
“What do you mean, if I’m still able?” If I’m able because I might be too stupid to understand deep and mysterious elven things, or if I’m able because I might be unconscious—or dead? My heart fluttered as I pushed my chair back. I’d been angry tonight. Alarmed. Concerned. Surprised. But this was the first time I’d felt physically threatened.
Mace grasped my arm. His grip wasn’t rough, but it also wasn’t yielding. “How easily this goes depends on how willingly you allow us to know you.” Mace looked around me at Betony, and the dark- haired man gave a brief nod and locked my other arm in a firm grasp. Mace had said know as if it should be epic and biblical. Vervain extended an arm across the table and grasped my arm above Mace’s hand.
Holy crap. They were all touching me. Nothing had happened yet, but I knew what was coming. Whatever mind- scramble Mace Banyan had tried on me last month, he was going to do again—with help.
I tried to wrest myself free, but they only gripped harder. “Don’t struggle, Drusilla,” Mace breathed into my ear. “Let us know you.” Definitely a capital Know. His voice grew muted, but I was able to hear one more sentence: “Quince Randolph, if you move an inch closer, I will have you lashed.”
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