“How am I the worst? I’m trying to help you save your familiar. As for our interlude, tell me with a straight face that you didn’t enjoy that.”
Ohmigod, he was so infuriating, but to be fair, I couldn’t think of how to argue that he was the worst. He actually said what I kept trying to forget—some of us might die fighting the Withered Lord. “Let’s—focus,” I stammered. “So is Daisy still trapped there?”
“She was just transferred to the infirmary,” Montague said. “She’s passed out. The guy there said she caught the flu.”
“So Piers used winter break to overwork her magic,” Harris said. “I would bet you anything they are using her to find Stuart and his cohorts, and that was how Councilman de Brigue was killed by Orson. They actually found Stuart, and he thought he would go in there, but Orson defended Stuart successfully. Now, the council will really be out for blood.”
“Will Stuart be able to help us fight the Withered Lord if he’s hiding from the council?” Montague asked.
“Probably not,” Harris said.
“We need Stuart,” Montague said. “He’s our link to the fae.”
I had this tingling sense of terror, like everything was going to collapse. If it collapsed, everything Ignatius fought for and Samuel died for would be lost. Mom would stay in the clutches of a demon. Alec would be stuck in Sinistral forever. The guys looked hesitant, and I huffed. “I’m…I’m gonna go see Daisy.”
I ran out of Lancelot House, hugging my jacket around me, shivering because it was really coat weather and not jacket weather. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to fight a demon. If Stuart’s gone…and we can’t even try…
The infirmary always felt eerily quiet because it was such a large building for what it was. More like a hospital than the small clinic you might expect a college campus to have.
“You can see her,” the nurse said. “But she needs her sleep. This is a nasty strain of the flu this year.”
“The flu, huh?”
“Have you heard of it? The flu?” he asked sarcastically. He wasn’t here last year. One of Piers’ cronies.
Daisy was the only patient, and she was tucked in bed up to her chin, fast asleep—or comatose. I had never seen her without makeup, her skin a washed-out olive color instead of the usual healthy golden-tan.
“Daisy?” I whispered. “Girl, you look rough. I wish I knew how to apply makeup like you do. Not that you need it. You’re still gorgeous, actually. I just know that you’re the type who would apply a red lip if you were dying. I’m rambling, I realize.”
A lump rose to my throat when she remained unconscious. I gave her shoulder a little nudge. “Daisy, please wake up. Did he hurt you?”
I shut my eyes and clasped her hand in mine, casting a quick energy spell to help with her spell exhaustion, since Harris said that was the real cause. “Light from your hand to mine, light from your eyes to mine…I give power to Daisy Pendleton.”
Her eyes fluttered open briefly. She gripped my hand weakly. “Charlotte…”
“Daisy?”
Her eyes welled. “He made me find Stuart…”
“Councilman de Brigue was killed by Orson,” I said. “I think Stuart got away.”
“I don’t want this anymore…” Her voice was barely a wheeze. She sounded so weak. “I don’t want this magic. Take it from me.”
“I can’t take it from you,” I said. “And I don’t want to. You’ll do good things with your magic someday.”
“He…used me.”
I paused. “I mean…did he…touch you?”
“No. No. You keep thinking that’s worse. It’s not. I’d rather he take my body than my magic if he has to take something. Maybe I could at least…detach from that. But no. He just wants my magic. He locked me up all alone for all of winter break… All alone. For two weeks.” She started sobbing. “Fuck him. I hope he rots and dies. I hope a demon spider catches him in a huge web and sucks the magic from him really slowly.”
“It’s all going to be okay,” I said.
“I think your grandma had it right,” she said. “I wanna give up. I don’t want my magic. I hate it.”
“You’re just tired. You have to avenge your parents, right? Your mom and your dad…they’re looking down on you, giving you strength. I’m sure of it.”
She looked off into the distance. “It’s been a long time,” she said quietly. “Sometimes…I don’t remember them as well as I used to.”
I grabbed a tissue from a nearby box and handed it to her as her eyes welled. “Memories fade. Love doesn’t. And you only get stronger all the time.”
She managed a smile. “Yeah, I guess I’d be tougher too if I had three hot boyfriends.”
“Well, you need to live if you want three hot boyfriends of your own,” I said. “Three or four.”
“Four?” She tried to sit up. “Did Harris finally—”
“Maybe… Sorry. I don’t rub it in but for the sake of transparency I should probably tell you we just had like, argument sex.”
“You can have him. He’s not good in bed. I just know.”
“Mm…”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, I’m serious. He’s not bad. I kinda liked argument sex.”
“Did he worship you like a queen?”
I snorted. “I wouldn’t want him to.”
Daisy threw out a hand. “Not for me. I accept nothing less than goddess status.”
“Okay, single girl, good luck with that.”
She dabbed her eyes. “You really do amuse me. Thank you.”
“I amuse you?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s usually an insult,” I said.
“No, no,” she said. “My grandmother would always say that my cousin amused—” She paused. “Okay, maybe it is an insult. But I mean it.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Charlotte
Classes had an air of tension, and the professors seemed to be keeping a close eye on us. Daisy was still weak, but the plan was progressing anyway. The vampires were on their way. I was having a hard time focusing.
“You can’t break the curse like this,” Firian said, when I tried to set aside an evening to restore his human form. “You’re jittery. Remember your meditations? You have to calm down.”
“I’m—I’m sorry. I’m not doing it on purpose. I just keep thinking about…”
“I know you’re scared, but you have to keep your focus no matter what. Sit and take a deep breath.”
“I want to at least try.”
“Practice your focus first. I don’t want to get turned into a two-headed wombat instead of a human.”
“Random.”
His eyes narrowed. “I wish that was random. It’s a real story I heard one time.”
I tried to meditate and calm down, but I couldn’t seem to cast the spell. “I think Piers gave me a broken relic!”
“I think you are just panicking about fighting a demon,” Firian said.
“Ya think?”
The next day, as I was leaving my necromancy class, Piers caught me outside the door and said, “Charlotte, please see me in my office.”
“Now?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Now.”
I wasn’t comfortable with this at all. When I hesitated, he just kept looking at me. “Are you afraid of me, Charlotte?”
“No.”
“Good. Then, come. I just want to show you something.”
I followed him to the room that used to be Ignatius’ office. He’d had it recently redesigned, and then I set it on fire, so it was renovated again. Well, Piers had put his own stamp on it, and that stamp was gloomy clutter, which did fit a warlock well, at least. The walls were lined with photos and paintings of relatives that all looked creepily similar.
As soon as I sat down, Piers sat down as well, and opened a drawer. He took a little doll from the drawer. The doll had a crude face and a simple body, but it had a head of what looked like coarse dark hair. It was also
wrapped in bands of iron. Piers stood the doll up on the desk between us with another tight smile.
“Most faeries suffer in the real world,” Piers said. “But there are two types that still fare pretty well. Gruagach and house silkies. We’ve long heard that a lord of the gruagach and the princess of the house silkies serve the queen as spies in this world. Sound familiar? They worked for Stuart.”
Orson and Penny were royalty? Sheesh.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Sure. Sure you don’t. Well, Lord Orson killed a man from our council. I’m sure you realize this can’t stand. Professor de Brigue, before he was killed, managed to rip hair from the prince’s head. With this doll, we can make him sick until he dies. De Brigue will be avenged, but that isn’t enough. We must have Stuart. We have given the faery queen one week to decide if she wants to go to war with us or not.”
“War with…the faeries? What would that mean?”
“Well, I don’t think they will look kindly on you,” he said. “Fickle humans. This is just what they fear about us. Your Wyrd wand can be used to break into their world.”
“I won’t let you use my wand. Plus, I lost it.”
“You ‘lost’ it.”
“Yes.”
He smacked his hands on the desk. “You’ve been distracted in class. You’re scared. You have your whole life ahead of you. A father who loves you. You don’t want to die, Miss Byrne. The fear is written all over your face. The weakness. But I don’t enjoy using innocents, so I am giving you one last chance. Leave this place. Go back to your human life and never return. Otherwise, I can’t promise anything.”
“You don’t enjoy using innocents? What about Daisy?”
“Daisy was born into this life.”
“She doesn’t want it. Just so you know, you are not the good guys. You aren’t ‘ethereal’. When you make creepy dolls out of real hair and use them to kill people, that’s your first tip off.”
“Then, you had better run from us,” he said. “Go back to your father. At the end of this week, the faery queen’s time is up. These bands of iron will tighten.” He held up the doll. “Lord Orson dies, and Professor Jablonsky is next. You and Daisy will help the council. Like it or not.”
I swallowed. The voice that came out of me hardly even felt like my own. “No way will I help you. You are not going to touch my wand. You already tried once and it didn’t go well.”
He slowly stood up. “Choose your next words carefully, dear.”
“I am not your ‘dear’.”
“You’re just a young woman and we have been lenient with you because we don’t hurt young women. But your grace period is up. Go home. I beg you to go home.”
The council is going to war with the faeries.
I wondered what that meant, exactly. The faeries could just stay hidden away in Wyrd, but Piers had the ability to kill Orson, and it seemed feasible that Stuart might step forward to rescue him, so it would keep getting messier.
“I’ll go,” I said, in a low voice.
“I knew you would make the right choice,” Piers said. “Stick to it. Forget all of this.”
I left his room in a blur and ran back to Lancelot House. Montague was sitting at his desk writing and Harris was taking a nap, but he woke up quick when I stormed in the door.
“We have to defeat the Withered Lord and get to Wyrd,” I said. “Now—or never.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Charlotte
“So you know where we’re going?” I asked Montague, puzzling over the road map of Savannah.
“Rayner is waiting for us,” he said. “You can put that down. I’ve been there before. Then we’ll get Professor McGuinness, Master Blair and Alec. Then…” He grimaced, his knuckles white gripping the steering wheel even though we were on a straight highway.
“Then we fight a demon,” Harris said.
“This is going so well,” Firian said.
I had to break the news to Firian that I didn’t have time to meditate and focus and lift the curse. Breaking curses requires a totally different mindset than the aggressive magic we would cast to defeat the Withered Lord, and I just couldn’t seem to get my head in the game, so I was feeling like a failure. So much for my yoga practice, my meditation training, ‘Fares wyrd as she must’ and everything else. I was letting Firian down when he needed me.
And we were missing part of the crew. Daisy was still drained of magic and it was too dangerous to sneak her out and we didn’t know where Stuart was hiding.
The danger was real, but running away wouldn’t fix anything either. I didn’t even believe Piers when he said the council would leave me alone if I went home. If my wand had power, they would want that power.
“Just leave this to me,” Harris said. “I have the grail water.”
Montague raised an eyebrow. “I can’t wait to see how you plan on getting the grail water into the demon.”
“He doesn’t have to drink it, Monty. Just the touch of it burns. We just need enough distractions to get close to him.”
“It’s that easy,” Montague said. “Why didn’t your family kill this demon a million years ago?”
“Because there is only one vial,” Harris said. “That’s why using it will make me an enemy of the Hapsburgs. I just want to make it crystal clear that the two of you should stay back. The vampires can weaken a demon and I’ll deal the finishing blow.”
“‘The vampires’,” Montague said. “What am I, then?”
“You’re my best friend,” Harris growled. “I don’t give a shit about the other vampires. After all, if Rayner and his clan get taken out you don’t even have to worry about having a sire anymore.”
Montague got quiet for a long moment. “Don’t ever say that again.”
“Monty, if you start to care about your sire, you’ll become beholden to him,” Harris said. “You’re stronger than that. There is no reason to protect him. They are real vampires but you’re not that far gone yet. I’ve seen you waking up from nightmares about how they murdered Lisbeth’s family.”
“Lisbeth might be in trouble, though,” Montague said. “And he protects her.”
“You don’t even know Lisbeth.”
“I sort of do,” Montague said. “At this point…I know all of them.”
Harris made a sound of frustration. “It’s happening.”
“What?”
“We’re losing you. I knew we would lose you. We can’t fight vampirism.”
“You’re not fucking losing me. I just don’t want Rayner to die.”
“No good warlock would care if a murderous vampire gets killed fighting a demon.”
“Guys!” I shouted, clapping my hands like I was breaking up a cat fight. “It’s so awesome to be in-fighting right before a big battle!”
Ohmigod.
For the rest of the drive I took charge by force. I turned on the radio and I wouldn’t let Montague keep “Welcome to the Jungle” on either. “We are listening to the bubbliest damn pop music I can find until y’all mellow out and if you don’t behave I am putting on those morning show guys who were talking about NASCAR!”
By late afternoon we reached Savannah. Montague drove us to a truly impressive mansion right in the heart of the city, and in the real world—not the parallel.
“This is where the vampires are?” I asked.
“Yes. They’re staying with Ulf.” He put the car in park. “This is where I went the last time. I wasn’t getting my mom a birthday present. I went to visit one of the oldest vampires in America.”
“Why? And why did you lie about it?”
He stroked a hand over the top of my head, his brown eyes tender but a little distant. He didn’t seem to know what to say.
But I got it. He was…becoming a vampire. When I first met him, he was trying to disregard the idea that he had a sire, but now…
Eventually, would he come to love Lisbeth? Instead of me? Would he consider Rayner, Silvus, Jie and Th
om his brothers instead of Alec and Harris?
I wrapped my hand around his.
“I’m all yours,” he said.
Then he threw open the door. “Wait here,” he said. “I don’t know that this is a safe place for humans.”
I watched him walk into the grand house. The door opened for him, and he stepped inside. I knew he’d be back in a minute, but I was disconcerted.
“He can’t help it,” Harris said gently.
In a few moments, Montague did return with the rest of his clan. He could fit in with them now. I saw it. He was changing, becoming more graceful and assured with every year. He seemed sexier than he ever had, when I saw him with the others, the predatory beauty that they shared. They fit together, but I wasn’t going to let them have him.
Rayner walked up to Harris’ window. “Good day, little spawn of the vampire hunters,” he said. “This is truly a day for the history books. We would rather not step into your parallel, but we’ve rented two rooms at the Econ Lodge off of the I-95 highway, and we will prepare the gateway into Sinistral for you while you collect your friends.”
“The Econ Lodge?” Harris said. “Did you blow all your budget on those suits?”
“No one cares if you open the gates of hell at the Econ Lodge,” Jie said. “Yelp said ‘it was so bad I slept in my car’ ‘reeks of marijuana’ and ‘so many cockroaches’. That’s where we go for shenanigans, and a good meal.”
“Good lord, what a poor choice of words,” Silvus said. “Just to be clear, we are feeding on the humans, not the cockroaches.”
Okay, so they looked sexy, but they still didn’t quite have a monopoly on suave.
“I have given Montague the key. We’ll see you this evening,” Rayner said. “I hope you’re all ready for what you’re about to take on. I expect we’ll do most of the work, but we will need distractions.”
“We’re ready,” Harris said. “And I was thinking the same thing about you. I have plans for this fight.”
Rayner looked unimpressed, in the way that probably only a multi-centuries old being can look. “Well, we’ll discuss it at the hotel.”
From there, we entered the parallel. I was nervous because I half-expected the council to have spies or to have murdered Professor McGuinness or something, but he answered the door right away, and this time Professor Adams was there too.
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