The two joined us in the conference room and sat side by side, listened to our proposals, and studied the photos of the Elms and the surrounding buildings and streets. When we were done, they conversed in low voices, in ancient French, the black-haired Leo leaning often to listen to his blond, blue-eyed bestie and secundo heir. They looked like very young, elegant, princely, educated, moneyed, metrosexual men who lived in a constant state of ennui, but they were also fighters with over nine hundred years of warfare and politics between them. Finally Leo sat upright and asked, “Jane, which option do you prefer?”
“I’ve become a control freak working for you, so I think we need armed men, our men, and that Derek should run things.”
“Eli Younger? You are the most currently experienced warrior in this room, even more so than my own men, with the most up-to-date knowledge of electronic warfare. What say you?”
Eli glanced sidelong at me and said, “If we were on foreign soil, I’d be all over Jane’s choice. But I’m torn between using our own men and using police. They might not take a shot our own men would, but they would also be responsible for any political fallout.”
“Derek?” he asked his soon-to-be-full-time Enforcer.
“I don’t want any of my men facing charges,” he said. “I say use cops.”
“And, Grégoire? Your thoughts?”
In a languid tone Grégoire said, “We could use off-duty police officers in tandem with our own men, and put them all under the control of Jodi Richoux.”
Which was bloody brilliant. It put all the responsibility under the wings of an NOPD officer, it divided the responsibility of whether to take a shot or not, and it placed any political or legal fallout in the hands of cops. I started laughing. So did the small team gathered there as they understood what the implications were.
Leo said to me, “And so you see the benefit of a few centuries of political strategizing. I’ll have my Enforcer, Derek Lee, contact Detective Richoux when she goes on duty this morning. We will allow her to choose the men and women she wants on the roofs. Derek, it will be up to you to assign men and women who will work well with the people Ms. Richoux suggests.”
“Yes, sir,” Derek said. “I’ll handle it and bring the full team in for vetting and instructions. Unless you think that should take place off grounds?” he asked Grégoire.
“If you could arrange that meeting for NOPD Eighth District, that would be preferable.” Grégoire sent me a smile, the kind that belonged on the face of the teenager he looked. “I do believe that Jane and George Dumas have recently met the police commissioner?”
“Yeah. Go, me. You meet all sorts of people when you get handcuffed and taken to the pokey.”
Grégoire looked at Leo and they smiled together. “The pokey,” Grégoire said.
“She is charming, is she not?”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “I’ll call the woo-woo room and see if I can get you on a conference call before you go to bed in the morning.”
“Excellent,” Leo said, standing. “Shall we?” he asked his secondo heir, and led the way out the door.
When it closed, Eli said, “And that right there is why fangheads scare me. Three moves ahead of us on the chessboard.”
“At least,” Derek said.
“Later,” I said. “I need my bed. Almost dying takes a lot out of me these days.”
“Wimp,” Derek said.
I just shook my head and left the room for the outdoors, dialing NOPD, the in-house number of the woo-woo room, the Paranormal Cases Department, headed up by Jodi Richoux. Eli was close on my heels as I set up a conference call between Derek and the woo-woo cops. I could mark one conclave responsibility off my shoulders.
* * *
The lights were on in Bruiser’s apartment when Eli deliberately drove slightly out of our way and pulled into an empty but illegal parking place on St. Philip Street. He didn’t look at me, staring out the windshield, his thumbs tapping out a slow, syncopated rhythm on the steering wheel. “Fine,” I said.
“You’ve been saying that a lot lately, usually when it isn’t fine. Wanna talk about that or you wanna go bump bones with Bruiser?”
I yanked my cell out of my pocket and texted Bruiser, Out front.
He didn’t text back. Instead he stepped onto the third-floor gallery of his apartment, unit eleven, and leaned out, hands on the iron railing. He was wearing a pair of loose pants. No shirt. Even through the distance and the armored glass, I could feel his eyes on me.
“Fine,” I said to my partner. “I know when I’m outsmarted.” Not that I didn’t want to go up. It just sounded so much like a booty call. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I opened the door and stepped into the fall heat and the cooler night breeze. The winds changed direction often, the Mississippi, the bayous, Lake Pontchartrain, and the Gulf of Mexico creating their own unpredictable weather system. Eli pulled away from the curb, the car door shutting on its own.
Heels tapping louder than I wanted, I went in through the wide hallway-like entrance and climbed the stairs to the top floor. I smelled Bruiser before I saw him. Man and Onorio and heat and that vaguely citrusy cologne he wore. Just a hint. Not too much to mess with my sensitive nose. Saw the light pouring across the floor, angled to indicate his door was open. I climbed the last steps.
Bruiser was waiting in the doorway, one shoulder on the doorjamb, still shirtless, barefoot. His pants rode on his hips, abs ripped in the angled light, the line of hair pointing down from his chest, to disappear beneath the low-hung waistband. There was heat in his eyes, though his face showed nothing. No emotion at all. I didn’t drop in often. Okay, never. Except for that first time, I always waited to be asked. Waited to be invited. This was different. I could feel the Onorio heat of his body when I slowed two feet away.
On the music system, something classic R&B with a hint of rambunctious country in the instrumentation was playing, a musician I didn’t know. The lyrics flowed out into the hallway.
“Blindsided by love, with no chance to put up a fight.
Well, I never saw it coming. I know I can’t recover. I’m a victim of the night. . . .”
The words were perfect for Bruiser and Leo. Or for Bruiser and me. Ohhh, I thought. Bruiser and me. I realized I had stopped moving and forced my feet to take the last steps. Right up to the man in the doorway. He smiled at last, and when he did, he caught me up in his arms, one arm like a vise across my back pulling me to him. The other hand slipped up to cup the back of my head. His brown eyes sparkled with laughter and a curl of dark hair dropped forward, to tangle in his eyelashes. The lyrics continued.
“Blindsided by love. Yes, I’m a victim of the night.”
His lips hesitated before they met mine, a millimeter of space between our mouths. I let my lips curl up and felt the tension slide away from me. I lifted my arms to his shoulders, wrapped them around him, wanting out of the shoulder holster that was suddenly constricting. “Blindsided, huh?”
“Everything’s better with bacon,” he whispered. And that was the last thing either of us said for a very long time.
* * *
On Bruiser’s gallery, we drank tea and ate French toast that had been delivered exactly five minutes after I woke. Wearing his shirt and nothing else. My ankles were crossed, resting across Bruiser’s legs, and we were nestled close on the love seat that hadn’t been there the last time I visited. He leaned in and licked syrup off my lips with a quick flick of his tongue, reminding me of other things he had done with that tongue during the night.
I made a small “Mmm” of pleasure and he chuckled, that manly, exhausted sound they make when they know just how well they have pleased. The vibration of the quiet laughter shook his chest. I rotated my head to rest it on his shoulder, my body in a C shape that should have been uncomfortable but was instead cozy.
Bruiser was one of very few men taller than I
was, tall enough to make me feel small and delicate sometimes. Like this time. My hair slid across him and he gathered it up, smoothing it back.
“I love the way your hands feel on my hair,” I said on a sigh.
“And I love the feel of your hair,” he said. So far, that was the closest we came to saying the three magic words. After the debacle of Ricky-Bo’s betrayal, I wasn’t ready to say words that were more . . . sugary. And Bruiser acted as if the words were not even in his vocabulary. Which suited me just fine. Really. It did.
He freshened our mugs and I added more sugar and cream to the extra-strong English Breakfast Blend. It was the perfect start to a day destined to be anything but perfect, because the conclave was soon and the final preparations had to be honed and refined and today was the day for hundreds of details to be dealt with. Already a few witches were descending on the city and taking hotel rooms, gathering in cafés, chatting informally in bars. Starting the political yammering and lobbying and scheming and intriguing, trying to firm up or change the agendas. Trying to create or destroy alliances. Stuff I hated. Stuff that would change the world as I know it.
Yet, around us, the night lightened, graying the world through a rare fog, misting its way off the Mississippi River and through the Quarter. The fog made everything seem personal, intimate, as if we were the only people left in New Orleans. Bruiser tickled my soles and I kissed his scruffy chin. It was a rare, peaceful moment and I so totally owed Eli for making it happen.
Behind us, framed in a shadowbox and hanging over the bed, was a brown, yellow, and pink T-shirt, ugly as all get out except for the cute pig on it. And the logo BACON IS MEAT CANDY. It was the T-shirt I’d worn the first time I came to visit him here, bringing lunch from Cochon Butchers, and had ended up staying for more than lunch. As long as my T-shirt hung over Bruiser’s bed, I knew we were good, no matter how bad things might get in reality.
The fog heralded cooler air, the first hint of real fall, and promised rain soon. No surprise there. New Orleans got an average of sixty-four inches of sky juice a year, and had no rainy season. Or, rather, it was rainy season all year long. In the distance, I heard a tugboat sound, long and low, and the fainter roar of traffic starting. Not even dawn and it was starting up.
My cell tinkled. Bruiser handed it to me and I answered, “Morning, Molly.”
“It’s Angie,” she said, tears in her voice. “Something’s wrong, Aunt Jane.” And then she dropped the phone. I heard it clatter.
“Angie,” I whispered. “Angie!” I shouted.
Bruiser was already moving. I whipped my entire body through the long narrow doors and inside, gathering up my clothes and weapons in one arm. In a single lunge, I leaped for the gallery and landed on the street three stories below. Bruiser hesitated a fraction of a second before he threw a satchel at me. I caught it one-handed, hearing the clank of weapons and gear. He gripped the railing on his gallery and swung to the railing one floor below him, then leaped to the ground. He beeped his car open while he was still in the air.
I was still dressing when a half-naked Bruiser peeled us out of his parking space and made a tire-screeching turn the wrong way up a one-way street. I had only two vamp-killers, a few stakes, and the two matching Walther PK .380s, loaded with standard ammo. No silver. None of Molly’s preset spells. And, “How did someone get through the wards?”
“What’s new at your place?” he asked as he took a turn too fast.
“People. Witches, a nonfamiliar cat, a vamp, a werewolf, and a grindylow. Pretty much everything,” I said, pulling on last night’s pants under Bruiser’s too-big shirt. I slid my arms through the shoulder holster, which was permanently sized to me, handmade of nylon and leather, the grips turned out, for a fast two-hand draw. I didn’t bother with the jacket. “Oh. Wait. Crap. Leo gave us the brooches to have Molly and Evan look at them, check out the spells on them. Eli would have taken them inside, but it was too late to wake the Truebloods. If it’s the same two attackers—”
“They got in with a Trojan horse spell.” Bruiser braked hard and the antilock brakes stuttered on the wet pavement two blocks from my house. The fog was thicker here, the SUV’s lights vanishing into it only inches from the front bumper. The streetlights were off the length of the street. So was the electricity. I remembered the scan spell. The entire street hadn’t lost power, then. Bruiser pulled into a parking space and killed the motor. “Can you see the wards?” he asked, opening the door and dressing fast while standing in the street.
“Yes.” In mixed human and Beast-vision I could make out the wards, the overlapping color stamp of an Everhart Trueblood working, red and blue and bright emerald green, sparking through with rainbow-hued motes of power. “I can’t tell much through the fog. They look fine, but . . .”
“But you know they aren’t,” he said, stamping into combat boots. “The ward is keyed to you. I won’t be able to get inside.”
“If it’s the same two witches, they took up places under two streetlights across the street from my house.”
“Got it.”
I got out and we closed the doors softly, simultaneously, though the sound of them slamming would have been swallowed by the fog. A form swept at us through the night and Bruiser was suddenly standing in front of me, a sword I hadn’t seen him strap on in his hand and held to the intruder’s throat.
The man made a small “Eeep” of sound, his arms out to the sides to indicate a lack of weapons, before saying, formally, “It is Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley, the Enforcer’s primo.”
Bruiser dropped the point of his blade and Edmund moved to me. He was fully vamped out, fangs, talons, and the blown black pupils in scarlet sclera, but he was in complete control, calm, which was something I seldom saw a vamp do. His power sparked along my skin, frigid as sleet. “There are two witches, under strong multiple wards, obfuscation workings, keep-away workings, and something I have never seen before, which strikes fire and burns hot. I saw a rat incinerated and I backed away.”
“Did they see you?” I asked.
“No. They do not know any of us are here. But their workings are attacking inside the wards, and the Truebloods have not keyed their protections to me,” he added with a snarl. “I may only enter when they permit.”
“I’m going in.” I heard the men talking as I dashed to my house, but their voices were swallowed by the mist. I raced ahead, nearly tripping when a curb appeared where I hadn’t expected one. I ran through the ward, a heated zip of power. Silently I opened the front door. A pale greenish liquidlike gas roiled at my feet and out the door. I left the door open and it poured into the street. I slipped inside, and the smell hit on my first attempted breath. Something bitter and so pungent it stole my breath.
Poison? A magical equivalent of poison? I left the door open and the spell flowed into the street. Forcing my lungs not to cough and therefore inhale a deeper breath, I raced up the steps and into the kids’ room. I threw open the windows in their room, grabbed both of my godchildren up, Angie off the floor and Little Evan off his bed. Molly’s cell phone clattered to the floor. As it hit, I saw something in the shadows that didn’t belong there, but there wasn’t time to examine it. I raced back down the stairs, lungs burning, oxygen starved, fighting to take a breath. Desperate for air, I lowered a shoulder and shoved through the side door, banging it open, hearing wood splinter and snap. Through the ward again, I stumbled into the backyard, where I started coughing and sucking fresh air. The sound was dry and rough and I wanted to throw up, feeling weird, as if I couldn’t get enough air, though I was hyperventilating. I pulled on Beast to make it to Edmund’s car. I opened the driver door and laid the kids on the seats.
Edmund dropped from the air to my side, having leaped over the tall brick fence. As I practically coughed up my diaphragm, he said, “Poison gas. I have notified Leo, who is calling in Lachish Dutillet and a magical Haz Mat team to deal with the gas flowing into t
he streets. We have to get them all out, strip off their clothes, get them oxygenated, and wash their bodies.” While speaking, he had been stripping Little Evan and laid the child in the grass. He leaned over and began artificial respiration on the little boy while scooping Angie to him and starting to strip her as well. Part of me wanted to stop him—it felt wrong to see the adult stripping the kids, but he worked with almost military precision and there was no yuck factor. And I was pretty busy, hacking up my lungs, coughing with an awful tearing, wet sound, pulling on Beast for healing. It was surreal and awful and— “Jane!” Edmund barked. “You can breathe later. Get the others. Now!”
“I’ll drop them down to you,” I said. Turning, I raced back through the ward, inside, forcing myself to hold my breath. Breathe later. Right. Tears streamed down my face as the poison magic stung my eyes. My lungs burned as if they were melting, but I held the coughing in.
The wards were air-permeable. Therefore they were gas-permeable. Open to any spell that used air to attack, and with the brooches here, the witches had a focus to use to set the spell. Stupid, stupid, stupid, each and every one of us.
CHAPTER 12
Licked Alex’s Head
Halfway up the stairs, I had to breathe and sucked the gas into me. Beast threw herself at me in a panic, her claws ripping at me. “Fine,” I said to her between coughs. The Gray Between erupted out of me, my skinwalker energies started healing me, and I slid into the place where time slowed. The poison mist around me developed visible layers, much more pale and gauzy at the top of the stairway where the concentration of the heavier-than-air mist was beginning to clear. I managed not to breathe until I reached the second story, but I still went light-headed when I sucked in the breath.