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Light flared around me.
For a brief, blessed instant, the pain simply vanished. It went away as though it had never been, and I could have wept with gratitude for the absence I’d taken for granted all of my healthy life. My vision cleared. The Fabulous Casimir’s face sprang into sharp focus. He was wearing a bouffant wig today, looking like a 1950s housewife. I could see the pores of his skin beneath a thick layer of makeup, his shrewd, concerned eyes studying me behind the long false lashes he wore.
And then the seal on my forehead contracted with a sizzling sound, drawing my skin tight. I doubled over in agony as the pain came thudding back—the spike between my eyes, the jackhammer in my jaw.
Through blurred eyes, I saw bits of dried ink sift to the floor like rusty snowflakes.
“Well,” Casimir said, “that didn’t work. ”
Sixteen
The bad news was that the Fabulous Casimir’s failure meant that Emmeline Palmer’s power exceeded his by a considerable degree.
The good news was that Cas was pissed off about it. “Let me talk to the coven,” he said to me. “We’ll schedule a ritual with the full circle. There’s no way she’s a match for all of us. ”
I nodded gingerly. “Okay. ”
“We can do this, Daisy,” he promised me. “Don’t start looking for alternatives, you understand?”
“You mean my father?” I asked.
He shuddered. “Hell, yes, I mean your father, girl. ”
I wasn’t looking. As always, I kept a tight lid on that thought. But as always, it was there. And I had to admit as I walked blindly home, clinging to the arm of an uncharacteristically quiet Jen, doing my best to support the pain-filled balloon that was my head, my tail lashing with impotent fury, that I was really fucking tired of being so goddamn powerless in a position of responsibility.
Powers of persuasion and seduction would come in really handy right about now. So would a splendid set of bat-veined wings and a fiery whip, just because.
Oh, the possibilities!
But there was that whole business about cracking the Inviolate Wall.
As much as I wanted to face down dear Emmy on my own terms, it certainly wasn’t worth unleashing Armageddon. And, too, in the back of my mind was the well-dressed hell-spawn lawyer I’d seen in the PVB office the other day, attempting to work some kind of wiles on Amanda Brooks.
He’d smelled bad. Rancid.
I didn’t know what that was all about, what the lawyer was up to, and why his presence and his apparent acceptance of his birthright didn’t threaten the Inviolate Wall, but I knew I didn’t want that stink on me.
As if on cue, Jojo the joe-pye weed fairy popped up from her lurking place amid the rhododendrons alongside the alley by my apartment. “Stupid reeking slattern!” she screeched at me in a brain-drilling octave that didn’t exist on any human scale, not even Mariah Carey’s. “It’s in your bag!”
Jen’s arm tightened under my grip. “What the fuck?”
“Seriously, Jojo?” My head hurt so badly, I wanted to lie down and cry. “Not now, okay?”
Hovering several feet above the ground on agitated wings, Jojo swore up and down and sideways in what I suspected was a variety of languages. “It’s in your bag! The charm is in your bag, dullard!”
I blinked. “What?”
Jojo let out another piercing shriek and tugged at her purple hair. “I can’t touch it, you fool! There’s cold steel and iron in there!”
“Um, Daise?” Jen said. “I think the fairy’s trying to tell you that Emmy’s charm is in your bag. ”
Jojo bared a mouthful of teeny-tiny shark teeth. “The dark-haired one is not such a lackwit as you. ”
“Gee, thanks,” Jen said.
I had no idea why Jojo would switch from plaguing me to helping me, but right now I couldn’t care less. Kneeling on the sidewalk, I eased dauda-dagr out of its hidden sheath and dumped the rest of the bag’s contents unceremoniously onto the concrete. I sorted through them by feel. Wallet, phone, keys, comb, hair scrunchies, a packet of tissues, lipstick—okay, I may be a hell-spawn, but I’m still a girl—a tangled set of earbuds, receipts, the lollipop that Doc Howard gave me . . . and there, buried in the heap, a small leather sack tied shut with a cord. I picked it up and gave it a cautious squeeze. It held something hard and lumpy, something soft and yielding, and something sharp and poky.
“Is this it?” I asked Jojo.
A few pedestrians were rounding the corner toward the park. With a huff, Jojo cast a glamour over herself, her appearance shifting to that of a five- or six-year-old girl. “What else would it be, you beetle-brained churl? Open it!”
Now that I actually had the thing in hand, I hesitated, squinting at Jojo’s blurry child-face. “Why should I trust you? Why would you help me?”
“You bade me spy upon her,” she said impatiently. “The sister. She wants to take him away from here. At least you don’t. ”
Aha. So dear Emmy had managed to piss off Sinclair’s lovelorn fairy. Good enough for me. I began picking at the cord tied around the sack.
“Here. ” Jen held out her hand. “Give it to me. You can’t even see straight. ”
“Does it matter who opens it?” I asked Jojo.
The fairy shook her head. “No. But I can’t touch it. ” She shuddered. “Iron. I loathe iron. ”
It took a few minutes for Jen to get the cord untied, and she had to use her teeth. Jojo rummaged for a tissue in the pile of junk from my bag, spreading it on the sidewalk. Jen opened the leather sack and poured the contents out carefully onto the tissue, and . . . ah, bliss.
Once again the pain vanished; the agonizing spike drilling into my forehead, the throbbing in my tooth. The blurriness and double vision went away and the world returned to clarity, bright and crisp and beautiful.
This time it stayed that way. I held still and took a few cautious breaths before examining the sack’s contents, which appeared to be one discolored human molar, a crude iron nail, and a pile of dirt.
Jojo peered over my shoulder. “A coffin nail and graveyard dirt, like as not. ”
“What about the tooth?”
She looked at me as though I were an idiot. “’Tis a tooth. ”
“Gross,” Jen commented.
I poked at the objects. “She must have put it in my bag when I went to the restroom last night. But I don’t see any hair or anything of mine. ”
“Maybe she brushed the tooth with the toothbrush you borrowed at Sinclair’s place,” Jen said.
Gah. “Maybe. ”
Jojo heaved an impatient sigh. “You had the charm on your person, lackwit, or at least near it under your own roof. The sorceress had no need to bind it to you further. Your warlock made a careless assumption based on his own knowledge of the craft. He condemned his effort to failure when he allowed the charm within his own altar circle. ”
“You know what they say,” Jen said. “‘Assume’ makes an ass out of ‘u’ and ‘me. ’”
“That’s a clever turn of phrase,” the fairy said approvingly to her. To me, she said, “You should be grateful that I recognize the reek of iron and magic. ”
“I am. ” I’m not sure how sincere I sounded, but I meant it. “I owe you a favor, Jojo. A big one. ”
Her eyes widened. “Truly? Then I beseech—”
“I’m not breaking things off with Sinclair,” I said. “That’s not on the table. But if there’s anything I can do in my capacity as Hel’s liaison, ask. ”
“Oh. ” Jojo looked disappointed; and I have to say that her crush on Sinclair was even more disconcerting with the little girl glamour over her.
I concentrated on seeing through it. In her true form, Jojo exuded a miniature green-skinned pubescent sexuality that was disconcerting enough, but it was better than the toddlers-and-tiaras vibe. “Look, I’ll put it in my ledger, okay?” By ledger, I meant the da
tabase I planned to create. “You can claim it anytime. ”
That appeared to mollify her. “Very well. ”
“So is this thing . . . defused now?” Jen asked, indicating the leather sack and its former contents. “It’s not going to reactivate again, is it?”
“The charm is broken,” Jojo assured her. “The sorceress would have to cast the spell anew. ”
“Good to know. ” I began returning items to my messenger bag, starting with dauda-dagr, then glanced up at the throaty sound of a motorcycle chugging down the street.
Oh, duh. Given the surge of panic I’d experienced when I woke up, the only surprise was that I hadn’t had a concerned ghoul on my doorstep within the hour.
Stefan Ludovic pulled into the alley astride a gleaming black motorcycle. Well, parts of it gleamed, while others were a matte black that seemed to swallow the light. I happened to know that it was a Vincent Black Shadow, one of only seventeen hundred in existence; I knew this not because I knew anything about motorcycles but because Cody told me so when we spotted it in the garage of a suspect who couldn’t possibly have legitimately afforded it.
Apparently, it now belonged to Stefan. I hadn’t noticed that the other night at Rainbow’s End.
He lowered the kickstand and cut the engine. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, just a pair of wraparound sunglasses that should have looked tacky, yet somehow didn’t. In the daylight, the pallor of his skin was vivid. Not undead pallor like a vampire, just sort of otherworldly. His slightly too long black hair brushed the collar of the leather vest he wore over a plain, skintight black T-shirt. I couldn’t figure out how the hell Stefan made that look elegant, but he did.
“Holy shit,” Jen breathed fervently beside me. “That’s the hot ghoul you told me about, isn’t it?”
“Outcast,” I whispered. “That’s what they call themselves. ”
Stefan took off his sunglasses, revealing those pale eyes, a shade of blue seldom seen outside the interior of a glacier. His pupils were contracted and steady as he met my gaze. “Hel’s liaison. ”