No one else had moved.
Sabina said, “Magic was used by Dominique Quessaire. Her penalty is true-death.”
I stilled. I had used magic too.
Sabina went on. “Magic was used by Jane Yellowrock, though only in self-defense, and after Dominique’s attack. The outclan priestess rules this an acceptable use. No penalty to Yellowrock.” Part of me wilted, but I didn’t let it show on the outside.
Softly, Grégoire said to someone, “Bring Dominique back to me. Her true-death is mine.”
I thought, If he hadn’t brought her back when her throat was ripped out we wouldn’t be in this mess now. Grégoire and Leo had been hunting for the clan who had allied with her. They had taken a gamble that Brenda had paid for with her life.
Bodies moved; vamps and humans departed. I watched as Brenda was carted down the stairs. Dead. Killed for spite, not as part of the Duello. Killed for not a damn thing. The cleanup crew started on the blood. People went in search of dinner and beer. I dropped to a bench and mourned the blood-servant.
* * *
• • •
We’d made a mistake. We needed more toilets. Even vamps had to pee, it seemed, and either eating corn dogs and drinking beer made them pee more, or they had trouble getting out of their fighting leathers, or they were just being pains in the backside. The lines to the bathrooms were ten people long, ninety percent of them female. Most males were outside finding a likely tree. I chose to do my business outside. At which point I discovered how freaking hard it was to get out of the new leathers. The uniform was comfortable in every way, except for a female needing to answer the call of nature. When I finally got my business done, my leathers in place, and my weapons holstered, sheathed, and hidden, I was frustrated and ready to hit something. I headed to the circle of hedge of thorns, my BFF, and the murderer, Dominique.
Molly was stretched out on a lounge chair, under a blanket or three to keep out the cold wind, her baby bump hidden by the swathing. Dominique was standing on the sand, in an inverted hedge of thorns, fists bunched, frothing at the mouth, screaming obscenities, I assumed, from her expression, though I couldn’t hear her.
“How’d you turn down the volume?” I asked.
Molly laughed, a sad but ladylike laugh I’d never master. “Lachish’s family uses it on the farm to keep the sound of tractors and farm equipment to a minimum. It’s a noise version of a confuto working, and I’m totally stealing it and setting it on myself, so I can sleep in on Saturdays and Big Evan has to get up with the children.”
I squatted beside her lounge chair. “That’s evil.”
“I’m a death witch. What did you expect?”
“Rainbow-colored baby bunnies and lollipops?”
Molly spluttered with laughter. “People who dye baby bunnies should be shot.”
“I’ll tweet that to my congressman for inclusion in next year’s bills. Has Grégoire been to see her?”
“Yes. He condemned her to death by facing the sun. He’ll have her chained in silver at sunrise.” She hesitated. “Are you sure? Burning to death . . . Witches were burned at the stake. I’ve read the accounts. Family accounts. Firsthand . . .” Her voice trailed away.
I touched her shoulder, not knowing how to comfort her. “She killed Brenda Rezk. She used magic in a dominance duel during the Sangre Duello. She was a traitor. But I’m not sure of anything. Not anymore.”
“Except that we love each other?”
I nodded slowly, feeling all the tension slide from my shoulders, down my spine, out my feet, and into the sand beneath me. “Except that. And that fangheads are evil, no matter whose side they’re on.”
“True.” She tilted her head at me, her red curls flying in the wind off the gulf. “I know you stayed in New Orleans to keep us safe.”
The tension shot back into me.
Molly held out her little finger. “Friends forever. Pinkie swear?”
I hooked my little finger into hers. “Best friends forever.”
Moll pulled her finger from mine and her hand under the blankets. “Quit worrying about me, Big Cat. I’m warm and safe.”
“Even though Titus did something with magic when he crossed over the hedge and onto the property? I just remembered.”
Molly frowned. She hadn’t noticed that. Crap.
“Even though Dominique is wearing a ruby exactly like one I own?” I asked. “And hers might be full of dark magic?”
“Even that. Do you want the evil ruby?” At my expression she said, “Sorry. The ruby isn’t technically evil. It doesn’t contain a curse and the working in it was used up and can’t be renewed.” I didn’t tell her that I had absorbed the working. I trusted Molly completely. But . . . maybe not about Dark Queen magics and what my five-pointed-star magics could do. “It won’t hurt you,” she said. “I can freeze her for thirty seconds and open a passageway into the hedge.”
I watched Dominique from my vantage point, crouching on the sand. I said, “If you can do that, sure.”
Molly squirmed higher on her lounge chair and pulled a hand from the covers. “You’ll have thirty seconds.” Louder, she called, “Lachish? Jane wants something on Dominique.”
The older woman appeared from the darkness, looking grumpy. “Of course she does. Jane always wants something.”
It felt like being slapped in the face. “Have I done something wrong?” I asked.
“No,” Lachish said. But her tone said otherwise.
Molly said, “Lachish. Jane’s trying to save us.”
“We could just incinerate the entire house and be done with it. It might be worth the punishment.”
Or Molly could just use her death magics and drain the life and undeath of everyone here. The words and the thought sent a cold shock through me. I looked at the house. The most powerful vamps in the world were all in one place. “You do that,” I said, my voice reasonable, unemotional, a false calm, “and there will be a power struggle in the vampire world like nothing we’ve ever seen on the face of the earth.”
Lachish blew out a breath and turned her Creole-dark eyes to me. “Think I don’t know that? Leo is the lesser of two evils. If Leo loses and Titus wins, all bets are off.”
I looked at Molly. A death witch. Draining the vamps to death would kill her baby and probably drive her insane and expose what she was to the entire world, but . . . Molly could do it. It was likely that the coven leader of NOLA could do that same thing in a different way. This was why the witches were really here and I didn’t know whether to be happy at the extra layer of protection for the U.S. humans or terrified.
Lachish stood next to Molly’s chair. They both pointed the fingers of their right hands to the hedge, and Lachish said, “Dominique, confuto. Hedge, concesso.”
Dominique went utterly still, her mouth open and her face frozen in a mask of vamped-out fury. The hedge of thorns appeared as a thin, uneven film of light, like a layer of plastic.
“Resigno,” Lachish said. A small thin opening appeared from the top of the hedge to the ground. “Go.”
I raced to the spell of confining, studying it as I moved. Mentally counting off the thirty seconds, I stopped in front of the hedge and examined the gem. There was no active reason to take it. But my gut, the magics coursing through my middle, said it was mine. I reached into the hedge’s opening and grabbed the moonstone necklace. Gave it a strong yank and the clasp broke. I slid it from Dominique’s neck. Stepped back, the magical gem dangling. And caught a vision of an emblem embroidered into Dominique’s undershirt. A lizard eating its tail. Jack Shoffru’s emblem. I looked around, hoping to see something that might be the anomaly that was Cym’s magic. There was nothing.
Moments later the hedge of thorns snapped shut, its energies began to move again, visible in Beast-sight, and Dominique started raving. She saw what I had in my hands and fell utterly still for a moment. Then she threw her entire body at the hedge. Again. And again. Not that it did her any good.
I examined the necklace, its central gem and its energies. The ruby’s magic had changed in the scant moments I’d held it. Instead of zipping all over the place in vaguely round patterns, as they had when resting against Dominique’s undead flesh, the energies had begun to angle in and out. They formed a star pattern, like the pentagram of my energies. The ruby seemed to have the ability to evolve to suit the person who held it or wore it against her skin. It was a battery for power.