Shadow Rites

That was nothing new.

“But the main peculiarity of the workings contained in the brooches is that they can fuse the energies of differing magics and use them. If the magics found a place in your spirit that was still touched by the memory of my magics, it was able to read that and return the information to the creators of the spells, who could then craft a new working using that information. And it would be able to use any other magics it discovered.” He looked again at my left hand. “Even the magics that belong to you alone. I have never seen such a thing.”

“So could it also have traced back, through me to you, and used your magics against you?”

Leo said, “Girrard? Is this why you attacked my Enforcer? Because your magics were turned to another’s purpose?”

Gee’s face was pinched with worry, his black hair falling over his ears, tangled in front of his eyes. “It is possible. I do not recall much of the duel between Jane and me. I recall only a sense of euphoria and bliss. I do not recall other than the emotions of great joy. Until I smelled her blood. Then I began to awaken.”

I needed to think, to meditate, to find some kind of healing, but my pain was too great and this was too important. I managed “Okay,” thinking about other things that had been inside, or part of, my soul home. Eli poured me glass of cold water and I took it in my good hand and drank it empty before passing it back. Casually, watching Leo’s face, I asked, “Do you think the green magic could reach out and control Leo?”

The expressions that flitted across the face of the Master of the City of New Orleans were too swift and too numerous for me to catch, all except the ones that rode the crest of the emotional storm. Shock. Recognition of danger, followed by fury. Realization that he had screwed up majorly when he tried to force a binding on me, a binding that might let him be controlled or attacked through me. I almost said, Karmic payback is such a bitch, but I held it in and let a sweet smile onto my face, waiting him out. “I will have Grégoire drink of me regularly,” he said stiffly. “If there is external magic he will detect it.” With those words, Leo left the room.

As the door swung closed behind him, I said very softly, “Karma’s payback is a bitch.” There was the barest movement of the door handle that let me know Leo had heard.

CHAPTER 9

Drugged Dream in My Soul Home

The moment Leo was gone, Eli closed the box, chuckling evilly. Bruiser knelt beside me. “Jane. Your hand is getting worse.”

“I noticed.” I raised the hand, which felt heavier than it should, and this time I looked at it. It was neither hand nor paw, not the long-fingered, knobby-knuckled version of my half-Beast form. It was more of a club, the way a hand might look if it was stuffed into a paw-shaped and furred mitten. Something a kid might wear trick-or-treating on Halloween.

“You need to shift.”

“Yeah. I noticed that too. What time is it?”

Eli said, “O four twenty-three.”

I had to time to change into Beast and then shift back. But I wanted to be at home, not here. Never here. “I have time to try. Take me home?”

Bruiser knelt beside me and picked me up as if I were a small child. He stood, cradling me, just as the door to the small room opened again. In the hallway stood Leo, Edmund, and Leo’s new secretary, the redheaded scrappy-looking woman, Lee. She was holding a spiral notebook and a pen at the ready.

Leo stared between Bruiser and me. “I have sipped from and read all my scions and my heir and the clan Blood Masters of the city. All are innocent of the disappearance of Ming Zoya of Mearkanis, and her presence in the pit.

“Edmund Killian Sebastian Hartley,” Leo said, and Scrappy wrote. He shoved Edmund into the room. The vamp stumbled and went down to one knee, his eyes on his master, “former clan Blood Master, once servus minime aestimata, lowest of my scions.” When Leo used titles, it meant serious Mithran business. And Edmund was breathing fast, in fear, the stink of his terror rising on the air. I had the mad thought that Leo was about to behead Edmund, right in front of me, and I had to stop it. I struggled to stand and Bruiser let my feet to the floor, still supporting my weight, the pain in my hand feeling as if I had just thrust it into a furnace. I grunted in pain, but Leo ignored me and went on. “I hereby reassign the last nineteen years of your servitude to Jane Doe Yellowrock of Yellowrock Securities, Enforcer to the Mithrans of New Orleans and the greater Southeast United States, with the exception of Florida. Your status shall be raised to the position of Mithran primo and you will serve her well.”

“No!” I said.

Leo flashed me a grin that was all teeth and fangs and bloodlust. “Yes, my Jane. It is done.” He popped away in a small sound of displaced air and the door slammed.

I gasped and my vision darkened around the edges in reaction to shock and pain. Eli, the evil man, laughed again. To Edmund, kneeling on the floor at Bruiser’s feet, I said, “This is all your fault.”

Edmund, whose face had gone white, and his eyes vamped out, looked up to me, the pupils like pits, staring into hell. With an effort of will, his fangs schincked back up on the little hinges in the roof of his mouth, and his eyes bled back to human. He bowed his head to me, leaning over his bended knee. “My master.”

I thought that I had avoided this, had actually thought that Edmund’s request to become my primo was a ploy on Leo’s part, something to delude the European Vamps that I had such strong magic that I deserved a vamp primo but was all bombast and no action. But . . . this had happened. It was serious. And with the little secretary putting it all in writing, there was no way to refuse. But I did it anyway. “I refuse. I don’t want a primo.”