Shadow Rites

“I suggest there be no next time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That would clearly be the best decision on my part.”

“Mmmm,” Molly said. “Come back here, Angie.”

“I’m bored. I wanna watch a movie on the big screen.”

“I wan’ watch moo!” EJ parroted.

“I’ll be working in my room,” Alex muttered, gathering up all his gear and traipsing upstairs.

“So, what are you going to do about the vampire?” Eli asked, trying to divert attention from his own faux pas to me. “You know. The one who wants to live here.”

“What?” Molly asked, whirling to face us again.

I shoved in another hunk of beef and chewed, my eyes promising all sorts of retribution on Eli. He laughed easily, happily—that rare mirth that would have been part of Eli all the time if Uncle Sam and military service hadn’t ripped all the innocence out of him.

Molly shooed Angie to silence and started a Disney movie, listening as Eli explained all about the situation with Edmund and his new, forced position in my life. Things were happening behind her intent expression, thoughts caught in her silence, reflected in her expression before she turned to me. She took a chair beside me and propped her head on her fist, her elbow on the table, red curls flopping over to one side, a little longer than the last visit, but still far shorter than I was accustomed to. “A fanghead primo isn’t a bad idea,” she said.

I nearly suffocated on a half-chewed globule of beef. Eli’s happy smile faded away. I choked the beef back up and said around it as I chewed, “Whatchu mea’?”

“I’ve been studying the Vampira Carta in my spare time,” she said, offhand. “Well, the twins and I have. And Lachish Dutillet.”

Lachish was the head of the New Orleans coven, the woman leading the Witch Conclave, and she was in charge of vamp/witch reconciliation. She was a stout, stern middle-aged woman who looked like someone’s grandmother, but was really a magical force to be reckoned with. The twins, Elizabeth and Boadicea, were two of Mol’s remaining witch sisters and were always in trouble. Or making trouble. Or stirring up trouble. Despite which, I liked them both a lot.

The Vampira Carta and its codicils contained the rule of law for the Mithran vampires and it contained protocols and rules for proper behavior between vampires, scions, blood-servants, blood-slaves, and cattle—the demeaning term for the nonbound humans whom vamps once hunted, sometimes for sport. The Carta provided proper procedures and conventions for everything, including challenging and killing each other in a duel called by lots of names: the Blood Challenge, the Sangre Duello, and the Blood Duel, to name three.

“A Blood Challenge,” Mol said, her eyes squinted, unblinking in thought, “Enforcer-to-Enforcer, or primo-to-primo, for first blood, is a common proper protocol for visiting vamps. It’s one acceptable first step to one master issuing a Blood Challenge to another. But if the first blood challenger loses on the first pass, they usually don’t offer formal challenge to the death.”

A fight to the death, with a sword, was a challenge I was destined to lose, which reminded me of the scar. I reached up under my arm and pressed the flesh there. I felt a ridge of tissue, but it was no longer sore or tender. The healing in the sweat house had given better results than I had expected, short of a true shift to another form.

“Having a primo makes you a master,” Molly said, “while still being Enforcer to Leo. It would put the challenger in a difficult place protocol-wise. A primo or an Enforcer can fight that first battle for any master. Is Edmund any good?”

“Yes,” Eli said. “Better than his position would indicate. He’s a former Blood Master who lost his position to an inferior fanghead, inferior in terms of vampire power, compulsion, and fighting ability. We’ve always thought he gave up the position instead of fighting for it, for reasons that have never made sense to us.”

“Interesting,” Molly said, picking at the pile of pineapple and onion and peppers I wasn’t eating. “One has to wonder why he fell so low, and why he’s still so low. Machinations, maybe? Leo doing what Leo does best?”

“Plans within plans,” I said.

“And this fanghead primo. He has no place to sleep? How about the bolt-hole/safe room you turned into weapons storage?” She was referring to the long narrow room under the stairs, hidden by a bookcase in the living room.

“We secured the entrance from under the house, but I could unsecure it,” Eli said. “I could put a lock on this side of the bookcase opening so he couldn’t get in through there. That would leave the house safe from him. There’s enough room to put a cot there, but no place for his belongings.”

“You are not seriously considering having Edmund stay here,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Big Evan would have a cow.”

“There is that,” Molly agreed. “Evan has cows often.” She pushed away from the table and wandered into the living room, where the kids were watching some animated, improbable movie, where the girls were all wimps, waiting to be saved by a prince.

Angie Baby was telling her little brother what was wrong with that scenario. “The princess would have a sword and lots of magic spells and point her magic wand and the bad man would go ‘poof’ and be gone.” And it made me smile. Angie would never be a wilting violet, waiting to be rescued.