Shadow Rites

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.”