Bad Blood (15 page)

Creek held his hands up, his leather jacket swinging from his fingers. “I’m not asking who the source is. I don’t want to know. I just want to use them to make my job a little easier. That is what they’re there for, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” If Argent had feathers, they would have smoothed. “You suspect she’s here, then.”

“Don’t know.” He slid the coat on, then scooped his helmet off the workbench. “Since the Castus is, that could mean she is, too. Or the Castus has found another way of getting the ring. Maybe she’s screwed up one too many times. Maybe they’re no longer using her.”

Argent half shifted, a sure sign that this conversation was near its end. Wing tips jutted from behind his back, his forked tongue flicking out to lick his lips. “I’ll see what I can find out. Regardless, you follow your leads, get that ring back. If it’s used tomorrow night, the world will never be the same place again.”

Creek snorted before he could catch himself. “It’s not now. And it certainly won’t be after tomorrow night.”

Argent shifted completely, his eyes hooding with a darkness that seemed both threatening and worried. “What it is and what it could be are as different as heaven and hell, because hell is exactly what this world will turn into if that ring gets slipped onto the right finger.”

M
a?” Evie called as she entered the house. She let the screen door slam behind her to announce her presence further. “Ma, you here?” Not that Evie expected an answer. The airboat normally parked beneath the house was gone, and she’d been phoning the house for hours without an answer. Evie’s left eye fluttered involuntarily for a second, then calmed. Damn spasms were getting worse. “Ma, where the heck are you?” Wasn’t like the old woman to go into town without asking if Evie needed anything. Or even to be gone without anyone knowing where she was. She was the coven leader. She had to be available.

“Anyone home?” she asked the empty space. A coffee cup and breakfast dishes sat in the sink. She passed the kitchen and went into the living room. TV was off. The demon was at rest in his aquarium, which meant only a boiling mass of black-red smoke was visible. Her mother’s bag, usually on the side table next to her recliner, was gone. What could be keeping her in town this long? It would be dark in an hour.

Evie flicked one long, clear-polished nail against the
aquarium to wake the demon up. Since being unfrozen from her stone prison, the twitching made it impossible to give herself a decent manicure with colored polish.

The smoke shifted and the demon roused enough to form a face within the smoke, nothing else. Daylight wasn’t its best time. “What do you want, human?”

“Find the ring yet?”

He sneered. “No.”

“Where’s my mother?”

A flicker of a smile. “Gone.”

“I know that. Where?”

“Not my problem.” He closed his eyes.

She picked up the spray bottle of holy water and gave him a spritz. Flames shot up from the aquarium as if she’d just doused hot charcoal with butane. She squinted at the heat.

The demon burst up through the fire. “Human, you try me.”

“Where is my mother?”

“I told you I do not know.”

“Use your power. You’re connected to her. To both of us. I know you are—our blood is mixed with the vampire’s we used to draw you. Find her.”

Nostrils flaring, he lowered his head. His eyes went almost completely black for a few seconds before returning to their usual red. “She’s not on this plane.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” She planted her hands on her hips. “Speak English.”

Wisps of smoke curled from his forehead. “I cannot sense her.”

Evie threw her hands up. “Just like you can’t sense the ring. I’m not sure what good you are, demon.” She leaned
toward him, her right shoulder suddenly hitching up. She hugged her arm to her body, trying to hold it still. “I can’t wait to destroy you.”

He smiled, reminding Evie of the body they’d found floating in one of the marshes. Time in the sun had tightened the skin into a very similar look. “I eagerly await your attempt.”

“You think I can’t do it? You have no idea, demon.” The years she’d spent in her stone prison had not been wasted. She’d cast and recast spells in her head until she dreamed them better than she’d done them in real life. What else was there?

It was how she had a feeling where her mother might be. Or at least how she’d gotten there. She gave the demon an exaggerated grin as she walked away. “You just sit tight. I’ve got some work to do.”

Her mother had a secret room, one Evie had never known about until her stone statue had been positioned in front of the glass windows overlooking the glades. Amazing how those windows worked as mirrors at night. How the angle of the mirror on the living room wall reflected her mother’s room and the door into her closet. Made no sense why her mother would spend hours in that closet. Not at first anyway.

Evie opened the closet door. The scent of smoke lingered, the last reassurance of what she already knew. It wasn’t uncommon for a witch to have a private altar. Evie’d had one in her old bedroom, just a simple wooden box she kept tucked under the bed. Nothing like the one she had now in the new house the demon had built for her.

She felt behind the clothes, along the wall, her movements releasing the fragrance of patchouli clinging to her
mother’s things. Evie’s hand sank into a strange dimple on the wall. She pressed it and the click of a latch being released caused her to nod. A shiver ran down her spine.

She pushed the clothes back, gripped the protruding edge, and opened the door. The smell of burned eggs and earth greeted her. She felt for a switch, found it, and flipped it.

Atop a small altar were the trimmings of the spell her mother had worked to fix the ghost girl’s troubles. The one she’d inlaid with a trap for the varcolai she’d known would pass through the smoke as well. More than that, Evie could tell by the arrangement of things and the freshly burned wick on the oil lamp that her mother had opened the trap and used it. Her disappearance meant the trap had worked. She was out hunting down whatever she’d discovered through the varcolai’s eyes. If she was gone this long, she’d found something good.

Evie kneeled on the pillow before the altar and set about opening the trap again. She threaded a new wick through the oil lamp and lit it, then picked up the mortar and pestle, giving it a good sniff. It seemed her mother had been so sure about her secret room that she’d left all the ingredients sitting out. There was no need to sift through her mother’s supplies for the hawthorn, sulfur powder, and ground bones of a money cat Evie smelled in the mortar, because they all still sat on the altar. Another nearby container held silver filings, but those wouldn’t be necessary to open the portal, since it was tied into the original spell. Although… she picked up the vial of silver filings. Her mother had them laid out but, based on the leftovers in the bowl, hadn’t used them. Silver would strengthen the spell, make it possible to control
the subject’s movement and actions, but it would also make the spell heavy-handed. The subject would feel the control.

She weighed the vial in her hand, her fingers twitching. Screw whether or not the varcolai knew what was happening. She needed to find her mother.

A heavy pinch of silver went into the bowl, then she tipped a little of each of the first three in as well. That done, she pricked her finger with the blade beside the pestle and squeezed in a few drops of her own blood. Last went in the pinch of earth necessary to ground the magic. She crushed the contents together with the pestle, then tipped them into a flame-blackened silver bowl and placed it on the burner.

The flame licked the metal, heating the mess until a curl of dirty smoke spiraled out of the dish. She smiled. “Like mother like daughter.” Didn’t hurt that this was the last spell her mother had taught her before the fateful night.

She bent closer, watching the smoke spread out like a curtain. “Show me what the one joined to this spell sees.” Hopefully she’d find out where her mother had gone. The demon’s words that her mother was no longer on this plane rang in Evie’s ears as shapes and movement wavered on the surface of the smoke. Pushing the meaning of those words away, she smoothed the smoke until the images became clearer.

She would find her mother. She glanced back in the direction of the demon. If anything had happened to Ma, anything at all, Evie would bring hellfire down upon the person responsible.

At the sound of Laurent walking toward the dining room, Tatiana bent over the dossier he’d left splayed out on the table, fixing her face as though she were intently studying the detailed notes. She had every intention of getting through the next few hours as quickly as possible. Giving Laurent no reason to question his wife’s knowledge of Tatiana’s information would go a long way in that direction.

“Evening, my pet.” He kissed the top of her head. “No need to wear yourself out memorizing all this information.” He scooped the papers away from her and into the leather portfolio. “I know the dossier inside and out. I should have no trouble apprehending the comarré at her home this evening, then we’ll return to Corvinestri tonight. Tatiana will be pleased, don’t you think?”

“Very.” Tatiana smiled, and for once it wasn’t forced.

He tucked the portfolio under his arm. “Not sure why she couldn’t accomplish this herself the first time she was here. Doesn’t say much about her as a leader.”

Her smile vanished. “Do you think it’s wise to speak of her so boldly?”

He laughed. “What? You think this house has ears?” He shrugged. “I don’t worry about such things and neither should you. She’s a dangerous woman, yes, but one who relies more on muscle than brains.”

Tatiana knew her eyes must be silvering but didn’t care. She shivered with the force of repressed anger, playing it off as fear. “You risk what I wouldn’t.”

He chucked a knuckle under her chin with more force than seem warranted for such a gesture. “That’s why I’m the man and you’re the woman.” He glanced around. “You have the satchel of supplies she sent?”

How did Daciana stomach this buffoon? “Yes.” Tati
ana touched the small pouch tucked into her interior jacket pocket.

“Then let’s go. This place wears on me. It has no character, no sense of history. I’ll be happy to leave it behind and return to Corvinestri to claim my new position.”

That makes two of us
, Tatiana thought. But if she could help it, only one of them would be returning. And it would not be Laurent.

J
ust from watching the subtle play between Mal and Chrysabelle in the car, Creek knew she’d made her choice and it wasn’t him. He was okay with that. Not happy. But okay. The more he got to know Mal, the more Creek understood the vampire wasn’t the monster he believed himself to be. He clearly cared for Chrysabelle and would do anything to protect her. Creek could respect that. Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to watch out for her, too.

The guards at the mayor’s gate had let them pass but not the car, so now the car was parked on the street and the three of them strolled toward the front door of the mayor’s house. Havoc stood on the porch waiting for them. From the expression the shifter wore, it was clear he hadn’t expected Creek to actually show up with a vampire and a comarré.

“Havoc.” Creek nodded, knowing his smug look wouldn’t help the already-icy relations between them, but proving people wrong felt damn good. Not as good as walking out of the Florida State Pen, but close.