Blood in Her Veins (Nineteen Stories From the World of Jane Yellowrock) (76 page)

In a matter of seconds, I was Beast, crouching on the bed. I stopped Beast from extruding her claws.
My linens do not need holes
.

She snarled back and stood, stepping slowly to the floor. On the hardwood, she extruded her claws and stretched, almost sitting, to pull on shoulders, then lifting up to pull herself forward, her belly scraping the floor. She extended her back legs and lifted the right one, stretching from front paws to back toes. Then she did the other leg. Languid and svelte, she moved to the door and lifted a paw.

No scratches!

She snarled again and deliberately extended her claws, dragged her paw down the doorjamb, putting deep grooves in the paint.

Oh crap. Eli just painted the moldings.

She chuffed with amusement.

When he gets mad at you, don't blame me. He's the one who brings you steak these days.

Eli is good hunter. Brings good cow meat.
She stared at the damaged door. Her appetite was growing at the thought of bloody meat, a totally different kind of cramping in her belly, the cramping of hunger from the energy used in the shift.
Beast needs sharp claws. Eli will not see.

Eli sees everything.

A knock came at the door and I/we stepped back. The door opened and Eli bent inside, placing a platter on the floor. As he was rising, he stopped, his eyes on the scratches. For a long moment he didn't move, halted half-bent-over. Beast looked away, offering to him her profile in a cat's utter disinterest. “I'm going to let it go this time. I'm going to repair it. I'm even going to make a scratching post for your damn claws. But if you ever do that again, I'll start cooking your steak well done.
Charred
. Are we clear on this?”

Beast sat, front paws close together, as if posing, but she snarled at him, eyes slit, lips pulled back, showing killing teeth.

“I'll take that as a yes. Jane, are you better?”

I dropped my head down and back up in a human nod, which felt all wrong but was the best way to communicate with Eli in this form.

“Good.” He closed the door.

Beast maintained the disinterest and indifference until we heard Eli's footsteps recede to the kitchen. Beast then picked up the largest chunk of raw steak and half chewed it before swallowing it and taking the next.

•   •   •

Back in human form, I felt much better, except for the hunger that raged through me; I had used up a lot of energy on the second shift. I dressed and got a step stool, placing the vinyl bag on the top shelf of my closet behind everything, and initiated the
hedge of thorns
ward back over it. It looked weird up there, some ten feet off the ground. I had never set the super-duper ward on anything up high, and the energies had formed a sphere around the bag and through the shelf. It wasn't easy to see in the dark of the closet except in Beast-vision, though I was certain that Angie would be able to see it if she got high enough. I took the step stool with me and inspected the room to see if an enterprising and determined little witchy girl could stack furniture and climb up there. I didn't see how, and I was pretty sure that levitation wasn't part of the witch repertoire.

When I came out of my room, I took the stool with me and deposited it in the butler's pantry. On the top shelf was a mad cat, her tail tip twitching and her eyes slit nearly shut. “Sorry about dropping you, KitKit.” She managed to ignore me with utter disdain.

In the kitchen, I could smell oatmeal cooking, and my mouth watered. It was cooked just the way I like it—old-fashioned oats dumped into boiling, slightly salted water. Cooked for a minute, two at most, then re-dumped into a big bowl filled with enough real sugar to bring on a diabetic coma, and lots of milk. The absolute best. I practically inhaled it and felt the sugary energy and complex carbs start to work on me immediately.

Molly joined us and looked from the empty bowl to my hair, which was now unbraided and hanging to my hips in a black swing. And was dry, which was nice. “How's Beast?” she asked, putting together the signs of a recent shift.

“She's good. How's Angie?”

“Pouting. She's currently in magical time-out, which makes her angrier.
I don't understand what's going on or how she . . .” Molly shook her head in frustration, her reddish mop bouncing. I only now noticed that she had cut her hair. The short, curly style looked good on her, professional, smart, and chic, but I bet Big Evan had not been happy. Molly added, “I don't know how she did what she did.” She lifted her cell. “I have a dozen phone calls to make, including one to my husband about that child. I smell tea steeping, and I'd love to have a cup.”

“You want a shot of whiskey in it?” Eli asked.

“Actually that sounds amazing. I'm sure it's five somewhere in the world. But just a dribble, please.” Molly turned and left the kitchen, already tapping calls into her cell. My eyebrows went up. Molly accepting alcohol in the middle of the day? That was another strange part of an already strange day.

Eli took my bowl—a mixing bowl that had held twelve cups of oatmeal—put it in the sink, and ran water into it while he poured tea for Molly and me. He put my mug on the table beside my elbow, along with a tub of Cool Whip and little cup of real cream, and carried Molly's tea, with its drip of whiskey in it, to her. I looked at the Cool Whip and the cream. Cool Whip in tea was comfort food, but it only worked with cheap tea. This smelled like the good stuff, and so I added a teaspoon of sugar and a dollop of the cream. It was perfect. I sat, sipping, listening to Eli as he tiptoed up the stairs and checked in on Angie and then came back down. He took a cup from the espresso maker and sat across from me, his dark eyes even darker with worry. “What happened?” he asked.

I held the warm mug for a moment and set it down, leaving my fingers lightly circled around the ceramic heat. “Molly had sent me a portable hedge and I activated it over the vinyl bag holding the skull and Molly's charms. It was a new working that was geared to not only stop a regular thief but also a magical thief.
Most
magical thieves. If the
arcenciel
had gotten to it, I can't guarantee that she would have been stopped. For all I know she might have swallowed the whole thing and taken off.” I waved that thought away. “Anyway. The new working has manacles built into it so a thief can't get to the bag, and also can't get away. They're trapped there. When Angie touched it, the working grabbed Angie's hands and wrists with the manacles. When I was outside of time, I watched as she shot little black light magics into them and into the hedge, trying to get loose. I didn't turn off the hedge. She used raw magics to get free.”

“Black light magics? I thought you said most magics are blue or green. Or red.” He thought and added, “Sometimes purple.”

I nodded. “Yellow, orange. Prisms of the rainbow, light and energy as used by a witch. They work like a signature to people who can see them. Angie's used to be white. Blue sometimes. Rarely with little motes of black power in them. Except the very first time I ever saw them manifest. She was barely out of diapers, and she got mad, and a whirlwind of her magics ripped through the mobile home they were living in. The magics were dark, like an angry cloud. She could have killed her parents. Instead Beast calmed her and stopped the attack. Molly and Big Evan bound her that day for the first time.”

I drank more tea, trying to put it all together in a cohesive timeline. Working with long-lived vamps, I had learned that timelines were important. “When Little Evan and Angie were in the witch circle waiting to be sacrificed by the Damours, Angie was surrounded by dark magic. And when she freed me from the head Damour, there were streaks of dark motes in her magic. I had never seen her magic up close enough to get a good look, and back then I couldn't bend time, slow it down, to really study it, and I didn't understand . . . but I think her magic became dark that night. I think she learned something and has been using it. Or was contaminated by it. Maybe not black magic, not blood magic, but something that can go either way.” I looked up from my mug. “This is going to be hard on Molly and Evan.”

Eli nodded. “You want me there?”

I shook my head. “No. Yes. I don't know.” I thought some more. Having Eli with me would be cowardly. I was
not
a coward. Or not often. “No,” I decided and stood. I refilled my cup and added more cream and sugar, stirred it, but then left it on the table. I walked out one of the new doors to the side porch. Molly was sitting there in one of the rusty chairs, rocking, her dress full-skirted and flowing out and down to the decking, chatting on the phone. Her red hair was flopping to one side, and the curls followed the same line as the dress. She looked as if she were posing for a painting by some famous watercolor artist. The thought was way too artistic for me, and I shook it away.

Molly's tone informed me that she was talking to Big Evan, her hubby. I walked over and sat at her feet, my legs curled up guru-style in a half lotus. It was an intrusion as well as an act of submission unusual for me and especially for my Beast. Her perfumed scent was too strong for me,
augmented as it was with my Beast senses, and I resisted the desire to sneeze or wrinkle my nose.

Molly's voice trailed off and we could hear the dripping and tapping of rainwater and the ever-present sound of traffic. “Jane's here,” she said.

“Would you put me on speaker?” I asked.

Molly tapped the screen and said, “Evan, you're on speaker. Jane has something to say. And she's sitting at my feet. Like a house cat.”

I managed a smile. Molly understood what my position and posture meant.

Evan said. “I'm not going to like this one little bit, am I?”

“Probably not,” I said. To Molly, I asked, “You already told him about Angie?” Molly nodded slowly, then shook her head. Mixed signals meant he knew parts. Slowly, I went on, knowing that I needed to say this in a special way, with compassion and tenderness and all that crap. But I didn't know how to do things like that, and hadn't figured out how during the walk out here. I was a bull in the china shop of my friends' emotions. “You know I can bubble time. So when I heard Angie scream, it just kinda”—I shrugged—“happened. And I ran inside. She had her hands buried in the hedge—that's the new and improved hedge, by the way—over the sabertooth lion skull. The trap part of the new hedge had been activated, and she was stuck. But I was standing outside of time and I saw what she was doing. She was zapping the manacles. And her magic was like black light. She's using her power raw, without maths to give it form. Controlling it just with her mind and will. And I have a bad feeling that she saw me bubble time, which means she might know how to do that too.”

Molly closed her eyes. Her face went a paler shade of cream; clearly she hadn't told Evan yet. I caught a whiff of her reaction, which was all tangled and twisted and broken.

“Thanks for sugarcoating it, Jane,” Evan said, the sarcasm so thick even I understood it.

I shrugged and stood, patted Molly's hands, and walked back inside. I was still barefoot, the wood floor smooth but with the rolling surface of a very old house. At the table, I picked up my tea. “That went well,” I said, lying.

Eli chuckled, and there was no amusement in the sound at all.

•   •   •

Supper was a quiet affair, though Angie didn't seem to sense it. Angie had sat Ka Nvsita, the Cherokee doll I had given her, on the chair beside her,
and was telling the doll about her day, omitting her time-out and concentrating on the flight and KitKit, who was still hiding on the top shelf in the butler's pantry. According to the doll chat, Angie had enjoyed a stellar day.

Molly stared alternately at her daughter and at her own left hand clenching in her lap. She ate with determination, but I could tell she wasn't enjoying the salmon and black rice Eli had made, nor the mixed greens salad—which wasn't bad for green leaves and veggies and nuts and stuff.

With nothing settled and no decision made about what to do with Angie or the skull, Molly pushed away from the table and called Evan again, her voice low and worried. Together, over the cell connection, they warded the house, Molly's incantation and Evan's flute playing following her from door to door and window to window. When the house was protected, Molly took a pouting but seemingly obedient Angie Baby upstairs. I followed and watched as Molly and Evan put their daughter to sleep. They used a new working that Angie wasn't expecting, a sneak attack that they didn't announce or warn her about. The little girl's eyes flew open in surprise and she resisted for some five seconds before she fell back on her pillow, eyes closed, and her breath even. Asleep. Molly looked from the little girl to me and said, “We had to.”

I nodded, relieved, and Mol turned back to her daughter. The music and chanted words of the new magical binding sounded through the house, the energies shivering along my skin and through the soles of my feet, sweet and dangerous and tight as thorny vines.

When Angie woke up, her powers would again be bound, more constricted than ever. I had a feeling that she was gonna be one ticked-off little girl. But safer. Much safer. When Angie was bound, Molly said some sweet nothings to her hubby and I pulled on Beast sight. The little girl's body looked as if it had been wrapped in a cocoon of blue and red magical strands, with a touch of bright sunlight energies thrown in to seal it. There was no way she would be able to break this one. The bright yellow magics would cancel out her nascent dark magics. I knew next to nothing about how magic actually worked, but I understood this one on some basic, intuitive level.

Satisfied, Molly and I took the stairs down and joined the card game waiting for us at the kitchen table. Poker. Five-card stud. It seemed that I had a natural advantage in the game, because I could smell the difference
between players' excitement at really good hands and their change in scent when they were bluffing. Alex wanted to take me to a riverboat casino offshore in the Mississippi for some high-stakes gambling. I wasn't interested in risking the money I had put aside, but the Kid wasn't to be denied his experimentation and, with Molly here, he had another subject to test me against. I won every single one of the matchsticks we bet. Later, the Kid told me that if it had been real money, I'd have made about fifty grand, according to his own geeky conversion mathematics based on a terribly inflated value for the matchsticks.